SOMA

http://www.gog.com/game/soma

This game was released today. It is made by the same developer who made the Penumbra games and Amnesia. I just started playing it, the native Linux version works great, like all their previous games. I have not played much yet, but I already had to take a break because it was becoming a bit too intense. It's been a while since the last time I played a horror game.

I did have a little problem getting the game starting at first, which was related to dbus. Arch Linux use a much newer dbus version than the majority of other distros, and as such the game would not run because of incompatibility. The workaround is quite simple thankfully, but it requires that you have Steam installed.

Navigate to: ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/amd64/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/

Then copy the two files:
libdbus-1.so.3
libdbus-1.so.3.5.8

Copy these files into the SOMA "game" directory. The game should now run without problem.

This problem is probably only present on Arch Linux, any distributions that use the Arch repos, or any other distros that always use the latest software versions.

Yes I bought the GOG version. All Linux games you run from Steam will use the Steam runtime, so this is only a problem if you purchased the game on GOG. The Witcher 2 have the same problem, I don't remember the specific library, but there was one library that the game required a specific version of, which I had to copy from the Steam runtime.

You could do a symlink, but the files in question are less than 300kb in size, so this is really the simplest solution. You could also add the Steam runtime as LD_LIBRARY_PATH by modifying the startup script for the game, but I believe most people would find copying files to be the easiest workaround.

Yes, they check their root path first before checking system path. Like I said, you could also set the Steam runtime libraries as your system path, and to have higher priority than the normal system libraries.

Ideally you should have the required system libraries installed on your system. Just about everything you need will be available in the repositories for the distribution you need. However, in some cases there may be an incompatibility between a system library and the version a game require, however this is usually only a problem with distros that aim at always having the latest software releases, so for distros like Mint you should just install a missing library from the Mint software center.

The Linux version is suffering from a memory allocation error at a specific point in the game. This error has been fixed in the Steam version, but GOG does not have the updated version yet. I suspect it will become available on GOG in a day or so.

Apart from this problem, I have played the game for several hours without any other problems. The Linux version is great, running smoothly and without any issues. As soon as this memory allocation error is fixed, I'll get back to enjoying this great game.

This game actually got me more scared than Penumbra and Amnesia. There is a certain type of monster in this game that also creates some weird effects when you are close to it which totally freaks me out. At one point I didn't want to proceed in the game because it was too disconcerting for me, so I actually left the game alone for two days before continuing. I get really immersed in good horror games, and I love the fright they give me. Anyone who enjoy a good horror experience should definitely look into this game.

I'd really recommend all games from Frictional Games, they really are great experiences and they make good Linux versions.