Extreme Tux Racer

Tux Racer was one of the first games I played on Linux. It was included in some old distro I downloaded (and burned to a bunch of CD's before installing no less) and I was quickly captivated by it's simple yet challenging gameplay. Guiding the Linux mascot Tux down snowy hills, picking upp herrings and watching the scenery fly by was simply a nice experience packaged as a well-controlling arcade game. Development of Tux Racer has continued since then, and the latest active version is Extreme Tux Racer, recently released in version 0.6. The finely tweaked control is still intact and the game has more features than ever. While the character models and animations could use some work and the backdrops feel a bit low-res, I can't deny how smooth and fine this game still feels. And small details like the snow on the main menu following the pointer around still gives the game a nice sense of polish. Complete and fully playable, Tux Racer is really worth a try and coming features should be interesting. I'd love a multiplayer mode, for example. Get it from it's project page here. (Or if you want a .deb package, try PlayDeb.)

Graphics look great in motion, although some of it is a bit dated.