Free: Battle for Wesnoth is really great, I haven’t played it in a long time but it was already great like 10-15 years ago so it’s probably even better today, Nethack (if you don’t mind the starting difficulty and the “graphics”) is also great, VERY complex gameplay but very rewarding if you know it fairly well. Also saw a video of Xonotic today, looks also really good if you’re into fast multiplayer arena shooters (Quake-like). Heard positive things about 0 AD as well (Age of Empires-like). All of these are open source and in the extra repository on Arch.
Non-free but really cheap: Stardew Valley is probably great, I’ve never played it and it doesn’t look like my cup of tea but I’ve only heard positive things plus it’s like #1 or #2 rated on Steam, so it must be really good.
Non-free: Stellaris (got into it recently, great game and well-maintained Linux client (not at all common), much better than I expected, VERY complex and content-rich, quite expensive when you want all DLCs. It’s like a live service game, you’ll pay quite a bit if you want everything, but you also get tons of content). Also, Alien Isolation is one of my favorite single player horror games of all time and it also has a Linux client (which was a surprise for me) but that one is probably outdated and not maintained anymore by now I’d guess (but didn’t look it up) so it might be better to play the Windows client via Proton. I’m not up to date on that though - look it up. Oh, and POOLS also has a Linux client, that’s a great small walking simulator, “Backrooms”-like, very atmospheric and great visual design.
Free: Battle for Wesnoth is really great, I haven’t played it in a long time but it was already great like 10-15 years ago so it’s probably even better today, Nethack (if you don’t mind the starting difficulty and the “graphics”) is also great, VERY complex gameplay but very rewarding if you know it fairly well. Also saw a video of Xonotic today, looks also really good if you’re into fast multiplayer arena shooters (Quake-like). Heard positive things about 0 AD as well (Age of Empires-like). All of these are open source and in the extra repository on Arch.
Non-free but really cheap: Stardew Valley is probably great, I’ve never played it and it doesn’t look like my cup of tea but I’ve only heard positive things plus it’s like #1 or #2 rated on Steam, so it must be really good.
Non-free: Stellaris (got into it recently, great game and well-maintained Linux client (not at all common), much better than I expected, VERY complex and content-rich, quite expensive when you want all DLCs. It’s like a live service game, you’ll pay quite a bit if you want everything, but you also get tons of content). Also, Alien Isolation is one of my favorite single player horror games of all time and it also has a Linux client (which was a surprise for me) but that one is probably outdated and not maintained anymore by now I’d guess (but didn’t look it up) so it might be better to play the Windows client via Proton. I’m not up to date on that though - look it up. Oh, and POOLS also has a Linux client, that’s a great small walking simulator, “Backrooms”-like, very atmospheric and great visual design.