My kids Top 6 Linux games

Edit: please see here for my teenager’s pick :)

We are leaving for a short vacation week, I’ve been begged not to leave my laptops at home. Here are the reasons why:

atanks

Once atanks (package atanks) is installed, you launch it from a terminal. The goal is to destroy other tanks before they destroy yours. You can earn “money” when you hit them and win, buy weapons, and get more powerful shields. My kids are not fluent in English, my systems are in English, they found their way around on their own.

Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid

Install the blobwars package (home page) and there will be an entry in the games menu, such as for the other games below. There was a war in the little Blobs world. You need to save all the Blobs while facing the ugly enemies and Galdov, their leader, using different weapons and ways to kill. You can turn on/off the blood effects, which are not scary. I like the “scroutch” sound the aliens make when they die ^^

Armagetron

Do you remember Tron, the movie? Armagetron is inspired from Tron. Drive a “Light Cycle”, a bike, that creates plasma walls where it goes. The closer you get to a wall, the faster you drive. Do not crash against it and force the enemies to crash by putting walls around them. Bottom line, be fast. They like the game, for short periods of time, it is quite intense, on the keyboard too..

wormux

Beware, the music can be obnoxious after a while. It’s a nice music, but it gets to my nerves. In wormux, you choose a number of teams (usually, my kids choose 4 teams), their look (dragons, foxes, bulls, pigs, etc.) and their weapons. Then you command one team and you have to exterminate the other ones. The nice thing is that you cycle through the teams. The winner is the team that has members left when all the other ones are dead.

Powermanga

Powermanga is a “shoot’em up” with manga-style drawing and lots of colors. You drive a space ship and have to destroy asteroids and enemy vessels. At times, the two youngest ones team up to use the keyboard with their little fingers and win. Side note: no music ;)

Frozen Bubble

Frozen Bubble is a classic, you launch balls to a series of other balls, they fall when you hit at least two adjacent balls with the same color. You win when all the balls are gone, before the top wall pushes them down and they hit the launcher. Some levels are easier than others. If you are too slow, the ball gets launched anyway, so hurry!

The descriptions are theirs, with their words and my own comments. All of the games are in the universe Ubuntu repositories. 3 boys, how did you guess?