A Short Summer Break and a short game on smoking

Having completely missed last summer and having endured what has without doubt been the worse six months ever, the time has come for my humble tired self to go on vacation; take a couple (or maybe three) weeks off. Have a bit of fun. Attempt to relax. Catch my breath.

This, of course, also means I'll be able to return and be properly refreshed in order to do all sorts of creative/indie things... You know, finish the Earthling Priorities freeware point-and-clicker (everybody else's work is mostly done), properly edit Workers In Progress, revamp this very blog, write more on indie and other sorts of games over at IndieGames.com, Warp Door, Retro Treasures and some other --to be announced and rather exciting-- places.

Oh, and did I mention I'm working on a dream project of mine with some absolutely brilliant people? Well, I am, but can't say much more besides admitting it's a RPG of sorts.

And now, dear reader, I bid you goodbye! I expect to be back before you know it (i.e. 14 days or so) and here's a lovely little something to keep you occupied: The Smoking Simulator. It's silly and good looking and quite a bit of fun and, well, it also is a freeware offering.

So, uhm, see you!

The Watchful Indie Watch #4.7

And with the third installment to the Watchful Indie Watch series it's time for a short break. After two years I too need a few weeks in order to avoid random re-calibrations of that old gnomic brain; the Watch will thus probably return in August (or late July)!

Richard Cobbett has thoroughly cobbetized Fallen London and given us Fallen Swindon. Anything else said about it is a spoiler and thus, wisely, avoided.

Excellent bear-filled beat-'em-up Fist of Awesome has just made it on Steam. And is on sale. And a bear-'em-up. And as pixely as ever.

Dwarves, astronauts, dwarf-astronauts in Stone Space and some lovely art make for a rather promising Kickstarter. We Are The Dwarves!

Fire with Fire won't be launched for another 10 days or so, but it does have a shiny new trailer. Oh, and it's gonna be a tower defense / tower attack thing with some creepy creeps.

The second episode of stunning point-and-click adventure The Journey Down, the aptly named The Journey Down: Chapter Two has entered beta and will soon get its release date.

Eternal Desert Sunshine is currently asking for your moneys over at IndieGoGo. It wants to become a wonderful, surreal arcade adventure set in ancient Egypt.

Voyage to Farland, on the other hand, already is. It's a hardcore rogue-like that plays traditionally but looks like something even a child would appreciate.

Back to things that haven't been released yet: Missing Translation -- a most definitely beautiful affair that manages to draw its inspiration from both FEZ and traditional adventure games.

Aching to download something? Good! Here's the latest version of ascii-esque FPS Illuminascii for Windows, Mac and Linux; it definitely feels unique.

BITBITJam and the Classic Hardware Freebie Indies

Jams are a lovely thing. A varied thing also and even the one jam I never expected to see happen, well, happened. It's the BITBITJam and it tasked developers with creating games for actual, vintage machines. Not retro-inspired games, that is, but games that would run on your very real, rather old, most probably dusty ZX Spectrums and Sega MegaDrives.

And lo, 10 brand new freeware games for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Sega MegaDrive, Nintendo Game Boy and MSX have been released! Download them all here.

The Speccy is a bit over-represented, which is always a good thing, and has gotten itself five offerings, followed by the MegaDrive with two, while the other platforms got one (lovable) game each. As for me, I only tried a few of said offerings, really loved Conspiralove and Leovigildo's Murcian Conspiracy and am aiming to play through the rest of said entries as soon as possible.

Mind you, in order to play everything, you will probably need several of these handy emulator thingies: WinApe (Amstrad CPC), ZX Spin (ZX Spectrum), BGB (GameBoy), blueMSX (MSX) and Kega Fusion (MegaDrive).

Reminder: I could really use your support via Patreon in order to survive long enough to make more indie gaming (and gaming in general) words and things. Thanks!