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 for the audience, to give people — especially those curious onlookers from outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed. The featured games are both local and global, and both indie and, on occasion, a bit-bigger-budget — what binds them together is simply that they’re all amazing.

In keeping with the tongue-in-tobacco-packed-cheek tone, we call these run-downs A Fistful of Indies, which are 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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As they certainly aren’t busy enough handling not one but now two Glorkian Warrior games with comic artist James Kochalka, indie studio PixelJam have just announced that they’re on the verge of releasing three new games at once in mid-December — a self-bundled release that will also include downloadable versions of previously web-only titles.

At top is the first of the new games, Potatoman Seeks the Troof, which the studio will only say is a “short and intense platformer”, with the other, Bitku, pictured below (and quietly teased for weeks on the PixelJam tumblr): a web-app that “lets you create simple comics / stories expressions, based on a theme, with a limited amount of random assets” with a multiplayer add-on expected to come in the new year.

The bundle will also include a new 8-track LP from PixelJam co-founder Miles Tilmann, with a new visualizer for each track (and the ability to use any of those for your own music) — a very exciting prospect if you’ve been exposed to his musical past, as his 2003 “Over & Through” EP (still my favorite of his releases — try especially track 6!) below should attest to.

Finally, PixelJam says they’ll also be tossing in a downloadable version of their holiday-festive pinball game Snowball & the somewhat Canabalt/Hook Champ-esque mini-game Marathon of Doom, a challenge-mode version of their fan-favorite Dino Run series.

Keep your eye on the PixelJam tumblr or Facebook page to see more as the date draws near.