Mostly nay. I am not against open-world in premise, but most open-world games do it poorly. I think that a lot of studios make their games open world because these types of games are popular, but don’t give a thought to what that means for their specific game. They want their worlds to seem expansive and think this is an easy solution but it isn’t.

If you make an open-world game, it needs at the very least two things: a compelling method of traversal (mechanics of interacting with that open world), and thoughtful, intentional design (not just large stretches of trees and rocks between towns). I think Breath of the Wild is a paragon of good open-world design.

I also like Darktable for photo editing and used Audacity over Adobe Audition even when I had an Adobe sub.

I used to use Adobe applications and have found decent alternatives for Photoshop (GIMP), Illustrator (Inkscape), and Premiere Pro (KdenLive) that run on Ubuntu.

Among those, Kdenlive probably measures up the worst to its Adobe counterpart. I am happy with it as an NLE, but I can’t deny that Premiere Pro is quite a bit more useable and powerful. The new interfaces do take some getting used to, but they are all excellent tools in their own rights.

For the Frog, the Bell Tolls

An adventure puzzle/platformer for the Game Boy. The mechanics are fun, and has you transforming between a human, frog, and snake to get through various areas. I’m about an hour in and the puzzles are fairly simple, but the charming writing and art design carry the game for me. I’d recommend it if you’re looking for something somewhat casual. I have laughed out loud a few times while playing it.

If you want to check it out, you’ll need to run it on an emulator.

• The game is a Japan-only release, but there’s an English fan patch you can find on here
• You’ll need the base ROM for the game, which you can find here
• Once you download both of those, use this to mash them together and you’re good to go.