Humble Bundle has launched a DRM-Freedom sale where you can get up to 96 per cent off a huge list of well-known and cult indie hits.

The list of available games is vast and overwhelming, so do go have a browse through the entire DRM-Freedom sale page to see if there's anything that catches your eye. To help narrow it down a bit, though, I've gone through and picked out a few particular highlights that you might be interested in.

Let's go for something a little arcane and peculiar to start us off. How tempted are you by Cultist Simulator for 10.04? Even with its minimalist presentation, the enigmatic card game has scratched the back of my brain through repeated descents into the occult as more secrets are unlocked.

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Cultist Simulator developer Weather Factory has unveiled Book of Hours, its "elegant, melancholy" RPG follow-up set in an occult library - alongside the two remaining pieces of its planned Cultist Simulator DLC, releasing today.

Book of Hours is notable for the fact that it started life as a bit of a throwaway joke on Twitter before taking on a life of its own. Back in January, Weather Factory's Alexis Kennedy posted an idea for an "extremely relaxed Cultist Simulator expandalone" in which players would adopt the role of occult librarian, examining, cataloguing, and arranging books for its visitors. "Very low challenge," wrote Kennedy, "lots of careful board organisation".

That early germ of an idea is now much more substantial, with Weather Factory's official Book of Hours announcement properly setting the scene: "Shutter the windows against the sea. Bank the fire against the cold. Listen to the rain rattle on the roof, while you slide books one by one into their ancient nests. For five centuries, the library of Hush House was a fortress of knowledge... until the fire. The collection is ruined, and the Librarian is dead. Your unique talents make you fit to rebuild the collection."

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Cultist Simulator's first expansion, The Dancer, arrives on Tuesday 16th October 2018 and it'll only set you back 2.50/€2.39/$2.99.

Those who own the Dancer DLC will be transported into the wonderful world of occult cabaret. Players will be able to pursue a new Legacy and rise to fame as a dancer in the Ecdysis Club or in some even snazzier parlours.

Two new Ascensions called "Heart" and "Moth" will also be introduced, alongside animal spirit-selves. Certain dances can't be performed in human shape (aside from the worm, obviously).

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All games are occult. We as players are not privy to the inner workings that define the rules by which we play. Unlike in a tabletop RPG, we're not even aware of the dungeon master's screen that hides the game's secrets and mechanics from us. Still, few games turn the inherent occultism of the medium into their central theme by making us acutely aware of the presence of the invisible screen, compelling us to piece together a mosaic of uncertain knowledge. And only an elect handful does so while invoking age-old traditions of magic and esoteric philosophy.

The most well-known of these is Bloodborne, a game which is notoriously obtuse and unwilling to reveal its hidden depths to the player. While deadly creatures may seem like the most obvious danger, it's ignorance that will be the biggest hurdle to the inexperienced. To glean some of the knowledge necessary for progress, intrepid hunters will either have to study the game's world closely or rely on the information collected by more experienced hunters.

The in-world representation of this striving towards understanding is the resource called "insight," inhuman knowledge gained by laying eyes on or defeating certain enemies as well as consuming items like "Madman's Knowledge" or "Great One's Wisdom". The item description of the latter tells us: "At Byrgenwerth Master Willem had an epiphany: 'We are thinking on the basest of planes. What we need, are more eyes.'"

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Cultist Simulator is about forbidden knowledge, forgotten histories and ill-advised pacts with entities who aren't so much gods as unsettling cosmic frequencies, felt rather than understood, but it would be nothing without its monotony. Starting the game, you are confronted not with a squiggle of eldritch geometry but a wooden table covered by a worn leather mat, its scratches picked out by a strange cobalt light. An hourglass timer begins to drain away, sucking Fund cards out of your hand with every revolution; you counter by plugging Reason, Passion or Health cards into a Work timer to generate more. This mundane rhythm keeps up throughout the ensuing 20 or 30 hours, as cards and timers of all kinds slowly cover the tabletop, each accompanied by a gravid yet delicate prose snippet about the game's curious, alternate-1920s England. It's the bassline for an experience that is as much an investigation of mind-killing drudgery as it is a homage to the wayward imagination - indeed, an experience that derives much of its mystery and threat from their inseparability.

Many of the challenges and setbacks you'll face during your career as a cultist will be crushingly ordinary: injuries in the workplace, humiliating demotions, a fatigue mechanic which renders certain cards briefly unusable, periods of bleakness or dissociation that may doom your character if you let them fester for too long. You'll deal with bullying superiors as an underpaid bank clerk, paint rapturous vistas in your spare hours that nobody buys, push paper as a police inspector, haul cargo as a labourer.

Sometimes you'll dream of endless roads, locked doors or being trapped under wormy floorboards. Often, you'll dream of nothing whatsoever. And eventually, if you're tenacious enough, you'll break through to a comfortable plateau, with a sustainable income, robust health and a little time for hobbies such as walking and reading. One of the endgame options lets you commit fully to this existence, to a blameless everyday world of graft, rest and idle recreation, a world without either light or shadow. Of all Cultist Simulator's deadly temptations, this could be the most seductive. It is, perhaps, the closest thing the game offers to happiness.

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Cultist Simulator, the card-based narrative horror game from the brains behind Sunless Sea, will launch on Thursday, 31st May.

Specifically, it will arrive at 7pm UK time, or 12pm Pacific time for our friends on further shores.

Cultist Simulator is the first game to come from Weather Factory, the two-person studio formed by Failbetter Games founder Alexis Kennedy and ex-Failbetter producer Lottie Bevan.

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