Linux Gaming

Kerbal Space Program!

Damn so many great ones to choose from. I am big fan of Paradox strategy games, kinda in that order: Stellaris, Hearts of iron IV and Europa Universalis IV.

Mindustry, sort of like factorio but open source and free on itch. Although you can also buy it on steam

I know you are specifically asking for natives, but with the awesome work Valve has put into proton so many games play well with linux now!

Right now I'm really getting into old school games or games that have the old school look. Here's a few which have native Linux support:

• Stardew Valley
• Broforce
• Carrion
• Dusk
• FTL: Faster Than Light
• Huntdown

The games I keep coming back and playing since years are Factorio and Cities Skylines. And Minecraft if you call a Java program native. All because of the vast number of mods that exist. And Dota now and then for playing with friends.

@privsecfoss Starsector has a Linux build, and is an excellent game.

I love Dead Cells and me and my wife have been playing a lot of Out of Space lately. Other than that Paradox games are awesome, and one that I've played a lot years and years ago was Project Zomboid. On the more AAA front I loved Deus Ex and Borderlands 2.

Savage 2 was so good. The memories 😢

There are a few that are really fun. My kids were getting interested in gaming, so I had to have a look into suitable games. So here is a kid-friendly list of great stuff that runs natively:

GCompris: A lot of nice learning mini games for the very young (also good to teach e.g. usage of mouse and keyboard)

Minetest: Very similar to Minecraft, but with its own twist. Highly customizable with mods and completely free and open. I am running my own minetest server with a customized non-survival world that is used by my family.

Widelands: A really great community adaption (and extension) of the Settlers II. My son totally loves it.

Unciv: Civilization game based on the Civ5 ruleset. I actually had to deinstall it again on my mobile phone (also available for Android) because it has the same addictive properties as the original...

And for non-free games: Lutris + GOG makes me happy. Currently playing some older Tomb Raider game. Although not really native, I think. Probably using Wine or so...

Factorio

I have a long list :)

Dota2 & CS GO Paradox strategy games (JRepin had listed)

Many non-strategy games published (not developed by) by Paradox Interactive are also providing native Linux games, incl. Cities: Skylines, Surviving Mars, Tyranny

FTL

Sounds like non-free data is allowed. Then surely ioQuake is the native game I spent the most time with.

Counterstrike and Project Zomboid are my main Linux native games right now.

On the proton side of things I'm playing POLYGON. It's a great little multiplayer shooter being worked on by a single dev. It's running EAC with (currently at least) working proton support.

Slay the spire and borderlands 2 are great but borderlands 2 doesn't have all content available on the native port

If you have a decent system and looking for good modern games with kickass graphics try out Dying Light and Tomb Raider.

There's a bunch of others, I like to play the native ones and purchase them to support vendors that are putting all the time & effort into making them Linux native.

For the type of games you have to buy, I've found Trine 2, Yooka-Laylee, BallisticNG, and TheoTown to be quite good.

For FOSS games, I find 0 A.D., Beyond All Reason, SuperTuxKart, and The Dark Mod to be very impressive.

And then there are the many recreation engine projects, like OpenMW for Morrowind or GZDoom for the original Doom, that let us play many older games natively.

SuperTuxKart is a fun racing game

I like starbound. Fun and runs even on older hardware.

I go back to Battle for Wesnoth a few times a year. There are many new scenarios over the recent years.

Whenever people ask this, no one ever mentions Teeworlds. It's so cute but has insane depth

Literally every valve game.

Aside from some of the things mentioned here, Death Trash is a pretty neat indev rpg.

I really like Golf With Your Friends.

Mount & Blade Warband is fantastic and I highly recommend it if you haven't played it.

Unrailed! is a neat little coop game to play with friends. If you buy this one on Steam you can use remote play together so only one person in your group needs to buy it.

Ultimate Chicken Horse is fun for a while with friends. Same deal with remote play together with this game.

Both Hotline Miami games are really fun.

Don't know about them being the best, but I've been playing Valheim and Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun and having a good time with both.

Stellaris - by far the best native game i played

The Talos Principle must be mentioned here. It was the first major game to provide Vulkan support, running just incredibly well.

And of course, Minecraft.

Dunno if it is a native game.

Https://veloren.net

Veloren is a rpg game that is inspired by cube world. Altough it is alpha, lack lot thing, the game is great, beautiful. Good community and an open dev team.

It is written in Rust.

Cataclysm DDA is a good time!

I'm partial to 7 days to die, the graphics look a little bit different in the Linux build but it's otherwise great, they're always releasing updates and you can play older versions easily through steam. Beware that it's one of those eternally unfinished games, it'll always be a bit jank. Community seems pretty good.