The game was originally created by Bill Kendrick and is maintained by the SuperTux Development Team. It is written mostly in the C++ programming language. Many of the in-game graphics were created by Ingo Ruhnke, author of Pingus. The game was developed under usage of Simple DirectMedia Layer as cross-platform middlelayer targeting OpenGL and OpenAL. Game engine and physics engine are own developed. The game's metadata are S-Expressions of the programming language Lisp, scripts are written in Squirrel. The development occurs in a series of stable milestones, each one improving steadily upon the last. First Milestone 1 was released in 2003. Version 0.4.0 was released on December 20, 2015, which features significant improvements to gameplay, all new graphics, a switch to SDL2, and new features. Milestone 2 was officially released as stable in 2016, with the inclusion of the official level editor. Version 0.6.0 was released on December 23, 2018 with redesigned Icy Island and Forest, revamped rendering engine and many minor improvements.
Gameplay
Gameplay in SuperTux is similar to Super Mario Bros. Tux can jump under bonus blocks marked with question marks to gain coins or retrieve power-ups such as the egg, which makes Tux bigger and allows him to take an extra hit before dying. Other objects such as trampolines and invincibility granting stars can also be obtained from these blocks. Tux can defeat some bad guys by jumping on them, and most can be defeated or frozen by shooting bullets after collecting a fire flower or an ice flower. Earth flowers grant Tux a miner helmet with a spotlight for dark areas and can give invincibility for a few seconds, and air flowers allow Tux to glide in the air, jump higher and move faster. If Tux gets hit after he collected a flower, he loses his helmet and transforms back into big Tux. The objective of each level is to get to the end, usually marked by checker-patterned poles. At the end of each world is a boss, such as the Yeti boss on Icy Island.
Contributed Levels
In addition to the two main worlds, there are contributed levels, which include the Bonus Islands and the community Incubator Island, where levels used to be tested and improved for possible implementation into the main game. In addition to this, there are installable addons and custom levels added by the player, either created in the internal Level Editor or added manually.
Add-on levels
There are additional add-on levels in SuperTux which can be installed with the built-in add-on manager or manually. The add-on manager lists over 20 add-ons. New add-ons are usually published on the forum and can be added to the list after testing.
Plot
In the game, Tux begins in Icy Island. Tux holds a picnic with Penny, his girlfriend. He starts dancing and distracted, he doesn't notice that the villain of the game, named Nolok kidnapped Penny. Tux notices, he finds that Penny is missing. Determined to save Penny, Tux begins his journey. He then navigates the Icy Island and later Forest to find her.
Reception and impact
In 2007 Punto Informatico described the atmosphere of the game as pleasant and praised the free availability of the game. In 2008, SuperTux was used as a game for children by school district #73 in British Columbia, which had decided to transition to free and open-source software. The game was ported to many platforms for instance the GP2X, Pocket PC, PSP and Palm WebOS. The game was also scheduled to be included in the release of the EVO Smart Console as of April 2009. SuperTux became a quite popular free and open-source game which was distributed by numerous freeware outlets for download or was included in freeware collection and cover disks. For instance, in May 2017download portalSoftpedia lists for the Linux version alone over 80,000 downloads, Softonic over 750,000 downloads for the Windows version. Between 2002 and May 2017 SuperTux aggregated also over 850,000 downloads via Sourceforge.net.
