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."

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

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 .

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 .

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 .

Office Point Rescue Deja Vu is a brand new retro-themed first-person shooter from Magellanic Games, a bigger expanded version of the original from 2020.

"Terrorists have invaded and taken hostages in the Emeraldalo Corporation's headquaters.  Agent Foldon is assigned to infiltrate the building, dispatch the terrorists, rescue any surviving hostages and gather intel."

Check out our gameplay footage below to get a taste of it. The gameplay was on Easy mode, as I didn't want to spoil any surprises and difficult in the other modes. It gives you a good idea of what to expect though, thoroughly reminding me of some retro arcade shooters that took way too many coins.

Features:

• 11 levels spread across 2 routes.  Navigate the office building, finding secrets and rescuing survivors.
• Utilise 4 weapons to fight back foes - pistol, shotgun, sub-machine gun and the mighty lightgun.
• Choose from 3 tuned difficulties.
• Save your progress.  Return to the last level you reached with all your items, guns and ammo.  No need to play through in a single sitting.
• 2 Additional unlockable modes - Giant Head Mode and Lightgun Mode
• Switchable graphics mode, enjoy in the original low-resolution mode or in clear, crisp high resolution.
• Full retro midi-like soundtrack.

Find it free on itch.io . While free, you can donate to the developer when you go to download it if you feel their work is worth supporting.

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.

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"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 .

Ready to drool over new Linux hardware? Star Labs are ready for you to open your wallets to the 14" StarBook Mk V. Now this is the type of laptop model I can get into. A screen that's not too big, a sleek chasis and a reasonable price backed up by some powerful internals along with it being designed for Linux.

With the new StarBook Mk V, you get quite a lot more choice too. When it comes to the BIOS, they're now letting you choose between AMI (American Megatrends Inc.) Aptio V and the open source Coreboot. Not only that, you can switch between them any time you want.

A nice matte screen as standard too with the 14-inch ARC display, with anti-reflective coating that should provide a good experience whever you are. Star Labs say it comes with a hard coating to prevent damage too.

Some of the specifications on offer:

When it comes to operating systems you get a lot choice there too between: Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS (64-bit) or later, elementary OS 5.1.7 (64-bit) or later, Linux Mint 20.1 (64-bit) or later, Manjaro 21.0 (64-bit) or later, MX Linux AHS 19.3 (64-bit) or later, Zorin OS 15.2 (64-bit) or later and even Windows.

Available from £777.00. Check out the official page to find out more and order.

It's currently in production, which may be delayed due to component shortages worldwide right now. They offer a 5% discount if you order a laptop that's in production and not yet ready.

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.

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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 .