I just read an article on Wired called Top 10 Most Influential Amiga Games, I remembered every one. After a nice feeling of nostalgia, I thought about what have been the most important Linux games. While a few Linux games are very good, the Linux game scene is still in its infancy, it only really started about five years ago.

While lots of impressive proprietary games are being ported to Linux, in this article I will concentrate on the free/open source games. As you will see by the games later in this list, we are starting to get there.

The difference between the community produced free/open source gaming world and the proprietary gaming world is that we only need a few games to really make headway in the gaming world. We can then maintain them and improve them over time. We only need one good football (soccer) game and we can then update it each year. We only need one civilisation game and we can produce new levels and graphics.

Within a few years we will have 25-50 really top-quality games, each having its core engine maintained by half a dozen hobbyists with the player community producing new levels and graphics. We have about a dozen of these already, and hundreds and hundreds of half-finished mildly amusing small games.

So without further ado, the 10 most influential Linux Games, feel free to provide your alternatives and reasons in the comments.

Most of the pictures are copyright wikimedia commons, use the links to get to the original.

MUD

The first networked game started at the University of Essex and soon spread around the world. When I went to Essex it was still very much played in computer labs at night and at weekends. Indeed MUDs are still heavily played now. While technically a BSD phenomenon, the MUDS and other adventure games of the 80/90s were far more popular as a gaming platform relatively speaking than Linux has managed to achieve.

Tux Typing

Link: Tux Typing

One area that Linux does do well is educational games, especially scientific/mathematical ones for some reason. There are a lot of really nice games that a child can play without being subjected to adverts, Disney characters or other corporate propaganda.

(Image Source)

Bastet

Link: Bastet

A tetris game where the blocks do not come out randomly but the computer tries to defeat you with the worst blocks. You can never go back to normal Tetris again.

Tux Racer

Link: Tux Racer

Not the most complicated game in the world, but when it came out in 2000, it did prove that beautiful graphical Linux games were possible via OpenGL.

(Tux racer image source) .. Tux racer image source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bd/Tuxracer.png

Frozen Bubble

Link: Frozen Bubble

Frozen Bubble, alongside Crack Attack, were some of the first puzzle games on Linux to have really good graphics, again not massively impressive for gaming in general, but for open source Linux games it was another small step.

(Frozen bubble image source)

Freeciv

Link: Freeciv

It first came out in 1996 and is still going strong, one of the classic Linux clones. Extensible and playable over the network. Globulation is another notable contender.

(Freeciv image source)

Gnome Games

Link: Gnome Games

A dozen or so simple but very polished little games. Important because it allows all the non-technical people to move to Linux, "don't worry, it has solitaire".

Liquid War

Link: Liquid War

You and your friends get together and become liquid blobs and try and kill each other. Exciting yet somehow disturbing.

(Liquid war image source)

Enemy Territory

Link: Enemy Territory

First person shooters based on commercially produced and open source engines such as Quake and Doom has long been one of the strong areas of Linux gaming. Considered fairly, they should have at least half the spots in the list. Sadly, I always die first, I need to get a joystick really. While Enemy Territory was completely produced by a game company, but the fact it was all released as open source meant it has a massive modding community. Die Nazis die!

(Enemy Territory image source)

Nexuiz

Link: Nexuiz

A modern and commuinity produced Quake type shooter, beautiful on new machines and you can turn off the advanced effects for speed on old machines. Run around fast and kill everyone on the net.

(Nexuiz image source)

Battle for Wesnoth

Link: Battle for Wesnoth

My favourite Linux game. It has good AI, a level editor, loads of third party levels and an online mode. Become an Orc general and kill all the elves, what more can you want?

(Wesnoth image source)

So that was my selection. What what you add and remove and why?