If the GOG store is your preferred place to grab some games, go and check out the latest release with Odd Realm. Another Linux supported title, which has you build up a settlement and expand across a fantasy world.

With it being available for a while already, it's quite positively rated by users on Steam at least and I enjoyed my own time spent with it earlier this year. It's got that right kind of relaxing building, mixed in with plenty of challenges. If you enjoy the likes of Dwarf Fortress, RimWorld and other similar games you will probably quite enjoy Odd Realm too.

Have a look at the trailer:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Features:

• 2 playable races with unique styles of play (3 more being worked on now)
• 5 procedurally generated biomes (Desert, Taiga, Voidland, Tundra, and Tropical)
• 24+ Creatures
• 100+ items, weapons, and gear
• 100+ buildable blueprints for props, blocks, plants, trees, and platforms
• 15+ Settler professions
• Unique scenarios and encounters based on player decisions

Right now it's in Early Access so it's not finished, however the developer is very active with it. They have no current set date to properly release, as they're keeping it open to constantly improve the game. Fully playable though, with tens of hours you can enjoy in it quite easily just keeping in mind the usual bugs and balance issues for an incomplete game.

You can now pick it up on GOG.com . Otherwise it's also on itch.io and Steam .

Game developer Rising Tail have confirmed they're working on Factory Magnate, their own take on the factory building and mining strategy sim with a tycoon style to it.

Factory Magnate will take elements from the likes of Factorio and Mindustry for the building and mining side but with different goals. With a "small loan of a million credits" your goal is to build up an empire of factories spread across a procedurally generated solar system. You will be in charge of extracting materials, setting up productions lines and making various products to get them transported off-world to sell.

They don't have a huge amount to show right now as it's under heavy development but it sounds interesting.

Feature Highlight:

• Make landfall on planets and moons and set up factory sites.
• Build factories to best utilize the resources available.
• Enter into short and long term contracts, committing to deliver a steady supply of products.
• Build relations with the inhabitants of the solar system, affecting trade prices and opportunities.
• Navigate the Interplanetary Central Market, looking for the best trades.
• Compete against AI companies.
• Hire scientists and product specialists for your Research & Development department, allowing you to unlock factory unit upgrades and new product lines.

With a huge focus on modding support Rising Tail noted that many major parts can be changed including core content (like graphics), items and product lines, the units you can build, the recipes to create things and more. The developer mentioned to us that they're building it with cross-platform tech including Java and LibGDX so it should have no problems running on Linux. Sounds like one to keep a close eye on.

If interested you can follow Factory Magnate on Steam .

Think you have what it takes to control complex train routes? The train dispatcher simulator Rail Route looks thoroughly interesting, and you can even try an early demo.

In the game you will be tasked with negotiating contracts, building railroads, setting up routes for trains and controlling the traffic. As you go you will unlock more features of the dispatcher interface, upgrade the railway network itself and add in a little automation.

Watch video on YouTube.com

When you start off you will be in charge of manual routing, clicking around signals and ensuring trains actually get to where they're supposed to be. From there, you will be able to unlock automated routing to help with busy train traffic and when the lines start getting complex. You need money though to do anything, which comes in the form of contracts to fill up your schedule and run trains across your lines.

It has a level editor too, so you can create whatever you want and perhaps replicate a local line you love.

The team at Bitrich have been updating the demo recently too, which you can try free on itch.io . You can also wishlist it on Steam . One big focus of their current effort is on an overhaul of the user interface, which they blogged about on their official site and it's looking pretty slick and much nicer than the current demo UI:

Egosoft are continuing to expand their absolutely massive space simulator X4: Foundations, with a Beta now available for the free 4.0 update that will release properly early in 2021.

It's an absolutely massive update both in terms of features and technical overhauls, so they're quite right to say that it's the "biggest free update so far" and shows just how committed they are as a studio to make X4 the best in the series.

This update will bring in at least one major graphical upgrade with volumetric fog, although they said there will be several other wide-ranging visual improvements. The way they've implemented it sounds great too, and it sure does look good with soft layers of fog throughout space that will interact with light directly too. When you think about fog, it's not exactly sounding exciting but for a space game it really can liven things up.

Egosoft are also saying they've invested a "considerable" amount of time to make fleet combat better with "improved steering behavior and several important AI script changes". This will include a new order called a "Coordinate Attack", which seems to let you have an admiral "subsequently give movement, escort and attack orders to all the subordinate ship groups, to coordinate positioning, formations and attacks against the enemy fleet" which sounds like a lot of fun.

They also gave a quick demo of the improved fleet control:

Watch video on YouTube.com

There's also going to be a Transaction Log for detailed breakdown of income and outgoings, a new message system for important communications from NPCs, an expanded Encyclopedia, NPC factions can claim abandoned ships, lots of AI improvements to various areas and a whole lot more. If you want to see the full changelog you can find it here - fair warning though, it's a really long list. The Beta for Linux is likely only available on Steam.

For the full game right now you can buy it on Humble Store , GOG and Steam .

They're also working on the upcoming X4: Cradle of Humanity expansion to release in Q1 2021, which is supposed to be releasing around the same time as the 4.0 free update. This expansion sees the X series return to Earth and it will "significantly" increase the size of the universe you have to explore along with new factions and plenty of other content.

Rain Games, creator of Teslagrad and World to the West recently released a new title called Mesmer, which is a unique social survival game where 'every encounter matters' they say. Note : key provided by a reader.

This was a pretty quiet release that I haven't seen many talk about, which can be attributed to many reasons including not a lot of marketing and tons of games releasing all the time. It's easy to end up buried but here we are! Mesmer has you take part in a revolution, where you run around an open city to influence people and factions to try and get them to follow you all while you're keeping a low profile.

"Mesmer. The pearl of the old world. At least it used to be... But the King has failed his people. He’s turned his nation into a police state, his citizens struggling under rationing and curfews."

Watch video on YouTube.com

Rain Games have managed to craft a game here that doesn't really have an equal, it's not really like anything else I've played any time recently. It's a game about quests, and lots of them. Trying to get one person to join you leads to another and another and…you get the idea. Most of this revolves around the conversations you have.

It's thoroughly intriguing and actually quite difficult too due to the conversation and convincing mechanics when you try to get people to join you. You might end up in quite a pickle through these conversations, where you have to spin wheels to get enough points and try to bribe people into serving your cause. There's absolutely tons of options but the key is being careful, I constantly ended up biting off far more than I could chew and a lot of people really hated me for not providing the sandwiches I promised for joining my riot.

After all your dodgy dealing, conversations, sneaking around and searching in bins you then need to hold public speeches to try to get various factions on your side. The main thing is, you need influence and a whole lot of it. Otherwise, you will get horsed as the authorities put a great big mask on you which contains Paciflowers, a substance they use to mind control people.

Feature Highlight:

• Deep, narrative driven gameplay, where your choices matter
• An enticing blend of social manipulation, stealth and riot gameplay
• Unique survival mechanics, where social influence is your main resource
• Leverage multiple social factions, each with their own goals
• Open world with multiple methods of traversal and world interaction (You can even ride a pig)
• Multiple endings based on your choices

For the Linux release, there is one issue with their special Paint Effect that I had to turn off otherwise it caused graphical issues. Unsure if that's NVIDIA specific and Rain Games are aware and mentioned they do want to get it working on Linux too. Apart from that, it works well enough (performance could be better) and offers a very quirky take on revolution. It's rough around the edges but worth your time if you like things a bit different.

You can buy it from GOG and Steam .

SCS Software continue to expand where we can go trucking with the American Truck Simulator - Colorado expansion out now and it looks like it has some good sights to see.

This is probably one of the bigger DLCs that has been released, which includes tons of areas to drive through like the Million Dollar Highway. A rather special bit of road the stretches around 25 miles, often said to be one of the most beautiful drives in the states where you get views of mountains, valleys and gorges and more. For many of us stuck at home during the COVID19 pandemic, it sounds like something worth exploring.

Watch video on YouTube.com

Highlights:

• Forget about the real world in vastness of the Great Plains
• Roam through the Rocky Mountains
• Haul cargo on the Million Dollar Highway
• Discover Colorado's important industries like agriculture and a gold mine
• Deliver freight to and from the inside of a large cargo aircraft in Denver International Airport
• Admire accurate representation of cities like Denver and Colorado Springs
• Visit landmarks like the Four Corners Monument and get a bird's-eye view on it with the viewpoint feature
• Unlock Colorado-specific Steam achievements

To celebrate the release, they're doing another of those huge community events on their World of Trucks service that you can hook up to your in-game profile. It's a really sweet feature, that allows players to feel part of something bigger while it being a single-player game and it keeps things nicely chilled-out. The Cruising Colorado event will see players come together to drive a total of 60,000,000 miles (96,560,640 km) while delivering cargo of any kind to or from anywhere in Colorado. Everything counts and if you participate these are the rewards you can expect:

• Personal goal: Players that deliver cargo to or from each of the 13 Colorado cities will gain a personal World of Trucks Achievement and an impressive Rocky Mountain Bighorn themed ATS truck paint job Steam inventory item.
• Community goal: When the community goal of driving 60,000,000 miles (96,560,640 km) during deliveries to or from any of the 13 cities in Colorado is met, and if the player has also achieved their personal goal, then they will receive a hanging Rocky Rodeo Gem ornament Steam inventory item.

You can buy American Truck Simulator from Humble Store and Steam .

Ready to take the action into space? Runner Duck, developer of the hit Bomber Crew have just released the sequel with Space Crew.

Bomber Crew was something of a surprise hit for the UK-based two-person indie studio Runner Duck, when it became a top seller on Steam. This sequel moves the theatre of war from World War Two to the far flung future with players challenged to fight a conflict on an intergalactic scale. Armed with their own carefully chosen crew and fully customizable spaceship, captains must protect Earth and venture across the galaxy to stave off a new alien threat known as the Phasmids.

Check out the new launch trailer:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Features:

• Strategic Space Survival Simulation: Ship-to-ship combat is strategic and deadly; manage your resources and crew abilities to stop ship invasions, repair systems, tackle fires and take evasive action.
• Recruit YOUR Space Crew: From captain to comms officer, weapons officer, engineer and more - you will create your own unique crew with customisable equipment, loadouts, appearances and names.
• Fastest Hunk of Junk in the Galaxy: Personalisation doesn't end at your crew, customise your spaceship from weapons, armour, engines, escape pods, liveries, and more to make your ship your very own.
• Close Encounters of the Space Kind: Precarious asteroid fields, harmful radiation, the freezing vacuum of space and black holes all pose a danger to even the most experienced space crew.
• Guardians of the Earth: Travel throughout the Galaxy and defeat the threat to humankind through a range of single player missions from reconnaissance to bounty hunts, reclamation and more.

I've picked up a personal copy, so some thoughts will come another day. Awesome to see it launch with Linux support right away, and from a brief initial inspection everything seems to work great. It's smooth, it looks good and it seems like it's going to be just as chaotic as the first game.

Pictured - Space Crew on Linux.

You can buy it from Humble Store and Steam . If you already own Bomber Crew on Steam, you get an extra 10% off and if you buy in the first week you get the soundtrack free.

Another fine example of open source in action with a commercial indie game here, as the dungeon building sim KeeperRL continues being upgraded.

Most recently with KeeperRL Alpha 31, which adds a new Warlord game mode. This new mode allows you to take a "retired" keeper (after you win) and some minions on another adventure through other retired dungeons. Sounds pretty amusing, and gives KeeperRL a fun mode for short-bursts.

They've also now hooked up scripting for procedural map generation, which several maps are now already using. This new system is moddable, faster to work with and since all of the algorithms used to generate the maps are included in the scripting - they said that there's a "huge potential for modders to customize their own maps".

More new content is included like:

• New unlockable Adoxie adventurer (already known by some from the bonus mod).
• Reworked Demon Den level.
• Reworked all castles in the game.
• Reworked the top and the lava z-levels using new the map generation system.
• Two new hidden z-level locations.
• Four new hidden top-level locations.
• Reworked blacksmith house.
• Angels have wings.

Still in Early Access, which amusingly the developer said it would be there for "maybe a year" and that was back in 2015. Good games take time though, and KeeperRL certainly doesn't disappoint even now.

You can buy it from Humble Store , itch.io and Steam . With the source code under the GPL on GitHub . There's also a free "demo" which is an ASCII text version on itch.

Lights! Camera! Scalpel? SEGA and Two Point Studios have a pretty amusing sounding DLC on the way with Two Point Hospital: Culture Shock. Releasing October 20, this new expansion turns things up a notch with the most illnesses included than any of their previous DLC packs.

"Face televisual shenanigans at Plywood Studios as you look to launch a hit medical drama with washed-up film star Roderick Cushion. Head to Mudbury Festival and grab lyrical headlines with musical headliners while serving burgers from questionable vans. Finally, savour the affluent aromas of high society life at Zara’s very own Fitzpocket Academy. Socialise, hobnob, and boost that VIBE darling, because if you don’t who will?"

Watch video on YouTube.com

Feature Highlight:

• 3 fabulous new locations
• 3 new, fully animated cure machines
• 12 new visual illnesses
• 36 new illnesses in total
• New gameplay
• New music, DJ and tannoy lines

These new illnesses will include some nicely themed issues like: Stunt Trouble, Wardrobe Malfunction, Writer’s Block, Square Eyes, Fourthwall Problem, Stage Hand and so on. I bet they had a lot of fun coming up with all the different names this time. It's just a shame that once again, only a small set of them are visually new. Still, more of a good thing is always nice to see and Two Point Hospital is great.

Pick up TPH on Humble Store and Steam .