Don't Starve Together from Klei Entertainment has a huge new update out now, completely overhauling the way survivors deal with farming and crops.

Continuing to be one of the best and most unique survival games around, Don't Starve Together can be a huge amount of fun played with friends. It's as beautiful with the almost Tim Burton like gothic style as it is brutal to play through but now at least you might not actually starve with a new crop system.

They also added a slick new trailer with an animated short:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Like a lot of new features that come to DST, it has its own little progression path you need to go through. First you need to have Farm Soil ready to till but to get that you need a Garden Rigamajig built from the science machine, and after that it all needs plenty of care and attention. A really sweet addition to a great game.

Here's the key points of what's changed:

• Survivors can now plow fields and sow seeds to grow the crops of their dreams
• Each vegetable has their own unique plant with preferred growing seasons and type of nutrients
• Stay close and tend to your crops and you will be rewarded.
• Neglecting crops won't be the death of them, but you might regret it.
• Be sure to cull weeds before they become a problem
• Use the Gardeneer Hat to research plants and track your progress via the Plant Registry
• Farm like the Ancients with the Premier Gardeneer Hat and learn your plants’ every desire
• Added the Seed Pack-It to help organize all your seeds.

Klei Ent also confirmed another big update is due to arrive with the Year of the Beefalo update, which will go live after they have a holiday break so there's no set date on it.

Need some extra spool, the in-game currency to unlock some other cool stuff? Right now Klei is giving away 900 if you follow this link and login. It's valid until around January 15, 2021. With the Winter's Feast event going right now too, if you open up the game you will get a few extra items as presents too.

You can buy Don't Starve Together on Steam .

Uncharted Depths is the name of the latest upgrade to Barotrauma, a sci-fi exploration sim that puts you and friends (or random people / AI) inside a submarine in the depths of Jupiter's moon Europa.

What I love to call an underwater suffering sim, as it's a pretty good description of what to expect from it. Inspired by FTL, RimWorld, Space Station 13 and others it's a sci-fi game full of silly ragdoll characters and plenty of horrifying sea creatures that want to eat you and your submarine. It's like a much darker and more in-depth version of We Need To Go Deeper.

The Uncharted Depths is out now adding in a huge overhaul to the environment with remade textures, branching level paths, more varied levels, new small explorable caves, destructible floating ice chunks, new environmental hazards like falling Ice Spires and more. That alone sounds awesome but there's a whole lot more including new missions, a big upgrade to the AI bot system to help you when you're alone, expanded modding support, tons of bug fixes and more.

Check out their new trailer:

Watch video on YouTube.com

While it's quite a difficult game to get going, it's one full of laughs and a few jump scares here and there when you're not expecting a monster to come visit your submarine. Between trying not to crash, dealing with alien sea creatures and putting out all those fires - it's can be a lot of fun with the right people.

Barotrauma is available to buy on Humble Store or Steam .

Might and Delight (Shelter, Meadow and more) are currently developing Book of Travels which they're calling a TMORPG (Tiny Multiplayer Online RPG) and it looks seriously gorgeous.

With a crowdfunding campaign well behind them now that was a success back in November 2019, they're fully into the production on it now and they put up around 30 minutes of footage along with commentary to give us a true proper first look at what to expect from it. I'm ridiculously curious about this since it will have small player numbers per cluster, it will rely on your character learning a unique symbol language and a focus on authentic roleplaying.

Watch video on YouTube.com

They also spoke to PC Gamer to get some more insight, and they make it sound even more interesting than I initial expected. There's no big-bad evil, or some sort of bad king. The world is already peaceful but there's still going to be some combat and conflict with combat being a serious event with lasting effects. Still, it sounds like Book of Travels is very much about the exploration, learning about the world and the journey, not constant encounters.

Some other features to expect from it:

• Authentic roleplaying and individual playstyles - Pick one of 20+ Forms in a detailed character creation sheet that focuses on personality and identity rather than stats and classes. The game allows you to play in a style that matches your character and to set your own personal goals. Are you a danger-seeking adventurer, a stoic practitioner of magic binding, or a carefree tea drinking gambler?
• Boundless narrative that won’t hold your hand - Your travels will present you with countless randomly occurring events making your story unique and each session different from the last. Peel back the layers of diverse plotlines and discover an immensely deep fairytale world.
• TMO - Tiny Multiplayer Online - Other players are few, but your paths will cross - it’s up to you to choose to travel together or go it alone. Find vehicles to reach far flung places or just amble through woods together. The absence of guilds and social structures makes your temporary fellowships unique and memorable.
• A beautiful world of uncertainty - An intricate and unique world that draws inspiration from old-world fairytales, Eastern mythologies and early industrial eras. Tons of intricate events chains that unlock items, characters, deep world secrets, and hidden gameplay features and tricks.

I can't wait to get absorbed into that world!

You can follow Book of Travels on Steam . They also have Shelter 3 coming up in 2021 too.

Gang Beasts from Boneloaf is the super-silly party game that sees various gelatinous characters engage in brutal fisticuffs and it's bigger and better than ever. Probably one of the funniest and dumbest multiplayer fighting party games around, and it seems they're going to keep on updating it after splitting from Double Fine .

There's a lot to go over but here's a small slice of what to expect: a major Unity game engine upgrade, it's now 64bit on Linux with 32bit removed, a new glass destruction system they said should look and perform better, a new buoyancy system to perform better and allow them to do more types of liquid, lots of new costumes and parts for customization including adding the Yogscast Charity Drive 2015 DLC now being part of the game, a new Aquarium stage, new audio, tons of combat tweaks to make it feel better and the list just goes on and on.

Safe to say, it's almost like a whole enhanced edition style update, something plenty of other developers have charged for or created a new standalone version of. Pretty awesome to see though, considering how much time across 2020 and well into 2021 many of us will be spending at home - a good party game like this is needed.

I've played a little bit of it myself now, both before and after the update and it is pretty amusing. I can't say I have any idea what is going on at any point though, with all players just flailing around like crazy people. That is, until you find that one person who clearly knows what they're doing and throws you in front of a speeding train or off the back of a lorry. Gang Beasts is certainly never dull.

Want to see how big an update it really is? See some patch notes here .

You can buy it on Steam and Humble Store , with Steam having a big 50% discount until December 14.

After being out for two years, Texel Raptor have now added online multiplayer to the theme park builder Parkitect. Not exactly a small feature for such a game, and it's a free update for everyone too.

You can team up with 7 people so there's a max of 8 players total, all working on the same park where you get to see exactly what everyone is doing. This is true for sandbox park and campaign scenarios too, and most mods should be compatible with multiplayer too. DLCs are supported too but people will need to own the DLC to play with you.

See the trailer for the update below:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Update highlights:

• added co-op multiplayer mode! Now you can build parks with up to 7 other people together
• added a new background music track
• improved decoration score calculation speed
• fixed fences not sticking to terrain when terraforming
• fixed a case where decoration could be seen through the terrain
• fixed a bug where guest money setting would not be stored properly when editing a scenario

The only downside is that right now the multiplayer is not cross-platform between Linux, macOS and Windows but they did make it clear they're going to continue working towards that goal.

You can pick up Parkitect from Humble Store , GOG and Steam .

War Thunder, the very popular free-to-play, cross-platform, MMO military now has its own Battle Pass system so dedicated players can earn even more from it.

Just like many other games now do, you can either just continue playing free and earn a few extras here and there or pay a fee to be able to unlock all of it as you play it. The first season of the War Thunder Battle Pass runs from December 2 until  February 2021. Gajin said each season of the Battle Pass will have plenty of new and often exclusive content like vehicles, decals, XP boosters, profile icons and much more.

This update also brings with it a Seasonal Challenges system which are "tasks of high complexity" that you can do during battles in the main game modes. Each time you complete one, it gives you a big bonus of progress points on the Battle Pass. You start off with three, and each week a new task will be live.

I have to admit since their Vulkan upgrade, which has dramatically improved the experience on Linux, I am tempted to pick it up to support their work. War Thunder has quickly become a favourite since the big New Power update. Annoyingly though, my account is quite an older one that was originally done through my old PlayStation, which causes problems with purchases needing to be done through Sony - I am tempted to just make a new account directly with Gajin to remove the annoying limit since my progress isn't too far.

You can play War Thunder on Linux from the website or Steam .

After releasing originally in 2016, it seems Tricky Towers is one game that I just seemed to have forgotten all about and that's such a shame.

During the recent Steam Autumn Sale, I decided to finally pick up a copy after it being in my wishlist for probably a very long time. As it turns out, this was a good idea because Tricky Towers is actually quite fantastic. Giving a warm blend of Tetris falling blocks, along with some physics and a touch of magic - it's a wonderful mix that keeps me wanting to come back for more.

Watch video on YouTube.com

The thing is, I've never been big on Tetris. Sure, I've played it (and quite a lot when I was younger) but it never really had a staying power with me. Tricky Towers reinvented it a little and I love it for that. Spread across a single-player campaign of various challenges, you will be tasked with building a tower and fighting against gravity with the physics system to achieve different goals across each level. This might be to reach the finishing line high up in the sky in a certain time, to use all blocks without falling, puzzle levels where you have to figure out exactly how to stack in a small area and more. A lot of my time has been spent there and it is genuinely good, a real pleasure to sit back with and enjoy with a gamepad in hand.

Like any game though, it can definitely have some frustration too. You're not alone, oh no, there's a few pesky wizards flying around that want to mess with you. They might make some blocks suddenly huge or wrap one of your carefully placed pieces in a bubble so it starts flying upwards while you're trying to direct another to come down. It's challenging, and most importantly - it really grabs your attention.

There's a few other tricks these little wizards have too, one of the most annoying being to wrap an area you're building in clouds so you can't properly see. That really makes you need to pay careful attention. They can also lock falling blocks, so that you cannot rotate them and that's messed me up a good few times.

When you get bored of the single-player, there's also local multiplayer and online multiplayer of which I've had quite a few games in. I've managed to win a few but to be totally honest, the majority of my games have seen real humiliating failure but it's always good fun to see how impressive other players are at the stacking in it. Especially nice with the little powers you get to use to both help you and hinder your opponents. At various heights you get these powers which can be things like giving you an extra life, attach blocks together, make your opponent have a really slippery brick and much a few others. The developer even has a downloadable Tournament Kit which is a nice touch.

Tricky Towers is a game you can easily come back to often. I really wish I had played it sooner. Great game.

No problems at all with the Linux version, everything worked exactly as expected.

Did you miss out on Tricky Towers like me? You can buy it from Humble Store and Steam .

Following on from a successful Kickstarter campaign in September 2020, Octobear Knight Games have released their digital board game October Night Games.

Being influenced by the writings of Roger Zelazny, H.P. Lovecraft, Abraham Merrit, Bram Stocker, Albert Bloch, and many others to create their procedurally generated narrative the game follows a battle between two mysterious and magical cults to decide the fate of the world on Halloween night.

Watch video on YouTube.com

Looks like this was a Kickstarter that slipped through our radar, with it seeing €7,699 funding from a couple hundred backers and their FAQ made it clear Linux support was planned so it's nice to see after the initial Windows release it's come to Linux now too.

Feature Highlight:

• Dastardly characters : Pick your own character, ranging from a mad monk, to vampires, witches and more. Each packs unique abilities such as astral projection and the ability to drain life.
• An Eldritch pet : Select your familiar, such as a loyal dog, a gossiping bat or a grass snake with the gift of alchemy.
• Social deduction : Work out who is friend or foe. Each side will have its one wand Holder, Book Master and Lamp Bearer.
• Multiple locations : Travel the town, graveyard and hollow, looking for cursed ingredients for your brews and rituals.
• Summon horrors : Call on Cthulhu and beings even more inscrutable with your rituals.
• Make magick : Experiment with alchemy and craft new, more deadly potions using a challenging but accessible brewing mechanic.
• Cursed combat : Fight off ghouls and angry townsfolk using a unique dice combat system, and perhaps even capture a minion or potential sacrifice.
• Stay alive : Keep your health, sanity and reputation intact - or there will be terrible consequences.
• Solo and multiplayer : Mix of competitive and cooperative play, hex your enemies and aid those you believe to be on your side.

You can buy October Night Games on Steam .

After being in development for some time, Zombie Panic! Source has the huge 3.1 release pushed out which brings with it the official Linux support.

What actually is it? Zombie Panic! Source is a cooperative, survival-horror first-person-shooter. Think of it like a dedicated infection-mode game. Most players start off as humans, while a few Zombies trying to take them down and infect them and have it spread. Two opposing teams, with very different play-styles.

So why did this upgrade take so long? As time went on and they attempted to do a major code rewrite to get around major issues, they realized how "awful" some parts of the game functioned and so they decided to blitz through it all and ship out a much bigger and better upgrade overall. They've said now this is out, they will hopefully go back to more regular updates.

The most major new features are as follows:

• Linux Client support for Ubuntu and SteamOS machines.
• Revamped recoil system to allow players to have more control
• Major source code clean-up and rewrite from the ground up to remove all code from HL2DM.
• New first-person and third-person animations for firearms, explosives and cell phone.
• Improvements to player hitbox registration synchronizing with the player's model animation.
• Reworked the melee system with 'hit rays', creating an arc of line tracers in the player's FOV.
• Enhancements to the Steam Workshop support with additional "Add-ons" menu.
• Implemented Steam Rich Presence.
• 30 new Steam Achievements.

While they only technically support Ubuntu / SteamOS, it does appear to work fine on EndeavorOS, which is pretty much just Arch Linux.

The game continues being free and you can grab Zombie Panic! Source on Steam .