For over a year now, if you are gamer looking to pick up some high quality indie games for your computer, Desura was a good place to look. A game delivery platform as well as a store, it catered to Windows users, and about half a year ago a Linux was revealed to be in the works. This client has now been officially released, and happily, installation of the client software and actually navigating the store itself is a breeze.
One of the advantages Desura has is that it places all kinds of games right at the gamer’s fingertips. Using the client software, it’s easy to browse through new games such as Oil Rush, or older games like Bullet Candy Perfect, or even standard open source games such as Neverball. They’re all within a couple clicks, and most – if not all – of the games include reviews, screenshots and even preview videos.
I’m not generally a big time gamer, by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, I have the handful of games that came installed with Ubuntu, and I’ve added a couple others (I was addicted to World Of Goo when it was first released for Linux, and am now playing Tanglet, a Boggle-style game, a little too often for my productivity!), but nothing serious. Certainly nothing that requires gaming hardware or extra peripherals. But what I noticed about using the Desura client was just how much it made me want to play games.
Maybe it was the great graphics that highlighted each game, or how every game, regardless of whether it cost $19.99 or was available for free, seemed to be presented with equal consideration. Simply because Oil Rush costs ten times as much as another game doesn’t mean it gets ten times the promotional space. Certain games may be better than others, but you’d never really know it by their store placement (other than one being at the top of the Popular Games list.
One other thing that makes the Desura store nice is that it has everything built in. There is a community area, where individual users can create blog posts, join different gaming groups, make online friends, and more. There is also a support area and development area, for users and game creators.
About the only thing I’m not a huge fan of with Desura is how purchased and downloaded games need to be launched from within the client software itself. When I downloaded and installed (and played) PlaneShift, it was only accessible through Desura. It would be fantastic if there was some sort of integration, so that games downloaded through Desura would show up in the standard application launchers, whether it’s an application menu, keyboard launcher or basic command prompt. Launchers can be created – the information for particular application launcher location is available – it’s just not as easy or as automated as it could be.
Still, if that’s the worst thing I have to say about this, then it’s done a good job. Considering the Desura client for Linux brand new, I think they’ve done a great job. Part of reviewing Linux gaming is acknowledging the fact that there will never be as many commercial games for Linux as there are for Windows. That’s just life. But if Desura can grab as many of the great free and indie games, then it’s well on its way to being a success.