Managed to get this double update out in time! It's more like 1½ update though since the two games in question are a release and a rerelease. A make and a remake? It's The Abbey of Crime and The Abbey of Crime Extensum. The original comes from the summit of the golden age of Spanish software, which was a period between 1983 and 1992 that saw a proliferation of 8-bit games from the land in question. While the Spanish certainly didn't miss it, it never actually saw release anywhere else until later. "Extensum" is by no major linguistic stretch of the imagination 'extended', which describes it well, and it's clearly the very way in which the game is best to experience today.

Salutations once again! There's nothing stopping the unearthing of more and more undeserved obscurity, the amount of which may only have ever been on the rise. Today's entry, The Land of Glass made a valiant effort at budding a new hybrid genre combining real-time action with deck-building. You have to appreciate what Dual Wield did that so many others did not. It's even found quite an original art style, drawing from mosaics and stained glass. Is there room in YOUR heart for this cuddly little puppy? Call 1-800-UNDERDOGS to find a friend for life.

The jam organized by www.DungeonCrawlers.org, which we observed with a great curiosity, has just ended. There were 78 qualified entries. Which means that many games were finished and were made according to the rules of the jam, which were quite specific since the goal of the jam was to recreate the old classic style of dungeon crawlers which almost extinct by now.

Here are the full results: Jam results

Top entries (according by voting by the jam participants):
1. Hedgerow
2. The Dark Forest in Heaven
3. Synthyfriends Dungeon
4. Beat of the Bard
5. Funk Dungeon

Also a special, HotU honorary mention goes to:
Callan: Escape From Dungeon

The first place winner is getting $100 USD worth of games from on itch.io or gog.com (sponsored by DungeonCrawlers.org). All jam participants are getting a copy of Legends of Amberland and Stellar Monarch (sponsored by Silver Lemur Games).

Happy two thirds through the second quarter of 2021! I've come to cognize calendar quarters don't start in the months these updates have been posted on... ON OTHER SITES. Wishing someone a happy quarter sounds very clumsy anyway but I'm always late to include even the Chinese New Year in my greetings so it's the closest I can get. :/ I don't believe we've welcomed a pure puzzler into the party in a time or two, so won't you receive the investigative ichthyes of The Fish Fillets II warmly! Or not, they're mostly cold-blooded after all.

Hope you're not greatly suffering from vicious ailments, dear reader! Yours truly has finally exhausted every safe harbor and cashed in all his seedy favors, much like Disney Han Solo, cause I'm stricken by some kinda flu-typ-a-thing. It's not the dread Chinese plague, however, so no excuses about posting this update today. I've got for you another very underdog underdog: The Adventures of Clive McMulligan on Planet Zeta Four. Clive is a gravity-defying stuntman in a space suit that protects him against hardly anything but the maleficent atmosphere. Thankfully lives (and subsequently deaths) are unlimited. It's not the first game of its kind, but still a very solid effort that could use a little more love. Would you adopt this puppy this Christmas?

Another quarter has whooshed past like that time when you were still pretty, Ma'm. Much to no-one's surprise, another game is getting introduced to the collection today. It's a shooty one with vertiginous verticality and va-voominous variability. This kind of random number generated fare often makes for fluctuating quality of gameplay, that or tends to grow old pretty quickly, but my 70 hours don't lie: 1001st Hyper Tower is a keeper!

It's known to be very difficult to sell games of a more obscure strain. People tend to look for games of specific kinds they know they like, according to this GDC talk at least. Anything that falls in-between, regardless of its inherent quality, may struggle to win buyers over. I believe this is something of the story of today's inductee as well. Please give a warm welcome to Memody: Sindrel Song!

Yet another game finds its way onto pastures greener with Endless Forms Most Beautiful, something that's novel in a very quaint kind of way. If you don't generally have interest or time to try out the games being quarterly-induced, this one won't take too much on your part to test out... until you're hopelessly trapped in its compelling gameplay. We also have our first guest author in a while who agreed to lend us his words lest we tread trodden grounds. Until next season!

There's nothing left of the unruly and frequently grammar-defying Top Dog entries since the final few letters (which I shouldn't have to tell you, are 'X', 'Y', and le 'Z') are also done and certainly dusted so those you with allergies can come hang out, too. You know, it seems the wint'ry holiday is trotted out creeping ever earlier with each passing year isn't it? If by this token, this update is also a Christmas one, which of the Ghosts of Christmas is today's entree, Jetpack 2 then? Past, Present, or a taste of things to come? Judge for yeselves, me hearties! Judge for yeselves...

No stopping the Top Dog train: the trio of 'U', 'V' and 'W' has been thoroughly purified of bad links and bad English. The game no-one talked about this month was Evil Islands, a tactical RPG that still seems to stand apart.

More and more top dogs get spanked into submission: this time everything under 'T'. This is not the letter this quarter's new entry will be filed in, articles being relegated. Don your tricorn hats and buckled shoes, and bow in the grand Count Lucanor!

STICK THIS GAME AT THE TOP OF THE WISHLIST! That's an order. Until next time!

In case you missed it, there's now a HotU Discord chat. Join it for real-time exchanging of underdog ideas and such.

Is there anyone reading this who would like to join the diminutive team as an editor? If you're someone who plays interesting, non-mainstream games anyway, you might as well be sharing your experiences. Find the appropriate thread in the forum.

Until next time!

YouTube button & FaceBook page
- added two YouTube buttons to game page, the first search YouTube for a review of that game and the second for a longplay
- created FaceBook page (link on the right bottom)

Upcoming Changes!
I was observing for a long time how the community was still hanging around, regardless of my laziness and negligence. And finally I gave up, you do want HotU to exist and you do want it to grow, so let it be your stubborn way :)
Since you really love it that much, let's bring HotU to its former glory (or at least make it fully functional again).

Of course there are several obstacles, but I think I got all or most of them covered. At the moment there is a discussion going on at the forum about the details.

But the overall plan is like that:
- an overhaul of the site (technical & functional wise - the look & feel will change over my dead body)
- more or less regular updates (like quarterly?)
- fundraising to assure long term survival and growth
- building a strong team of editors and other helpers (so I'm not the bottleneck)
- embrace the XXI century (to a reasonable extend, in the end we are all old geezers or geezeress (or whatever female geezer is called) who live in nostalgia world :))

For now I made a small overhaul which is:
- created Twitter account
- fixed/removed some outdated information

I will post more details once we got them forged out.