I received an email yesterday about a small indie game called Barbarian Battle Quest. Nothing grandiose. No press release. No screenshots or epic trailer. Just a developer interested in showing off his game. His awesome, retro-styled, Golden Axe-like, beat ‘em up that shows an enormous amount of potential. Yeah, that’s a lot of adjectives.

Post titles are a natural breeding ground for misguided metaphors, I’ll admit. Simply put: Pyrodactyl Games have recently made available a downloadable demo of their latest project, Will Fight For Food. This is being provided through the Desura marketplace in advance of its upcoming release on Feb 29th. Described as a ‘Role Playing Brawler’, you’ll be cast as an ex-wrestler fallen on hard times on a quest for revenge and, one assumes, some stable accommodation. This is street life, people, only with less Randy Crawford and little more Randy Savage.

Terry Cavanagh always has the best ideas when it comes to micro indie games. VVVVVV was damn near perfect in its simplicity. His newest game, ChatChat, isn’t ripe with puzzles nor is it trying to be anything more than it is right now: a game where you are a cat. Oh and did I mention that it was a pseudo-MMO for your browser? Because it is…

It seems like Ludosity has been cranking away for forever on their newest game Ittle Dew, a delightful looking Zelda-like that will be released piecemeal, episode by episode. The game was originally announced back in February of 2011 and, since then, all we’ve seen are a few trailers. Great looking trailers, mind you, but trailers nonetheless.

I’m a huge fan of Portal. What Valve did with the basic concept was revolutionary, in my opinion, to the puzzle genre. Prior to that most puzzle games refrained from that amount of action. Gateways, is a similar type of game as Portal, but it changes up the equation in a few key areas which help it stand apart.

Firebase Industries, the delightful gents who created Orbitron: Revolution for the Xbox Live Indie Games a few months ago, has officially announced that their Dream.Build.Play finalist game will be heading to the PC. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, considering most XBLIG games eventually head to the much greener pastures of the PC game scene. Sorry, XBLIG, but you’re kind of a dead weight…

You won’t find Mario or Luigi here, but what you will find are two mechanics who are not only brothers but share some of the same habits and tendencies as those “other” more popular brothers most people have heard of. According to the developers we can fully expect the game to be “a pixelated family fun adventure of running, jumping, collecting, racing against the clock.”

It’s pouring with rain outside as I sit here writing this. Thankfully, I’m perfectly cosy at home, tip-tapping away on my keyboard and drinking cup after cup of Earl Grey tea in order to maintain a state of precision consciousness. I’m in this situation, yet have still been thinking: oh, what a lovely thing to take a walk outside. Not, you’ll understand, because I’m in the mood for a quick soaking – not actually outside at all, but inside-outside through the medium of browser gaming and Jonas Kyratzes’ latest project, Arcadia.

This week’s Minecraft Snapshot brings a few updates you’ll probably be interested in, that is, if you’re a Minecraft fan. The biggest update being the trainable Ocelot “pet” as well as some smarter AI pathing for the skeleton baddie. Other updates as well, which we’ll get to after the break.

And another indie game heads to retail! This is good news for everybody who lives in Europe, bad news for those of us stateside because, as with Gemini Rue and Terraia before it, the Binding of Isaac is heading to retail courtesy of Merge Games, a UK-based company. In any case, it’s still quite cool to see more indie games going, although I’m not sure if the Binding of Isaac is necessarily “right” for retail. Seems like it might scare a few people away.