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Games: Steam Titles for GNU/Linux, Retro, and Review
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Boiling Steam ☛ New Steam Games Playable on the Steam Deck, with Skate Story and Dunjungle - 2025-12-13 Edition
Between 2025-12-06 and 2025-12-13 we selected 10 newly released games that are rated as Verified or Playable on the Steam Deck, and meeting specific criteria in terms of user ratings. Quite a few good finds in this past week, with Skate Story in which you play a demon trying to reach the moon on a skateboard. Don’t mind the scenario, OK, it’s about skating and it looks cool. There’s what looks like an amazing 2D action game as well, Dunjungle. Looks like December won’t be boring this time.
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Hackaday ☛ Why Games Work, And How To Build Them
Most humans like games. But what are games, exactly? Not in a philosophical sense, but in the sense of “what exactly are their worky bits, so we know how to make them?” [Raph Koster] aims to answer that in a thoughtful blog post that talks all about game design from the perspective of what, exactly, makes them tick. And we are right into that, because we like to see things pulled apart to learn how they work.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ id Software released its first game 35 years ago today, John Carmack’s breakthrough side-scroller engine — Commander Keen title brought smooth scrolling to PCs
35 years ago today, Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons - Episode 1: Marooned on Mars was released by a dev team including John Carmack and John Romero.
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Boiling Steam ☛ Mars First Logistics Review: Build and Deliver Stuff
I saw this game a few years back (2 years ago?) at the Bitsummit in Kyoto, and I remember it looks very intriguing. It puts you on the planet Mars, where you have to carry stuff (hence the name logistics) across its surface. The problem it asks you to solve is “what does it take to move this object from place A to place B?”. And the whole thing is in 3D, of course, with some degree of physics simulation. And to tackle that challenge, you get some parts to assemble a rover. Very similar to LEGO parts, by the way. Which makes me wonder why LEGO never really focused too seriously on this kind of market of construction games. They are mostly known for the lazy licensed LEGO games with famous movie franchises. A game like Mars First Logistics is exactly what LEGO, the company, should commission, if they had any idea. Anyway. Moving an object from A to B is a simple concept, but as they say, the devil is in the details.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Experiment to train rats to play Doom reaches a new level; rats can now shoot enemies — wraparound AMOLED screen provides virtual environment for neuroengineers' expanded open source project
The project, led by neuroengineer Viktor Tóth, has evolved into a second-generation setup that significantly expands what the rats can do inside the Doom engine.
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El País ☛ The day the creator of Tetris met the inventor of the Rubik’s Cube: ‘We have to look for entertainment that challenges us’
Both men rarely give interviews, but they agreed to speak with EL PAÍS at the OXO Video Game Museum in Málaga, Spain. Rubik — who spends half the year in San Pedro de Alcántara, a resort town in Málaga province — visited the museum on Friday, December 5. The following day, in this temple of creative leisure — which is always packed with children — Pajitnov received an honorary award.
The conversation is a tectonic clash between two minds that know how to combine leisure, creativity and mathematical challenges. With one difference, of course: you can’t get more analog than a Rubik’s Cube… and you can’t get more digital than Tetris.