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 some classic first-person shooter fun? Developer 'Scumhead' who works with the GZDoom game engine recently announced that Shrine, Lycanthorn and Lycanthorn II all now have Linux builds.

This makes grabbing them and playing them easier than ever, no need to mess about with setting up GZDoom manually or moving anything around. Currently it's only on itch.io but hopefully the Linux builds will hop over to Steam too sometime soon. Shrine is quite highly rated too, one we've talked about briefly here before when running it as a standalone.

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Shrine is a really well made total conversion, where you battle a "nightmarish eldritch horde as Tusk, the skinless monstrosity" across nicely designed levels full of unique and strange weapons. If you do love classic Doom, Hexen and so on this is probably something you should check out with 16 challenging levels to explore.

Check them all out here if you love your FPS games:

• Shrine
• Lycanthorn
• Lycanthorn II

The best part? They're all free to play but you can support the developer on their Patreon .

Need another amusing co-op and PvP party game? Crooks Like Us is all about grabbing as much as you can, and then making a run for it.

The overall goal is to carry as many items as you can, and dump them into the getaway van before the timer runs out. Sounds easy right? Not so much. If you stack up a bunch of items and dump them into the van together, you get a score multiplier but actually carrying a stack to the van is another matter - you wobble all over the place and it's quite silly. It also leaves you open to the other crooks to grab your stuff if you take on too much.

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How the gameplay works:

• Before starting the game, choose 4 different gadgets from the main menu to take with you.
• Enter the van to use your chosen gadgets. Each one has a different effect on the room when activated - you could turn out the lights, make an earthquake, drop anvils, put down ice, move doors and loads more.
• Each gadget can be used for free, but will have a recharge time after activating. You can use the money you earn in a match, and pay to use the gadget again straight away instead of waiting for it to recharge.
• Leave the van at any point to continue stealing on the ground
• Watch out for the guards in the room - they will make you drop your stack if they catch you.
• Throw items you are carrying to knock over other thieves and guards.
• Dash forward to attack other players or destroy objects like doors and walls.
• A vault will open in the last 30 seconds to reveal an extremely valuable item - sometimes enough to sway the game!
• Make sure you’re in the van ready to escape before time runs out!

An amusing setting and you can try it out yourself right now. They have a version available in Alpha on game store itch.io , which you can play directly in your browser.

You can also follow it on Steam for release in 2021.

Using a powerful dash you're not just avoiding people in Hole Punch, you're smashing through the level itself to get around the challenges.

A fun and very playful physics platformer we have here, one that wants you to try and destroy everything. Thanks to the destruction mechanic, you can play it in a number of ways. Do you try to be stealthy and avoid everyone? Go for the fastest time or try to take everyone out? Either way, you're going to be dashing and cutting up entire levels. Starting off very simplistic, it doesn't take long for it to become quite challenging.

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Once you start getting into the flow of jump, dash, slice and repeat it really finds its feet and it's thoroughly entertaining. Considering this is only a demo with limited content and plenty of time for the developer to further improve it, this could be a huge amount of fun when it's released fully. The developer mentioned that they're planning to release it in late 2021 for around $8.

Feature Highlight:

• Destroy literally anything (even the game's title)
• 60 colourful levels
• Physics-action gameplay
• Fast, bouncy movement
• Killer music
• Super secret bonus stuff?

You can try the free demo on itch.io and Steam .

After a Kickstarter success back in May 2020, then an Early Access release on Steam in September 2020 - the fantasy grand-strategy city-builder Songs of Syx has continued to be a big indie success. Here's a look over it.

"Songs of Syx is a fantasy city-builder where you start off as an insignificant colony and build, scheme, and fight your way towards a metropolis and empire. The mechanics are complex and true to life, where small events can spiral into the collapse of kingdoms."

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When it entered Early Access it was clear they had something special, selling over one thousand copies in less than twelve hours . Now though, a few months later, they've sold well over eleven thousand. Speaking to the developer, Gamatron AB, they shared with us plenty of info on this including that the vast majority is from Steam, with itch seeing less than one thousand and GOG "seems completely dead".

From what they showed us they had 12,228 total units on Steam (11,327 being Steam direct purchases and 901 key activations). Against the total units 262 were from macOS and 213 from Linux so we can put those sales stats down to:

• 96.12 - Windows
• 2.14% - macOS
• 1.74% - Linux

So macOS and Linux are pretty close together overall in sales, with Windows as expected being the biggest seller. Nothing unexpected there but good to see a fresh indie developer doing really well in a very crowded market and wonderful to see them support Linux during Early Access. Considering how well it's doing, they made it clear this "ensures years of further development".

They actually offer an unlimited time demo both on itch and Steam, so you can even try before you buy. Only recently they expanded the game quite a lot to with a major update including new ore types to mine, a bakery industry, proper fisheries, a new and improved save system, better ultra-wide screen support, more music and the list goes on - they've clearly been busy.

Coming up next they have more big plans which will include a room for soldiers, the ability to have them patrolling the streets, a crime system with prisons, laws that affect happiness and crime plus more. Sounds like it's getting to be an exciting game quite quickly.

You can buy it on GOG , itch.io and Steam .

Driving trucks has probably never been this challenging before with on-screen controls, Frick, Inc. from Kenney is a fantastic idea for a game.

Frick, Inc. is a game about being frustrated. The name is part of this joke, it's frick-inc-frustrating. The hilarious kind though, with you swinging little trucks around a track by pulling levers and flicking switches, all with on-screen controls and you can only do one thing at a time. Challenging? Sure, annoying as hell but fantastic at the same time.

Joining Kenney's other game Pixross , it has hopped on over from itch.io and joined the many thousands of Linux games available on Steam directly.

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As it's a very clever idea, it also didn't take long for a mobile game developer to completely rip it either. Such a shame how often that seems to happen to indie developers. I know that a game idea often repeats through developers and games with Zombies, Battle Royale, Deck-builders now too and so on in a loop but seeing it like this - done so blatantly is sad. Kenney's original version with Frick, Inc. is well worth picking up though.

Since we last wrote about it, the game had a major update too adding in:

• 10 new levels
• Improved road visuals
• Shows best time on level selection screen
• More accurate time display

Now you can pick it up on Steam if you prefer, or itch.io as before.

Naev returns! This classic free and open source 2D space exploration, trading and combat sim release version 0.8.0 and it's quite a big change for it. What is it? Taking inspiration from the likes of the Escape Velocity series, you travel around space and pretty much do whatever you want. There's various story missions, lots of different ships and encounters and it's now bigger than ever.

If you're a fan of classic space sims, Naev is worth a look, especially with the masses of improvements that came along with this brand new release. Here's just a small slice of some of the bigger changes in Naev 0.8.0:

• Overhaul of the interface to be more sleek and functional
• New map overlay with adjustable opacity
• Added rarity indicator to ships and outfits
• Simple economy model implemented with map visualizations
• Added travelling merchant who sells unique items
• Added asteroids and mining
• Improved player GUI and new default UI
• Improved and fixed escort system
• Made combat music vary from faction to faction
• Improved AI behaviours
• Added Soromid organic ships that level up organs
• Improved and expanded NPC portraits
• Added a “slow mode”, which runs the game at half speed (like an easy mode)
• Added a ship log which records events
• Added a “system map” which displays information about known remote planets
• Added support for giving commands to individual escorts
• Increased pirate name variety for bounty missions
• Added map decorators showing locations of factions and the Nebula
• More music
• New and/or improved missions

There's a lot more, and of course plenty of bugs were fixed along with that too.

You can grab Naev free from itch.io , Steam the official site as an AppImage and Flathub (outdated at the moment).

After more similar free and open source space sims? Do check out Endless Sky too.

After releasing for itch.io first Pixross, the nonogram puzzle game from Kenney, has now hopped on over to Steam and it also had a sweet upgrade for both stores.

"Pixross is a picture logic puzzle game featuring 150+ unique puzzles, customization and extra challenges for each puzzle. Unlock new puzzle packs or customization options by completing puzzles!"

If you've never played it the mechanic is simple and effective: you count numbers and try to get the correct amount of blocks coloured on each line. Simple logic but it takes time to get through.

This has been, without a doubt, one of the nicest experiences I've had with a Nonogram puzzler (some of you probably know it as Picross). I don't want to rehash the things I said about it before, which you can read about here but it really is quite lovely. A very relaxing atmosphere, with some nice little customization progression to give it a bit of a personal touch as you play through it.

A recent update to the game that arrived just before the Steam release also added new content including:

• Added 10 new 'Holidays' themed puzzles
• Added 2 new 'Holidays' themed backgrounds
• Added 2 new 'Holidays' themed tile styles (snowflake and star)
• Added option to disable colors during gameplay
• Added ability to toggle clues by hand (only in non-automated mode)
• Added Steam achievements
• Fixed issue related to delayed sound effects
• Raised price of gashapon machine
• Improved puzzles: Painting, Tea, Crab and Goldfish

Now you can buy it on Steam in addition to itch.io .

As one of my absolute favourite games from 2019 , Baba is You really is an exceptional puzzle game that really makes you think outside the box and break some rules.

The thing about Baba is that you're pushing around and combining logic blocks, to change the rules of each level to be able to actually solve it. The idea is just brilliant, it works well and it's quite challenging too. Have you never seen it? Check out the trailer below first to get a good idea of what to expect:

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While there is a lot of included content, more is always nice - and they just delivered.

With a Beta now available for a built in level editor, along with the ability to load up from a set of featured levels. You can also input a level code from anyone on the internet to play their creation, which is being shared on a new official Twitter account . It's a fantastic addition and allows you to be seriously creative. Due to the block pushing mechanic, along with lots of logic blocks you can make some wild levels.

Try out my own quick creation with level code "F3MH-4LZS". You can see it in the picture below.

Pictured - the Baba is You level editor running on Linux.

I fear for my free time with this addition. Playing with it is really fun. I can only imagine what people with a far more creative mind than me can come up with.

You can try out the level editor right now on itch.io (free until released fully) or on Steam with the "betatest" opt-in Beta for owners. As for where to actually buy it if you don't own it: Humble Store , itch.io and Steam .