Bittersweet Birthday is an upcoming action game set inside a mysterious building. You wake up dazed and confused, there's people after you but someone is trying to help you escape. An interesting setting full of intrigue, with each fight being a unique combat encounter.

"Bittersweet Birthday is an action game where every combat encounter is a challenging and unique fight. You can also explore different areas and help many of the NPC populating them with their everyday struggles while learning more about the world and its history."

A demo was released in late December, check out the trailer:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Feature Highlight:

• A story of mystery driven by endearing characters!
• Explore a lively village with friendly residents and their interlocking quests!
• Punishing combat where reading the enemy is the key to victory!
• A darts mini-game! Well, at least darts are being used...
• Cute pixel-art characters on beautifully drawn backgrounds!
• Fully re-mappable input and support for PS4, Xbox and PC controllers!
• From 30 minutes to an hour and half of gameplay!

The features included will be expanding and changing over time of course, as this is only a demo. An impressive demo though, with a great atmosphere and game feel. Playing the demo on Linux was great! Can really see what they're going for here and it made me want more. Probably one of the most remarkable demos I've seen for a while.

Going to be one we're going to need to keep up high on our watch list. Being made with Godot Engine too, so it's great to see more there too.

Find it on itch.io .

Inspired by the likes of Dwarf Fortress, Civilization, SimCity and more we have the free and open source Arcane Fortune which continues to expanding in features. Played in your favourite command-line terminal application, or just use the pre-made launch script it comes with that sorts out everything for you.

Seems like it has some genuinely great ideas, and considering how ridiculously popular Dwarf Fortress is, we know that shiny graphics are not a key to success. Perhaps Arcane Fortune will be able to carve out a nice niche.

Pictured - the beginnings of a new civilization in Arcane Fortune.

What's new in Arcane Fortune 0.3.0:

• Nobility - these families may join your empire and offer some advantages based on their personality and inclinations. For example, in diplomacy or war. Their opinions of you may change, however, depending on how you govern your empire.
• A trade system to exchange resources and negotiate defensive pacts with other empires.
• Kingdoms - sub-empires that may join your empire. Unlike noble houses, they retain more autonomy, but will share all the diplomatic relations (war/peace) with the parent empire.
• Assassination - useful both to explore other cities (they can scale walls) and to rid the world of the presence of unwanted leaders and nobles.
• Screen reader mode -- there is a page on the wiki which has more information about this mode and its features. Mostly the benefit of this mode is that the text cursor will be placed in relevant parts of the screen and some text can be tabbed through to help cue screen readers. There are also other small changes I've made based on feedback I've received.
• Changes to mouse controls making it easier to pan the map while moving a unit (thanks to lecom & Tchey on the forums for specific advice on this).
• Miscellaneous bugfixes (and likely new bugs to replace them!)
• Performance optimizations -- some of which might not be noticable since the nobility might slow the game down nearly as much as I've managed to speed it up.

The idea is certainly interesting, and the mash-up of ideas already makes the early game quite engrossing. The key is going to be in the AI, much like it is for Dwarf Fortress. Arcane Fortune is going to need to keep players engaged with encounters, and other civilizations.

You can download free on the official site and GitHub .

LDtk (prev called LEd) is an in-development free and open source level editor, one that's modern and designed to be as user-friendly as possible designed by a former dev on Dead Cells.

A big release just went out out with the 0.7.0 version, which the developer explained has "many important changes to make LDtk production ready and future proof . These changes will allow better support for large projects, better API creation and maintenance, and smoother user adoption".

Some of the bigger changes in this release include a new home layout, which is designed to focus on "what's really important". You can also now enable LDtk to separate level files to have one main project JSON file, and then one per level which sounds like a good features to prevent ending up with unreadably long files.

For game developers and anyone tinkering with level design, you can also now avoid JSON with an option to export all supported layers as PNG images. That might even be useful for just quickly showing off your work to someone. Speaking of images, each level can now have a custom background image too.

Backups! That's now a thing too, with LDtk making backups of your project when saving in case of issues.

Making LDtk even more useful, you can now have an LDtk project supported and loaded up with the open source and cross-platform HaxeFlixel thanks to a new official LDtk Haxe API. There's more to the release than all that, so be sure to check over the full changelog.

You can download LDtk 0.7.0 from GitHub , for Linux select the Ubuntu download which gives an AppImage that should run fine across any distribution. Also read more about it on the official site .

After entering Early Access in 2014, JIW-Games have been rewriting their open world sandbox game Rising World to move away from Java and instead use the Unity game engine.

They actually announced this back in 2019 , as part of a post mentioning how changes to the Valve algorithm for showing games had dropped off their store page traffic dramatically. They said about wanting to rework a lot of it and Unity would help them achieve this.

Back in December they finally showed off the result of their efforts, with a massive overhaul available in Beta that's now using Unity and they're continuing to support Linux.

If you wish to try the new Beta, on Steam you can opt into the "unity" Beta which has a description of "New Version Preview". Currently though, they say it's a "demo" as it has very limited features and just meant to showcase they are genuinely working away on the big overhaul.

The good news is that they mentioned how many of the core mechanics are integrated or almost ready, so hopefully they will start doing more regular updates now. On their official forum in early January 2021, they mentioned construction and multiplayer currently being in progress.

Good to see they're still going with it after so long, especially as the original Java version was quite highly rated by players.

Find Rising World on Steam .

This is your once a month reminder to make sure your PC information is correct on your user profiles. A fresh batch of statistics is generated on the 1st of each month.

You can see the statistics any time on this page .

PC Info is automatically purged if it hasn't been updated, or if you don't click the link to remain in for 2 years. This way we prevent too much stale data and don't hold onto your data for longer than required. If this is still correct and it has been a long time since you updated, you can simply click here to continue to be included . If this isn't correct, click here to go to your User Control Panel to update it!

After being in Early Access since February 2020, SouthPAW Games have now released their head-swapping rogue-lite action platformer Skul: The Hero Slayer.

Taking place in a world where it seems that things are a bit backwards. The heroes appear to be going on a rampage, enslaving other creatures to help with their dirty work and destroy the demons once and for all. Everyone has been taken prisoner, except for you, a little little Skul. With action comparable to the likes of Dead Cells which I adore, and Hollow Knight, this is a rogue-lite you're going to want to keep on playing.

You're no ordinary fighter though, as you can swap your regular boring old skul with another. When you do this, you gain some pretty impressive abilities and there's quite a lot of different skul's to find. This makes it quite unique because it can end up being very different on each run.

Watch video on YouTube.com

Like a lot of games that work on repetition, it can get a little…repetitive. It all depends on how much you enjoy jumping around platforms, and slicing through every enemy possible while also unleashing some admittedly awesome abilities. At times you feel ridiculously overpowered, others it's like you're an ant and they're just a big shoe waiting to step on you. RNG can be an issue here though, as it can often depend on what skull you can find to help you progress.

The good news is that for all the repetition needed, the combat is absolutely brilliant mechanically. It feels so good! Swapping between heads which gives you an instant ability firing off (great in a pinch), and then unleash some abilities while you wait to be able to switch back. So much fun to the action and it's not bad looking either, some of the pixel-art that went into Skul is really pretty with lots of little details.

I should note that the current build on Linux has an issue of a black screen instead of the main menu, although all it does it get you to click a button to load back into the game which does work so it's not a big problem. I've let the developer know.

Overall though if you're up for a challenge and you love your pixel-art, rogue-lite action-platforming with plenty of character variation with all the skulls then it's an easy recommendation to go and pick up.

You can buy Skul: The Hero Slayer on Humble Store and Steam .

More game industry news coming at you following the Team17 buying up Golf With Your Friends and YoYo Games being acquired by Opera we now have Klei Entertainment agreeing for Tencent to take a majority stake in them.

Speaking in a forum post , studio head Jamie Cheng mentioned they've "agreed to deal for Tencent to purchase a majority stake in Klei Entertainment" and that "Klei retains full autonomy of creative and operations across all aspects of the studio, including projects, talent, and more".

Klei have actually been working with Tencent since 2016, as Tencent helped Klei distribute games through China on the WeGame platform and more recently a mobile Don't Starve game. Cheng also mentioned how a "large proportion" of their players are actually from China.

Tencent have invested in a lot of different companies including Riot Games, Epic Games, Funcom, Supercell, Bluehole (PUBG) and many many more.

Pictured - Don't Starve Together

Klei have been good to Linux for games giving us the likes of Don't Starve, Don't Starve Together, Oxygen Not Included, Invisible, Inc. and Mark of the Ninja. Hopefully more to come with creative control remaining with the current Klei head.

This trend of companies pulling together lots under their banner is a little worrying, too many eggs in one basket.

Tomorrow, January 23 there's going to be an online GodotCon that's going live on YouTube. This is a chance for anyone interested to learn more about the free and open source game engine Godot Engine.

Interestingly, it won't be live. The talks are pre-recorded according to the announcement. However, to help with that and so you can chat with the Godot team and other users and developers using Godot, the team has now set up their own dedicated social chat area using Rocket.chat.

Schedules available as a PDF and Google Sheet . Looking over it, some of the talks are quite exciting! Lead developer Juan Linietsky for example, will be giving a talk on the new rendering coming with Vulkan in Godot 4.

It's happening between 8:45 UTC to 16:00 UTC. You can watch it right here! The livestream is embed below:

Watch video on YouTube.com

See the full announcement here .

Skellboy Refractured, the new and fresh release from UmaikiGames is out with Linux support as an expanded version to the game that originally released for the Nintendo Switch. Note : key provided the developer.

"Sometimes, when there is nobody up to the task, old heroes have to rise from the grave to save the day! Crush your enemies and make good use of their guts - literally, as you can augment Skippy with your foe's body parts and weapons! Help Skippy, the cubic skeleton, to fight off Squaruman's endless forces of undead and vicious foes in this rectangular action packed cardboard adventure!"

A very charming game, and very silly too. What really sells it is the graphical style with the perspective. The world is 3D and you move around in a 3D space but the characters look flat and 2D. It's been done before (what hasn't?) but how they've done it here does look fantastic.

Watch video on YouTube.com

I had a lot of fun play through different bits of this one, with some quite surprising scenes. It's supposed to be family friendly too, and with local co-op support it could be a good one to play with a significant other or a younger gamer wanting something a little different.

This is an action-RPG through and through, with you running across hacking and slashing your way through various different enemies. The fun part is switching between different body parts including you legs and skull on top of the weapon you're using. All of them have different effects so it's however you feel like playing. Some equipment, or body parts, have active abilities too like blocking projectiles or firing a seed at enemies (it gets weird) which makes it all the more interesting and often amusing. The description on some of the items was rather on-point too.

There's even boss fights, which I don't want to overly spoil but even they are a genuine delight in difficulty, design and weirdness. The first one for example, which happens quite early on, makes you fight off a strange creature that needs you to jab it in its many eyes.

Not particularly difficult, it even has a little platform on its back to help you jump up to it but it's so well designed like most parts of the game it's just lovely.

Feature Highlight:

• An expansive singleplayer experience across the interconnected Kingdom of Cubold full of square charming characters and edgy villains!
• A true action-rpg adventure that will test your skill and rewards exploration!
• Swap your bones for 100+ different body parts and items of friends and foes with (more or less) useful effects!
• 5 unique weapon types to clobber any foes you face!
• Special enemies and bosses that will truly test your mettle!
• A Vibrant 2d pixelart style that comes to life in a 3d world!
• Includes some rocking chiptune tracks and sounds!

As far as I could tell, the Linux version runs great.

You can buy Skellboy Refractured on Steam .