FreeBSD Games: bsdgames

Submitted by b on Fri, 01/25/2019 - 07:32

I recently started using FreeBSD on my computer (again). The 'why' isn't really important.

But, I still love video games, and FreeBSD might seem like an odd choice, because the common misconception is that there aren't any games on FreeBSD. If  you want to play video games, you should use Windows, or maybe Linux so you can use Steam.

Well, I don't want to do either of those things, because lots of other people are doing those things, and there's almost nobody talking about the games available on FreeBSD (and there are lots of them), so I decided to try and fix that.

I figured the best place to start was the venerable 'bsdgames' package, which contains such gems as Boggle, Tetris, ppt, and bcd.

ppt and bcd aren't really games, they take what you type in and convert them to representations of what it might look like on paper tape or punch cards, respectively. The other two games, boggle and tetris, are more what you would expect.

Boggle is a game of boggle that you play in the terminal, with the standard rules, and it makes me realize that even though I've been speaking English for most of my life, I still don't know very many words.

Tetris is Tetris. You know Tetris, so I hope that it doesn't require much explanation. It's a serviceable version of the ubiquitous game, and it's playable on just about anything you can install FreeBSD on (which is a pretty broad selection of computers).

And there you have it, two basic games for your FreeBSD install. Don't worry, in future installments, we'll delve a little bit deeper into the category and get some games that are maybe a little bit more exciting to watch.

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