I followed these instructions: "Just open the .zip, copy the files into any directory, and run skyrogue.exe!" by downloading and copying to my home folder, then opening skyrogue.x86

The screen initially went black as if the game was starting, then the desktop appeared but the mouse wouldn't work. I could open the terminal using the keyboard but couldn't kill skyrogue with pkill and had to switch the computer off and on again.

Any advice?

I'm using Ubuntu 18.04

(Ubuntu 18.04 as well) - I can't launch it at all; either in the file manager or in Terminal.  The executable flag appears to be set correctly.  There's no clear indication about why it won't run -- in the file manager (I use Nemo) it just doesn't do anything.  In terminal it says "cannot execute binary file".  Not sure what I'm missing here.

Open up a terminal, navigate to the folder and use the command:

chmod +x skyrogue.x86