Ever wanted to enhance the game of Chess with new elements? That’s where SokoChess comes in. It combines Chess with Sokoban – the latter of which involves pushing crates to their proper destination. You have Chess pieces to move, but your goal is to push the black pieces to their destination, without them overtaking yours. The game is made with the awesome open-source Godot engine, and there’s a native Linux version available that plays great!

Luxtorpeda is a Steam Play compatibility tool for allowing a certain set of games on Steam (mostly pertinent to older titles) to run using a native Linux engine, rather than having to use Proton for a Windows-only game. For instance, Ocean’s Heart has a Windows-only icon on the Steam store page. But with Luxtorpeda, we can force the game to use the native Linux version of Solarus, the engine that powers the game.

Someone had emailed me this morning regarding an upcoming point-and-click adventure called Splittown. According to the official site, you play as the character Leonard Nimby. Nimby is a former “top agent of IM5” who’s on the move to find the person responsible for stealing his shrink gun…right on the day before an election. Seems like a pretty interesting premise. It also has that nice 90s aesthetic to it, reminiscent of the SNES/Genesis days.

Them’s Fightin’ Herds – a fighting game featuring adorable animals – has finally received an update. The last update was shipped in February. But we’ve got some great things to look forward to with the 3.0 update. Probably the biggest thing is the introduction of level 3 supers (have a look at the trailer; they’re pretty flashy). This will certainly change the meta of the game, for sure. All characters have been adjusted, whether cosmetic features have been added as part of their moveset, some of their moves have been balanced, and/or received bug fixes.

DRAG is a tough-as-nails racing game that’s available natively on Linux. It went to Steam in early access, and it hasn’t been updated in over a year (and unsurprisingly, the developers didn’t get back to me when I asked on their Discord how progress was coming along). But now it seems like we’ve finally got an update. Not an actual software update; just a general update on what the roadmap for the game is.

If you have Splitgate installed on your system, prepare for a massive 15 GB update. Season 2 for the Halo-meets-Portal shooter has now landed. Key features include: a new matchmaking system, making it more likely you will pair with people who are the same skill level as you new battle pass with a crapton of skins remastered version of the Abyss stage new game modes: Juggernaut, Hotzone, and Lockdown revamped progression system various adjustments to guns, from fire rate to ammo count and everything in-between updated UI improvements to the map editor other smaller details Check the official blog post for more info.

Seems like it’s been a long time since we got an update from the 2D fighting game Them’s Fightin’ Herds. Well, not to worry, we’ve finally been updated on what’s going on with the game. Last year, the game got ported to Linux. Some time later the Mac version went up as well. Now the game will be heading to consoles later this Fall. While it may not seem like a big deal for us Linux gamers, the good news is all versions will have cross-platform multiplayer, meaning on PC you can play against someone on Switch, for example.

Project Heartbeat gets an update today. Here’s a quick list of what’s new: new song: Reprisal skin editor visualizer rework and new main menu visualizer new UI elements rework of the Controls editor sorting system a cross is displayed when a note is missed plenty of bug fixes Check out the patch notes on Steam. Cover image credit: Project Heartbeat developer

True to Double Fine Productions’ word, Psychonauts 2 is now available natively on Linux. The Mac port coincides with this update, along with two new text languages. The stability for the Strike City checkpoint at the end of the level has also been fixed. They left a few notes regarding both the Linux and Mac versions. Here’s the rundown for the Linux version: save file location is in ~/.config/Epic/Psychonauts2/ game may crash on launch or when changing the Display settings.

Looks like we’re starting off a pretty strong week. Two titles have either received a Linux version or will be in the near future, and two titles have received Steam Deck support. Psychonauts 2 should be releasing on Linux later this week too if everything goes according to plan. Swordbreaker: Origins now has a native Linux version, and along with the update came a few fixes. Casebook 1899 is an upcoming point-and-click mystery adventure; the demo will come on May 31 with native Linux support.