The game begins in Icy Island. Tux holds a picnic with Penny, his girlfriend. Suddenly, the villain of the game, named Nolok, appears and knocks out Tux, then kidnaps Penny. Later, Tux wakes up and finds that Penny is missing. Determined to save her, Tux begins his journey. He then navigates the Icy Island and later the Forest to find her.[8]
Gameplay in SuperTux is similar to Super Mario Bros.. Tux can jump under bonus blocks marked with question marks to gain coins or retrieve power-ups such as the egg, which makes Tux bigger and allows him to take an extra hit before dying. Other objects such as trampolines and invincibility granting stars can also be obtained from these blocks. Tux can defeat some bad guys by jumping on them, and most can be defeated or frozen by shooting bullets after collecting a fire flower or an ice flower. Earth flowers grant Tux a miner helmet with a spotlight for dark areas and can give invincibility for a few seconds, and air flowers allow Tux to glide in the air, jump higher and move faster. If Tux gets hit after he collected a flower, he loses his helmet and transforms back into big Tux. The objective of each level is to get to the end,[9] usually marked by checker-patterned poles.[10]
At the end of "Icy Island", the first world in the game, the Yeti boss awaits Tux.
At the end of each world is a boss, such as the Yeti boss on Icy Island or the Ghosttree on the Forest World.
Level editor in 0.6.2
In addition to the two main worlds, there are contributed levels, which include the 4 Bonus Islands, a christmas and halloween levelsets and a special retro levelset (Revenge in Redmond) designed to celebrate the game's 20th anniversary (2020).[11] In addition to these, there are installable addons and custom levels added by the player, either created in the internal Level Editor or added manually.
There are additional add-on levels in SuperTux which can be installed with the built-in add-on manager or manually.[12] The add-on manager lists over 25 add-ons. New add-ons are usually published on the forum or in the Discord server and can be added to the list after testing.[13]
Development and release
The game was originally created by Bill Kendrick and is maintained by the SuperTux Development Team. It is written mostly in the C++ programming language.[14] Many of the in-game graphics were created by Ingo Ruhnke, author of Pingus.
In 2008, SuperTux was used as a game for children by school district #73 in British Columbia, which had decided to transition to free and open-source software.[17]
