Gaming Minds Studios and Kalypso Media have released Railway Empire - Japan, the latest DLC pack for the popular rail-network building and management sim.

Railway Empire - Japan transports the series to late-1800s Japan where an industrial revolution is booming and the people are crying out for a nationwide railway. After the successful restoration of the Meiji rule, the Land of the Rising Sun’s long-term ambition to develop its own modern, nationwide railway network has become a reality and people from formerly feudal regions are yearning to travel to booming metropolises. Players can lay tracks between mountains and hot springs, using foresight, planning and clever strategy to establish a railway network and facilitate the 'great commute', moving Japan into a new industrial age.

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Features:

• 2 new scenarios: ‘Rising Sun’(1870 – 1890) and ‘Twisted Paths’ (1900 - 1920)
• Map expansion: 3 new maps of “Japan” (All, Mid and South) available in Free Game and Sandbox modes.
• 8 historical engines including the D51 Degoichi, Class 9600 Kyuroku and Class 8620 Hachiroku
• 28 new tradeable goods (e. g. sake and rice) and 35 more cities to discover.
• Added ‘ticket’ feature playable on all Railway Empire maps - cater to tourists and commuters to increase your profits.
• 11 iconic Japanese landmarks including Osaka Castle, Hells of Beppu and the Itsukushima Shrine
• New music, buildings and reworked mini portraits for characters

You can buy Railway Empire from Humble Store , GOG and Steam .

Exploring a romantically wretched city as a strange alien creature, Aolta is a thoroughly weird casual experience for those of you who like games aimed at an adult / mature audience.

"Aolta is a casual RPG where you play as an eponymous alien who lives in a romantically wretched city. Sit back and enjoy the game world... relax at the night club, stroll down the streets and meet interesting creatures and discover their stories. You can find a job that suites your abilities or you can skip work and resort to foraging. Meet someone to love, become the lord of the local music industry, retire to another planet, and/or maybe get married."

Features:

• Discover many activities around the city which includes dancing, loitering, smoking, drinking, getting high and fighting in the pits.
• Romance up to six main characters and unlock their endings.
• Befriend dozens of other characters and learn their secrets.
• Collect spirits for your bottle city!
• Develop your character by working on your stats which allow you to survive and ultimately get what you want.
• Features several animated sexual scenarios.
• Unlock several endings, collections and achievements.
• Engaging music and atmosphere.

You can buy Aolta for $10 from itch.io .

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.

Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager from Goblinz Studio is out now, letting you build up and protect a dungeon from pesky hero intruders.

Very much a video game version of the excellent card game Boss Monster (which I also love), Legend of Keepers has you recruit various creatures and place traps to hopefully keep the heroes away from defeating your boss. It provides a good mix of management and tactics, one that's a bit engrossing when you get into it and it's easy to spend a good number of hours with.

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Features:

• Join the Dungeons Company and climb the corporate ladder
• Crush so-called "heroes" and protect the company's treasures
• Hire monsters, manage your employees and your stock of traps
• Deal with employee strikes and other fun events

For the Linux version, one issue encountered is that the intro video is a black screen, which is likely a Unity codec issue - they developer has been made aware of it. It's quite short anyway and doesn't break the game, as you can just skip it.

You can play it now on GOG , Steam and Stadia .

Recently we wrote about how Wolfire Games (Lugaru, Overgrowth, Receiver) engaged in a legal battle with Steam owner Valve in regards to alleged anti-competitive behaviour.

Wolfire's David Rosen has now written up a blog post to explain their feelings on why. It's worth noting that Rosen was one of the original founders of the Humble Indie Bundle, later spun off into its own Humble Bundle company and then sold to IGN. Rosen then, you would think, has a reasonably good grasp on how all this works on the business side. It's somewhat amusing that the blog post starts with "Dear gamers", which probably isn't going to do them any favours in such a legal battle.

Rosen mentions how they felt they had "no choice" as they believe "gamers and game developers are being harmed by Valve's conduct" and they're not doing it for personal gain. Rosen said after wanting to have Overgrowth listed at a lower price on a newer store, they "personally experienced the conduct described in the complaint". Speaking to Valve, Rosen said "they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM" and so that "would make it impossible for me, or any game developer, to determine whether or not Steam is earning their commission".

So the problem here isn't specifically the 30% cut Valve take but rather Valve forcing price parity, or developers face being removed from Steam.

Rosen believes that Valve are "taking away gamers' freedom to choose how much extra they are willing to pay to use their platform" and that it's believed "this is part of why all competing stores have failed".

We did reach out to Valve yesterday for a statement to no reply.

Klei Enterainment deliver again, adding the conversation-based deck-builder Griftlands to their list of Linux supported games. It looks brilliant too and it has received an Overwhelmingly Positive view from users on Steam overall.

"Griftlands is a deck-building rogue-like where you fight and negotiate your way through a broken-down sci-fi world. Every decision is important, be it the jobs you take, the friends you make, or the cards you collect. Death comes quickly, but each play offers new situations and strategies to explore."

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Features:

• Battle Challenging Bosses - Test your combat decks against powerful foes with unique mechanics and attacks.
• Build a Team - or Buy One! - Hire mercenaries, find pets, or impose upon your friends to accomplish your goals.
• Master Hundreds of Cards - Each character has unique negotiation and combat decks to draft from. Get powerful item cards from fallen foes, or as rewards.
• Decisions Matter - Killing foes may incur the wrath of their friends, but sparing them leaves a dangerous piece on the board. Choose wisely, everyone remembers everything you do!
• Welcome to Havaria - Each playable character's story takes place in a unique environment, with different factions and locations to explore and exploit.
• Explore A Broken-Down Sci-Fi World - The world of Havaria is a harsh place, full of harsher denizens. Explore lush, hand-illustrated environments full of people who want to kill you.
• Playing Politics For Keeps - Each character has a factional allegiance and an opinion of you. Play politics between rivals, and try to capture the most powerful social boons. But watch out -- doublecross the wrong person, and you'll be subject to their bane!
• Outwit or Overpower - Overcome obstacles with the power of your fists - or your words. You'll need to pick your cards and play them right if you're going to survive. Build two decks simultaneously, balancing the tradeoffs of each.

Now that it's available on Linux, Klei said they will be announcing the big 1.0 launch date this month. Along with the new Linux native build they also updated the game as a whole, to include a number of overall fixes to the gameplay. They also fixed a bunch of typos and incorrect grammar.

I've picked up a personal copy today, so I'll be taking a good look in due course.

You can buy Griftlands on Steam .

This looks absolutely brilliant. Oddventure is an upcoming adventure RPG from Infamous Rabbit and Pineapple Works that follows a girl trapped in a cursed fairy-tale world.

"Oddventure is a JRPG about the misadventures of Charlie - a nihilistic and rebellious teenage girl with anger issues and social awkwardness. Charlie searches for her troublesome brother Bonzo and ultimately for a way back home. The setting is the Kingdom of Luxia, a land straight from original Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales with a dark, Nietzschean twist."

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It's currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter, with a goal of €20,000 they need to hit by June 5. I'll be massively surprised if something that looks this good doesn't get funded. Looks like it's off to a good start with over €3,000 pledged less than an hour after launch. For Linux fans, it's good news too as they're supporting "PC (Windows, Mac & Linux) and Nintendo Switch" with it being "actively developing and testing the game on all platforms".

Features:

• Meaningful choices – EVERY decision matters, sometimes in the most unpredictable ways.
• The friendly RPG where nobody has to die... but can. In a horrible way.
• Unique and EMOTIONAL turn based combat system with cursed-image-like enemies.
• Countless hidden secrets, references to pop culture and fairy tales.
• MEDIEVAL FURRIES?!
• Frog milk as a currency.
• Bitter-sweet comedy mixed with some coziness and dark humor.
• Dope and climatic OST.
• A life changing gaming experience.

You can fund it on Kickstarter and follow on Steam .

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:

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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 .

Nepos Games have announced the next big update for their isometric Pharaoh-like city-bulder Nebuchadnezzar.

After launching with Linux support back in February, it seems a lot of people really loved the style but there wasn't enough substance to it. Thankfully the first update addressed some of the issues adding in big freeplay maps, new difficulty modes and a tax/wages mechanic too. Now they've teased the 1.2 update with no current release date which will bring in Fire, Crime and Diseases to add a little more challenge to it.

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Once they mention a release date for this exciting version 1.2 we will let you know. Seems they're managing to turn it around, with the most recent user reviews on Steam being "Very Positive". Going over some of the user reviews, it seems it lacking a good challenge is what has put a number of players off so perhaps these new systems coming in will bring more players back.

Buy it now on GOG and Steam .