NeuroNet: Mendax Proxy is the upcoming title from Dream Harvest, an upcoming choose your own adventure styled cyberpunk visual novel and it looks brilliant.

While Dream Harvest are also working on the strategy game NeuroSlicers (which will also come to Linux ), NeuroNet: Mendax Proxy will be coming out first but they're not giving a date just yet. NeuroNet: Mendax Proxy is also confirmed to be launching with support for Linux.

"You are an artificial intelligence charged with managing a city-wide augmented reality network known as the "NeuroNet". Embark on a journey of self-discovery as you learn what it means to be human in a world losing itself to technology."

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Features:

• A branching narrative that takes you across the city of Catena, exploring humanity's reliance on technology and its power to be both our saviour and downfall.
• Manage a variety of city resources tied to the state of affairs within Catena. Balance the city's financial prosperity, how the public perceives you, the axis of order, and your degree of power.
• Meet and build relationships with 23 diverse, fully voiced characters, each with their own wants and needs.
• 6+ hours of gameplay with over 5000 unique story cards.
• Discoverable mini-games and secrets.
• An expansive Codex packed with gorgeous character and environment art.
• A unique original soundtrack.

Definitely excited about this one. With some wonderful visuals backed up by what sounds like a thoroughly interesting story in a visual novel adventure style setting with a cyberpunk theme.

You can follow it on itch.io and Steam .

Free Game Friday! Fancy trying out something completely bizarre? EXsynchronos from developer Ravee is a true cyberspace adventure and it looks fantastic visually.

The developer describes it as a "transhumanist action packed cyberspace metahorror" and frankly that's about as good a description as you're going to get on this one. It's a complete visual overload on the senses with puzzles, exploration, platforming and shooter elements, all wrapped in a dense atmosphere. You control a Pr0x (Process Resurrective gh0st eXistence), "one of the most advanced virtual technologies that was ever developed" possessed by a human soul.

Prepare for lots of flashiness:

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There's a huge and completely wild story behind it too. In fact, it's actually part of a series with this being the third (although you don't need to have played the others). Feel free to check out meloveyou and awaren3ss as the first and second episodes if you want the entire story but it's all quite disconnected.

When you download EXsynchronos, you get an 18 page PDF full of lore and words from the developer at the end, it's truly something to read through.

Play free on itch.io . You can donate if you like it when downloading.

Coming later this Summer the one-woman studio 2054 will launch The Sundew, a dark cyberpunk, retro-styled adventure game. Set in the aftermath of a devastating future war, where the world as we know it was twisted by flames into a terrifying new dystopia, The Sundew follows a lonely beat cop who soon holds the fate of the world in her hands.

"After several years of work and many adventures, The Sundew is finally about to see the light of day. I see this game as a world that players will be able to enter, followed by other games in the same universe. My greatest joy will be to see the players take over this world and make it their own!" - Agnès Vuillaume, solo developer of The Sundew.

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Inspired by classic point-and-click adventure games from LucasArts and Wadjet Eye Games, The Sundew pays homage to those with its gameplay mechanics, style, and storytelling. Beautifully drawn pixel-art, stunning minimalistic sound design, environments brimming with atmosphere and interactivity, and a compact, thrilling tale brings this dark future to life and grounds you in a vision of humanity’s progress that is both alien and strangely familiar…

What to expect from it (apart from confirmed Linux support!): alongside classic point-and-click gameplay The Sundew will ask you to make decisions that will change the future of humanity. Playing off contemporary issues, the choices offered are never black and white. Where do you believe mankind’s interests lie, and what means are acceptable to achieve them?

Features

• Guide Anna Isobe, a cyborg cop with a dark past, through the unravelling of a global conspiracy.
• Experience a diverse cast of characters, each with their own secrets and history.
• Explore Shibukawa and the remnants of the old world.
• Make decisions that will change the fate of humanity, for better or worse.

You can wishlist / follow on Steam .

Enlarge / People are complaining about situations like this in Cyberpunk 2077 . (credit: CDPR / Twitter )

On its release day, Cyberpunk 2077 immediately pivoted from one of the holiday season's most hotly anticipated new games to one of this year's biggest debacles, as bugs both comical and game-breaking proved to be so prolific on consoles that Sony even delisted the title entirely from its digital storefront for the time being. Developer and publisher CD Projekt Red has had its hands full for the last few weeks juggling broad mockery and unhappy customers, and now there's a new woe on their pile: shareholder suits.

Two different law firms announced last week they were filing suit against CD Projekt, alleging the company violated securities law by misleading investors (and everyone else) about the state of Cyberpunk 2077 and whether it would be playable on current-generation consoles, the PlayStation 4 and XBox One.

Statements CD Projekt Red made about Cyberpunk throughout 2020 were "materially false and misleading," the complaint ( PDF ) alleges, because the company failed to mention that the game "was virtually unplayable on the current-generation Xbox or Playstation systems due to an enormous number of bugs."

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The first title from Chaosmonger Studio with new publisher Assemble Entertainment looks to be shaping up well, and there's a new featurette trailer with chief developer Nicola Piovesan.

ENCODYA is a cyberpunk dystopian point-and-click adventure, which shall release with Linux support on January 26, 2021 - following on from their successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. This new featurette has Piovesan chatting about the world their team created along with a bunch of new footage.

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"The sweetness and creativity of Studio Ghibli, the setting and atmosphere of Blade Runner and the humor and game style of Monkey Island: these are the ingredients that inspired ENCODYA, a point-and-click adventure game set in a dystopian future."

Planned Features:

• Explore the dark cyberpunk world of ENCODYA in 2.5D with 2 playable characters
• Over 35 non-player characters bring the world and story of ENCODYA to life
• More than 50 locations in Neo-Berlin to discover and explore
• Over 3000 lines of dialogue tell an immersive story
• Randomization of objects and locations
• Unique art and sound design
• The original soundtrack creates a thrilling atmosphere
• Professional dubbing actors lend their voices to the characters

You can wishlist / follow on GOG and Steam .

One particular indie game I am very excited to eventually get my hands on is Death Trash, a blending of real-time action and RPG mechanics in a very strange post-apocalyptic world.

"A world where cosmic horrors long for humanity but meet punks with shotguns. Influenced by post-apocalyptic, horror, and cyberpunk classics, but with a fresh personality of its own. Death Trash combines the crunch and depth of old-school, role-playing classics with the controls and game feel of modern games."

In a recent update post on the Steam page , the developer confirmed that 2021 will be the year for Early Access and they're still figuring out an exact date while a few people have been helping to playtest. They're working on more content and will pull in more testers in the coming weeks and eventually a new trailer too.

When it comes to the first Early Access build next year they're looking at giving 5+ hours of the story available with "medium replay value" and all gameplay systems hooked up. It will have gamepad support on top of mouse / keyboard, rebindable controls, support across Linux / macOS / Windows.

For the full version they're hoping for at least 20 hours of story content, with more replay value. Further out, we might even see modding support and a level editor.

They also confirmed that online co-op would probably not happen due to budget limitations. However, local co-op will be a feature supported.

You can see their older trailer below to get more of an idea of what it will be like:

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You can follow and wishlist Death Trash on Steam . Once there's a confirmed Early Access date we will let you know.

After a successful crowdfunding campaign back in September 2019 , Chaosmonger Studio have announced that their cyberpunk point and click adventure Encodya will release on January 26, 2021. In an announcement done by their publisher Assemble Entertainment, they confirmed the release date will include Linux, macOS and Windows at the same time across the GOG and Steam stores.

Encodya follows a nine-year-old orphan and her clumsy robot guardian. Set in the year 2062, with parts of it inspired by Blade Runner, Studio Ghibli and Monkey Island it's looking pretty great.

"One day, the little girl discovers that her father left her an important mission: to finish his plan to save the world from grayness! Tina and SAM embark on an incredible adventure across different realities full of bizarre robotic creatures and grotesque human beings. Through puzzles and exciting dialogues, they’ll find out the true meaning of being alive."

You can check it out in the brand new trailer below:

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Feature Highlight:

• Explore the dark cyberpunk world of ENCODYA in 2.5D with 2 playable characters.
• Over 34+ non-player characters bring the world and story of ENCODYA to life.
• More than 100 locations to discover and explore.
• Over 4000+ lines of dialogue tell an immersive story.
• Randomization of some puzzles for a unique experience.
• Cinematic Cut Scenes.
• Amazing art and sound design.
• The original soundtrack creates a thrilling atmosphere.
• Professional dubbing actors lend their voices to the characters.
• Lots of Easter Eggs and 10 Secrets to find.

You can wishlist / follow on GOG and Steam .

The weekend is just about here and if you're stuck for something to do, why not try out the cyberpunk adventure Quadrilateral Cowboy with the latest update.

"Quadrilateral Cowboy is a single-player adventure in a cyberpunk world. Tread lightly through security systems with your hacking deck and grey-market equipment. With top-of-the-line hardware like this, it means just one thing: you answer only to the highest bidder."

What's interesting with the latest update, is that game porter and FNA creator Ethan Lee upgraded the game engine used for Linux and macOS to be 64bit on both. Quadrilateral Cowboy is actually open source too, with the code under the GPL as it's based on idTech4, otherwise known as the Doom 3 engine. Lee gave a shout out to the dhewm3 and RBDOOM-3-BFG projects "who did an excellent job with their 64-bit updates" which saved some time for the Quadrilateral Cowboy update.

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Wonderful to see more Linux games get updated to continue working far into the future with all that 64bit goodness. Ports done by Ethan Lee are always great.

You can buy it on Humble Store , itch.io and Steam .

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