The Watchful Indie Watch #3.10

You weren't expecting this, were you reader? You though that the Watchful Indie Watch was dead and buried, right? There's no shame in admitting this mind you, but I obviously digress. What really matters is that a lot (an exciting lot, actually) has been happening these past few weeks and here are the more interesting things from the indie world:

First and most importantly, we have the lovecraftian Case of Charles Dexter Ward Kickstarter campaign. It will probably become one of the best horror adventure games ever and the first game to proudly carry Lovecraft's name in its title. Based on HPL's only novel, the Case of Charles Dexter Ward will also benefit from the design talents of Agustin Cordes (of Scratches and Asylum fame) and the knowledge of scholar S.T. Joshi.

16-bit RPG Pier Solar has made the transition from the Sega MegaDrive to modern Windows, Mac and Linux PCs and all are finally happy. It's a rather epic, pixelated, top-down affair, you see, and one that will last you for a few dozen hours of fantasy fun. Oh, and it's also available for PS3, PS4 and the OUYA.

Wonderfully written and swashbucklingly epic interactive fiction Down Among the Dead Men has made it to Apple's App Store and is now available for all iDevices. It's an excellent read filled with more than enough intriguing choices to help you feel that piratey vibe and even comes complete with crisp illustrations.

This one has been out for quite some time now, but being a kindly freeware exploration game I can't recommend it enough and must thus remind you of Dust City by Kitty Horrorshow. It's a surreal 3D game with tons of stuff to explore and some awesome meta-content. Also, a mystery.

GameLoading: Rise of the Indies is currently up on Kickstarter and aims to become a feature-length documentary exploring part of the indie gaming community. All sorts of lovely people will be appearing, including Tale of Tales, Rami Ismail, Christine Love, Catt Small and, for some reason, John Romero.

Oh, and I almost forgot; there are more big news for adventure gamers, especially those craving a serious sci-fi story, as J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars has been released both as a DRM-free download and on Steam. It's bloody amazing, it is, and a huge improvement over the original J.U.L.I.A. I reviewed ages ago here.