Hi to everyone. I am a little frustrated with Linux games on GOG. I recently switched to Zorin OS 17 Pro, which is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, and have tried to use the Linux versions of games I've bought on GOG before. Some have worked just fine without incident (and I'm talking about starting up right away and playing perfectly), whereas others have just not worked without any kind of error message to show what's going on (with the exception of The Witcher 2, which did show missing dependencies).

Maybe it'd be a good idea for all of us to crowd-source a list of Linux GOG games that we all know just work, and haven't had any issues getting to play. I'll start. For me, it's Bastion, Aragami, BallisticNG, Shadow Warrior (2013), Frogun, and the Shovel Knight that straight-up work just fine. Games that don't start at all are Everspace and Lovely Planet. I have more Linux games in my library, but I haven't tried them out yet. I'd like to purchase Linux games on GOG that I know work. Any recommendations? Thanks!

I don't use Linux much, but the Batman games work fine for me.

I don't see any Batman games on GOG for Linux ... ?

Back when i was trying to get Linux games to work on my laptop and whatnot, other than DosBox games, Schenzhen IO and Fez both worked. (Actually Fez performed BETTER on linux than windows, and had fewer graphical issues. Note i don't recall if it was a HB version or Gog version)

Rest of them not so sure.

I maintain a public list of games I play on a regular basis on Linux, and are all working flawlessly using ./play.it on a Debian Sid (most of them are tested on a Debian stable too): vv221's games collection.

A much bigger collection is supported by ./play.it, cf. ./play.it - Game scripts (there is roughly a thousand games in there). But the collection I linked to above are the only games I personally ensure work at all times.

--- Everspace is supported by ./play.it, in the community-maintained games collection.

--- The Windows builds of the Batman: Arkham series of games work nicely on Linux using WINE.

Okay, let's start with the easy stuff: Anything that runs in Dosbox or ScummVM will work just fine; better if you use the system's native version of Staging and the latest ScummVM.

Factorio, Caves of Qud, V 6 times, Terraria, Tales of Maj'Eyal, Stardew Valley, Parkitect*, Papers Please, OpenTTD, HypnoSpace, Huniepop, Slime Rancher, Starbound*, FTL, FEZ, and the Cook Serve games all work flawlessly as well.

Next comes the fun part: Source ports. These games won't work natively, but there's certainly versions out there made by fans that will:
OpenRCT2 (RCT 1&2), Jazz2 Resurrection (Jazz2), countless IDtech source ports (too many to list), Aquaria, RVGL (Re-Volt), OpenJazz (Jazz1), Serious Sam Classic: Vulcan (Serious Sam TFE/TSE), Daggerfall Unity (Daggerfall), Citadel (System Shock 1), OpenMW (ES: Morrowind), Redguard Unity (ES: Reguard), OpenTESArena (ES: Arena), various Tomb Raider engine ports, various Ultima ports, and OpenBOE (Blades of Exile).


*By certain definitions of work; the game runs like sticky arse.

Update:

On a whim, I reinstalled Everspace and double-clicked on the icon that said, "use system libraries," and much to my surprise, the game started just fine. Works great. The other icon didn't work at all. This goes to show that the Linux games that don't work are very much dependent on the libraries present, which also suggests that GOG could benefit from including these same libraries in their installers for Linux games. Also - just to clarify - I am looking for games that will just work by using the .sh installer, and not piggyback on external services such as Steam or Lutris. Would like a "pure" gaming experience with my Linux setup, is all.

Want to make this as simple as possible. Thanks.

Just to make sure there is no confusion, the solution I suggested earlier (./play.it) is not a launcher/client/service. It’s a command-line packages generator that builds native .deb packages from the original game installers. Then the system packages manager can use these .deb metadata to ensure things like required libraries are installed.

./play.it itself is no longer useful once the packages are generated, and does not need to be available on the system the games will run on. The packages are fully stand-alone, and do not rely on any kind of service.

If you know of alien, the tool used to convert between the .rpm and .deb package formats, ./play.it is a bit similar to that, but specialized in DRM-free video games. A short description of this tool can be found on Debian wiki.

Sorry I was talking about using wine.

I had made a thread about that:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/does_it_run_on_newerother_linuxmac_versions_thread
It doesn't see much movement, but once life and what is likely a case of adhd stop getting in the way so much, I'll try supplying again.
(Also don't have a Mac, thus no Mac reported from my side)