Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, natively on Windows, macOS and Linux
A port of the 2008 Xbox Live Arcade game, rebuilt from reverse engineering of the original executable. All six modes, the menus, local score boards and achievements, and multiplayer for up to four players, at any resolution.
Needs your own copy of the Xbox Live Arcade game. geow2 contains no game data.
Online scores: your high scores on every device, and your friends' on your leaderboards.
geow2 is only the program. The graphics, sound and text come from your own copy of
the game (title ID 584108FF, the LIVE package from an Xbox 360). The first time it starts, geow2
turns it into the data folder it reads.
On Windows and macOS, download the archive for your system and unpack it anywhere, and install
FFmpeg, which decodes the game's sound during setup (on a
Mac, brew install ffmpeg). On the Steam Deck and Linux, install it with
Flatpak, which brings its own.
Start geow2 (geow2.exe on Windows, geow2.app on macOS). It asks for the
LIVE package or a folder of its extracted files, accepts only the release the port was made
from, checks every file and makes the data folder, once. It works with a gamepad.
Or in a terminal, in the folder you unpacked:
geow2-extract unpack <your package or extracted folder> data. The folder works on every
system, so you can make it once and copy it.
A gamepad works out of the box; so does the keyboard: WASD to move, arrow keys to fire, Space for a bomb.
Deadline is open from the start. Each of the others unlocks by playing the one before it, in this order, as on the console.
3:00 ships unlimited 3 bombs
Three minutes to score as much as you can. You can't run out of ships: a hit clears the field and you carry on. Collect the geoms that destroyed enemies drop to raise your multiplier, and use a bomb when it gets crowded. Score earns more bombs, but bombed enemies give no points.
1 ship no bombs points x2
You can only fire from inside a zone, and enemies can't get in. Once you enter a zone it lasts three and a half seconds, then shrinks away and a new one appears somewhere else, so you have to cross open ground to reach it. Points and geoms are doubled, but a geom picked up inside a zone is lost. One hit ends the game.
4 lives 3 bombs no clock
The open-ended game: enemies keep coming and keep getting tougher until your last life is gone. 100,000 points earns an extra life and bomb, and each later bonus comes at ten times the score of the one before.
no weapons no bombs 1 ship
Your ship can't shoot. Fly through a gate, between its two ends, and it blasts the enemies around it; touch the ends and you're dead. Crossing gates in quick succession scores more. Only grunts and gates appear, in growing swarms, and one hit ends the game.
1 ship no bombs rocket walls
Rockets cross the arena in formation, horizontally and vertically, as half walls or full ones. Shoot a gap and slip through. Other enemies join in as the game goes on, and the walls come faster and faster. One hit ends the game.
20 levels 0:30 each 3 bombs
Twenty set levels with thirty seconds each. Clear a level's enemies to move on. Running out of time or losing a life moves you on too, with no second try. The game ends after level 20 or with your last life. Learning the patterns is the key.
2-4 gamepads versus or co-op
Every mode you've unlocked can be played with friends on the same machine, each with a gamepad (the keyboard counts as the first). Play together with one shared score and one pool of lives, or against each other, alone or in teams of two.
Two players can share a ship as pilot and copilot: one flies, the other fires. In versus games power-ups appear: speed, a shield, a magnet for geoms, a bomb and a five-way spread, and two that slow or freeze the other teams.
Xbox Live is gone, so geow2 brings its own: a score server your group runs for free on Cloudflare. Your high scores, unlocked modes and achievements follow you between your PC and your Steam Deck, and the leaderboards show the whole group, with the Friends and My score views of the original. Pairing a device takes a QR code and your phone; nobody types a password.
Set up online scores a server for your group, in five minutes
geow2 is a new program written from a reading of the original executable. Enemy behaviour, spawning, scoring, timings, the grid and the menus follow the original's code, and the source cites the functions it follows. It was checked against recordings of the original running in an emulator.
The few deliberate differences, such as local score boards in place of Xbox Live, are each listed with the evidence in DIFFERENCES.md.
geow2 runs natively on the Deck. Install it with Flatpak in Desktop Mode, start it once to set it up from your copy of the game on a USB stick or microSD card, then add it to Steam and play in Game Mode. Updates come through Discover. On the OLED model, set the refresh rate to 60 Hz for the smoothest picture.