Taking the concept of "roguelike" maybe a little too far, Brut@l plays like an action-filled dungeon crawler which borrows its aesthetics from the original 1980 release. It exchanges the original's ASCII-filled dungeons for a contemporary playing field, but they are still all around you, like reminders of an era long past. Your character, your enemies, weapons, and items are all made out of ASCII characters. This is more than an aesthetic choice; it also has a direct effect on the gameplay. Crafting a weapon requires you to collect the correct letters first. Then you can watch as all those Ls and Ts form the spikes on a club, for example. It's pretty neat and makes you wonder why nobody thought of this before.

Heroic crocodiles and loveable/hostile oddballs await in thecatamites' new game, Magic Wand. As Radiget, a crocodile in a robe and floppy hat, it's up to you to make small talk with a bunch of people you don't know who are still perfectly willing to talk about their lives to a complete stranger. Then, that information may or may not form a story, or you may just end up getting roughed up by creatures who don't appreciate you prodding in their lives.

Screenshot Saturday comes back with an longer collection of games in development after last week's break, from colorful puzzle platforming to intense sci-f action.

A friendship like that between the hero of The Adventure Pals (formerly Super Adventure Pals 2) cannot be crushed by the humdrum problems of our dull, colorless world. The bright home of Sparkles the Giraffe, a place where a giraffe can fly by spinning his tongue and a boy can fight a huge monster made of vegetables, is far too vibrant to fade away, something that has brought its developers from the precipice of giving up and back into the swing of creating this delightful-looking adventure.

The environment is your greatest tool in Torreng Labs' Fabric, a first-person puzzler releasing next week. With two clicks, the level can be compressed and expanded, distorting the layout of the world to your advantage. Through this space-bending mechanic, Fabric drops you into a diverse array of tricky spatial challenges, where the world around you is meant to be broken.

The world of Why It Happened To Me? looks like a fun, lighthearted place. Yes, your head might not be screwed on too tight while you're there, but that just makes it easier for you to detach it and put on a pal's noggin. Plus, with a friend's head on, it's much easier to understand their problems and figure out how to solve them in this surreal point & clicker.

Snow Horse has slipped onto Steam (and iOS a few days ago), finally giving horse snowboarding enthusiasts and hat aficionados the extreme sports game they have been waiting for.

Featuring a lovely, semi-realistic, hand-painted European comic-book look and offering a story-driven campaign on the medieval shores of the North Sea coast, The Great Whale Road is one impressive strategy/RPG hybrid. You select a culture - only the Danes are currently available, as the game just entered Early Access - and then set off into the stormy seas. Each year is split in two. Summer is the sailing season, allowing you to seek adventures along the whale road. Winter, on the other hand, is spent at home, managing your settlement and planning for the year ahead.

David Wehle, creator of Home Is Where One Starts..., is currently working on a third-person exploration game called The First Tree. Centered around two parallel stories of a fox trying to find her missing cubs and a young couple dealing with a tragedy in their family, the game should appeal to fans of Journey, Gone Home, or Firewatch. Taking control of the fox, players will discover artifacts from the young couple's life on her journey to the mystical First Tree. There isn't any more information currently available, but Wehle recently released a short trailer and it looks absolutely wonderful.

Submissions are now officially open for the 2017 Independent Games Festival, the signature competition for indie games, to be held for its 19th year during GDC 2017 in San Francisco next March. This directly follows a record-breaking year which saw over 750 entries for the 2016 event, including top prizewinners like Her Story, Mini Metro and Undertale.

The deadline for all submissions to the IGF this year will be October 24th, with finalists announced in early January 2017. Finalists' games will once again be playable at the packed IGF Pavilion on the Game Developers Conference 2017 Expo Floor, and will compete for over $50,000 in prizes.

As per normal, these awards include the Excellence in Visual Art, Audio, Design and Narrative Awards, which will have six finalists each, with the winner getting $3,000 in each category. There will also be six finalists for the $30,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize.