Linux Games #5: Pingus
English, German, Linux Games November 12th, 2007
Pingus is a free (as in licenced under the GPL) Lemmings clone. Lemmings itself was a puzzle game in the 90s where the player had to guide a bunch of lemmings through a 2D world filled with dangerous cliffs and malicious barriers. While the lemmings walk on their own, one has to provide them with tools, e.g. parachutes so they won’t crush or pricks for building bridges. The goal of every level is to make sure a specific amount of lemmings reach the exit point safely.
Pingus is not limited to the ideas of Lemmings but features some additional actions and secret worlds. This includes a worldmap which you might know from Supertux. At the beginning of every level you get a quick briefing with the mission specs, sometimes small hints, too.
It features 22 (plus 8 with version 0.7.2) playable levels and runs under Windows (Binary) and Linux (Source). I noticed the Gentoo maintainer to be pretty quick with updating the portage ebuilds (~arch) while Debian is a few versions behind (lenny). My advise is to manually build from source if the package provided by your distribution is older than 0.7.1 since there has been a major rewrite (it’s based on SDL now).
Pingus is not limited to the gameplay itself, the source includes a built-in level editor, multiplayer and a few other features and is under steady development.
So, what are you waiting for? Just give it a try, I garantee you hours of fun and tossing. Visit pingus.seul.org for everything you need.
