The Watchful Indie Watch #2.10

Now that was another properly and quite unexpectedly hectic week with dozens of intriguing releases, more than enough interesting Kickstarters and all sorts of indie stuff happening all over the place. Early autumn is apparently ideal for doing things when you are indie.

The texty games of the 2015 IF Comp have been made available to download, play and --if you are so inclined-- judged. They all seem incredibly delicious, though I have only managed to play through one so far: the excellent TOMBs of Reschette.

On the more commercial front on interactive fiction, you'll be happy to know that the excellent, steampunk, globetrotting, sci-fi adventure 80 Days has been expanded and ported over to Windows, Mac and Linux.

The equally excellent Jotun has been released on Steam and is one of the most beautiful indie games of late, what with its majestic hand-drawn graphics, awe-inspiring bosses, breath-taking vistas and its overall stunning version of the mystical Norse Purgatory. It's an action-combat-exploration thing.

It might lack the detailed setting of Jotun, but Dino Run DX is filled with dinosaurs and has also finally appeared on Steam. It's better than ever too and, provided its unique crowdfunding campaign keeps providing, it'll evolve more.

Cataegis - The White Wind: Ziggurat Chapter has also launched, but not only on Steam. You can find it on itch.io too. It's a very old-fashioned combat-platformer with EGA-like graphics.

ORBIT by 4-bit Games is a brand new twin-stick shooter. Looks very interesting, I haven't played it yet, but I will do so soon. You had to be told though.

Another thing I haven't played yet and will try to find the time to do so is iOS and Android interactive fiction offering PataNoir. It's a parser driven, illustrated noir mystery after all, and I do tend to love those.

Oh, and Assault Android Cactus is another twin-stick shooter. Haven't played this one either, though the graphics do look nice. As mentioned, this was a ridiculously busy week.

Moving on to crowdfunding news, excellent afro-noir adventure game The Journey Down --following two brilliant installments-- has moved to Kickstarter in order to make sure the third and final chapter of the series will not only happen, but will be the best one possible too.

Something else I wish I had more thoroughly looked into is the incredibly intriguing Top Secret Kickstarter. It's a game about hacking, surveillance, NSA and the Snowden leaks.

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, of course, actual games and things. Thanks!