Short on time and want to try something new? It's Free Game Monday™! Come check out Fate of Dynasty which is open source. Originally created for the Global Game Jam 2021, it was created over 48 hours and shows a great example of what a small team can do.

"Fate of Dynasty is a short lore exploration puzzle game inspired by walking simulators such as Gone Home, Dear Esther, and Layers of Fear. Figure out how to perform the ritual to put an end to the tyranny of the ruling dynasty."

Watch video on YouTube.com

Check it out free on itch.io , Steam and the source code is under the MIT license on GitHub .

Green With Energy from developer Orbifold Software is an upcoming casual puzzle building game, that sees you become an engineer to design a sustainable power grid.

Through various contained levels, it acts like a puzzle game that pulls in small elements from a city-builder while you design your grid and place down power structures. It's supposed to be somewhat relaxed while you iteratively design, test and build power grid designs while balancing budget, efficiency, and environmental impact through different levels and biomes.

Check out their new trailer below:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Features:

• Use a range of energy technologies like solar, wind and hydroelectric power
• Run simulations and evaluate the results to determine your next steps
• Balance budget, efficiency, and environmental impact
• Compete with the community via in-game leaderboards to build the best designs
• Build infrastructure which functions in different weather patterns and climate
• Store energy in expansive battery farms to avoid power cuts when the sun or wind aren't available

The developer mentioned Linux will be a first-class platform for it.

You can follow Green With Energy on Steam .

After a relatively short stint in Early Access, the Zach-like puzzle game ComPressure is officially out now.

ComPressure has you building complex computation units powered by high pressure steam, which you do by place and moving pipes around to direct this steam where to go. It definitely has a feel like some earlier Zachtronics titles and it's a pretty unique game overall.

Watch video on YouTube.com

"Each unit has four ports with a desired function. There are only three base components. The steam generator and the switch and pipes to connect them. Using these, the game guides you through creating increasingly complex composite components. Each solved challenge yields another useful element that can be used in future designs. Poor solutions in previous stages make poor components to use further on, so you will end up coming back to old designs, tuning and optimising them."

If you love building things and optimizing, this is the puzzle game for you. It takes some learning though, and isn't exactly easy to get into but once you get going there's a lot of charm to it overall. Watching everything happen when you come to a solution is pretty great. The puzzles definitely get complex pretty quickly too, so it's one that might keep you going for a while.

You can buy ComPressure on Steam .

Do you enjoy setting up elaborate production chains and resource management tycoon style gameplay? Mini Countries offers up a very curious take on it all. Note : key provided by the developer.

Each level offers up, as the name suggests, a mini country. Over time new cities pop up all over the map, and it's your job to satisfy their resource demands. Functionally, it feels quite a bit like Train Valley 2 in the way you're drawing up networks across the map. Here it gets just as complicated with you needing to setup the production, then transport the goods to a city and then deal with the cities that don't have direct connections to resources as you then begin to ferry resources between cities.

Watch video on YouTube.com

Getting to grips with the transport system takes a little time, as each city and production building have limits on the amount of transport connections they can have so it all takes a bit of planning. That's the puzzling part and what makes it quite interesting to play through. It has some nice replay value too thanks to the randomization of cities. Each time you replay a level, the position of cities will be different so it forces you to think anew each time. The levels aren't particularly long either, so each level gives a tasty bite-size puzzling strategy experience.

Like most puzzle games it starts off seriously tame and then gradually sprinkles in the difficulty. Don't be fooled by the first few levels, the design really comes through once you learn the basics and it starts getting you to do a whole lot more. Lots of moving pieces and it looks wonderful while doing so too thanks to the soft colours and sweet visuals.

Features:

• Build trade buildings to produce resources in your country
• Make sufficient storage buildings available
• Transport resources from storage buildings to demanding cities
• Choose new items each month to bring your country forward
• Plan your resource production according to different seasons
• Upgrade resources by constructing industry buildings
• Import resources which are not produced in your country
• Export resources to generate knowledge
• Integrate famous landmarks into your country
• Decide on one branch for the development of your cities: Workers' cities allow trade and industry buildings to produce resources faster and science cities improve the growth rate and thus the generation of further knowledge points

You can buy Mini Countries on itch.io and Steam .

Altered from developer Glitchheart is an upcoming meditative puzzle game mixing hard puzzles and a soothing atmosphere, as you move and morph yourself around small areas to complete each puzzle.

Featuring over 80 puzzles the twist here is that you go through multiple characters / objects to control, each with a unique power of altering their form. The developer says by "understanding their powers, you will gain new intuition for solving interesting puzzles".

Check out the new trailer:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Hilariously, the developer went back and re-did the initial object you control as apparently it looked like a "turd" after the original announcement. Checking out the demo…well, they're not wrong. Hilariously this resulted in a newer trailer (the one above) being done where they've given the starting object a shiny golden makeover that I'm trying not to make jokes about because now it looks like a polished moving and growing poop.

Jokes aside, the idea genuinely does seem to be quite interesting.

You can follow Altered on Steam for release on March 12 and try the demo now.

What Never Was is a free short, story-driven first-person puzzle-solving adventure that released back in 2019. It was so popular that the developer is bringing out What Never Was: Chapter II.

The first part released in January 2019, with a Linux build arriving later in April 2019. It went on to gather over 4,000 user reviews and still has an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating today. Epic Games later noticed it and gave the developer an Epic MegaGrant (no exclusivity) to help Acke Hallgren work on more of it.

"Starting immediately after the events of What Never Was - Sarah finds herself magically whisked away to a strange place. Where did the magical clock take her? What other secrets are to be discovered? What more did her eccentric grandfather hide from her?"

Hallgren has been busy, with What Never Was: Chapter II well underway now and it has a fresh teaser:

Watch video on YouTube.com

A while away from release though, as work is currently ongoing into the core parts of the game and so no release date is currently being set.

On the subject of Linux support returning for Chapter II, Hallgren said to us "assuming everything goes according to plan, I will make sure to have the same support as the previous chapter" which is great to see.

You can follow it on Steam .

Do try out the original on Steam since it's free and you might find something you like. It is quite a peaceful little puzzle-adventure so it's not surprising it's so highly rated.

Blending together city-building, resource gathering and logistics into a fine puzzle game Malmyr is worth taking a good look at with a wonderful relaxing atmosphere. Note : key provided to our Steam Curator .

Like a lot of smaller releases, it's almost criminally overlooked. It released back in December 2020 with full Linux support, and it works very nicely. Don't let the charming intro and visuals fool you though, it's a challenging game once you get going like any good logistics puzzler. While you are building up a city, it's not a city-builder, don't be fooled by that either. Malmyr is about careful resource distribution to overcome all the challenges.

There's no war or combat and no huge factories, just a focus on the current tasks by buying up land tiles and producing resources. Getting the distribution of wares right can be quite tough, and you will find yourself often building up, only to completely demolish and re-do it 5 minutes later. Everything needs careful attention to their placement. Buildings need wood to get built, needing roads to move it around but houses also need food so you need a farm, then you need to get the food from the farm to a market to then distribute it in a small area to various houses. The chains can end up a little on the elaborate side.

Watch video on YouTube.com

Feature Highlight:

• Inspired from games of our past and present - Like The Settlers, Anno and Factorio.
• 12 story based missions - You need to find a good strategy to solve them and handle the hazards thrown at you.
• Unique obstacles and ambience for missions - Each mission was made to give you a different experience: Sometimes more relaxing, sometimes more challenging than the previous one.
• Complex production chains - They will get longer and will need a wider variety of resources to function.
• A different take on resource transportation - You will not just connect buildings with a road, set up a transportation route or build conveyor belts. You will have to manage and optimize each piece of road manually.
• Over 45 different resources - Global resources like coin and food, building resources like wood and bricks and commodities for selling like jewelry.

While 12 missions might sound short, together it's pretty long overall and will take quite a few hours to get through. After that, you then also have the freeplay and sandbox modes to keep going for longer. The story isn't really worth much thought, and felt a little like it was just in the way so don't expect great writing from it. However, there's plenty here that makes Malmyr worth picking up. If you usually like logistics puzzlers it's an easy suggestion to buy that's unique and quite elegantly designed. Overall, it's great.

You can buy Malmyr on Steam .

Block-breaking puzzle games come in many different forms and Mixolumia from davemakes is one that has absolutely sucked away my attention recently. Originally released much earlier in 2020, the developer has recently put up a Linux build on itch.io and I've been playing through it.

"Mixolumia introduces a fresh twist on block-clearing puzzlers. Scintillating visuals and entrancing music respond to your input and evolve as you progress. Diamond blocks slide together on the gem-shaped board and explode in glittering chain reactions."

What you end up with is a thoroughly enchanting experience that really sucks you in. I've been struggling to tear myself away from this one because it's really that good. It can be as easy or difficult as you like too, with multiple modes of play.

Watch video on YouTube.com

Mixolumia has some interesting mod support available too. Not only can you adjust the colour palette with lots built in and you can add in your own, you can also add entirely new packs of music. The real amazing part is how the music system reacts and adjusts based on what's going on in your game, with modders providing music packs that work with this system like the " Ambient Mood " pack which I've grown pretty fond of.

Feature Highlight:

• Arcade style gameplay
• Dynamic, evolving music
• 6 game modes: Marathon, Endless, Rush, Intense, Relaxed, and the secret Impossible mode
• 40+ color palettes
• Players can create their own color palettes
• Players can create their own music and sound effects
• Accessibility options to disable effects

Find Mixolumia on itch.io and I can easily recommend it. Wonderful.

After a year in development on the latest update, the brilliant puzzle game b.i.t.Lock is now not only free but Petorio also added a Linux build too.

B.i.t.Lock is a game about fitting shapes into slots by moving around blocks on the screen. Sounds simple right? Wrong. All the blocks you have move at the same time, together and you need to push them around into walls to get them into the right place. It's challenging, makes you really carefully think and it's just such a well-made puzzle game that's definitely worth looking at.

You navigate these blocks through six different worlds with their own themes and mechanics and free the world bit by bit with each level solved. Each world has its own style of gameplay and requires different ways of thinking to solve the puzzles.

Watch video on YouTube.com

With the latest update adding in a Linux build (which works great), it also added in Steam Workshop support with a built-in level editor, new music tracks, a bunch of new sound effects to make the game feel a bit more alive and lots of other little adjustments.

One of the additions in particular in this update I liked is the newly shown steps taken when you complete a level, with each movement being a step. One level took me well over 100, oh my. I'm not very good at it, clearly, but it is a lot of fun to play through.

Find B.i.t.Lock free on Steam .