WARNING! For successfull building you must install these development packages (names may vary in your distribution): sdl, sdl-mixer, sdl-image, sdl-ttf, lua5.1 0) Prepare for building Unpack source package with this command: $ tar xzvf instead_.tar.gz Change current dir to project's build dir: $ cd instead- There are several ways to build package. 1) On Debian based systems you can build deb package: $ sudo apt-get install liblua5.1-dev libreadline-dev libsdl1.2-dev libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libsdl-image1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev libreadline5-dev $ apt-get install build-essential $ debuild $ cd .. $ sudo dpkg -i instead_.deb 2) On gentooo or arch linux please copy-paste PKGBUILD or EBUILD from here: http://code.google.com/p/instead/wiki/ And, I think, you have enough skills to build package yourself. ;) 3) For other distributions you have a two choices: 1) try run ./configure.sh and follow instructions or 2) do all things manually 4) Manual build To build game, that runs just from build dir use Rules.make.standalone. $ rm -f Rules.make $ ln -s Rules.make.standalone Rules.make $ make clean $ make If build process has failed check Rules.make.standalone and make changes if needed. $ ./sdl-instead Enjoy. To build game for system install. $ rm -f Rules.make $ ln -s Rules.make.system Rules.make $ make clean $ make If build process has failed check Rules.make.system and make changes if needed. $ sudo make install $ sdl-instead Enjoy.