Love to curl up with a good book? Sarawak from Cowleyfornia Studios LLP is out now and it looks fantastic.

Text-based adventures might not be the most flashy genre but, depending on where you look, they're very much alive and well with plenty releasing all the time. Sarawak is a delightful piece of interactive fiction, so you're playing out a mystery game set in Oxford and Borneo.

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"Through dialogue choices, you interact with a whimsical cast of characters who help or hinder your progress. The more you unravel, the more conflicted you become as you start to question who's lying and who's telling the truth."

The developer mentioned it will appeal to people who enjoyed the likes of 80 Days, A Case of Distrust, LucasArts adventure games or Agatha Christie novels. While a text-based novel it's not all reading though, as it's very much like a visual novel with you picking answers and it also blends in some creative puzzle solving with discovering secrets, opening locks and doors, hacking into police equipment and more so it plays like a mix of things.

Visually, Sarawak is actually quite wonderful with it's soft pastel colouring that looks like it was all done on paper. The simple styling helpfully enables your mind to wander off a bit into the setting, just like you actually would while reading a good real-paper novel. What I especially liked about it is how each scene was setup on the technical side, as it just keeps on scrolling down giving you a chance to go back up to any point in the current scene you need to. This allowed me to really get into it, and for people whose English reading perhaps isn't the best - it would allow more to enjoy it I think.

Sarawak is a great experience to sit back with a coffee as you get pulled into the mystery surrounding the story.

You can buy Sarawak on Steam and itch.io .

Love you wild adventures? Critters for Sale is one you should take a look at because this is the second time I've played it and I still have no idea what the hell is going on.

Originally released on itch.io back in 2019 which I mentioned here , and a contributor also took a look later, it's now seen a first episode release on Steam with Critters for Sale: SNAKE. It's so bizarre! A point and click visual novel adventure, one that's black and white with a bunch of animated scenes in the middle of the screen.

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"Critters for Sale is a compilation of 5 short stories: Snake, Goat, Monkey, Dragon, and Spider. All of which occur in different eras and locations, touching on themes like time travel, black magic, and immortality. A journey in which you meet characters familiar and foreign to you, ranging from inhabitants of a garden in Earth's orbit, aliens from Neptune, Noid Men from neighbouring timelines, and residents of a certain Reincarnation Palace. "

I don't want to spoil it so I will just say it's truly strange and I still don't understand it. Very unique idea, although I'm not really sure how legal including a real person is in a game in this way…you'll know what I mean if you try it. It's short too, so you won't lose much time by giving it a go and seeing if you like diving into something psychedelic.

Try out the first part free on itch.io and Steam . The full game with all episodes is currently due to arrive on Steam on June 3, 2021.

Note: The Linux version appears to still use an old Unity version, which has issues on NVIDIA GPUs. If you see distortions at the bottom of your screen, the easiest fix is just to add this as a launch option which makes it work perfectly:

-force-glcore42 -force-clamped

Combining elements of the Wolfenstein 3D classic first-person shooter with the rolling gameplay of Super Monkey Ball, what could go wrong? Return to Castle Monkey Ball is quite hilarious. Pointed out by a reader earlier this week, it's a web game you can play on itch.io right in your browser so there's no downloading and the idea actually works quite well. Amusingly so and it's pretty challenging too.

The idea here is that you're rolling your way through some cramped hallways, while soldiers are trying their best to shoot you. Smash into them to hurt them, keep rolling and collect bananas to boost your score and hopefully make it out alive. Probably one of the most unique mashups I've seen lately. Check out their trailer:

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"Fight your way through eight procedurally generated floors to escape the fortress! Collect bananas and treasure to maximize your score and defeat guards for time bonuses! Just get to the end before the timer runs out! Lose all three of your lives and it's game over for you.

Are you tough enough to take on this challenge and break free from the grips of your captors?"

The developer mentioned they're taking no money from it and it shall remain free.

Do give it a go on itch.io if you need a good laugh.

Möbius Front '83, the difficult turn-based strategy game from puzzle masters Zachtronics has seen a big free expansion adding in quite a lot.

So far, it seems like possibly the only Zachtronics title that hasn't become some kind of instant classic. However, they're clearly trying to make big improvements to it. Personally, I enjoyed it though and it is good but the challenge was tough and that's what put a fair amount of people off. This update is a nice step towards making it more approachable since you can dive in for a battle against the AI whenever you want to learn more, or against others online.

That's not the only addition. Because your ability to play as the enemy "Americans" is only unlocked when you complete the single-player campaign, they also added a brand new Soviet Army faction with over 20 units, including the T-72 Ural (an old tank but cheap tank that can be used to overwhelm your opponent), the paratrooper team (which can deploy directly to any open hex on your side of the map), and the BM-21 Grad (which launches four artillery attacks at a target in a single turn).

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"The year is 1983 and the United States of America must defend itself from an enemy it could have never imagined— an America from an alternate universe that will stop at nothing to seize control of the country’s heartland!"

If you missed it you can buy it on Steam and itch.io (which went live 2 days ago) with the GOG release still tagged as coming "soon".

Lenna's Inception is a top-down Zelda-like action-adventure game with a world that is glitching, with a style that can switch between 8-bit and 32-bit pixel art styles.

It's now been available for a year so Tom Coxon of Bytten Studio has written up a postmortem for how it went, and it was a thoroughly interesting read. First, a refresher on who they are. Bytten Studio was initially just Tom Coxon who previously worked for Chucklefish on titles like Starbound and the multiplayer for Stardew Valley, Coxon was later joined by Jay Baylis who also worked for Chucklefish in the past on titles like Starbound and Wargroove.

To date they've managed to sell 6,800 across itch.io and Steam which isn't a lot for an entire year. However, it's well above average going by the 2019 numbers that Mike Rose of No More Robots put together . Game development for indies is clearly tough and most will likely need a part-time job to ensure they can keep going, something Coxon points out in the Lenna's Inception postmortem.

So above average sales, and thankfully the reception was good overall and on Steam right now it's sat on a "Very Positive".

What's interesting for us here is that 5% of the sales were from Linux, which is again (like sales for indies) higher than the average and higher than the current Linux user share on Steam (see our Steam Tracker ). Not only that, 22% of their sales were from the itch.io store too so that's a reasonable chunk and certainly not to be ignored. Here's what they said about the Linux stats:

Also of note is that 5% of copies were bought by Linux users, which is a lot more than the average for games on Steam. I think this comes down to several factors:

1. The low number of total copies sold means that not many extra Linux users in absolute terms have to find the game to push the relative-terms figure up.
2. Actually reaching out to Linux-specific gaming press and treating Linux as a first-class platform. I do think that indies have yet to really figure out how to market to Linux gamers, who often get ignored or lied to by larger studios. There are more than enough Linux gamers out there to make your indie game a success; the difficulty, as with all platforms, is in reaching them. The difference is that nobody seems to be marketing specifically to Linux gamers. The first to actually succeed at this could maybe double their sales figures or more.

I did all the coding for Lenna’s Inception on Linux (I like a good terminal), so officially supporting the platform has been almost free. Linux gamers are also very good at fixing your bugs for you!

The figure for Mac was a lot lower: .8%. Most likely because we dropped official Mac support prior to release because continuing to support it became a huge burden .

So the Linux version sold approximately 340 copies which at their normal price of £7.19 that would be somewhere around £2,444.6 (it went on sale once previously, so likely a bit lower). For a small indie developer, that can make all the difference.

Interestingly, they gave purchasers of the massive Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality on itch.io a copy of Lenna's Inception too so a further eighty thousand people have a copy of it. This had a fun side-effect, which seemed to actually boost their sales shortly after on Steam.

Concluding the postmortem: sadly overall Leann's Inception was not a commercial success but valuable lessons have been learned from developing and marketing it. Oh and Coxon said "Don't sleep on Linux, itch.io, consoles or localisation. They’re important!".

You can buy Lenna's Inception on itch.io and Steam .

Bytten Studio are currently working on Cassette Beasts , an open-world monster catching RPG built with the free and open source Godot Engine and they will be continuing Linux support with it.

Well this is quite unusual. You've played monster catching games before but not like this. Familiars.io put a fresh spin on it all and it's quite ingenious.

Developed as a pixel-art retro-looking browser game, it's super accessible since you can play it on pretty much anything that can run some simple graphics in a browser window. It's an MMO too, so you can join up with others and chill out. When you want to, go off and catch some monsters, engage is some PvP and perhaps find a new favourite game waiting for you.

However, while it has a fun face there's a deep dark lurking inside it. These creatures can't be put into a special healing centre, oh no, once they reach 0 HP that's it – they're gone. Instead of you having permadeath like some roguelike, your creatures need their HP closely watched! That one twist is enough to set it apart from many other games doing a similar setting.

Familiars.io is currently under active development, with new content being added to it regularly. One of the most recent updates added in a pretty sweet feature: you have your own private resort. You can warp there whenever you want, and drop off up to 50 creatures to keep them out of harm's way. Nice little touch that.

It's also entirely free and you can play it on itch.io .

From the developer of MidBoss and Super Bernie World (Kitsune Games) and 2064: Read Only Memories (MidBoss, LLC.) comes Kitsune Tails. An adventure platformer inspired by beloved classics steeped in Japanese mythology.

"Play as a young female kitsune, one of Inari's fox-eared and bushy-tailed messengers, and embark on a hero's journey that begins while delivering your first message. Experience a romantic encounter with a kindly sorceress who comes to your aid in a time of need. Explore the complicated relationship with your former mentor turned antagonist and uncover her reasons for sealing your love interest inside an elemental prison. Unlock powers that manifest as cute outfits to help you run, jump, and dash across a land inspired by Japanese mythology in Kitsune Tails, the follow up to Super Bernie World."

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Feature Highlight:

• Classic platforming action set in a land inspired by Japanese mythology
• Explore five elemental worlds and various haunted houses
• Learn new elemental powers and use them to find secrets and optional story content
• Unlock a bonus ending by fully exploring the relationships between characters
• Use cute outfits to power up or stomp around by stealing a giant boot from enemies
• Defeat your haughty former mentor and her gang of foxy minions
• Stomp on pangos to make them curl into a ball, pick them up, and kick them around
• Carry lights through haunted houses to reveal secret doors and ward off ghosts

It's slated to release in Q1 2022 with full Linux support and they will be gathering funding through a Kickstarter campaign, which will launch mid-2021.

You can follow it on Steam , with it also planned to release on itch.io too (no store page live yet).

Shot in the Dark needs you to have good platforming skills, good point and click aiming skills and it's a whole lot of fun if you're up for the challenge. Note : key provided by the developer.

Released with Linux support on January 12 from developer Possum House Games, the idea of it is seriously great. It's an action-platforming that requires precision in more ways than one. Using a very simply and quite limited colour palette that's largely black, white and red - a lot of things blend together. You need to pick out the enemies from the background and take them down.

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Tougher than you think for a few reasons. You often don't see the enemies until they're up close, as you need to keep a real close watch on your surroundings - look out for those glowing red eyes coming at you. Not only that, you're using a trusty old revolver which only has 6 bullets at a time and you need to individually reload it. To make things even more interesting? You can't move while aiming. However, it balances this out a bit by letting you point and shoot pretty much anywhere.

After each shot you get a slight pause too while your character deals with the kickback from the gun, it's only short but that also needs thought due to your positioning if you're going to be taking out multiple enemies near you. Clearly a lot of thought went into the design of the limited mechanics here and all all works great together.

Some of it might perhaps feel a little bit unfair when you've died a couple times, however, a lot of it is all about taking it slow. It's not random, you learn enemy movements and placements and you do get checkpoints at each new section of the game so it's not overly punishing. Challenging for sure in places but fair I feel. On the flipside, some if it is about speed and precision too, as there's sections that need you to run, stop and shot and run some more.

Constantly surprising me with how it mixed up all these small mechanics from enemies that also aim and shoot at you in the same way, to enemies that only activate if you accidentally aim across them, enemies you only see in reflections or when lightning strikes and more.

Point and click shooting with platforming, where the enemies blend into your surroundings - great. Had a huge amount of fun blasting through it. Be sure to check this one out.

You can buy Shot in the Dark on Steam . and itch.io .

Top marks for originality and total quirkiness here. Sleeper Games have a pre-alpha build out and available for Linux of their new title Hyperspace Harvest.

It's going to be a mix of casual farming, with a little genetic engineering and some dungeon crawling on the back of a mysterious giant space mammal who reincarnated you after being involved in some kind of war. You will need to "Grow medicinal crops on the space whale's' skin, or venture deep into its anatomy and terminate the corrupted cells yourself!". Looks and sounds wild, check out the teaser:

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We actually covered the initial announcement, and now you can jump in and try it for yourself. Keeping in mind Sleeper Games are after feedback, as it's far from being finished. Most of the core systems are there but it needs a lot more content to fill it up. From my early time spent in this pre-alpha, I can see something with a huge amount of promise and it already feels like it could be a lot of fun once the initial rough edges are sorted.

Love the mix of gameplay it will offer. All very unusual and we need a lot more of this.

Find the pre-alpha demo up on itch.io .

You can also follow / wishlist on Steam .