So you still want to be a hero?  That's a good thing, because the world will soon need one in ANU Studio's We Need a Hero.

When a mad biology professor discovers a toxic substance, his formula accidentally drains into the sewers, turning all the species living underground into monsters. Now the world needs a hero, but all it gets is a simple plumber named Jacky, who is "not a clever man and sometimes he does stupid things." Hardly the heroic type, it's nevertheless up to Jacky to defeat the rampaging creatures and save the day.

As seen in the game's first screenshots, We Need a Hero is a hand-drawn, 2D point-and-click adventure. The game's indie developers have designed almost 60 backgrounds to explore, each with a distinct atmosphere, and are promising a large number of puzzles to solve, including some that will be very challenging. As befits a monster game, they are also considering some action sequences and even "boss fights", though this hasn't yet been confirmed for sure.

Production on We Need a Hero has been going on behind the scenes for quite a while now, and though there is currenly no firm release date, the developers are aiming to complete the game by May for PC and iOS and Android tablets.

When designing a unique indie adventure, why not shoot for the moon, right? That's a notion that six students from ENJMIN University in France have take quite literally as they've recently announced their debut project, Lune.

Rather than sending players to the moon, Lune gives players the ability to influence the moon itself. Trapped on an island in the middle of the ocean, a lone protagonist must explore an ancient tower that's now abandoned except for its protective runic Guardians. In between guiding the protagonist directly, you'll assume control of the moon in order to change gravity, manipulate tides, and control the way light is reflected from the sun. As seen in the game's stylish announcement trailer, you can "use your capacity to manipulate water to flood rooms and free stairways. You can also trigger Moonset and walk in the shadows to avoid the unwavering stone Guardians."

According to Sergey Mojov, one of the game's six student designers, Lune defies traditional genre labels. It's not a classic-styled adventure, as there are stealth elements that require you to hide at times, but solving environmental puzzles through lunar influence is an essential component of the game. Regardless of genre distinctions, the developers are eager to make the solitary experience "as much about contemplative exploration as it is about mechanics." Each scenario promises to have multiple outcomes, so players curious to see how they've influenced the world can backtrack to inspect new paths along the way.

Team Lune is currently working on a playable browser-based prototype that will be released for free this June on Windows, Mac, and Linux, in time for Hits Playtime, a French student game competition organized by LeMonde.fr. The number of Facebook likes the game gets in the meantime will improve its chances of winning the competition. A more fully-featured version of Lune is tentatively slated for October, though there is no firm release target yet for the final commercial version of the game.

If the thought of an enhanced edition of J.U.L.I.A. is already music to your ears, you ain't heard nothin' yet, because CBE Software's current fundraising campaign aims to finish on a high note with a live online musical concert from Jan Kavan.

Along with being an innovative game designer, Kavan is also an accomplished composer and cellist, and his next live performance will be an "IndieLude" thank you concert for fans who successfully funded his project (although those who haven't are free to watch as well). Kavan will be accompanied on piano by his wife Barbora Kavanová, playing pieces from such composers as Ástor Piazolla and Gabriel Fauré as well as some of Jan's own compositions. The concert will be recorded live and broadcast on YouTube on April 10, 6:00 pm GMT (time zone converter).

Following the recital, Jan and J.U.L.I.A.'s artist Lukáš Medek will answer questions as they continue the final push towards their next "fullscreen exploration" stretch goal that will enable them to recreate all the original mini-images as full screen high quality renders, and switch to a context-specific command interface based upon individual regions. The latest old-new screen comparison of an abandoned research station highlights the differences between versions.

There is still a week left in the Indiegogo campaign for J.U.L.I.A. Enhanced Edition. To learn more about the project, and about the publishing trials faced by CBE with the original version of the game, check out our recent interview with Jan.

The spectre of World War III no longer hovers over us tangibly, but it will in Oberon, an alternate reality political thriller due to arrive sometime in 2014.

The debut adventure from two-man indie team BlackBird Games is set in a world on the eve of war, as the "diplomatic correspondence between the Federal Colonial Republic of Britannia and the Germanic Empire reaches the boiling point". When a nuclear weapons expert is murdered in Berlin, it's up to the titular protagonist to defuse the latest crisis. The "low ranking Slavic special agent stationed in Berlin" must investigate the mysterious circumstances of the scientist's death, a "quest which will lead Oberon to the dark underworld of global politics and beyond…"

As teased in the game's attractive first screenshots, Oberon will follow two separate storylines, one in the game's real-world German capital and the other in the "nightmarish realm of the main character’s dreams". The third-person, point-and-click adventure promises plenty of people to talk to, puzzles to solve, and inventory to collect and combine along the way.

There is no firm release date yet for Oberon, but the developers are currently targeting completion and downloadable launch for PC sometime in the first half of next year.

If you heard that a black-and-white claymation musical starring a gender-ambiguous film noir detective released on April 1st, you'd surely think it was an April Fool's joke. But nothing could be more natural for quirky indie developer Deirdra Kiai, whose latest adventure Dominique Pamplemousse in "It's All Over Once the Fat Lady Sings!" is available now for PC, Mac, and iPad.

The titular star of Dominique Pamplemousse is either a male or a female -- no one seems to know, and Dominique isn't inclined to say -- but is nevertheless a private detective in desperate need of a new case. It seems his/her rent problem is solved when he/she is hired by the CEO of a major record company to track down a missing pop star. However, soon "Dominique winds up framed for a crime they didn’t commit, bringing to surface their mysterious past and the events that led them to take up shady detective work in the first place."

Dominique Pamplemousse has a conventional Flash-based point-and-click interface, and is entirely unconventional in every other conceivable way. In this Kickstarter-funded adventure that's heavy on story and light on puzzles, all voices are performed by Kiai herself, and many of the dialogue lines are sung.

The game can be purchased now for PC and Mac exclusively at the official website, where a playable demo is also available. The iPad version of the game can be downloaded from the App Store.

Telltale Games has kept a tight lid on its upcoming adventure based on the comic book series FABLES so far, but at long last the first details about the newly-renamed The Wolf Among Us have been revealed. The better to entice us!

Bill Winningham's long-running DC comic franchise is a modern take on popular fairy tales, "imagining that characters like Snow White, The Big Bad Wolf and Pinocchio from the world's most beloved storybooks are real -- real, and living among us, with all of their powers intact." Dan Connors, Telltale's CEO, claims that "through an evolution of our approach to choice and consequence, we can further explore the complexity of each and every iconic character in a universe rich with untold history from the darkest sides of the storybooks."

The adventure series is set prior to the start of the comics, casting players in the role of the Big Bad Wolf, now known as Bigby Wolf and working as a sheriff. Currently "exiled from the land of fairy tales, Bigby is tasked by the bureaucrat Snow White to keep order within a society of mythical creatures and characters trying to remain undetected in the world of the mundane. From a chain-smoking member of 'The Three Little Pigs,' to a car-stealing Mr. Toad itching for his next wild ride, The Wolf Among Us examines the lives of beings straight from the pages of myth and lore, now trying to survive on the meanest and most run-down streets of New York City."

There is currently no firm release date planned, but The Wolf Among Us is expected to be launched sometime this summer on PC, Mac, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. In the meantime, keep an eye on the official website for more details.

Until now, only PlayStation 3 owners had been able to experience the unique allegorical tale of Papo & Yo, but that won't be the case much longer, as a PC port of the game will be launching on Steam next month. 

A unique mix of platorming and adventure that won our Best Concept Aggie Award last year, Papo & Yo tells the story of a young boy named Quico who explores a South American favela with his best friend Monster, a "mostly-friendly beast with razor-sharp teeth. Monster loves Quico but has a serious problem: an addiction to poisonous frogs, which, when eaten, drive him into a murderous rage from which no one, even Quico, is safe."

As a very personal allegorical tale of Creative Director Vander Caballero’s childhood experience of alcoholism and abuse, Papo & Yo guides players through an increasingly "mystical world, manipulating the environment to open up new paths and move forward on their quest to cure Monster of his addiction and save him from the greatest danger of all: himself."

The PC version of Papo & Yo will be arriving on Steam on April 18th, promising a number of as-yet-unspecified updates and improvements.  In the meantime, be sure to check out our review of the game for complete details.