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Recently, I bought a laptop from a friend to do some serious business with on the road more than anything, write stuff, be my sofa gaming chat companion that type of stuff. It was stock with i3 8130U with Intel UHD 620 gpu integrated, with soldered on 4gb of ram. I After deciding correctly for such specs that a light Linux distro is a must, and gave it all the productivity stuff I wanted and initially meaning to have no games on it... I still had to put every game on it it could run. Guess that is a gamer's curse. I did upgrade the machine after the fact with 8Gb RAM stick giving it total of 12, and installing cachyos that smoothed out performance nicely on the PC. For example, before upgrades Dreamcast emulation was utterly unplayable, jumping into feasably playable after them.
This made me a fun thing testing out stuff back and forth, which games need way more power than you assumed, which games work much better than you anticipated with such a low spec for gaming, etc. I would say "Emulation is kinda obvious answer" this machine likely emulates everything everyone is able to surmise themselves. But the area slightly outside emulation, or more exotic emulation things are OK. Thus far my list would have:
Doom, Doom 2, various expansions. Kinda obvious and just about any engine of your choice will do the job fine.
Quake 1-3 - Less obvious with 3 but all have choice of few stellar sourceports, out of which I put in vkquake, yquake2 and ioquake3. All run beautifully at native 1080p
Daikatana - Also has native multiplatform including linux files from 1.3 development team. Runs beautifully and fast. Though Daikatana shines more as a multiplayer game and you need to give smoke signals to the natives to setup a good MP session.
Ion Fury - Modern boomer shooter that has native Linux version as well. All hail BuildEngine.
Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst (Ephinea): Just setup with lutris on linux, pair your bluetooth controller, stay more in 720p resolution zone and have grand good time.
Diablo II - Given but not immediately obvious. Proton handles the windows version nicely on linux.
Pro Pinball Trilogy - These are my favorite pinball games that utilize pre rendered graphics. Very playable on just about anything.
Marble Blast Ultra (OpenMBU64) - Runs beautifully at 720p (it's original resolution). Very good fun especially if you pair up a dual analog controller to roll with.
Marble it Up! Ultra - Runs significantly worse than OpenMBU but minimize graphics and resolution and it will 60fps with you. Also have bit more RAM than 4gigs.
Balatro - Balatro. (Does have fanmade native ports on numerous platforms including native Linux version)
Surprising failures:
Buckshot Roulette and Demon's Tilt. Both needed apparently way more power from your GPU than I assumed. Demon's Tilt skirted around by just not hitting a high enough FPS for comfortable play, but buckshot roulette was utter slideshow city. Some of the modern "PS1 look" games can be deceiving in how much they still actually need despite the end result players see on their screen.
So my thread topic is: Which games that require very little oomph from your PC do you think are great/quintessential/hidden gems etc.? Obvious emulation answers aside. Can be retro, can be surprises from modern indies, etc. The linux compatibility thing is just personal thing that is not exactly part of the thread, just something I focus on as it is part of the search criteria for me. Focus on great games that run on little.
This made me a fun thing testing out stuff back and forth, which games need way more power than you assumed, which games work much better than you anticipated with such a low spec for gaming, etc. I would say "Emulation is kinda obvious answer" this machine likely emulates everything everyone is able to surmise themselves. But the area slightly outside emulation, or more exotic emulation things are OK. Thus far my list would have:
Doom, Doom 2, various expansions. Kinda obvious and just about any engine of your choice will do the job fine.
Quake 1-3 - Less obvious with 3 but all have choice of few stellar sourceports, out of which I put in vkquake, yquake2 and ioquake3. All run beautifully at native 1080p
Daikatana - Also has native multiplatform including linux files from 1.3 development team. Runs beautifully and fast. Though Daikatana shines more as a multiplayer game and you need to give smoke signals to the natives to setup a good MP session.
Ion Fury - Modern boomer shooter that has native Linux version as well. All hail BuildEngine.
Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst (Ephinea): Just setup with lutris on linux, pair your bluetooth controller, stay more in 720p resolution zone and have grand good time.
Diablo II - Given but not immediately obvious. Proton handles the windows version nicely on linux.
Pro Pinball Trilogy - These are my favorite pinball games that utilize pre rendered graphics. Very playable on just about anything.
Marble Blast Ultra (OpenMBU64) - Runs beautifully at 720p (it's original resolution). Very good fun especially if you pair up a dual analog controller to roll with.
Marble it Up! Ultra - Runs significantly worse than OpenMBU but minimize graphics and resolution and it will 60fps with you. Also have bit more RAM than 4gigs.
Balatro - Balatro. (Does have fanmade native ports on numerous platforms including native Linux version)
Surprising failures:
Buckshot Roulette and Demon's Tilt. Both needed apparently way more power from your GPU than I assumed. Demon's Tilt skirted around by just not hitting a high enough FPS for comfortable play, but buckshot roulette was utter slideshow city. Some of the modern "PS1 look" games can be deceiving in how much they still actually need despite the end result players see on their screen.
So my thread topic is: Which games that require very little oomph from your PC do you think are great/quintessential/hidden gems etc.? Obvious emulation answers aside. Can be retro, can be surprises from modern indies, etc. The linux compatibility thing is just personal thing that is not exactly part of the thread, just something I focus on as it is part of the search criteria for me. Focus on great games that run on little.
