Welcome to another Sunday and another week of some open source games. When people think of puzzles, most people might think of MineSweeper or a jigsaw puzzle. While these are a grand example of how to be ‘puzzled’, pardon the pun, there are more games out there, that test your know-how and will tease your brain. I remember Lemmings back in the day when I was using a Commodore 64, which while extremely interesting and fun, quickly grew harder as you got higher and higher in levels. And after about ten levels, I know at age eight, I had an extremely hard time trying to beat the levels. Sokoban was another classic game on the C64 that I used to play that got difficult as the levels went on. But at time has advanced and as I’ve aged, some games have gotten easier but no less fun. Today’s puzzle games might stump you when you first play, but I can assure you, they are beatable. As well, today is when the I’m announcing the winners for the 12 keys of Hitman Pro and the 5 keys of Windows 7 Firewall Control which will be announced after the main post.
Enigma (15 mb)
Off the site, Enigma is a puzzle game inspired by Oxyd on the Atari ST and Rock’n’Roll on the Amiga. The object of the game is to find uncover pairs of identically colored Oxyd stones. Simple? Yes. Easy? Certainly not! Hidden traps, vast mazes, laser beams, and, most of all, countless hairy puzzles usually block your direct way to the Oxyd stones. It is precompiled for Windows and for Slackware Linux users (and derivatives of Slackware), however, it is found in most repositories pre-compiled for ease of use for non-Slackware users, such as Ubuntu. It is based off Sokoban, and to me is one of the most addictive games I’ve played in a long time. It works on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.
Pingus (13 mb)
Pingus is a Lemmings clone with penguins rather then lemmings, and is literally the only difference I’ve noticed. It’s just as difficult as the game progresses and manages to put out 22 amazing levels that start out very easy as they advance and make you want to tear your hair out. There is also a fan addition of another 105 levels, which can be found here as well as explaining on how you can add them in. If you used to play Lemmings or if it’s interested you, Pingus is an extremely faithful clone that I would highly recommend if you have a desire to replay a classic. Pingus works with Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.
Robots is a nifty little game that while lacking a Windows port, is pre-installed under most distributions of Linux that use GNOME as a desktop environment. It also has a port for BSD as well. Gameplay is very simple, every turn you take, the robots take one step closer to you, and they’re trying to kill you. However, you kill the robots by making them collide into each other and make sure they don’t touch you. You also have a teleportor that will teleport you randomly on the map safely for only so many trips as well as some versions that have an unsafe teleportor as well. It’s really more addictive then I explain here, and only works under Linux or BSD.
Links to older Open Source Gaming articles
Week One – First Person Shooters
Week Two – Simulation
Week Three – Remakes of Classics
Week Four – Strategy Games
Week Five – Emulation
Week Six – Racing Games
And now for the winners of the Hitman Pro/Windows 7 Firewall Control Giveaway!
Winners of the 5 Windows 7 Firewall Control keys:
SC, wave, Adrian M, Mike, Ahinigami
Winners of the 12 Hitman Pro One Year keys:
vdyll, Ionut, Joe, nailzuk, jordan, INDRANIL, safeguy, Mark Berkovic, riyaz, smokexx, gurmi, abdullah
Check your emails within the next 48 hours and you should be receiving your keys. Have a good Sunday all and relax!