What new games are available for Ubuntu in 2011?

Oil Rush

Proprietary, beta preorder for $19.95

OilRush is a real-time strategy game based on group control. It offers mechanics of a classical RTS combined with a Tower Wars genre: control the upgrade of production platforms as well as their defence forces, and send battle groups of naval and air units to capture enemy platforms and oil rigs.

Phoronix have been harking on about this for months like they're getting a dollar every time they mention it (they probably are), but it does look like a genuinely pretty game. It's made by Unigine, a company that sells a closed source graphics engine and hardware benchmarks based around the tech-demos they've made with it.

This could be good.

Trine

Proprietary, priced at $19.99

Trine is a physics-based action game where three characters allow clever solutions to challenges created by hazardous puzzles and threatening enemies. The gameplay is based on fully interactive physics - each character's different abilities and tactics can be used to invent new ways to overcome obstacles and save the kingdom!

I've played this under Wine and can heartily recommend it. It's going to be awesome to play it through again natively.

Minecraft

Proprietary, priced at $26.95

A hard to classify adventure-creativity game that is—in the words of its creator—about placing blocks while running from skeletons. Minecraft is a playground where players pursue self-set goals such as mining resources, gathering food, constructing buildings, accessing alternate dimensions, and riding pigs.

Premise

Minecraft is a game about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine. At night monsters come out, make sure to build a shelter before that happens.

Features

• A rich, randomly generated world of hills, deserts, swamps, oceans, and mushroom-fields. Towns of villagers, hidden ruins, and alternate dimensions to explore.

• Nearly endless creative possibilities. Dozens of items and tools. Dozens of block types for building. Mechanical tools like pistons. Redstone wires for circuitry.

• Emergent challenges. Monsters spawn in the dark, resource-producing and tamable animals spawn in sunlight. Ores and lava deep underground, flora and fauna on the surface.

• Modes like Hardcore, Survival, and Creative. Allows players to choose whether to play Minecraft more like a sandbox, or more like a roguelike.

• Huge community of multiplayer worlds, build sharing, and Let's Play videos.