Over ten years after the last stable release of SuperTux (0.1.3 released July 2005) the SuperTux team have announced the release of the first stable version in the Milestone 2 series.

Compared to 0.1.3, this release features:
  • a nearly completely rewritten game engine based on OpenGL, OpenAL, SDL2, ...
  • support for translations
  • in-game manager for downloadable add-ons and translations
  • Bonus Island III, a for now unfinished Forest Island and the development levels in Incubator Island
  • a final boss in Icy Island
  • new and improved soundtracks and sound effects
  • new badguys, bonuses and power-ups (air-, earth- and ice-flower)
  • a halloween tilemap
  • new graphic effects (glowing objects, particles, ...)
  • levels and worldmaps are scriptable using squirrel
  • much more game objects: trampolines, switches, portable stones, wind, moving platforms, ... - most of them have scripting APIs
  • improved statistics
  • many invisible changes, like unit tests, efficiency improvements and more bugfixes
  • much more...
And of course we updated the official levels to make use of all the new features.

SuperTux 0.4.0 Overworld
It has been a long road for the project, and a lot has changed as the engine seems to have been largely rewritten to make it suitable for more advanced graphics and scripting. Whilst the existing content has been updated, it would seem that the one area in which the project is short is new tilesets and levels, with only a partially complete 2nd forest overworld of the (originally planned) 7 desired worlds.

That's where the community comes in though. With a stable game to work with, hopefully players and artists can combine to extend the game and make it enjoyable for generations to come.

My own 15 year old son remembers SuperTux 0.1.3 fondly as, he says, the best game he played as a young child.