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Developing Games on Linux: An Interview with Little Red Dog Games

Little Red Dog Games is an indie game developer that primarily uses Godot to create games such as Deep Sixed, Precipice, and their latest game, Rogue State Revolution. To learn more about their experience developing games in Linux, we sat down for an interview with CEO Ryan Hewer and Lead Programmer, Denis Comtesse.

Tell us a little about Little Red Dog Games. How did you come into being as a company?

Ryan: We’ve been around for the better part of a decade now—I’d say maybe 8 years. We’re based out of northern New York, and Denis resides in Germany. We started off as a hobby business making point-and-click adventure games and playing around with various tools that are out there. With every product we said, alright, well what if we take it a little bit further? What if we push ourselves a little bit more? Then we started taking on increasingly ambitious games.

Now we’ve come to the point where we’re not really a hobby business anymore, we’re all full-time developers. We’ve got a studio that has put out four commercial games—and a smattering of other things we won’t admit to. I think we’re one of the larger companies out there that uses the Godot open source software, and we’re definitely one of the larger Linux-focused companies out there.

How long have you been using Linux to develop games?

Ryan: Denis is our lead programmer, and he works within the Linux environment, so it’s kind of a requirement for anything that we do. We have to play nicely with Linux.

Denis: It’s all my fault. Originally the first game was made with Adventure Game Studio, which I believe was still Windows-based, but from 2016 onward we started to use Godot. Since I’ve been a Linux user since about 2008, I just used the tools that I’d always used, and we just went with it.

Linux, and by extension Godot, are not usually the go-to game development platforms. Why did you choose to design your games in this software?

Ryan: We’re not exclusively Linux developers, and working within the Godot system doesn’t come at the expense of other platforms. So for us, because we use Godot for a lot of our products, adapting from Windows to Linux is quite literally like flipping a switch, changing a few parameters here and there; but I would say it’s less than a half-hour’s work to be able to support Linux consumers out there. Linux users represent about 7 percent of our market right now as game developers, which is more than enough to justify the minimal steps needed to be able to make the game compatible for Linux PCs.

Denis: For my case, I’ve always been using Linux. It’s just my favorite operating system. I’m doing all my work in it. I’m also a musician and I’m recording all my music in Linux, and so for me it was just obvious since most game engines support Linux.

On the other hand, I didn’t pick Godot because it has good Linux support—that’s a welcome bonus—but because I really like the workflow of it. I tested a couple of engines, and this was the one I preferred. And since I had already worked with Godot, it was obvious that we would continue using this engine for similar projects.

What do you find are the benefits of Linux game development over more traditional avenues? Why is it your preference?

Denis: I usually encourage everyone to use the tools they like. Of course in a game development team we have to agree on certain things like which game engine we use. But other than that, some people use Linux, and some people use Windows on our team. Everyone just uses what they like to use within the limitations of the project. We’re not forcing anyone to work in an operating system they don’t like.

What additional challenges are present when designing in Linux?

Denis: Most of the work is translatable unless you need certain tools that aren’t available on Linux. Sometimes you have to use workarounds, but with compatibility layouts like WINE and all the possibilities that allow you to run Windows software on Linux quite easily now, I haven’t run into any problems. As a Linux user for many years, I know how to approach these things. I’ve mostly used open source software even before I switched to Linux, so the switch wasn’t difficult for me.

What do you think the future of Linux gaming looks like?

Ryan: Right now there exists very little pressure or incentive pushing game developers, practically speaking, into developing for Linux. It’s more of a spillover benefit of trying to work with new and diverse tools. Godot’s market share is slowly growing within the realm of non-traditional engines. And it’s inevitable that with that, with an increasing number of developers that are adopting Godot as an engine, you’re going to see more Linux games coming out into the market. There’s no reason not to. It would be a huge oversight for any developer to not be putting out packages for that 7 percent demographic, and it’s painless within Godot to do that. I think just for that reason you’re going to see more content.

We will say that our Linux users are often very grateful for all of our products that come out in the Linux environment, and they can be some of your biggest cheerleaders. I would encourage developers to pay attention to these overlooked markets, just because that kind of publicity can go a very long way.

Denis: The only thing that any developer has to be aware of is that as soon as you release something for Linux, you have to do support for Linux. For us it’s easy. If the lead programmer is already working in Linux, then it’s no problem. Every build is tested in Linux by default because I’m using it every day, but for other developers it’s definitely something to consider because you need someone who knows Linux and knows how it works to be able to provide support. Godot was very easy to work with in that regard, and I don’t think we had any Linux-specific bug reports, have we?

Ryan: No. Actually it’s the opposite. Historically when it comes to development we always get issues in Windows, and then the response back is, well we’re not seeing that on the Linux build at all. And that’s nice—unless you’re us, in which case that’s just frustrating and awful. But I would say that usually the Linux builds have fewer stability issues. I would encourage developers to generally use a mix of OSes in their pipeline really early on in development, because you can catch some real weird behavior that way before it’s too late. We’ve definitely caught some issues when it comes to file naming for the Linux environment, for example, and that sometimes things that would be acceptable in Windows are not acceptable in Linux and vice versa.

Do you game on Linux? If so, any favorites?

Denis: I game almost exclusively on Linux because it’s getting easier. A couple of years ago, I occasionally had to use WINE to run Linux games when I had to run Windows games on Linux, which is getting more and more reliable. It works surprisingly well, and now with Steam Play it’s getting even easier. Most of the time the game just runs out of the box. It surprises me, I usually don’t even check to see if a game has Linux support when I buy it, just because even if it doesn’t, I can usually get it to run.

As for favorite games, I’m not playing enough, to be honest. I play strategy games and adventure games, and the most recent title that had native Linux support that I played was Beyond a Steel Sky. I like that one.

How does that experience compare to gaming on Windows for you?

Denis: I rarely play on Windows. Only in the very rare case where a game just won’t run, and that hasn’t happened in a while. Most stores come with their own launchers, and installing a game is just a couple of mouse clicks, so for me it’s not any different.

What’s next for Little Red Dog Games?

Ryan: Oh, man. The things I could tell you. We’ve started work on what is our largest and most ambitious project ever, and I don’t like saying the word magnum opus because I say it too much, but this really does qualify. This is a big one. Our team has grown rapidly over the past year or so, and we’re going to be experiencing growth for the next year or so after that. The next game will be stunningly gorgeous.

Denis: No pressure.