You are all very welcome. Thank you for being such fun party guests, and the dancing was great! I got introduced to some new Penguins, as well as seeing many old favorites of my own again. :)

For personal interest ...
One from the guest list AND dance card was Stardew Valley, which I understand the wife and I can also co-op in, and now has the Linux version on GOG. Does anyone know if it is LAN-able - or is it online only co-op?

Then there is Overload! How did I miss this one? I spent a lot of time in the tunnels of Descent 1+2, to the point I caught myself spotting things that could be secret entrances or thief hiding places ... in stores. LOL! Thanks Lift, for bringing it to my attention!

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun speaks to our (both the wife and I) old strat/tactics/stealth gaming. We just have not tried it yet.

However, for today we are trying something new with Aquaria. Thanks gogtrial! :) We have never done a metroidvania, and this one sounds like a beautiful, puzzling and relaxing one to explore. I confess Hollow Knight also looks beautifully drawn with an interesting story, but having not tried that style (and being self-confessed poor at platforming) I am not sure if I would find it frustrating. Aquaria seems like a wonderful and enjoyable introduction to the genre.

Having said that - look for some guests and dance partner Penguins to make a return later this year if possible ... perhaps in a "Summer Games" (as being Penguins they may wish to get away from Anarctica for a bit during their 'mid-winter'). ;)

Thank you all again for joining in the party fun, and Happy 2020!

Does it mean Aquaria is somehow relaxing / not frustrating / easy and still feel like metroidvania? :)
I'm so ambivalent about metroidvania. I remember a lot of platformers from my childhood and these challenging games are somehow so satisfying to beat for me. On the other hand, I often start to hate them, becasue I'm not good in such games and repeating some long sequences dozens of times may be extremely frustrating.

This year I've bought Teslagrad on GOG. I had the game on Steam before, but dropped it after not more than hour of gameplay. When I started GOG version I've just fall in love in the game. I was fighting till the very end, however I was made to edit saves (extreme method also remembered from childhood;), because 2 bosses were far above my abilities. Still – I loved the game and for sure I'll try some other ones from the genre. Aquaria looks interesting.

If you want a really fun, zero frustration, metroidvania, try Yoku's Island Express. It got a 4.9 rating on GOG (less than a dozen games have that rating, and only two were released after 2000, The Witcher 3 and Yoku's), and it pretty much deserves it. No penguin though...

I will have to get back to you on that - we have just installed it! (Patience, Grasshopper.) LOL. Like yourself we are very curious about it being a metroidvania style. gogtrial's description and the GOG reviews seem to indicate it to be more a puzzling and non-frustrating one though.

This is part of our difficulty also - aging eyes and twitchy or finicky controls in platformers just do not seem to go together. We use keyboard/mouse, not controllers, and have never console gamed, so have just avoided most platformers and metroidvanias as too frustrating. Aquaria will be an interesting experiment, but I take it from the descriptions and gogtrial's recommendation that it is not a typical metroidvania.

Question out there to others who may know ... is Hollow Knight difficult in the way of finicky platformers, poor keyboard controls and/or needing very fast twitch and precise timing/targetting/eyesignt?

Wow, looks impressive. I've never heard of it and I suppose it may be a bit too demanding for my current hardware, but it goes to my watchlist, because the game looks like made for family gameplay :) Thanks!!

Congratulations to the winners and Happy New Year!

Yes. My wife, who's at best a casual gamer and has never heard of metroidvanias, saw me play it and wanted too. She completed the game to the true ending (97% completion).

Thanks for the giveaway, bjgamer, and congrats to the winners!

To spread the penguin love a bit more, another recommendation for a little Linux game with low system requirements, which I'm just playing to work on my New Year resolution. :) And it's quite addictive: Train Valley.

I don't have personal experience with it, but LAN supports seems to be there: I can highly recommend playing Stardew Valley, too. The only reason I didn't include it in my list of favorites is that according to my own criteria, I haven't finished it yet (I'm still working on the achievement for cooking all meals, but then the latest update added another meal!)

I've tried LAN, and can confirm it does work.

Sounds interesting. I take it the GOG version does not work with Linux at all (so far)? I could not find any references in my usual go-to lists. I did see where Steam's is listed as Platinum with Proton tho.


Thank you both for confirming this! :)

Well, I guess the Penguins that found new partners went to four, so it is only fair there are four games now on my new to play Penguin resolution list ... Aquaria, Stardew Valley, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun and Overload! Thanks again for introducing us to some of your favorites! :)

Thank you bjgamer for setting up the party, congrats to the winners and happy new year everyone!

LOL, indeed. A lot of down-scrolling on Google Maps to get any reference point :D

Congrats to the winners and thanks for the giveaway, bjgamer.

Happy New Year, everybody!