FOSSPicks
Multiplayer game
Kurve
There are many brilliantly designed games that are very simple yet have great playability, and Kurve is one of the best examples. It's a modern remake of an old freeware DOS game from the mid-90s called "Achtung, die Kurve!," although many older players will recognize the gameplay as being similar to the light cycle level in the arcade game Tron, or perhaps even Snake on the Nokia 6110. In Kurve, you control the direction of a pixel that's drawing a continuous line by using only two keys, one for left and one for right. If at any point you cross a line or hit the edge of the gameplay area, you lose. But the brilliant element that makes it all so much fun is that six people can play at the same time – not online, or with different controllers, but all via one keyboard in front of your computer. It means you can get up to six of your friends together in close proximity, each with fingers delicately poised on specific pairs of keys on your keyboard, and each with the ability to zoom about across the screen creating a line in whatever color that person's pixel avatar has been granted.
The ensuing game is predictably chaotic but a lot of fun. Every player starts in a random location and needs to wait for the other players to press their keys to signal their ready state. Their dots are then launched across the screen, which quickly turns into cartoon-style spaghetti. Each player's drawing will stop at random points to create gaps that give skilled players a way through, and that means games last longer than in Tron, especially with fewer players. But it always ends the same way, as each player eventually succumbs to the mess of lines on the screen. All that's then left to do is enjoy your ranked moment on the leaderboard before pressing space to play again.
Project Website
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you've found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Zorin OS 17 Beta Available for Testing
The upcoming version of Zorin OS includes plenty of improvements to take your PC to a whole new level of user-friendliness.
-
Red Hat Migrates RHEL from Xorg to Wayland
If you've been wondering when Xorg will finally be a thing of the past, wonder no more, as Red Hat has made it clear.
-
PipeWire 1.0 Officially Released
PipeWire was created to take the place of the oft-troubled PulseAudio and has finally reached the 1.0 status as a major update with plenty of improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Rocky Linux 9.3 Available for Download
The latest version of the RHEL alternative is now available and brings back cloud and container images for ppc64le along with plenty of new features and fixes.
-
Ubuntu Budgie Shifts How to Tackle Wayland
Ubuntu Budgie has yet to make the switch to Wayland but with a change in approaches, they're finally on track to making it happen.
-
TUXEDO's New Ultraportable Linux Workstation Released
The TUXEDO Pulse 14 blends portability with power, thanks to the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU.
-
AlmaLinux Will No Longer Be "Just Another RHEL Clone"
With the release of AlmaLinux 9.3, the distribution will be built entirely from upstream sources.
-
elementary OS 8 Has a Big Surprise in Store
When elementary OS 8 finally arrives, it will not only be based on Ubuntu 24.04 but it will also default to Wayland for better performance and security.
-
OpenELA Releases Enterprise Linux Source Code
With Red Hat restricting the source for RHEL, it was only a matter of time before those who depended on that source struck out on their own.
-
StripedFly Malware Hiding in Plain Sight as a Cryptocurrency Miner
A rather deceptive piece of malware has infected 1 million Windows and Linux hosts since 2017.