Already renowned amongst certain circles of the indie community, TheCatamites became even more an instant cult favorite developer with the release of last year’s anarcho-adventure Murder Dog IV: Trial of the Murder Dog, a short, brutal and deceptively brilliant and funny point & click game that went deep into the remorseless mind of a dog given over to his own raging and vengeful id (don’t miss the game’s trailer).

The Pleasuredromes of Kubla Khan, just released as a free PC download, continues right where Murder Dog left off: a brief but hilarious interactive history lesson of the Mongol emperor’s Xanadu.

Like a modern-day punk Encarta (and as with Murder Dog), its best feature is its frantic and entirely unreliable Muppet-esque narrator, providing meta-commentary on all your actions (toss yourself off the edge of the world to smash further through the fourth wall), as you find yourself headed straight into the hedonistic heart of the pleasuredrome.

The fact that the game has instantly crashed out at the peak of the insanity in every one of my playthroughs is, I hope, awesomely intentional, and puts the game high on my list of 2012’s greatest. [The Pleasuredromes of Kubla Khan, via GameJolt]

Still desperately missed on Twitter, TheCatamites has also just launched his new website Harmony Zone, where you can find all of his previous releases (see also especially: Space Funeral), as well as precious resources for would-be devs, and one of the best definitions of ‘game’ in recent memory. [via @doougle]

Every month, as part of the regular monthly meetings of the Austin, TX independent game community JUEGOS RANCHEROS, we do a very casual & chatty rundown of the ten or so games from the previous month — both local and global, and both indie and occasionally a bit-bigger-budget — for the audience, to give people — especially those curious onlookers from outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed.

In keeping with the tongue-in-tobacco-packed-cheek tone, we call these run-downs A Fistful of Indies, which are be presented here on Venus Patrol for your reference, each fully-annotated, -linked, and off-the-cuff blurbed, in addition to their home on the JUEGOS RANCHEROS site.

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