Love your open-world games? How about farming life sims? The Ranchers looks like another great entry into this more casual and laid-back part of the gaming world. Releasing on Steam sometime "early" this year, RedPilzStudio could be onto a hit here. As for Linux support, the developer confirmed it very clearly on Steam .

"After years of living in the metropolis' stressful and hectic life, you finally decide to leave everything behind to buy your first lot of land in the country and start a new life, in the quiet, close to nature. However, your skills as a farmer and manager will be put to the test to make your Ranch a prosperous business and earn the villagers' respect and esteem. And who knows, maybe find love and start a family."

There's no trailer for it just yet but the developer has shared some screenshots of what to expect (click to enlarge):

Feature Highlight:

• CREATE YOUR RANCH - Raise animals, grow crops, reclaim resources, buy new lots of land, and much more. You'll have plenty of space to create the Ranch of your dreams.
• DEVELOP YOUR RANCH - Craft objects, machines, and transform your basic resources into elaborate products to attract villagers, fill daily orders, or sell them in different markets for maximum profit.
• MANAGE YOUR RANCH - Optimize your Ranch's resource consumption, sign water, electricity contracts, or build your water wells, wind turbines, and solar panels and sell your surplus to the village.
• ONLINE COOPERATION - Invite 1 to 3 players to join you in your Ranch online! Your friends can help you develop your Ranch, fulfill your goals, or explore the vast open world of The Ranchers together.
• AUCTION MARKET - You can sell your resources to other players via the online auction market to maximize your profits. The auction market is directly accessible from within the game and from the companion application on iOS and Android. It seems that in The Ranchers, money never sleeps!
• A GIGANTIC OPEN WORLD - On foot, horseback, scooter, pickup, or yacht, explore a gigantic open world where mines, wild islands, shipwrecks, and dangerous monsters abound. Use your skills to recover ultra-rare minerals, gems, etc., to make and improve your tools, donate them to the village museum, or sell them at the auction market to other players.

I am an absolute sucker for these types of games including Stardew Valley, Littlewood, Farm Together and more. They're great when you're totally worn-out by everything else.

You can wishlist / follow on Steam .

Keeping you up to date on what's happening with the open-world space shooter EVERSPACE 2, it seems it's just about ready to enter Early Access for Windows.

A game we're really excited about but it's nowhere near finished yet. After the successful Kickstarter campaign in November 2019 that saw the team at Rockfish gain over €503K in funding from players, it was due to originally launch fully in Q3 2021 but due to delays elsewhere and 2020 being what it was, the full release is now coming in "the first half of 2022" which will include "native Linux support" as confirmed in their latest announcement .

Watch video on YouTube.com

They also mentioned how over 2,000 people have already played it, thanks to previous Closed Beta testing and they had plenty of feedback from that to make it ready for Early Access. At this current stage it already has professional voice acting for 12+ hours and the current content will keep people going for "at least 25 hours of gameplay".

For players who truly can't wait, it should work okay with the Steam Play Proton compatibility layer but as always there's no guarantees or support from the developer there. We'll be waiting until the official supported release in 2022 and will keep you posted on any delays there.

You can follow EVERSPACE 2 on Steam .

The Long Dark is probably one of the most beautiful survival games, and quite brutal too. Ready to get cold again? A big new update to the Survival Mode is out now.

Gameplay in The Long Dark is split between playing through the episodic story (with Episode 4 due in 2021 ) and the open-world Survival Mode where you do whatever the heck you want. This latest free expansion named Hesitant Prospect adds in the Ash Canyon region where you "might find an abandoned mine that hides treasures worth more than gold to any survivor" but to get there you have to cross some worn out looking rope-bridges — eek!

That does not look particularly safe…

You also get access to Crampons, which will help prevent sprains and enable easier travel over weak ice. Plus there's a new Technical Pack that adds a permanent capacity buff to your inventory for all that burning wood you need.

A new challenge mode has been added too, based upon the Halloween event where you're being hunted by an invisible force. If you complete it, you will get a Darkwalker Feat to enable in Survival Mode to give you a stamina boost at night but it will drain you during the day. There's also a new setting where you can force an Endless Night for an extra challenging run - better wrap up warm.

See their roundup video below:

Watch video on YouTube.com

You can buy The Long Dark from Humble Store and Steam .

Continuing to be seriously impressive, the 1.14 update to the deep survival game Vintage Story is officially out now after multiple testing builds.

As mentioned recently , Vintage Story is the survival game for those of you who love the blocky style of Minecraft but want something deeper, something much more complex and exciting. This is actually a pretty large update to the base game bringing with it a character customization system so you can make it all feel a little bit more personal. Coming with it is also the Steel Age which adds in lots of new blocks, more metal working objects, a more expansive body temperature system, new shader effects and so much more it's hard to really sum it up correctly.

Take a look at their new highlights:

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Honestly, I find it difficult to go back to Minecraft after spending a good few hours in this. Minecraft has its place, thanks to the simplicity it can get you easily into it and create and good for a younger audience too but Vintage Story is just a whole 'nother level of survival.

See the full changelog here .

You can buy it from Humble Store and the official site . I suggest you do, it's awesome. A community member is also hosting a server for Linux fans, check that out on our forum .

Currently in development and not yet considered a full game but still very impressive anyway, Veloren is a free and open source multiplayer voxel RPG. Inspired by the likes of Cube World, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft it's a very exciting project to be following. Written in the popular Rust programming language it fully supports Linux, macOS and Windows.

This latest release is the biggest yet, with overhauls to various parts of the game as well as introducing plenty of new features to keep players busy.

Highlights of the 0.8 release include:

• New level of detail feature, letting you see all the world's terrain at any view distance.
• Block-based voxel lighting.
• Point and directional lights now cast realistic shadows, using shadow mapping.
• Added leaf and chimney particles.
• Some more combat sound effects.
• New creatures and habitats including: beehives and bees, fireflies, several new animals and bosses.
• Animals now have customized attacks and AI
• Travellers that explore the world
• Lots of new sound effects.
• Lots of UI improvements.
• New forest types with Birch and Willow.
• And the list goes on…

You can check out about 15 minutes of gameplay from the latest release below, which shows off lots of new bits:

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If you missed it, we interviewed one of the developers involved in creating Veloren back in June 2020 which is a great read worth a few minutes. Another excellent example of open source in action, with Veloren shaping up to be one of the most promising modern FOSS games available.

You can download for free from the website . The full source code is up on GitLab .

The huge open-world space sandbox Avorion has the first expansion releasing on November 2, along with plenty more details revealed and a trailer.

It's going to include quite a lot of extra content for those who wants it. Avorion already had a huge open world with lots to do, and you can spend hours in it easily thanks to the deep ship-building mechanics. This expansion is aimed it those who want more story and more game mechanics overall though with 20 new story missions, side-missions and events. There's a new hacking ability, a Black Market to trade at with illegal and stolen space goods along with weapons and upgrades only found there. On top of that there's The Convoy story event, that has a huge convoy attempt an expedition towards the center of the galaxy and you can choose to join or fight it.

You can see the exciting new trailer below:

Watch video on YouTube.com

When the expansion becomes available, a big free update for everyone will be released too which is currently in an opt-in Beta for testing on Steam. This will bring all players in Avorion a number of advancements including:

• Docking - Ships can dock to other objects and fly around with them
• New ship controls / communications like bribes and inspections
• The RTS style Strategy Mode got some huge improvements
• Legendary Weapons - need we say more?
• Visual Improvements
• Performance Improvements
• Bugfixes

They also confirmed all players can play together, regardless of owning DLC or not. Some DLC-specific events can be played by all players, as long as someone with the DLC is around to start it too. Seems like a pretty great way to ensure your community can stay together. That's if you play it online anyway, it can be played entirely solo.

If you want a space sandbox to play by yourself or with others, one that supports Linux then you should absolutely take a look at Avorion.

You can buy Avorion on Humble Store and Steam .

I honestly feel like I need to take an entire week off just to play Tenderfoot Tactics, a mix of turn-based battling and open-world exploration that's out now. Note : key provided by the developer.

Tenderfoot Tactics is a very strange mix of games. The open-world exploration is real-time, and it blends in party-based RPG mechanics with each of your goblins having levels, equipment, abilities and the option to evolve into something bigger and then when you get into the combat it flips that into a turn-based tactical battler. It works together so amazingly well though.

"For a generation, the terrible Fog - one vast, voiceless, and cruel spirit - has been eating the once-thick forests of the mainland. Now, with nowhere left to call home, and granted magic by the friendly spirits of the archipelago, one small party of would-be adventurers sets out. Find a way to save the many goblin towns of the rocky coast, discover the truth of the Fog, and, if possible, put an end to it."

Watch video on YouTube.com

What's really juicy about Tenderfoot is the the combat system, which is easy enough to understand if you've played any turn-based tactical battle system but it does things quite differently and needs a little time to learn the special way it does things. You don't have random miss chances, so unlike the likes of XCOM you're not going to see 99% and still miss. No special ranges to deal with and you get to use magic to manipulate the very ground beneath your feet to open chasms, raise mountains, boil lakes, drain rivers.

Nature does its thing during battles too. Grass and bush will grow, creating difficulty moving through costing more time, fire will spread and more so there's plenty to be aware of especially when you start manipulating things. The way it does this during battles keeps it interesting too, as every action has a time cost associated with it so you might see a bush or two appear while a character moves across the battlefield.

There's another aspect to the combat that makes it unique too. When you take down an enemy, they drop a little spirit you can pick up for instant experience points and HP gain. This is often needed too, as the battlefields are quite small and it's easy to end up loosing a lot of health if you're not careful.

Graphically, I think it's gorgeous too, especially when you're exploring. The way the world melts in and out of view as you explore, it's completely serene and really rather calming. The world is an entire mystery to you too, with little explanation as you go into the game so you really get this sense of walking into the unknown that makes it quite the experience.

I'm also having far too much fun sliding my crew down mountains as we continue to explore.

Tenderfoot Tactics is now sitting high up on my list next to other unique gems like Wildermyth and Fort Triumph for when I want to dive into turn-based tactical battles.

Another thing that's interesting about it, is that the crew who worked on it form part of Ice Water Games, a "democratically owned" label representing a collection of games by the artists who built those games. So, it sounds a bit like a co-op. It's great to see more people come together like that to ensure they're all treated fairly as there's far too much worker exploitation in the video game industry.

You can buy Tenderfoot Tactics on Steam .

Terraria fans rejoice, as not only has the Linux support improved but you can now show off your vanity items in all their glory with the 1.4.1 release out now. When the Journey's End 1.4 upgrade released, they did mention a patch would follow to clean up issues and they stuck to it. They're jokingly calling this patch "Journey's Actual end".

So what's in it? Quite a lot actually. There's new items, several of which focused on filling out the early/pre-hardmode Summoner options, also new Achievements along with new Princess NPC which they said you have to find out how to get them and what they do on your own.

It also brings with it some new Vanity items as a result of a design contest, and a wonderful and much needed overhaul to how such items are displayed on characters. No longer will you have to choose between things like Wings or a Cape - have both! Previously one would overwrite the display of the other but thankfully that issue is now finally solved.

With an upgrade to the cross-platform FNA tech developed by Ethan Lee , it should hopefully sort crashing / resolution issues players on Linux encountered. So you can properly enjoy the experience once again. They also mentioned these other QoL (quality of life) improvements for everyone:

• The Journey Mode duplication menu has been overhauled, with the addition of several new filters to break up some of the larger categories
  • Additionally, the Misc option in the duplication menu should more properly encompass items that do not fall under any other category
• Torch God now plays an Otherworldly track when that setting is toggled
• Bestiary now indicates if a drop is Wave-based/if it only drops after a certain wave in Frost Moon and Pumpkin Moon
• Plantero's Sombrero has made its triumphant return
• Reorganized menu settings for resolution/fullscreen/windowed borderless to all use the same sub-menu, to reduce confusion

Full update notes can be found here .

You can buy Terraria from Humble Store , GOG and Steam .

If you missed the huge Journey's End 1.4 release, see the trailer below:

Watch video on YouTube.com

What's become quite an ongoing indie success story is Vagrus - The Riven Realms, an incredibly interesting post-apocalyptic fantasy RPG-strategy hybrid.

"Vagrus is an award-winning roleplaying game with a narrative focus, open-world exploration, and strong elements of strategy. The player takes the role of a vagrus - a caravan leader who strives to survive in a strange and dangerous dark fantasy world by leading a traveling company on all kinds of ventures."

A game that's been featured here on GOL a few times, and with good reason. The amount of promise it shows is ridiculous, especially if you love games with deep lore and lots to explore. Lost Pilgrims Studio have been funding their game on Fig for over a year, using a hybrid model of Early Access / Crowdfunding where you get instant access. This campaign has now passed $100,000 and continues to rise as they pull in funding to work on new features.

Watch video on YouTube.com

It formally entered Early Access on Steam and GOG back in July and it appears to be a small hit there too. On GOG it's gained 4 / 5 stars and on Steam they've managed to hit the essential Very Positive user rating from close to a 100 posts, a rating that's needed to keep Steam's almighty algorithm happy.

As a narrative-heavy game, you need to enjoy reading for pleasure. Personally, I think it's fantastic that we have such a ridiculous variety in our gaming. From fast-paced action to slow-burn games like this. I've played quite a lot of Vagrus myself and thoroughly enjoy the atmosphere and great design, the writing is definitely interesting too. Vagrus is a bit of a deep hole to fall into too, as it sprinkles in more and more game mechanics as you travel across the lands. Dealing with random encounters, keeping your people happy and paid, turn-based combat, visiting and interacting with different locations to pick up cargo and more. Lots to see already.

You can find Vagrus - The Riven Realms now on GOG , Steam and Fig .