After a slick limited-time demo and a Kickstarter campaign, the dungeon crawling / tower defence hybrid Dwerve has now managed to complete the campaign and get fully funded. It's a blend of genres that's not usually done, you often get one or the other and to see them blended together like this seems like it could work real nicely.

The Kickstarter campaign managed to finish with $53,750 pledged and they went through multiple special stretch-goals, which are funding points for them to confirm certain features like a Mario-styled overworld map, a boss-rush mode, more enemies and so on.

Check out the original trailer:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Dwerve tells the story of a young dwarven tinkerer that adventures into dwarven ruins to unearth the lost technologies of the ancient warsmiths: turrets and traps, the only weapons that can protect the dwarves from Witch Queen Vandra the Wicked and her army of bloodthirsty trolls and monstrous creatures.

Follow it on Steam for release in 2021.

Like hundreds of others, we're tracking Dwerve on our dedicated Crowdfunding Page .

Dirty Land puts you in the shoes of Frank Marsh, a newly hired salesman for Pure Sky Properties, a real estate office where coffee is for closers and the status quo is hawking swamp land to unsuspecting buyers for a tidy profit. Inspired by classic 80s and 90s sales movies like Glengarry Glen Ross.

Currently in development by Canadian crew Naturally Intelligent, the same developer behind the quirky title Patchman vs. Red Circles . Dirty Land will see if you prefer to scrape by honestly, or throw ethics out the window and make some quick cash. Check out the teaser below:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Not just chasing down leads though. You will also be dealing with your co-workers too, who seem like they will make every effort to back-stab you. Spread across multiple days which each bring in new characters, new events and new stories. There's plenty of double-crossing involved, and apparently a little murder mystery too.

They've been working on Dirty Land for about two years using open source tools like Godot Engine, Yarn, GIMP, Krita, Ubuntu and more. The developer shared an example shot on IndieDB , which showed off Godot Engine .

Looks like it's going to be great, fantastic atmosphere in the trailer.

You can back it on Kickstarter here or their concurrently running IndieGoGo . They also have an official site with various places to follow them on.

As one of the most promising indie games this year, Songs of Syx has properly entered Early Access on Steam so you can try your hand at city-building with a grand strategy theme.

It's hard to fully grasp the scope of it right now but it's big. You start off as an insignificant colony and build, scheme, and fight your way towards a metropolis and empire. Funded with a successful Kickstarter campaign that ended back in May 2020 with about £23K from over 800 backers. As they said it would, Linux support is wired up and ready right away.

Watch video on YouTube.com

Their roadmap of what's to come has lots of big and interesting stuff in it like an expanded military system, religion, a more in-depth health system and so much more. Once finished, it will be one of the most interesting city-builders around thanks to the setting, the scope and how it mixes in large battles.

I ended up putting a surprising amount of time into the early builds on itch, as it really does a nice job of sucking you into it. Even the tutorial can give you quite a lot of playtime whilst you're exploring things at your own pace. If you're someone who loves base-building, economy management, and a whole lot of people watching then Songs of Syx is something you're going to enjoy a lot. All the moving pieces of a living world is fantastic to see in motion once you've got even a small village built. If you wanted RimWorld on a much bigger scale merged with elements of Dwarf Fortress that's more modern / interactive, well you kind of get what they're going for here.

So much to like about it, I don't know where to start and stop talking about all the little things I enjoy about it. Like the way you can zoom out to get a huge map, and get a real-time box of what's going on below you like so (click - enlarge):

Hey look, someone's swimming! Oh, they're face down? Oh dear. Turns out I was having so much fun exploring the map, I forgot to ensure we had enough food this time. A little while longer, a few more farms built and we're going once again, without everyone deciding to take a very long swim.

As a quick tip for Linux players, as it confused me for a while trying to find it. Saves, screenshots and more can be found in your home folder under "/Library/Application Support/songsofsyx".

Songs of Syx is a game where minutes turn into hours and day, it's easy to lose yourself in it and get absorbed. I'll have plenty more to say about this as it's further developed but it's already great.

You can buy it now on Steam and itch.io . The demo is also still available.

Fast turn-based strategy where the map changes along with the climate, Epicinium could be interesting with its fresh take on tactical battles.

War, war never changes. Except when it does and the land around you is ruined. That's what Epicinium will have a focus on when it releases free on October 12. The idea is that you need to be seriously careful to balance firepower against the enemy, and damage to the environment. There's a 'global warming' system that will also include a multitude of different weather effects adding to gameplay depth and variety.

Feature Highlight:

• Multiplayer battles with up to 8 players in free-for-all
• Versus-AI skirmish matches, featuring several AIs with different strategies
• Ranked and unranked matchmaking modes
• An easy-to-use map editor

You win by being careful. Combat will destroy grass, crops, trees and so on. Building industry will accelerate the global warming system and more environmental destruction will happen as battles go on. Players get a score based on how much of nature is left at the end of the war. While it's turn-based it does have a simultaneous turn system so no one should be left waiting around too.

Worth a look if you want a new strategy game to try out.

You can follow it on Steam .

A game where the unexpected hero is an NPC inside a game world that's glitching out so badly the NPC becomes aware of you? GLITCHED sounds pretty wild.

"When a glitch appears in the video game world of Soren, an NPC named Gus becomes aware of you- the player. Travel together to solve the mystery of the glitch and save Gus's friends, hometown, and digital world. As the story unfolds, Gus might start to question what role you play in his world."

The progress idea sounds pretty fun. As you do more and gain experience, you can use that to patch up glitches in the world giving you access to new areas with every activity giving you some form of experience points so there's many paths through to progress the story. Additionally, the way the story goes changes based on if you win or lose fights which the developer said means you should "almost never" see a game over screen. Sounds thoroughly interesting.

Feature Highlight:

• 20+ potential party members
• Raise bebos and enjoy that sweet monster-raising RPG content
• A friendship & romance system for party members
• Tons of achievements
• Every object has unique flavor text (yes, every object. thousands of objects)
• Tons of outfits that change up all party members
• Cool and weird equipment
• Multiple endings
• Frogs

As it turns out, it actually had a Kickstarter campaign way back in 2016 which clearly mentioned Linux support. Since it had been a long time, and it has now appeared on Steam as an upcoming title we reached out to the developer about this. They confirmed Linux support continues, although they will be officially only supporting Ubuntu.

It was originally due to launch late last year but the developer delayed it to ensure they're not overworking themselves, since it's a solo project and to ensure the quality of it.

You can follow GLITCHED on Steam . It should be due to release late this year.

Face off against large groups of zombies while taking a scenic road trip with Death Road to Canada, which just had a big upgrade and there's more confirmed on the way.

The 'KIDNEY Update' adds in a few big improvements for multiplayer co-op play, with a complete revamp of the character selection screen. They said it originally confused everyone so they remade it. Now any other player connected locally (or Steam Remote Play) can hit start and bring up a character select menu. Sounds great.

Additionally, if you're out or normal recruits the new player can pick the '?' icon to be a 'Vermin Recruit' which has low stats but they regenerate every mission so anyone can still take part. They said they plan to expand this feature if it proves to be popular.

Since hats were popular, they've added more although you need to unlock them through the Challenge Hut by paying ' Ugnomey in Unlock Town AKA Zombotown'. There's also two new game modes which let you start with 4 instead of 2 characters. Tons of extra tweaks and bug fixes also made it in.

They also confirmed in 2-3 months another update is planned which will focus on adding in more perks, new locations and then another content update a few months after that too. So it sounds like they're nowhere near done expanding the game overall.

You can buy Death Road to Canada on Humble Store , GOG and Steam .

Never played it before? Check out the trailer!

Watch video on YouTube.com

The upcoming pixel-art survival horror adventure Lamentum is coming along in development, although it's going to see a delay with it now releasing in 2021.

After getting successfully funded on Kickstarter back in the Summer of 2019, Lamentum looked like a promising upcoming indie game with a great atmosphere. We've followed along since then and a recent Kickstarter update noted some major changes. Developer Obscure Tales mentioned the delay reason being the "current situation" complicating things, which presumably they mean the COVID19 pandemic. So it should now release in Q1 2021, a while away but hopeful the result is a game that is not rushed.

Not all bad news, they have teamed up with publisher Another Indie who will help with with translations, QA and more. Another Indie has worked with numerous other developers on titles like the popular Yuppie Psycho.

They also showed off a new trailer:

Watch video on YouTube.com

We spoke to the developer, who confirmed again their continued intention to have it available for Linux too.

If you wish to keep up with it you can wishlist Lamentum on Steam .

Lenna's Inception, the wonderful top-down Zelda-like action-adventure that takes place in a world that's glitching away has a big first post-release upgrade.

"The Kingdom of ▜̴͈̔▕̴͜͝▯̴̳̈́░̷̪͗▚̷̪̆▒̸̣̓ is glitching. The evil Chairman of the Banker’s Guild has captured the Prince, opening the way for destruction at the hands of the Archangels. With the Hero eliminated, and the world horribly unraveling, reluctant tutor Lenna must step up to save the kingdom. But it won’t be easy--all she has to guide her is the voice of the deceased elder, and he seems to know more than he’s letting on..."

A lot of fun and after releasing in January 2020, it sadly didn't see a lot of interest from players on Steam. It's currently still sat on less than 100 reviews. Considering it's one of the nicest Zelda-style action adventures I've played in some time it's a shame more haven't taken a look. Especially with the ability to switch between 8-bit and 32-bit pixel art styles.

After a bit of a break, they came back with a big update seemingly out of nowhere. So perhaps it's time to take another look if you were on the fence.

Here's what's new:

• Steam Input support, which should allow more different types of controllers to work with the game
• New Game+ mode, which you'll need to beat the game using 1.1 to unlock (although you can do this with an old save file)
• New biomes
• New enemies & minibosses
• New weapons
• Spoiler log generation
• Seeded challenge modes

Watch video on YouTube.com

Feature Highlight:

• Team up with a friend. Make peace with Shadow Lenna to enjoy the game in local co-op multiplayer!
• Play again (and again). With two graphical styles, multiple endings, multiple boss forms, and procedural generation, you won’t see everything in a single playthrough!
• Challenge yourself. Speed through the daily challenge dungeon with no sword, with only three hearts, or without taking a single hit. Show off a GIF of your playthrough on the connected leaderboard afterwards!
• Recruit companions. Will you choose Henrietta, the free-range chicken with a vendetta, or perhaps Gourdon, the sentient pumpkin? (4 to discover)

Lenna's Inception can be picked up from itch.io and Steam for $9.99 / £7.19 / €8.19. Easily worth the price.

While all this is going on, as a reminder Bytten Studio are also working on the open world monster-fusing RPG called Cassette Beasts that's worth keeping an eye on.

With a detailed hand-crafted world, Shadow of Aya is a pixel-art adventure that looks and sounds pretty epic.

"Master the elements of poison, fire, ice, and meteorite in Shadow of Aya, a top-down action adventure ode to the 8-bit classics. But beware—as your powers grow, so do the forces that conspire against you. The journey downward is choked with shadow, and the creatures who slumber among them."

There's no trailer yet so here's a few shots:

Feature Highlight:

• Discover a Handcrafted World: Every rock is carefully placed, so leave no stone unturned. Shadow of Aya is meticulously designed to evoke the “gotta find every secret” vibes of the old-school titles.
• Nonlinear Progression: An interconnected overworld and underworld mean that as you gain abilities, you also gain choices. Set out in whichever direction you favor, filling every corner of your map.
• Explore the Mysteries: Secret paths, endless staircases, forbidden forests, hidden graveyards—the world bristles with relics, riddles, and rare powers to aid you on your quest.
• Use Elemental Types: Every element has its weakness. Learn how to exploit them to blast, melt, burn, slash, and freeze your way through waves of unwitting enemies.
• Evolve Your Combat Style: The classic two-button A + B control style is easy to learn, challenging to master. Each elemental power gives access to a new pair of moves, unlocking an entirely different style of play.

We spoke with the developer, Incoming Games, who mentioned to GOL that their current plan is for a simultaneous launch across Linux, macOS and Windows for both the upcoming demo and full game. Once we get some more information on a trailer, demo and/or release date we will let you know as we're now following along.

You can follow Shadow of Aya on Steam .