


Changed between various Proton versions as well as tried using native to no avail.
Sometimes a "second screen" can appear in the corner of the screen as well as other visual anomalies.
Native version crashes upon starting a new game in most cases, though will sometimes load and then crash very shortly afterwards.
Upon my experience and researching other peoples' experiences, the game's logic does not seem to work correctly in WINE; this can result in item duplication, puzzles not working correctly, scene transitions not taking you where they should and many reported soft locks among other problems.
Penumbra: Overture worked perfectly fine via WINE on the GOG version, apart from the occasional graphical glitch. However Black Plague is absolutely riddled with issues no matter how you try to play the game, as native always results in crashes and Proton/WINE will make the game incredibly buggy and unplayable after a period of time.
It's a huge shame, as a fan of Frictional's other games, I was hoping to enjoy this one seeing as many fans praise Black Plague a ton. Seems like Linux users will have to settle on watching a playthrough until these issues get a proper fix or workaround.

Runs perfectly fine on native version.
For some reason, the game only shows the menu under proton, everything else is just a black screen. It works flawlessly on native linux version tho!

GOG versions runs perfectly

gamemoderun %command%
multiple major softlocks caused by wine, makes the game basically unplayable unless you download a bunch of saves online and just swap to those when the softlocks happen, not a good game experience either way.

Level Bug
Stuck in a infinite loop during Memory sequence when putting the dog on the hand statue
Game is borked, i read somewhere in the forums that this bug is related to Wine not working great with this game in particular, idk if that's true, i tried all the proton builds, every time the game infinite loops on that Memory sequence with the Dog sacrifice. nothing else i can do, borked. Play this on Windows
Native version works fine

${STEAM_RUNTIME}/scripts/switch-runtime.sh --runtime="" flatpak run net.lutris.Lutris lutris:rungame/penumbra2 # %command%
I simply indicated in Lutis the location of the executable file of the Linux version of the game installed via Steam and selected Linux in the Runner field
• The native Linux version, when launched normally via Steam, crashes 10 seconds after loading a level.
• When forced to use Proton, the game does not crash, but shows a black screen when loading a level. This is fixed by disabling Post Effects in the graphics settings, but the lighting remains broken, there are no shadows, the flashlight does not work, which is critical for a horror game. The lighting can be fixed by lowering the Shader Quality to medium, but then strange and importunate artifacts appear in the form of stripes on the textures, like rays that come from a single point.
• The only working option was to run the native Linux version of the game through Lutris. This saved the game from crashes, and allowed you to enjoy the graphics in maximum quality. I was able to completely complete the game in this way without any problems.
• Also, in order to launch the game from the original shortcut, and for Steam to count the time spent in the game, I added the above command in the launch options, which replaces launching the game through Steam with launching through Lutris, in which the value "penumbra2" after / corresponds to the identifer field in game shortcut configurations in the Lutris library.
• As far as I was able to find out, the native Linux version crashed when launched through Steam, since Steam OS defaults to Mesa Library is built with compiler optimizations applied. And it seems that Lutris uses some other custom Mesa Library, so the game does not crash when launched through it. Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to change the Mesa Library in the launch options of the game, maybe it can be done somehow more gracefully, without using a Lutris layer.
Unplayable on Linux
Game crashes 1-2 minutes into gameplay
Frictional Games pls fix
gamemoderun DXVK_ASYNC=1 %command%
Slight stuttering that can be felt when moving the mouse to look around. This wasn't fixed by DXVK_ASYNC=1 which usually fixes micro stutter issues like these.
When running the Native linux port the game would crash very quickly. The longest I got was about 5 seconds before a crash. I tried using other save files that I created when playing through proton but this didn't fix it. The only fix was using Proton.
When playing through Proton, the game would get stuck in the "mental sequence". After sacrificing the dog, you get teleported to a different location. However, the dog doesn't despawn correctly so you get teleported over and over so you can't move with the voice line "warm in here" repeating forever. I tried moving my save files to the native linux version and continuing from there, however, that version still crashed no matter which save I used.
Unless there is some magic fix, I'm forced to play on Windows :(
The game crashes on AMD cards (and therefore the steam deck) on native port, and no lighting with proton
Lighting is completely broken. No lighting at all on Shader quality High, glitched lighting on medium and below
Unfortunately for ALL the penumbra games, they are unplayable in any reasonable capacity due to the crashing that happens on AMD cards with the Linux port, and the lack of all lighting when running Proton/wine/etc.
Completed the game on GE.
If the game world is black, try:
- disabling post effects on AMD;
- turning off either anti-aliasing or post effects on NVIDIA.
Quick fix to make lighting a little better on AMD:
- set shader quality to medium
Also, after a clean install of the windows version the steam particle problem was no more
Although it doesn't crash, visuals are bad. (Adding because "fine" is definitely not the right word, i was just happy it didn't crash)
On garuda the native version crashes just in few seconds after loading the first scene, on manjaro I could get a little further - it crashed when I pulled out the cable in the fuse box. I guess Hoystein is right, and i don't have the knowledge required to get it to work.
While using proton, the game doesn't crash, but there are graphics bugs - I didn't progress far, but this is what I have already seen:
- some textures are blurry
- enabling post effects turns everything black (also everything gets blacked out in certain camera angles on low settings)
- it looks better with shader quality set to medium, on high lighting just isn't right -steam particles are black squares, but if refractions are off, they're white squares.
The native version crashes after starting a new game.

Corre nativo!
No sé si es mi mouse, pero el mouse tiene un sensibilidad exagerada para este juego.
No usar proton. Eso haría que el juego no funcione. Configurar en modo Steam Linux runtime para que corra. En opciones de lanzamiento puse gamemoderun %command% porque sí, pero no es becesario para una gran experiencia.
On native, could not exit game without closing. Proton worked, unlike overture, but I could't get resolution higher than 1080p there.
Works on NVIDIA but not AMD. https://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-54134.html
On AMD the game will crash when you first flatten the coin in the vice. This is due to a OpenGL glitch with the game that results in it not working with the default build of Mesa for an AMD GPU or APU. Fixing this is out of the scope of the normal user.