LGP Is Now Porting Shadowgrounds: Survivor

Nearly a year ago we reported on two new games coming to Linux: Shadowgrounds and Shadowgrounds: Survivor. These games were developed by Frozenbyte, a relatively unheard of Finnish game studio, and both are third person shooters with a sci-fi setting.

These two games were supposed to be released for Linux (they are already available for Windows platforms) by last Spring, but that never came to fruition. In August we were then told that things were held up due to publisher negotiations, but that beta testing would hopefully start in a week or two. Well, we never ended up seeing any beta or any other word from Frozenbyte or IGIOS (the company originally hired to port these two titles to Linux).

Now it appears that Linux Game Publishing has been involved with porting Shadowgrounds: Survivor to Linux. Linux Game Publishing has apparently been working on porting this game to Linux for the past several months, according to a company blog entry. Closed beta testing is expected to begin shortly -- of which we will be apart of, so we will keep you posted. LGP hasn't announced any work on Frozenbyte's original title, Shadowgrounds, but just the "Survivor" sequel.

Shadowgrounds: Survivor will also be the first commercial game on Linux to be using NVIDIA's PhysX library for physics handling. Four years ago when PhysX was owned by AGEIA, they told us they would support Linux. Their PhysX software library is supported on Linux, but they don't have Linux drivers for their PPU (Physics Processing Unit) hardware. These days, however, PhysX can be accelerated on NVIDIA GPUs through the use of CUDA, which is supported on Linux.

Also on the bright side is the graphics for this game appear to be decent. Shadowgrounds: Survivor was released for Microsoft Windows in late 2007, which is relatively new compared to some of the other titles that Linux Game Publishing has previously ported to Linux.

Linux Game Publishing is hoping to ship Shadowgrounds: Survivor by the end of March of this year. Sadly, however, LGP quite frequently ends up missing their target ship dates. A recent title ported by LGP was X3: Reunion and it arrived well over a year late and nearly two years after LGP first announced they had acquired rights to this game. Let's hope Shadowgrounds: Survivor will not face such delays -- especially considering it already is running a year late!

More information on this game can be found on the LGP product page.