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Publication Date: 2023-03-16
Being the person behind the continuously evolving OpenBSD games database PlayOnBSD.com, I have developed ways over time to keep up with new indie games and to check quickly if they are candidates that might run on OpenBSD.
I want to share some of my methods that help me to accomplish my goal to not miss out on interesting new indie games that can run on OpenBSD.
There are several components to this that I am going to elaborate more on in the rest of the text. First of all, in order to know what's new, I need to be well aware of what is not new ("Keeping Track of What Is Already Known"). Then I need sources that inform me regularly of upcoming or newly released games. Related, but not exactly the same is the goal of closing gaps in my awareness of games that have already been released. I need ways to get more information about the games' engine information to screen if there is even a potential of running it on OpenBSD. Last, but not least, I need a way to keep an eye on games of interest until I can more definitely evaluate if they may be runnable on OpenBSD.
I mainly accomplish this through the PlayOnBSD.com games database (see above). Other places that I also try to keep updated are linked here:
Steam group PlayOnBSD with curated list of compatible games
I rely on several different sources of information on upcmoning and newly released indie games. They are generally a starting point to hear of games of interest, and then I check if there are any signs about their potential compatibility with OpenBSD.
GamingOnLinux is, of course, centered around Linux. But finding games here is often a great prompt to look for more details.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/
They provide an RSS feed:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/article_rss.php
There are several YouTube channels that are very passionate about Indie Games and do a great job at keeping up with new stuff:
I mostly just watch them when they show up in my video queue. There are, of course, many more video games besides that.
This is a little less straightforward than looking for new things. Essentially, this boils down to having some resources that can be consulted easily in search for games that have so far escaped my attention.
One way is to look for what's on sale on the big digital distribution platforms, but the interesting titles often get crowded out by a large number of Windows-only and/or triple-A games that have no chance of running on OpenBSD. This is a little better with some "thematic sales", for indie games, or - even better - sometimes based on certain game engines or publishers with a high likelihood of running on OpenBSD.
Another way to close some gaps is to look at any "best of" lists - best indie games of all time, best of 20XX, etc.
The common engines, like FNA, HashLink, LibGDX, Adventure Game Studio have their own "showcase" pages. Here are a few examples:
Showcase for HashLink/Heaps.io games
Adventure Game Studio award winners
This is an essential step to keep the whole activity manageable for me. I come across at least a dozen upcoming indie games every week. To keep the volume manageable and high-yield, it's indispensable for me to screen the games quickly for "non-starter features." The most common such scenario is finding that a game is developed with a proprietary engine like Unity or Unreal which precludes running it on OpenBSD in any foreseeable future.
There are several ways to get info about a games' engine, of different reliability. Here are a few such places with their caveats:
In my experience, deducing the engine from the files included in the game is the most robust way. The most practical way to do this is via SteamDB.
Not only does this page allow you to take a look at all the file names for the games, it also uses heuristics to automatically detect certain game engines based on the files that are present. Nifty! This tends to be more robust than the other pages above, where the engine entry is determined by whoever writes the entry, which often ends up being wrong.
One caveat with SteamDB is that games that have been released only recently often don't have the filenames yet, but only a hash of the file. This is usually not an issue anymore after a few months post release. Many games release demo or early access versions that can be looked at for engine information when the main game hasn't been released yet.
If a game might run on OpenBSD, but I can't or don't want to buy it at this point, or I have insufficient information to know if it might run, I mainly use the Steam Wishlist to keep track. This has proven very useful for a variety of reasons:
1. Almost every game has an entry on Steam, including pre-release.
2. Steamdb.info contains a wealth of data, see above.
3. You can make use of Steam's wishlist alerts to regularly learn about newly released and/or discounted games on your wishlist.
Some exceptions to the above are games that are limiting themselves to Kickstarter, and choose not (yet) to publish or track the game on Steam.
It's possible to track on other digital distribution platforms (Epic Games, GOG, HumbleBundle, itch.io). Those tend to have fewer games than Steam.
If I am interested in a game and I want to confirm that I can run it, it is ideal if there is a demo that can be tested. Fortunately with steamctl in ports, we have everything that is needed to obtain the Steam demo files. I wrote this up previously and you can find the instructions here:
/gaming/steamctl/getting-demos.gmi
As of March 2023, there is a variety of mechanisms that can help track interesting indie games, even if they are more on the obscure side. With the help of SteamDB, I can inspect the filenames to get an early sense if the game might run.