Games often don’t seem like the most important thing for GNOME. Yet, many people expect to have some common games available, and for some individuals being able to play Solitaire or Sudoku is a major reason for having a computer in the first place.
Historically, the GNOME project has developed a fairly extensive collection of games. These used to share some of the same code, but have recently been split up into independent modules and repositories. This was a great move, and I definitely think that each of the games should be allowed to develop into independent projects in their own right. I’m sure there are plenty of opportunities here for new contributors.
I recently spent a bit of time looking at some of our games to try to help raise the quality level. Since there are quite a few games in GNOME, and this was a fairly quick design pass, I decided to focus on the most commonly recognised games that users might expect to be able to use on GNOME. As a result, I’ve so far restricted my work to Sudoku, Tetris (or Quadrapassel in GNOME language), Reversi (aka Iagno) and Minesweeper (aka Mines). I also took a look at Tetravex, since it seems like it could be an accessible puzzle game.
It should be said that I am no graphic designer. These mockups are just the first step, and if you have a flair for graphics and would like to help, your assistance would be most welcome.
The GNOME games developers have been a pleasure to work with, and some parts of the designs have already been implemented. Many of the proposed changes have also been filed as bug reports, so it’s easy to get started if you want to help to make the games into a really fun and pretty.