Alternative Games Is All About Linux Gaming

Yesterday we talked about Frozenbyte wanting Linux gamers to help test their Linux game port of Trine. We also mentioned that Frozenbyte's Trine 2 would likely be coming to Linux and that this work for Frozenbyte was being done by Alternative Games, a company we never heard of. We have now received an email from Tapio Honkonen, the CEO of this company that's said to be all about Linux gaming.

Yesterday we mentioned that it looked like Alternative Games came out of IGIOS, the company that previously ported the Shadowgrounds games to Linux. This is in fact correct. Tapio Honkonen tells Phoronix that Alternative Games was founded by the IGIOS Linux team. The mission of Alternative Games is specifically to focus upon porting games to Linux.

Not much more than that was said, but while Alternative Games right now lacks a functioning web-site and all, we can confirm that this new Finnish company is the IGIOS Linux development team and they are focusing on bringing games to Linux. They will also be publishing Trine with Frozenbyte without Linux Game Publishing as they had done with the Shadowgrounds and Shadowgrounds: Survivor titles last year.

It's good to see another player in the Linux game porting field at a time when Linux Game Publishing, which was born out of the Loki Software demise a decade ago, was down for months due to an embarrassing server failure.

It's also at a time when Ryan "Icclus" Gordon, a former employee of Loki Software and in the years since had been credited with single-handedly porting many popular games to Linux and Mac OS X, doesn't seem to be doing much in this area. The last we heard from Ryan was when he wrote on his finger, "hush now" and "a lot of things have happened this year, and exciting things are approaching in the coming months."

There's also other individuals that are porting games to Linux, like Frank Earl, who is part of the Phoronix community and has ported several games over to Linux in the past independently and as a contractor for Linux Game Publishing. These days there are also more game studios bringing their games to Linux directly rather than relying upon a contracted porting outfit.

The Linux gaming scene is only going to get better from here going into 2011, much better. You can count on it.