Overview

Extreme Tux Racer is a free, open-source downhill racing game starring Tux, the Linux penguin. You steer Tux as he belly-slides down snow and ice courses, weaving between trees and rocks, grabbing herring on the way, and crossing the finish line before the clock runs out. It continues the original Tux Racer by Jasmin Patry (2000) through the PlanetPenguin Racer fork, and has been developed by the Extreme Tux Racer team since 2007.

Latest release: 0.8.4, 10 May 2024.

Key Features

• Belly-slide racing physics — ice is fast but slippery, snow gives you more grip, and rocky patches or a crash into a tree cost you speed. Course terrain changes the way Tux handles.
• Two ways to play — Practice for a free run on a course of your choice, and Events (cups), where you work through courses in order and have to meet herring, time and score targets to progress.
• Full move set — steer, brake, jump, paddle for extra speed while on the ground, and flap your flippers in mid-air to stretch a jump. Brake plus turn gives a tight turn, and you can reset Tux if he gets stuck.
• Herring hunting and scoring — herring are scattered across every course; the faster you finish and the more fish you collect, the higher your score.
• Editable courses — tracks ship as plain data directories (terrain layers, object placement, course lists), so you can tweak the bundled courses or build your own.
• Very light on hardware — a small OpenGL/SDL C++ engine that stays smooth on old laptops, netbooks and single-board computers.
• Keyboard flexibility and localisation — since 0.8.4 the A, D, W and S keys work as an alternative to the cursor keys, and the interface is translated into several languages (English, Czech, Finnish, French, German, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese and more).

Why Use It

It is a genuine free-software arcade racer with no ads, no in-app purchases, no DRM and no account: a small download, native builds for the three main desktop platforms, and an engine light enough to run on hardware that modern 3D games would never touch. Twenty-five years after the original Tux Racer it is still maintained and still fun for the five-minute-break kind of play, and because the course format is plain data, tinkering is part of the deal.

Use Cases

• A quick arcade race that starts in seconds on any desktop or laptop.
• Kids’ first 3D game — simple controls, forgiving physics and no purchase pressure.
• Reviving old or low-powered hardware, including single-board computers.
• Free-software and Linux demo material: Tux, GPL licensing and a tiny install.
• Course modding and level-tinkering for anyone who likes data-driven games.

Platforms

Windows, macOS and Linux builds are published by the project, with BSD support; there are community ports to other systems as well. On Linux the game is packaged as extremetuxracer (Debian/Ubuntu trixie ships 0.8.4) and is available as a Flatpak on Flathub.

Licence

Free and open source — GNU General Public License v2.0 (GPL-2.0). The game source ships under the GPL v2 (see the COPYING file in the source tarball); a small amount of bundled third-party code carries its own compatible terms, listed in the Debian copyright file.

Similar Tools

• SuperTuxKart — the other big free Tux racer, with karts, tracks, items and online multiplayer when you want a fuller arcade-racing package.

Website

extremetuxracer.sourceforge.net — official project page with downloads, screenshots and documentation; source tarballs and Windows/macOS installers are on the SourceForge project. Flatpak on Flathub · Debian package. Note that the old extremetuxracer.com domain is no longer the project’s home.

Screenshot: Wikimedia Commons — Screenshot Extreme Tux Racer by 31NOVA, CC BY-SA 4.0.