Cairn and The Bard’s Tale Trilogy Lead New GeForce NOW Games as Native Linux GeForce NOW App Enters Beta
NVIDIA has rolled out another GeForce NOW Thursday update, adding 10 new titles to the cloud gaming library while also moving a long requested platform upgrade forward. This week’s drop is led by the mountain climbing narrative adventure Cairn and The Bard’s Tale Trilogy, and it also marks the beta debut of a Linux native GeForce NOW desktop app that goes beyond the earlier Linux experience tuned specifically for Steam Deck users.
Cairn is the latest project from The Game Bakers, the indie studio behind Furi and Haven. The studio has built a reputation for switching genres while keeping a strong narrative core, and Cairn continues that approach with an intense climbing focused loop that is built around momentum, risk management, and survival decisions. NVIDIA also positions Cairn as one of the RTX 5080 ready titles for GeForce NOW members, which is an important signal for players who want maximum cloud performance and minimal friction.
Alongside Cairn, NVIDIA calls out a set of other RTX 5080 ready games joining the service this week. These include the first person extraction zombie shooter The Midnight Walkers, the physics based medieval combat simulator Half Sword, the open world adventure Vampires Bloodlord Rising, and Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2, which is now available to Xbox Game Pass subscribers. The core value proposition here is straightforward: you can jump into these new releases and high profile titles with the horsepower of an RTX 5080 class environment on the server side, which is especially relevant for players running on lower power laptops, handheld PCs, or Linux devices where local driver stacks can be a blocker.
Here is the full list of games entering the GeForce NOW library this week, with the original release timing and storefront references preserved from NVIDIA’s announcement.
The other strategic headline is Linux. NVIDIA confirms the Linux native GeForce NOW app has entered beta and is available for Ubuntu 24.04 and later. The key message is that this desktop app is designed to make GeForce NOW easier to use on Linux devices broadly, not just handheld focused workflows. In practical terms, this is NVIDIA tightening its cloud gaming funnel by reducing platform friction, and it is a meaningful quality of life win for desktop Linux gamers who want premium cloud performance without living inside a browser first experience.
If you are a GeForce NOW user, which of these matters more to you, the new RTX 5080 ready releases like Cairn and The Midnight Walkers, or the Linux native desktop app finally entering beta?
