Möbius Front '83, the difficult turn-based strategy game from puzzle masters Zachtronics has seen a big free expansion adding in quite a lot.

So far, it seems like possibly the only Zachtronics title that hasn't become some kind of instant classic. However, they're clearly trying to make big improvements to it. Personally, I enjoyed it though and it is good but the challenge was tough and that's what put a fair amount of people off. This update is a nice step towards making it more approachable since you can dive in for a battle against the AI whenever you want to learn more, or against others online.

That's not the only addition. Because your ability to play as the enemy "Americans" is only unlocked when you complete the single-player campaign, they also added a brand new Soviet Army faction with over 20 units, including the T-72 Ural (an old tank but cheap tank that can be used to overwhelm your opponent), the paratrooper team (which can deploy directly to any open hex on your side of the map), and the BM-21 Grad (which launches four artillery attacks at a target in a single turn).

Watch video on YouTube.com

"The year is 1983 and the United States of America must defend itself from an enemy it could have never imagined— an America from an alternate universe that will stop at nothing to seize control of the country’s heartland!"

If you missed it you can buy it on Steam and itch.io (which went live 2 days ago) with the GOG release still tagged as coming "soon".

Getting real close to release now is the huge 2.6 upgrade for the Beamdog classic RPGs now including Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition, Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear and Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition.

They've gradually moved from one game to the next, opening up an opt-in Beta you can try for each right now on Steam. Each of them needing some feedback to ensure you can properly play it including double-checking the save system is working correctly.

2.6 is a big upgrade for Beamdog's enhanced version of the Infinity Engine and while it won't solve every last issue in each of the noted games, it's still a needed update for them all.

Want to get involved? They need Linux testing too (the Beta is Steam only, other stores when ready). We've reported on the Baldur's Gate Beta testing before but now  Icewind Dale is included and the Baldur's Gate titles also got fresh updates. See the links below for each for more info:

- Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition
- Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear
- Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
- Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition

You can see the full changelist here . Some highlights for all include:

• Changed to 64 bit executables; 32 bit operating systems are no longer supported
• Hundreds of bug fixes including many spell fixes
• Improved pathfinding
• Improved multiplayer stability
• Added Adventurers of Neverwinter content to all games
• Added French, Italian, German, Ukrainian and Polish text localizations to Siege of Dragonspear
• Added French text localization to Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition
• Added Brazilian Portuguese and Chinese (Simplified) text localizations to Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition

Need to buy a copy? Links below:

- Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition - GOG / Steam
- Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear - GOG / Steam
- Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition - GOG / Steam
- Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition - GOG / Steam

While work continues on the sequel, Axiom Verge has a first ever free content update following the release back in 2015 with a new Randomizer Mode. Never played Axiom Verge? You're missing out. A true love-letter to the classic metroidvanias!

This brand new update is currently in Beta, requiring you on Steam to opt into it in the usual way. Right click the game, go to Properties and hit Betas on the left panel and find it there. As the name of the update might suggest, it makes things a bit more random but "in a very sophisticated way". This mode is smart enough so you won't get stuck because of needing a certain item to progress onwards.

How did it come about so long after release? Thanks to the speedrunning community, along with a developer of a mod that gave players an unofficial version of this but it needed a copy of the game. They teamed up to add it into the base game with the modder refusing any compensation for it. How nice for all of us!

There's a few different modes of play for the randomizer, as the developer explained:

• "Beginner progression mode is really a bit of a misnomer. The Randomizer itself is for people who have beaten the game, ideally multiple times, and have explored the map very thoroughly. Beginner mode assumes that you will be playing through the game in much the same way that anyone would progress through it. For what it’s worth, this is the mode I play."
• "Advanced mode assumes that you’ll play through the game the way a speedrunner familiar with exploiting certain glitches may go through it. There are ways to skip the entire grapple hook area, for example, if you know how. Because the system knows what you expect to be able to get at which areas, it can make sure to accommodate this route."
• "Masochist mode is similar to Advanced mode, except that it assumes you’ll be doing a low % speedrun. As of right now, there are exactly 4 people in the world able to play this mode. If you don’t know that you’re one of them, you’re probably not. This progression mode is included primarily because the aforementioned people who developed this mode include those masochists in question."

See the full details of the new mode here .

Initially the Beta update broke on Linux but thanks to a quick fix from FNA developer and Linux game porter Ethan Lee (who is not involved in this game directly), the developer pulled in the fix to ensure the Linux version is good to go.

You can buy it from Humble Store and Steam .

Watch video on YouTube.com

Starting off as nothing but a tiny little cell in a massive world, Thrive is a free and open source evolution sim backed up by the power of science.

Quite early on in development still overall, it is however very playable already and you can have a little fun exploring and eating away at various resources to evolve your creature. It's like a much more detailed version of EA's Spore (in the early game stage). Now powered by Godot Engine , their progress on it seems to be speeding up.

Thrive 0.5.3 is up now and it brings with it numerous improvements to the flow of things like key rebinds, translation support, a process panel to show running processes in your cell, big improvements to the save game system, you can pan the camera in the editor now, music fade improvements, tips on the loading screen, plus lots of bug fixes to make it a lot smoother.

Check out their latest release trailer:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Work is already well underway for the next version, which will have a fancy new binding agents feature which wasn't quite ready for this version. Once that's ready, the next release will go up with that and whatever else they've done. They're also working on thermoplasts, 3D stages and absolutely loads more that sounds exciting for an evolution sim.

You can follow it on the official site and GitHub . It's free and open source. They also take donations to their Patreon , where if they manage to hit an additional £100 per month one of their team will be able to actually work dedicated part-time on it which would be great to see hit.

After releasing in late 2020, the monster battling metroidvania mix in Monster Sanctuary was quite a highlight and it's getting bigger and better this year. Moi Rai Games have released a roadmap of their plans and it's quite exciting.

Naturally after any game is released that saw some attention, they've been given plenty of feedback from players. Seems it went well overall though as they said it was "quite a successful launch". The first update will be coming with two additional difficulty settings with "Casual" and "Master" to appeal to more players, with the ability to switch as you like during the game.

On top of that they're adding in a New Game+ mode where you get to keep your existing monster crew, for players who want that extra challenge. The online battle mode will also see some matchmaking improvements, like allowing direct challenges to your Steam friends.

Not seen it before? Check out the trailer:

Watch video on YouTube.com

As for what will come after this big 1.1 update? Lots more is planned and this is where it gets even more interesting. We can look forward to player customization, improvements to the minimap, speedrun options, various quality of life improvements to come too like:

• Be able to inspect all Monsters, not just the enemies. Additionally, inspecting will display all buffs/debuffs a Monster currently has.
• Sorting Monsters
• Possibility to take back assigned skill points while still in the skill menu
• Improved Monster donation (warning when donating Champion Monsters, be able to donate multiple Monsters at a time)
• Display the number of items already possessed when buying additional ones
• Option to increase all wild encounter levels

Sounds great. Monster Sanctuary is already a lot of fun as a finished game but this all makes it sound like it's going to be worth playing through again.

If you want to buy Monster Sanctuary you can do so on the Humble Store or Steam .

While GOG continue dragging their feet on supporting Linux with GOG Galaxy, you can use the useful Minigalaxy client which is free and open source.

It works pretty great too, doing the majority of what you need with downloading and installing games you own from GOG onto your Linux installs. Minigalaxy 1.0.1 is mainly a bug fix release following on from the stable build that went out late in November 2020.

It can be used for both supported / native Linux builds, and you can also install Windows versions with the Wine compatibility layer. You can also set it to use your system build of DOSBox and ScummVM for those titles GOG have that use them. Overall, it's much nicer than manually downloading and keeping things up to date individually.

Here's what's changed:

• Open maximized if the window was maximized when last closed (thanks to TotalCaesar659)
• Kept installers are now stored in ~/.cache/minigalaxy/download
• Fix about window displaying wrong version number
• Fix show store page button not showing anymore (thanks to makson96)
• Fix the download manager crashing when an installer has been damaged during downloading (thanks to makson96)
• Fix games showing an update is available while the latest version is installed (thanks to makson96)
• Fix loading the library taking a long time when many games are installed (thanks to makson96)
• Fix Gex not launching
• Add the following translations:
  • Swedish (thanks to Newbytee)
• Update the following translations:
  • Polish (thanks to ArturWroblewski)
  • Russian (thanks to TotalCaesar659)

You can grab Minigalaxy from GitHub .

DRAG is easily one of the most impressive Early Access games from 2020 and they ended 2020 in style with a big upgrade to the game and it's looking great.

Since DRAG has a next generation 4CPT vehicle physics (4-way contact point traction technology), there's going to be plenty of tweaks over its Early Access stay. The latest update adds in limited-slip differentials to the front and rear axles as well as a center diff, plus they did a big balancing pass to the handling system.

I've put quite a few hours into it with all these changes, and it feels overall like a big improvement. There's less spinning-out and random slipping where it feels like you should have some grip. If you found it too difficult before, this is a good time to check it out again.

The controls for gamepads and keyboard were also adjusted as they "focused the damping and sensitivity more on the center", along with Steering Wheel force feedback being reworked but still very much a work in progress.

For a bit more fun they also added tire walls to the game, which you can smash through.

For drivers who like a little more customization, DRAG will also now let you switch up the colours of Vehicle 1 so you can make the game feel that little bit more personal. That might actually be my favourite feature, as silly as it is, having your personal colours on your car while racing around makes it feel that little bit sweeter.

More fixes also came along including:

• updated SDL2 for PS5 and Xbox Series X controller support
• fixed camera collisions in online qualifications
• fixed respawn orientation in hairpin track A-4
• lowered guardrail friction in Zone-B to make them less deadly
• increased guardrail friction on Demo track to avoid wall riding
• fixed shortcut on Demo track

They also updated the demo to include Special Event track 1 permanently so you have more content to try before you buy.

What else is planned? More tracks, a better online system with lobbies, split screen support for the online races, new vehicles, more languages, a photo mode, a track editor and they've been teasing a large open-world style area in their Discord. Safe to say 2021 is going to be a fun year to follow DRAG. You can find DRAG on Steam .

Never seen DRAG in action? Check out their original trailer:

Watch video on YouTube.com

1 year and 4 months of work later, the sleek and simple Linux desktop Xfce 4.16 is out now along with plenty of visual upgrades and some big tech upgrades too. A desktop for those of you who like less bling, more "classic" styling and one that just stays out of you way.

On top of various visual upgrades including a whole new set of icons for the default applications with a consistent colour palette, Xfce 4.16 has seen some other impressive improvements with one major tech change being the introduction of display scaling with a new fractional scaling option in the Display Settings.

They also merged together the preferred applications and mime-type settings into a single window, letting you pick all the defaults together. Saves time with less clicking around and just sounds like it makes a whole lot of sense. Thunar, the file manager for Xfce, also saw some big tech improvements too including the ability to easily pause file operations, queued transfers, view settings per-folder are remembered and support for GTK transparency is added in.

Xfce 4.16 also saw the Panel get plenty of work too including new animations, dark mode support, launchers having more options in the right-click menu, a new Status Tray plugin that combines both legacy Systray item support with modern StatusNotifier item support and various other little changes elsewhere like the About application now having a section for basic details of your PC.

Have a tour of what's new here . Full changelog here .

Need an easy way to capture those awesome moments when you're playing Linux games? ReplaySorcery is what you need, and the developer has been very busy with it.

ReplaySorcery is a bit like AMD ReLive or NVIDIA ShadowPlay Instant Replay. The idea is simple: while running it stores around 30 seconds of your screen and audio in memory ready to dump it into a video file for you. It works, and really quite well too.

Since we last wrote about it there's new features aplenty including: audio capture, options for changing output quality, VA-API hardware acceleration, local config file support, the ability to not run as root and more. It's quickly becoming a great short-capture solution.

It works exactly as you want it to. Set it up as a systemd service, then at the quick touch of the hotkey Ctrl+Super+R you get a video dumped into your Videos folder like this:

Game Featured - WHAT THE GOLF?

That was taken with no adjustments to the configuration, everything at the defaults and it really does seem to do the job exactly as you want it to.

Great stuff. Check it out on GitHub .