Gaming the Steam Summer Adventure, playing Together on Linux, and more

Open source games roundup

Week of June 22 - June 28, 2014

In this week's edition of our open source games news roundup we delve into the Steam Summer Adventure, hope that Together hits its Linux milestone, and more.

Gamers game the Steam Sale

Or did Valve fix the whole thing from the start? From the conspiracy theory files this week comes this piece over at Kotaku about the meta-game behind this summer's Steam sale, and how fair it actually is. Certain teams in the game-about-buying-games began to have landslide victories, and folks railed against Valve on Reddit and Steam. As per usual, Valve said nothing, but after it became apparent that the whole system was kinda broken, Valve swooped in and changed the rules. Personally, I'm glad I've never gotten caught up in the Steam badge/trading card thing. I have barely enough free time to play real games as it is.

Co-operative adventure game Together on Linux?

The super adorable, "interdependent" couch co-op game Together: Amna & Saif is just a couple thousand bucks shy of hitting the Linux stretch goal over on Kickstarter. The artwork is gorgeous, the game is already playable, and, perhaps best of all, you won't find any gun-toting Big McLargeHuge protagonists here. Instead, you and a friend control a mother and son as they seek out a cure for an ill family member. Hooray for non-traditional main characters in games!

Bare metal ARM assembly tribute to Star Fox

A team of student developers banged out a 5,900 line ARM assembly code rail shooter akin to the original Star Fox on Super Nintendo. With NES controller input and direct memory access sound ("Do a barrel roll!"), the PiFox project will send most gamers on a trip down memory lane. Fork PiFox at GitHub.

Konami Code Necklaces for sale on Etsy

It's not the first time someone's tried to gain an extra 30 lives via jewelry, but I really like the look of the translucent acrylic on this necklace from Etsy use Ha Ha Bird. They should make matching sets with the "Select Start" variant, though. Y'know. For a second player? (via Boing Boing)

Big thanks to Opensource.com summer intern Bryan Behrenshausen for his help in gathering stories this week. If you like our open source games coverage, be sure to follow us on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news.