Torus Trooper, Tumiki Fighters and Starfighter
one of the best Arcade native Linux games made ever
I'm not a big gamer this days, however every now and then I do like
playing some fast pace arcade game to cheer up.
The arcade games for Linux are really lot, however most of them are
too boring and has a notable bad graphic design or a game play,
here is why I decided to blog about two really worthy games to be
noted and placed among best arcade games produced so far.
Below you will find a quick game review of the arcade game Linux
trio
Torus Trooper, Tumiki Fighters and Starfighter
1.Let me begin with Torus
Trooper
Torus trooper is an awesome fast pace japanese game a bit in the
tradition of the good old
Star Wars racer the graphics of
course as with most Linux games are not that awesome as with Star
Wars racer, however the game is a really nice one 3D tunnel
shooter, especially if you'd like to play half an hour to relax
from a heavy strained day. In the game you have a spaceship and you
have to navigate through a rotating tunnels and kill the enemy's
spaceship, there is quite a lot of action involved and this makes
the game really wonderful to lift up your adrenaline :)
While navigating though the tunnels and killing enemies you can
switch up and down your spaceship acceleration,
you have a limited time for which you have to complete each of the
game levels, whether killing a series of enemies
would win you some bonus seconds usually if you get a bonus time an
extra +15 seconds is added to your time limit you're supposed to
complete the level.
On certain scores also can grant you extra time bonus of (+15)
seconds. If you get killed then a (-15 seconds) are deducted from
your level completion time limit.
As every arcade in the game each level has a
boss (a base)
you have to destroy dependantly the time interval in which you
succeed in destroying the end level boss would add up either (+30)
or (+45) seconds to your overall game time limit.
The enemy will show up after you kill a previously game defined
number of enemy's spaceship, the remaining enemy's spaceship to be
destroyed is (displayed at the right up corner) of the game.
Below I present you with the screenshot taken from
Torus
Trooper 's official website and hopefully it will give you a
brief idea what to expect if you desire to give the game a go on
your GNU/Linux.
The game installation on Debian is pretty straight forward is
available as a debian package to install just copy paste in your
root terminal the:
debian:~# apt-get install torus-trooper
Now all left is to start up the game in full-screen mode by typing
as a non-privileged user:
debian:~$ torus-trooper -fullscreen
What annoyed me a bit was the fact that I couldn't find a
fullscreen option in after starting up the game without the
-fullscreen option. But heh, let us not forget we are on
Linux, things to be a bit commandish :)
Hopefully in future releases of the game (if there are such), the
fullscreen will be added as a possible option to be selected from
within the game itself.
Another very notable thing about the Torus Trooper game is the
addicting music and game play I belive is the real charm of arcade
games.
2. TUMIKI
Fighters
Is another great japanese arcade game, it's an interesting fact
that both
TUMIKI Fighters and
Torus Trooper are
created by a single Japanese man
Kenta Cho
Mr. Kenta Cho has done quite a good job especially if we consider
the fact that he is the only one that has developed this two
wonderful games.
TUMIKI Fighters's also very dynamic, however it's more a 2D
like arcade, each of the ships within the game are actually a toy
like (Lego like).
What I find unique about TUMIKI Fighters as a game is the fact that
whenever you kill an enemy toy ship you're able to assimilate the
destoying ship before your eyes.
As described in
TUMIKI
Fighters official game web site ,
"Stick more enemies and become much stronger."
In other words the more ships you are able to gain to your basis
ship the stronger your ship becomes.
Below I present you with a screenshot to get an idea what to expect
if you consider installing and playing the game.
The screenshot is a bit messed and the game looks a way better in
reality so I urge you to take few seconds to install and try
it.
If you're on Debian just issue command:
debian:~# apt-get install tumiki-fighters
To start up the game in fullscreen in a similar fashion to Torus
Trooper you will have to pass the
-fullscreen command option
next to the main game binary.
So:
debian:~$ tumiki-fighters -fullscreen
Will start the game in fullscreen.
3. Finally I'll tell you a few words about Project
Starfighter
Project Starfighter is I a class above both Tumiki Fighters and
Torus Trooper this is most probably because it was developed by a
developers group called Parallel Realities
If you're a Linux game developer, it's very likely that checking
their website will provide you with a number of precious articles
on Game development e.g. making many of the developed Parallel
Realities developed games as well as game source code.
Parallel Realities has so far developed a lot of games, they've
done a great job that each of the games has Linux / Unix
ports.
I find Project Starfighter a real game with a class for the Linux
platform. Below I provide you with a screenshot from a battle
between your own battle ship and an enemy boss:
Some of the game includes features (as taken directly from the
game's website) are:
- 26 missions over 4 star systems
- Primary and Secondary Weapons (including a laser cannon and a
charge weapon)
- A weapon powerup system
- Missions with Primary and Secondary Objectives
- A Variety of Missions (Protect, Destroy, etc)
- 13 different music tracks
- Boss battles
Mentioning about the game music here is the time to tell you that
the game music of
Project Starfighter is among the best game
soundtracks I've ever heard in my life!
The music is quite much a
demoscene like so I'm quite sure if you play the game you will
truly enjoy the wonderful game music.
The game would require you to have a succesfully configured and
running
SDL library on your Linux, along with that you will
have to have a properly installed video drivers otherwise the game
would run up very slowly.
The game is available for a numerous computer OS platforms
including even
Microsoft Windows :)
Again we the Debian users are favourable because the game has been
packaged in a deb for a Debian platform to install the game on
Debian GNU/Linux invoke in your root terminal:
debian:~# apt-get install starfighter
The game is started either by navigating to
GNOME / KDE
menus games menus or directly via a terminal by
executing:
debian:~$ starfither
The game has one major drawback, it's difficulty level is a real
killing one, you have to play at least a couple of games until
you're able to pass level 1.
I've never ever passed level 2, if the developers work out the too
complex game level of difficulty then I believe the game will be a
way more addictive.
Anyways each of the 3 reviewed games
Torus Trooper, TUMIKI
Fighters and Project Starfighter are really addictive and makes
the ordinary sys admin / programmer life a bit more enjoyable
:)