As part of this years Doctor Who series the BBC are launching a set of 4 free fully interactive downloadable adventure games (referred to as ‘episodes’) for UK viewers (and those who like proxies). The first ‘episode’, City of the Daleks, was made available a few hours ago on the BBC site – but can Linux users play it?

Sadly the game is only available for Windows and OS X, with those using Linux and accessing the official mini-site greeted with an ‘operating system not supported‘ type error.

Thankfully everyones favourite not-a-windows-emulator ‘Wine’ comes to the rescue as ‘City of the Daleks’ plays pretty much flawlessly via it. The only ‘issue’ I’ve found being that it will only play correctly if ran as a virtual wine desktop.

How to install the Doctor Who Adventure Game in Linux

  • Go to the adventure game page on the BBC Doctor Who website
  • Ignore the ‘operating system not supported’ error and download the Windows installer.  
  • Install the game via wine as per any other application.
Once installation is complete you may need to enable a ‘virtual wine desktop’ for the game to run properly.
  • Go to Applications > Wine > Configure Wine
  • Under the ‘Graphics’ tab check the box next to ’emulate a virtual desktop’.
  • Launch Doctor Who: The Adventure Games from Wine > Applications > Doctor Who – The Adventure Games > Play Doctor Who – the Adventure Games
Issues? 
Since it works for me – it should work for you. I’m using Wine 1.1.42 with nothing fancy added or installed afterwards – just stock Wine from the repos.
I have applications running for ‘Windows XP’ and my graphics settings are as follows: –

Happy Dalek hunting!
Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk