Educational and Strategy software

• Gtraffic is a block puzzle game for Gnome, where you have to move blocks around so you can get the red block out. The first levels are fairly easy, but it gets harder as you go. Requires Gnome.

• Xpuyopuyo is anther tetris like game, similar to columns, but with an extra twist. 2 playrs each try to match their 4 colored spheres in their own play area, and every time one such arrangement is made, the spheres disappear, and a grey useless sphere is dropped on your oppennent's game. You can can play with 2 human, or against the computer. And the computer is pretty smart ...

• Ace of Penguins is a collection of 9 different games, inluding a couple of cards solitaires, a minesweeper (a la Windows 3.1), and taipei, a Mahjong type game. Nice job.

• Columns is a tetris like game, where little colored balls fall in groups of 3. You have to line up at least 3 of a color to make them disappear. Requires SDL.

• PySol is a collection of cards solitaire games. The latest release has 160 of them. Requires SDL, BLT and python (>=1.52), sound is optional. Over 4 Mb of downloads with the libraries. We are still working on it ....
• Lincity is a simulation game where you build your city from scratch and try to develop it into a living entity. You start by building houses and roads, then add a fire station, stores, stadium, etc. After a while, pollution and crime will have to be dealt with. It will probably remind you of Simcity.

• Gnome Chess is a Gnome version of the game. It is actually a Gnome front end to the GnuChess program, so you'll need to get that first. If you prefer KDE to Gnome, then get Kchess which is the KDE front end to the same GnuChess mentioned above.

• Crafty is another chess engine like GnuChess. We haven't tried it yet.

• There is also Knightcap, a 3D chess game, which we are in the process of reviewing.

• GtkPool, as you can tell from the name, is a pool game. 8 balls with pockets. It is a work in progress, so we give it a B, but it is playable. Things that still need to be added would be support for multiple players and keeping scores. You can hear the balls hit each other if you have the sound working your computer.

• Xarchon, is a clone of the famous Archon game. The forces of Good and Evil fight it out on a chess like board. This time, each individual fight is resolved using strength, but also spells and casts. The control of the game takes a while to get used to, make sure you read the man page for the keyboard control description. Requires Gtk+, Xpm and Xpm-devel.

• Skill Literature. The goal is to go from point A to point B, using a set of pipes, straight or bent, that are provided to you in a given order. Requires Gnome.

• Wurst (German for sausage) looks like a really well designed trading simulation game. You have just inherited a hot-dog stand from your uncle, and you will try your chance at making it in the food business. You interact with customers and and try to sell them on your wonderful sausages.
  Unfortunately, the game and all the documentation is in German only, so our experience was limited. However, it looks very promising. The author is looking for volunteers to help with the translation of all the dialogs and the documentation. Runs under X, with sound. GPL license, binaries download only, but there is a CD for sale with all the source and some extra goodies from the main web site.
  Install tip: from the first link above, you will need either the rpm or gz file, and the wurst.gz which is an updated binary. The game looks for the data directory in /usr/local/games, so install it there or create a link.

• Puzzle Square is a little puzzle board game where you have to move the squares around to get them back in order. Install with the standard ./configure ...

• Xmahjong is the famous tiles game. This is a standard X version, so you don't need a fancy environment like the Mahjong that comes with Gnome. For people who never tried it, you start with those cute little tiles piled up in different configurations, and the goal is to remove all of them, by taking off the table two matching tiles at a time. You can only remove tiles that are on the top or on the sides. The trick is that most of the tiles come in 4. So when 3 are showing, you have to pick the right 2, or you might get stuck later when the other 2 are for example on top of each other.
• Darwersi is an adaptation of the classic Othello, or Reversi. This one features some smart algorithms (Artificial Intelligence ...) that should make it a tough opponent. Uses Tcl/Tk, and comes with sound. Warning: the download is almost 10Mb, and binaries only. Darwersi has a very professional look !

• In Blackbox, you follow rays coming in and out of a "black box" and try to find where the rays are being deflected inside the box. It gets harder as you try to solve the problem for bigger and bigger boxes.
• Mancala is one of my preferred board games. The rules are very, very simple to learn, yet it can be very challenging is your opponent knows what (s)he's doing. Comes in text and X-window versions. You will need XForms for the X version. I had to remove the -lXpm library in the mancala Makefile to get it to compile the X version. But now it's working and I can play this cool game on the computer !
  LFK's review: The console version gets a straight A, the X version gets a B because of the library problem.

• Kugel is a board games where you score points by lining up similar objects, then those objects disappear, and you have more room to keep playing !

• Othello The console version of the classic game.

• GNOME and KDE both come with a few games.

• Pente

• Yahtsee The dice game. Text based.