The Steamlords at Valve have rummaged in their reams of data and emerged with a new blog post talking about what the growth of Steam (and the number of games on Steam) has meant for developers. Coming up with a questionable definition of "success", they note that Steam in 2019 saw three times as many games earning $10,000 in their first fortnight compared to Steam in 2013. They went on to estimate that if they had kept Steam's catalogue curated and tightly controlled, a whole lot of games they consider successes wouldn't have even been released on Steam. So, that's good? Also, obvious?
]]>After saying bye bye to the voter-led Steam Greenlight last week, Valve have today launched Steam Direct. It’s their new way for developers to submit games to the store by filling in some forms and throwing $100 onto Valve’s gold hoard as an publishing fee. There’s a lot more info about all this in a blog post but let’s go over the basics.
]]>Steam Greenlight, the process by which developers can get their game on Steam’s digi-store by collecting enough votes, has been shut down and all voting is now suspended. This is to pave the way for Valve’s new method of adding games to their store – Steam Direct – which is coming on June 13. It’s all part of a plan that has been in the works for a while, and although it mostly affects developers looking to sell their various murder simulators this will also likely change both the quantity and variety of games you’ll be wading through.
]]>$100 (£80-ish) is how much it'll cost to publish a game on Steam after Greenlight shuts down, Valve have confirmed. They're ditching the Greenlight system of having would-be players vote on which games reach the Steam store, and replacing it with a system that'll let developers sign up and, after being verified, submit games directly to Steam for a fee. What we'll probably see is many more games hitting Steam, and quicker. Valve had previously tossed around $100 and $5,000 as mooted figures.
]]>Valve have announced plans to hugely widen the number of games they allow onto Steam by approving developers directly. The popularity contest of Steam Greenlight will end as Valve replace it with the new 'Steam Direct' scheme. This will let devs register with Valve and, after verification, publish games to Steam as they please. The changes are due to kick off this spring. It's not an open-door policy like Itch or Game Jolt, mind, as Valve do say they will charge a recoupable fee per game submitted "to decrease the noise in the submission pipeline". But the end result should be more games on Steam.
]]>This news just vomited out of the RPS ticker-tape machine marked “side scrolling ultra hard platformer news only!” Snowflake’s Chance [official site] is a hand-drawn platformer about getting a bunny out of hell. You have 99 lives to escape this scratchily-drawn Stygian abyss as Snowflake the rabbit, and every time you die your evil counterpart becomes stronger. "You are weak and ineffectual!” screams the game’s description. “Don’t slip!” There’s more to see in this trailer. Warning: contains lots of rabbit death.
]]>I am getting the strongest sense of deja vu with Carl Burton's gorgeous Greenlight submission, ISLANDS. Like, to the point where I was so sure we already had an article talking about how gorgeous the screenshots were and was about to skip writing this because of already writing it.
Apparently I'm broken and we haven't posted about it at all. So, here! Have a look at ISLANDS!
]]>P.A.M.E.L.A. [official site], the upcoming sci-fi survival horror FPS from Canadian studio NVYVE, has been Greenlit after reaching the number one spot just two days after launching on Steam Greenlight. When we last visited P.A.M.E.L.A. earlier this year, information was thin on the ground. A whole lot more has been dropped since, including a trailer, and it looks equally as pretty as it does terrifying. Take a peek:
]]>Here's a cute 3D explorer game about the weather that's just popped up on Steam Greenlight. It's called Lovely Weather We're Having [official site] and it looks gentle and colourful and weathery which is rather appealing as I've had a nice morning of typing and listening to the rain fall outside.
"You play as a young girl who's locked out of her house, and there's also a cute dog and a dozen NPC friends with distinct personalities," says developer Julian Glander. The neat part for me is that the environment she is exploring changes to reflect local weather data.
]]>A childhood spent playing IK+ and an adulthood spent playing Nidhogg and games like it means that the overlapping circles in the Judo venn diagram is labelled "Graham". That's Judo not as in the modern martial art, but as the four-player indie fighting game on Steam Greenlight.
]]>Yesterday, Hatred was removed from Steam Greenlight. Despite having more than 13,000 votes and being the seventh ranked game of 2,000+, the isometric killing spree simulator had its page removed and Valve told the developers, "based on what we see on Greenlight we would not publish Hatred on Steam. As such we’ll be taking it down."
Now it's back and developers Destructive Creations have posted what appears to be an apologetic email from Gabe Newell regarding the decision. That's below.
]]>Reflex aims to bring back the competitive, multiplayer Quake 3-styled first-person shooter, but its Kickstarter project was cancelled early when it became clear it wasn't going to meet its goal. Its developers said that instead they were going to focus their efforts on polishing up the very small, existing build of the game so that they could release it into Early Access, to hopefully convince people of the merits of the game by simply letting them play it. Less than a month later, that's now happened: Reflex's alpha is available now through Steam.
]]>When a writer says that a game is "X + Y", that's them taking a lazy shortcut towards capturing your interest. But also, Sky Battles is Crimson Skies + Shadow of the Colossus, and that does capture your interest. There's too few arcade flight combat games in the world, and there's certainly not enough which feature titanic beasts amid the dogfighters. The game's just been Greenlit, so have a gander at the trailer below.
]]>It used to be standard procedure to celebrate the milestones of development for games you were looking forward to: announcement, going gold, getting released. Now I find myself celebrating the indefinite delay of those milestones. KeeperRL is an "open-source dungeon simulator inspired by Dungeon Keeper and Dwarf Fortress" which has been in-development for some time and was due to be finished before the end of the year.
But after the game improved this past year and was Greenlit last month, its developer has announced instead that he's going to continue working on it for at least another year - and probably much longer.
]]>Battle Brothers is what we call Adam and John when they get into the crawl space together and start causing a ruckus. But it's also the name of a turn-based strategy game which takes its cues from Jagged Alliance and XCOM. You lead a squad of mercenaries around a procedurally generated worldmap, get in fights for money, and level up your squad. It's still in development, but there's a new trailer and a demo linked below which give some idea of its potential boardgame-y charms.
]]>As we sit in the RPS chatroom, picking through each day's new selection of games in which you play a coma patient, something simple, explosive, videogamey can feel like a breath of fresh air. Cavern Kings is a forced-descent infinite action platformer inspired by Super Crate Box and Risk of Rain, in which there are spinning blades to dodge, giant worms to defeat, and a destructible floor to tunnel into deeper and deeper.
There's a trailer below that appropriately sells its simple charms, and a download link for a public beta. It's on Kickstarter too, though already almost halfway towards its minor $2,500 goal.
]]>When I first discovered Stikbold! it was via a GIF of an as yet unreleased trailer. When I then posted about the local multiplayer dodgeball game, I figured that was it: I wouldn't return to post the new trailer when it finally did come out. I was wrong, because here we are. I can't resist its '70s style, its expressively blocky eyebrows, or its co-op campaign which seems to see you lobbing your balls at buses, whales and, it seems, satan.
Trailer below, which it turns out marks its launch on Steam Greenlight.
]]>Monaco didn't do it for me, but it wasn't that concept that put me off. There's nothing I want more than to carry out expert heists with a crew of skilled crooks. I have high hopes, then, for the The Masterplan, which matches that idea with plenty of '70s crime movie style. It's on Greenlight now and there's a new trailer below, introducing its team of characters.
]]>"Hmm? What's that?" Valve spins around its chair, suddenly noticing the noise. "E3 just happened and we didn't release any trailers for far away, in-development games? Right. Yeah, I guess you're right about that." Valve reaches over and pulls a rusting level by its desk. *k-k-k-thunk* Seventy-five new games have been greenlit, making their way through the community voting process to now have the right to release and sell their games through the service. This batch includes ADOM, Northern Shadow, The Hit, and a ton more obscure games.
]]>With all this talk of Unreal Tournament 2014, it may be that you're recalling fond memories of the myriad mods available for previous UT games. One of those was Deathball, a sports game in which you fired a ball not bullets and attempted to pass and shoot and score your way to team-based victory.
Well, Deathball begat Supreball, a standalone game made by the same team. It has an alpha which is freely downloadable, it's looking for votes on Steam Greenlight, and there's a trailer below.
]]>Valve have greenlit another 75 games for release via Steam. If you're a writer covering game news, this poses a problem. Do you only mention the games readers might already heard of? This current batch includes the Kickstartering Chaos Reborn, the (also Kickstartering) Duelyst from former Diablo 2 and Rogue Legacy devs, the fiddly platforming roguelike Catacomb Kids, plus Hero Trap, Lemma, and a few others we've already covered on these pages.
Do you attempt to mention the other 65 games which people probably don't already know? This latest batch includes a great many games in which static drawings of anime characters hover near menus, for example.
Or do you attempt to fit the game names into the lyrics of an Animaniacs song?
]]>The trailer for Mind: Path To Thalamus is a dream-like series of beautiful landscapes, with a backing of melancholy piano and sorrowful synths. Promising environmental manipulation as well as a jolly good stroll through the corridors of memory and (of course) regret, it reminds me of Linger in Shadows, the demoscene project that broke through onto PS3. It all begins with a voiceover, which I managed to ignore, but it ends with another snippet of monologue that croaked out of my speakers, along with the mental image of a beatnik sitting on a windowsill and sucking on a Gauloises while contemplating the shape of the smoke, and pondering how fascinating he must look from afar. Mind is heading to the Rift.
]]>(It should be noted this story was written moments before the Facebook/Oculus announcement.) We already know the Oculus Rift is the perfect tool for immersing players within cockpits, but I was unsure until I played SuperBike TT whether they might similarly benefit motorbikes. The narrow straddle-rockets can cause problems with positional awareness even without a head-mounted display, but the indie project currently on both Greenlight and Kickstarter suggests threading the racing line in VR could be thrilling.
Just as soon as there's a Rift headset available which doesn't blur your vision like a drunkard, anyway. Video below.
]]>I first heard about Boon Hill from a friend while we read epitaphs in a graveyard. That's only fitting, given that Boon Hill is a game about exploring a graveyard and reading epitaphs. It's been successfully funded on Kickstarter, and its creator recently climbed in bed with Nathan. It seems only reasonable that we now give it its own post. Trailer below.
]]>Lethe is currently seeking votes on Greenlight and two teaser trailers have been released in an attempt to win over the public. I'm entirely comfortable describing the contents as 'Psi-Ops meets Amnesia'. The player character can levitate objects using a magical scab on his hand, throwing them across the room in a fit of rage or using them to activate distant pressure plates and the like. Story-wise, it's a creepy island investigation sort of vibe, starring handsomely-named journalist Robert Dawn. He is "searching for clues about a disaster on an isolated island. After coming in contact with an unknown substance, Robert mysteriously develops psychokinetic abilities, but not without a cost." It won't surprise you to learn that he is not alone.
]]>Why are the trains in Britain always late? Here is one possible reason: efficiently connecting train routes is flipping hard. I only realised this while playing Mini Metro, a Ludum Dare entry turned alpha for a full game which arrived right on time when I needed something to play this weekend. It's a neat strategy game, as visually clean as the finest tube maps, and currently freely available to play in your browser.
]]>Seems like only yesterday that we were posting about Crawl's spiffy new hot-pink-emblazoned Steam Greenlight page, and that's because it was. In what has to be some kind of record, it's already emerged from Valve's crowd-run dungeon with keys to the Steam kingdom in hand. Why, before you know it, Crawl will probably be learning to drive, graduating from college, and serving minimal time for its first white collar crime. They grow up so fast. Other standouts from this week's 50-strong Greenlight selection include NIKO: Through The Dream and open-world horror-thon Memories of A Fisherman.
]]>The infernal Greenlight machine rolls on, devastating the environment and breaking hearts without missing a beat. It doesn't care what gets in its way. It knows only one pursuit: middling-to-popular indie games. Its main fuel source? People. Well, their votes, anyway. And also some arcane fusion of press reviews, crowdfunding successes, sales on other platforms, angel dust, kitten tears, and a signed copy of The Who's greatest hits album. But hey, I can't fault the system's invisible, probably mutant hand for selecting the likes of Galactic Princess, Ultimate General: Gettysburg, Hover: Revolt of Gamer, and Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries. The full 50-strong batch is below.
]]>BeamNG.drive reads like someone is attempting to talk after a visit to the dentist, though I've no idea what they'd be saying or what the context would be. "Brian, Drive!", maybe? Now that Brian has the wheel, I can pay more attention to what BeamNG.drive actually is: a game about the joy of realistically crumpling cars. It's been out for a while, though it still remains an alpha with some big plans rather than a fully-formed game. I think the devs need to sell more to realise that dream, so they're taking to Greenlight in the hopes of grabbing that Steam bump. Trailer is below.
]]>Valve have pushed another 50 games through the Steam Greenlight system, which by my count finally pushes us over the limit. There are now officially too many games. Please cease and desist all game manufacturing immediately. This is not a drill.
]]>Valve's developer-only Steam Dev Days summit has begun, but that doesn't mean corrupt, malformed press types like us can't be there in spirit. And by spirit, I mean Twitter, because this is what my life/career has become. So then, what's going on behind the iron veil of Valve's Seattle warfortress? Tons of stuff, honestly. But so far, the biggest announcements concern Steam (it gained another 10 million users in three months) and Steam Greenlight's slow, probably painful death. Also, Steam Machines, because I will not stop writing about Steam Machines every week until the day I die.
]]>The best thing about Ludum Dare is the regular avalanche of tiny games that people produce during the event. The worst thing is discovering a brilliant concept or idea, and waiting for a larger continuation to be released. Porpentine spotted Taquito Tower during Ludum Dare 27 and described it as follows:
A tower of cube mazes filled with burritos and sassy enemies. Semi-turn based, so actions take place every second...Having at least 5 burritos makes your attacks more powerful, but eating them regains health.
An expanded version, Burrito Galaxy 64, is now seeking votes on Steam Greenlight. The trailer is pleasing.
]]>Every day, approximately 43 billion new indie games spring into existence from mysterious ethers far outside the realm of human comprehension. We approach these portals into The Beyond with great apprehension, then we scuttle away with our bounty, arms and hearts full of excitement and terror. We call this process "game development," and it will probably bring about the end of the world. Until then, though, someone needs to curate these things, so Valve blasts new finds with its organizational death laser, Steam Greenlight. Yep, that's exactly how it all works and this is not just me filling space because I've written far too many Greenlight posts at all. Anyway, standouts: powerful Twine darling Depression Quest, surrealist Thief usurper Tangiers, and sidescrolling epic Treasure Adventure World.
]]>Whatever Arranger is, and it appears to be many things, it has something in it called a "Turpato Peeler". That is such a beautiful mangling of the term that I laughed for about a minute. The rest of this strange adventure game seems no less silly and wondrous: it's set in a world of music and inspired by classic point and clickers, and a game where you fight not with swords or guns, but with the musical instruments that you've collected in your adventures. Your goal is to become the best music arranger the world of Musica has ever seen. The trailer below is quite the thing.
]]>After a potentially disastrous misjudgment last time around, the Greenlight train appears to be largely back on track. And by that, I mean it's knocked out another 100-strong batch in a single go, some parts of which are even vaguely recognizable. I'm especially glad to see The Stomping Land, Krautscape, Paper Sorcerer, Stasis, Driftmoon, and The Girl and the Robot get Valve's lambda-shaped stamp of approval. Also, the greatest news of all: War of the Human Tanks finally passed muster. Can War of the Too Human Tanks be far off?
]]>You can keep your self-driving cars, Amazon delivery drones and cryptographic currencies. The future I'm excited about is the one in which I get to play Master Spy. The 2D evasion platformer is about sneaking past guards, cameras and dogs using a an invisibility cloak to a soundtrack of '80s synth. It has unaccountable floating platforms, unaccountably beautiful pixel art, and it understands the power of the GIF.
It's up on Steam Greenlight now, and there's a teaser trailer below that sells its wiley charms.
]]>Maybe Valve should put a yellow light in front of Steam Greenlight, because it needs to slooooooooow down - for just a second or two, anyway. I mean, don't get me wrong: I'm all for tons of games getting the go-ahead to drown in sweet, sweet Greenlight green, but this week's batch included - among a few other questionable/forgettable picks - Neal Stephenson's CLANG. You know, the one whose development has been mostly halted and may not ever reach completion? Admittedly, Stephenson claims it'll get finished no matter what... somehow, but maybe Valve should've held off until it was in a less questionable position? Or given the slot to a more deserving game? With improvements come new complications. Guess it's true what they say: it's not easy bein' green(light).
]]>Once upon a website, weary, while I pondered weak and sweary, Over many a dull and tedious release of forgotten bore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some colleague gently rapping. Alt-tabbing to my inbox door, `'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `emailing about The Last Door - Only this, and nothing more.'
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak June that Adam last wrote about that. The Last Door is an episodic horror adventure game inspired by Edgar Allan Poe and creepy houses. "Creepy House" is now a genre of videogame, by the way. Adam thought it was pretty good, and it's now three episodes in and up on Steam Greenlight.
]]>By criminy, Steam's daft Greenlight is letting a lot of games through at the moment. 100 more after the 37 a couple of weeks ago. That makes a total of 262 games cleared for entry in the last three months. That's a lot of games. Does it mean Greenlight is finally working? No, of course not. But it does mean there's a long, long list of games to look through below. It includes Race To Mars, Luminesca, The Mandate and Risk Of Rain.
]]>"This is hard. Hard and stupid." You are correct, Probably Archery. You are both those things, because that is your reason for existing: to be hard and to be stupid. Probs Arch, as I like to call it, is another of that breed of games that gives you an intimate level of control over bits of your body. In this case, you manipulate both arms independently, while swiveling wrists, and adjusting elbows and shoulders. I think it's a game of archery, but the ambiguity of the title means I'll have to check out the demo before making a definitive statement.
]]>The next year may end up bringing us X: Rebirth, Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen, each one a more staggering depiction of outerspace than we've ever seen. But for all their graphical eye-kisses, there's still room in my heart for cold blue circles against a background of deep black. That's what SPACECOM looks to offer: a multiplayer strategy game about deception with a clean, futuristic aesthetic.
]]>The Greenlight additions are coming thick and fast now. Another 37 games have been released from the Humiliation Cage. 100 emerged in August, another 25 last month. It's a lot of new games. This latest collection includes FOTONICA, Fran Bow, Neverending Nightmares, Rimworld and Real World Racing. And one-man miracle, Universum: War Front.
]]>I am excited and I don't know why! Ikaruga is begging for votes on Steam Greenlight. I only played Ikaruga about twice back in the Dreamcast days (my very first job was working on DC-UK's website, and I lasted a month before complaining that I didn't have enough to do - I was bolshy back then), and it was clear that I'd need new eyes to track the on-screen action, finger enhancements to make things happen at the pace the game required, and possibly a brain bypass so my thoughts of insurrection didn't get in the way of reactions. I was aware that it was special and I was not.
]]>This week, on a very special episode of As The Greenlight Turns, social intrigue rules the spotlight. Remember Race The Sun? It's an excellent blink-and-you're-wall-pizza racer in its own right, but it also recently catapulted its way into prominence due to its trouble getting on Steam, abysmal initial sales, and a subsequent, er, sale its developers organized for others suffering from their same plight. Well, all that stuff worked! Kind of hilariously quickly, given that the sale only started yesterday. Race The Sun has been greenlit. Other standouts this time around include Thief/Dishonored-inspired roguelike wonder Eldritch, Kickstarter darling Hyper Light Drifter, and PULSAR: Lost Colony.
]]>It's amazing the difference one change can make. The last time I peeked into the rug-ged world of Arcane Worlds, a game basically built out of memories of Magic Carpet, it didn't have trees. It was just a barren world beneath a burning sun that you could flood or crack open with spells. That was kind of enough to give me a few hours of fun, though. The latest update, that coincides with it attempting to break through the outer crust of Steam Greenlight, is available to download, and I noticed the worlds are created with a layer of foliage. So I reinstalled it.
]]>Valve may not have pushed another 100 titles through Steam Greenlight's mighty monetary birthing canal, but the latest batch of 25 is nothing to scoff at. Do you want Dear-Esther-influenced Mars exploration? You've got it. Car games (that are currently titled, er, Car Game)? There's plenty of that too. And survival-horror? Well of course there's survival-horror. There always is. This is Greenlight we're talking about. But yes, between Lacuna Passage, U55 - End of the Line, Eden Star, SUPERHOT, and plenty more, there's quite a lot to be pleased about.
]]>Bugbear, the makers of the glorious FlatOut, recently announced a crowd-funded car crashing game, intermediately titled Next Car Game. To help tempt you with those papery things in your wallet, they've released a video detailing the destruction engine that the game will have. You should watch it, and make sure your hands are free so you can give it a round of applause. It's beautiful.
]]>This Stanley Parable trailer is definitely my favourite game trailer of the second Wednesday Thursday (this post was written yesterday, time fans) of September of the year 2013. The developer has embraced popular culture and asked Youtube game talker-over Chilled Chaos to make one of those Let's Play things, but all is not as it seems. Watch as the boring corridors slowly lull the gabbing gamer into a comfortably mundane meandering. In that mindset, when the walls of a corridor become the warm centre of the universe and everything is recognisable and safe, change can send a man mad. It's really funny.
I swear, if one of the potentially awesome space adventure games in development doesn't come out soon I might just explode. The problem is I'm so swollen with anticipation that I might just start another Big Bang, which would create another universe that doesn't have these games in development. Just give me one right now! Like Pulsar: Lost Colony, a sort of first-person co-operative FTL that will let you and some space-chums take up specific roles of a spaceship while you go on an mission. You can be Captain, Pilot, Scientist, Weapons Specialist, or Engineer, each with a role to play in a hunt for the titular 'Lost Colony'. Oh, it'll be procedurally generated, too, but it's not out until 2014. Boo! Footage below.
]]>If I had just the right test tube and one of Mr Bunsen's Bestest Burners, I reckon I could scientifically prove that FootLOL: Epic Fail League is the worst title since Henry VIII appointed a young cleric as his Royal Glans Grater, purely to irritate the delicate sensibilities of Pope Clement VII. As it is, all I have is a broken slide rule and a warped protractor so you'll have to judge the title for yourself, without the guiding hand of Science to enlighten you. The game itself is currently loitering in the vicinity of Steam Greenlight and there's an online demo. It has little in common with actual foot-to-ball, although there are teams of men hoofing a sphere about the place, being more concerned with landmines and comedic chaos. It's quite good.
]]>The Greenlight program has hardly been without its detractors. When first announced it seemed as if the indie messiah had arrived, parting the seas of bad games to allow those noble and true forward. Then the waters muddied as its systems and comments sections were overtaken by Steam's worst trolls. Now it lies as a problematic but necessary tool of indie game development. But perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel: Valve have announced that a new batch of one hundred titles were being greenlit as of yesterday. This brings the total to a rather respectable 260. Details on some of this number, and what it may mean, within.
]]>Steam Greenlight's still a contentious way to do business. The $100 cost of entry, the required cheer-leading, it's a lot of effort for no guarantee. And while I get the idea of having an established community is important, I'm glad I'm not an indie developer attempting to shout above the noise on there. GOG.com's new indie submission portal seems to have taken in a lot of the criticisms of Steam's hand-off approach and applied those lessons to their new venture: they're looking for indie developers to submit games to their indie portal, with the company promising to "We're not machines. We talk." Ouch!
]]>The Steam Greenlight machine keeps right on churning, and I have to say: it's getting a little more efficient. Initially, batches of new games were wheezing out in sickly trickles, but now we're getting 15-game shotgun bursts every couple weeks. There's still plenty of room for improvement of course, and it remains to be seen whether or not Valve can keep pushing this pace, but it's good to at least see some baby steps in the right direction. With that said, let's dive into this week's selection. Standouts include Syndicate spiritual successor Satellite Reign, the ever-popular (and hilarious) Viscera Cleanup Detail, open-world zombie sandbox 7 Days To Die, extremely ambitious god game Maia, and quiet, thoughtful ghost romp The Novelist.
]]>Sometimes Lewie Procter is very useful. Not only does he do the delightful Bargain Bucket, but he is also, and this is a huge secret, quite good at videogames. That is quite terrifying to anyone else who happens to write about videogames, because we actually try not to be good at videogames so that we will have time to write about videogames. But Lewie can do both and do the Bargain Bucket! He is some sort of superhuman. Anyway, this week he has been playing Need For Madness, and doing mean flips and whatnot in the air and sending us videos. Perhaps you'd like to try this car game out? It is now on Greenlight and looks very lovely.
]]>There's been another round of Greenlight clearances. While Valve are hopefully tearing the ghastly model into eighty-thousand parts, and then scattering them around the farthest reaches of the universe such that they can never be reformed again, in the meantime a new collection of games have escaped the spike-laden pits and will be on Steam proper. Fourteen of them, in fact, including badger sim, Shelter, Operation Black Mesa, and being-a-toddler horror Among The Sleep.
]]>Recently, Vlambeer's Rami Ismail told me that he thinks Greenlight is "the worst thing that’s ever happened to Steam". I don't think all developers feel quite as strongly, but Valve's kinda crowd-sourced attempt at game curation has certainly ruffled some creatorly feathers. It's not particularly transparent with gamers either, leaving it in a rather unenviable position all around. So first, the good news: Valve is well aware, and it wants to make things better. But, uh, they kinda said something similar last year, and things are still pretty dire. So.
]]>There are very good reasons why adventure games are not emergent. If the colander isn't found under the pig then there will be no way to strain the pasta to feed to the the astronaut that will make him bloated so he'll adjust the orbit of the moon so that the waves are choppier and the lady on the boat leaves her door unlocked because she needs to go hurl. It just won't happen. But that's part of a problem with the mechanics of adventure games that Adventurezator: When Pigs Fly is attempting to solve. It's an adventure puzzle game that emergently generates puzzles with solveable solutions. What I'm saying is: if you have a sieve instead of a colander, that'll work just as well. In addition to that, players can easily build their own puzzles. The Kickstarter elevator pitch, in an actual elevator, is below.
]]>3761 AD. Seattle. A line of tourists is snaking around a wrecked skyscraper. If we listen closely, we can hear their guide: "... this is the cupboard where they found the 'test heads', and this is where they arrested Robin "Mad Hatter" Walker, who admitted to 243402 counts of decapitation. That's the rebuilt Dota 2 annex. The war where the Dota 2 team attempted to secede from the union in 2103 caused a brief civil war, but it turned out their tactics when applied to a real world conflict just got them all killed. We don't know what this place was: a cupboard where we found the skeleton and a crowbar. Just a handyman, maybe? Moving on to one of the more remarkable finds: a PC that was found in the rubble, still running a copy of Alien Swarm. And beside it was this Steam Greenlight page for a mod that turned it into a first-person shooter. What was Greenli..."
]]>The megachat continues! At the behest of many, I'm carving it into the Internet's unforgetting crystalline walls - one hefty chunk at a time - because mere ears could not withstand its relentless auditory onslaught. Last time, I gathered Obsidian's Chris Avellone, Dreamfall's Ragnar Tornquist, Vlambeer's Rami Ismail, Introversion's Chris Delay, and Redshirt's Mitu Khandaker to discuss what exactly makes each of them "indie" despite their exceedingly different backgrounds, so you should probably read that and stuff. Done? Then you may now proceed onward to a spirited debate about the increasing uselessness of the term "indie," Steam Greenlight's many shortcomings, and the role of Kickstarter for smaller devs vs juggernauts like Obsidian. It's all after the break.
]]>All of a sudden, espionage is cool again. I'd suggest it has something to do with WikiLeaks, but the last time I typed a nice thing about WikiLeaks my PC started making funny noises and a flower delivery truck spent three days outside my house. And I hadn't ordered any flowers, sheeple. Anyway, I blew that van up and then the police came. Coincidence? I think not. So now I'm writing about Black Annex from the front room of the Cuban embassy: Developer Lance E. McDonald streamed it as part of the Greenlight SuperShow, showing off his incredibly silly strategy action game. I think it looks rather lovely.
]]>Despite AAA game developers talking about how more powerful hardware and shinier engines mean you can better experience the character's emotions, the evidence is clear that they really don't care about that, or even understand how to do it. If you think about it, they're saying they need more RAM and HDD space to make you care about characters. That's ridiculous, and though I do feel emotions when adding things to my PC (the emotion of "squeee!"), I don't think it'll help games be more emotional. Meanwhile in the indie space, a place typically divorced from anything even approaching additional hardware, they're at least attempting to make you care (or feel lonely, or depressed, or other emotions that don't come from guns). It might not work for everyone, but I'm betting a few people out there will feel something, connect somewhere with Montague's Mount, "a psychological rollercoaster ride through isolation, desolation and one man's tortured mind all set against the bleakness of an isolated Irish island." Which of course means it's a FPS puzzle game.
]]>There are so many videogames! More than I can count with my entire, exceedingly creepy plaster hand collection. Valve tries its darndest to get the best ones on Steam, but they just keep coming. Perhaps throwing the towering Select-O-Tron 9000 and 3/5 into hyperdrive is the answer? Valve's having a go at it, at least, and so far the result's been smaller batches of games at an appreciably speedier clip. Last time, that meant three games, but this time it's six. Hooray, progress! Standouts include the piracy plagued Game Dev Tycoon, Harvest-Moon-meets-Minecraft standout Stardew Valley, and the creatively named RIOT, which is about riots. Details after the break.
]]>You know me. You know I love games with dinosaurs. I think I was born in the wrong time period. I'm more of a late-period cretaceous type of guy. Don't believe what those "scientists" would have you believe. People and dinosaurs did live at the same time, as evidenced by the totally fact-based multiplayer dino-hunting game, The Stomping Land. See those hunters? See those dinos? I rest my case. Games One, Science Zuheero. Take a look at the trailer. It has traps, and at one point the guy pole-vaults a stegosaurus.
]]>Not so long ago, Gabe Newell sounded like he was dead-set on killing off Steam Greenlight, but still the rather obtuse game selection process persists. If nothing else, though, at least it's not treading water. Say so long to a sludgy trickle of monthly additions, as Valve's paving the way for a rapid-transit highway straight to the heart of the Greenlight system. From now on, it'll greenlight more titles faster, but in smaller batches. And the first to benefit? How about surging (and completely marvelous) communist document thriller Papers, Please? Or, if that's for some insane reason not to your liking, there's also Edge of Space and ambitious, otherworldly action-RPG Venetica, in which you play as the daughter of Death Incarnate. Innnnnteresting.
]]>Incredipede was one of last year's most delightful surprises, and you should feel ashamed for not playing it. The grotesquely adorable creature constructor was not, however, without its flaws, and creator Colin Northway has no trouble admitting it. Now, though, Qwozzle's got her tiny yet mighty sights set on Steam, and she'll be completing her dogged climb into Newell's house of wonders (and hopefully apples) on March 18th. But this isn't the same game the most beautiful and handsome among you played late last year. Among other things, version 1.5 includes an entire new set of less-punishing Normal mode levels, a much more versatile control scheme, and eagles (!!!). After the break, you'll find a trailer of the new features and levels in action, plus a rather massive chat with Northway and artist Thomas Shahan. So go forth! Peruse!
]]>LOOK! I made a pun! That will only make sense to people in the USA! Snowbird Games have announced the second beta test for their fantasy-worldy turn-based strategy thingy.
]]>Gabe Newell hasn't been particularly sweet on Steam Greenlight as of late, but the fully open Steam of tomorrow hasn't supplanted its "dictatorial" ways just yet. Instead, the mighty user-driven machine trundles on, streamlining the process where it can and rhythmically opening its jaw each month to crunch down whatever creative morsels we offer up. So then, what's on the menu this time around? Well, semi-big-names certainly top the list, but it's not without a couple enticing curiosities.
]]>Much-loved XBLA/iOS column puzzler, Poker Smash, recently appeared on Steam Greenlight and the creator confirmed that he is working on a PC port, albeit one that will be lacking multiplayer at launch. Multiplayer modes will be added as soon as they can be ported without any quality loss. My memories of the XBLA version are of a fast-paced, combo/hand-building game, which shares some of its genetic makeup with Tetris Attack. There's no word on a release date yet but you can vote for the game on Greenlight, or perhaps watch the video below to see if tumbling, exploding playing cards appeal to you.
]]>Steam Greenlight continues to make dreams come true - you know, assuming those dreams are hoisted atop the shoulders of marketing savvy, inherent appeal to a very specific audience, and sometimes implausibly fortuitous happenings, anyway. Ultimately, though, the results are usually quite nice, and this time around appears to be no different. Ten more games have been granted eternal respite in Valve's hallowed halls, and only one of them's technically older than many of the people who voted for it. Aside from Larry's lizardly remake, standouts include the exquisitely handsome-looking MaK, American McGee's Akaneiro: Demon Hunters, and the supremely Dungeon-Keeper-y War for the Overworld.
]]>There is a gif below the jump that compelled me to write about this indie Terraria-a-like, Edge Of Space. Go there and you will see. You won't be disappointed, I promise.
]]>Forge is proof that not earning your Kickstarter funding isn't the end of the line. The third-person multiplayer action game fell some way short of a $300,000 cash grab, but regrouping on Steam Greenlight gave it a boost and it managed to launch this week. Here's what a few hours on the servers has taught me.
]]>Like somewhat rusty clockwork, the not entirely predictable Steam Greenlight machine has whirred to life again - granting the wishes of hopeful developers who dared perform the dark rituals needed to invoke its promotional might. This time around, 13 games made the cut, and - as is becoming a happy trend - it's a fairly diverse selection. Well-ish known standouts include Waking Mars, Primordia, and StarForge. Oh, also, there's productivity software this time too, so thrill to that. (How does one thrill to something? I've never understood that phrase.)
]]>Headup Games are trying an interesting tactic to get more Steam Greenlight up votes for their game, Bridge Constructor: they're giving it away for free. Expressing their frustration at not getting into the Greenlight top 100, the company have suggested that people might like to vote them up in exchange for getting the game entirely for no pennies (and DRM free). It's a bold and brave move, and you can see from it just how important getting on to Steam is for companies like Headup, that they'll give their product away to Greenlight voters in order to get noticed. It'll be interesting to see whether anyone else employs similar tactics to get those vital upvotes as competition hots up.
]]>I intended to keep at least one of my spider's worth of eyes firmly affixed to Towns, the indie construction and management sim that makes you the mayor of an olde time Sunnydale. Turns out it was one of my many bad eyes and I haven't played the game since Britain sipped a Pimms No.1 Cup with a dash of lemonade and wore a straw boater for a couple of weeks. I speak of the summer. Since then, thanks to its community and the magic of Greenlight, Towns has appeared on Steam and, as of last week, so has its demo. Jolly good.
]]>Fly'N, Ankama's exquisite and charming botanical platformer, is due to launch on the 9th of November, which just so happens to be tomorrow. It'll be available on Steam, as the the Green Light of commerce has reflected kindly upon it, and there's a new trailer to celebrate the release. If I hadn't played with Rayman's Oranges this year, I think I'd be handing Fly'N the 'platformer wot has the most colours in it' award for 2012. If Fly'N was a broth, which is isn't, then the ingredients might include a sprinkle of Rayman, a dash of Pixeljunk: Eden and a drop of Botanicula.
]]>Having successfully fought its way through the Greenlight lion pit, Miasmata is a first-person survival game, created by just two guys - brothers Joe and Bob Johnson (under the silly name of IonFx. Eyeonphnx?). And when they say created, they really mean it. This game in which you must survive on an island, pursued by only one strange creature, has been built from scratch. Take a look at the superb graphics in the trailer below, and then be somewhat amazed that they built the engine too.
]]>Have you recently tried to make a game for submission to Steam Greenlight, only to realize it wasn't actually a game at all - but instead a piece of ruthlessly efficient productivity software? Well then, you're in a far better place than me. My aspiring Greenlight submission turned out to be a toaster. Sadly, there's no category for that. Your software, though, can now enlist the aid of a community more numerous than the number of stars that can be seen through the thick clouds of smog in the sky. Well, potentially, anyway. Also, remember that pesky $100 Greenlight fee? Valve's introduced a "Concept" category to help devs sorta kinda get around it.
]]>Steam Greenlight isn't perfect. Not by a long shot. It's still very much a work-in-progress, and - at the moment - it's making things harder on some developers than even the old, underdog unfriendly selection process used to. Valve has, however, made one thing abundantly clear: it wants developers to round up outside communities of their own and then take Greenlight by storm. Obviously, that's far easier said than done, but the Green Light Bundle is - if nothing else - an interesting attempt at making order out of chaos. Better still, it uses the 100 Percent Guaranteed Indie Game Solution To All Life Problems (Including Relationships And Spiders): "When in doubt, bundle."
]]>Over the weekend, I attended Fantastic Arcade, an indie-focused gaming show in Austin, Texas. It was - as is often the case with these things - full of passion, creativity, and the guy who played that one kid in Dazed and Confused. You'll be hearing tons more about it soon. First, though, we'll look at what was perhaps the most incongruous moment of the event: a Valve panel. Steam Greenlight, of course, has had some pretty serious ups and downs since launching, and this panel gave the very people who are fighting to set up shop on the ubiquitous storefront a chance to voice their complaints directly. Here's how it all went down.
]]>McPixel has exploded onto Steam and is the first game to reach Valve's storefront through the Greenlight process. There's a feature about the indies and Steam coming later, courtesy of Nathan who has been visiting Fantastic Arcade where he was witness to a Valve panel all about Greenlight. I didn't go to Fantastic Arcade but I did wake up at 7.30 this morning, endure the difficult commute from my bed to my computer and put on my Serious Journalist Hat. Primed and ready, I sent a list of very important and serious questions to Sos Sosowski about being the Armstrong of indies: the first man on Greenlight.
]]>The Stanley Parable - that extraordinary Source mod from last year - is to receive a reinvention as an independent game, hoping to find its way to Steam via the Greenlight thing. And there's a new trailer to prove it.
]]>The saga of Steam Greenlight has, thus far, been packed with unexpected surprises, whiplash-inducing twists, and sudden bursts of lava-like sensuality. Unfortunately, hardly any of it has been related to actual, you know, games. Instead, Greenlight itself and its (in some cases, not-so-well-explained) policies have hogged the spotlight, with Valve doing its best to tweak and modify the system as it goes along. Now, though, the first batch of community-tested, Valve-approved games is getting its chance to shine. Also, one of them is Half-Life.
]]>This second part of our look at how the indie community feels about Steam Greenlight had its thunder stolen before it could even get out the door. There is, I'm afraid, now a much bigger issue than anything addressed here, yesterday having brought the news that Valve had implemented a $100 charge for any developer wishing to create a Greenlight page - regardless of whether or not it would prove successful. It sorts the wheat from the chaff perhaps, and thus could be said to address one of the major issues with Greenlight to date, but in doing so it also presents an extra barrier to indie developers who don't have money to throw around and raises further moral issues around something that was already in something of a grey area. That, however, is an issue already discussed by those it directly affects, and a topic around which much more needs to be and will be said. Here, primarily in the interests of good, honest decency, I simply wish to allow those who spoke in the first part of this planned series to finish their pre-charge thoughts about Greenlight - what changes they'd like to see to it, and how democratic it can ultimately be.
Participating: Tiger Style, Size Five Games, Puppy Games, The Indie Stone, Lo-Fi Games, Locked Door Puzzle, Hermitgames and many more.
]]>Well, that was quick. Steam Greenlight launched last week, and a horde of jokers and spammers took that to mean "open the floodgates on vaporware and oh-so-original cracks about the fact that Half-Life 3's not out yet." But now, without missing a beat, Valve's moved to put a stop to all the shenanigans. In short, submitting a game to Greenlight requires an initial $100 fee - with all of the proceeds going straight to the Child's Play charity. So it's about "cutting down the noise in the system," not creating the most hilariously diabolical money-making scheme the gaming world's ever seen. But will it work? And does it alienate the folks who need Greenlight the most? I discussed Valve's rather sudden decision with a few especially smart (and attractive) developers to get a clearer view of the situation.
]]>Steam's light has turned green, which means indie games which are not already available on Valve's market-ruling online PC gaming store can now petition users to vote for them, in the hope that the eye of benign Sauron will turn to their game and grant it a coveted spot on Steam. I could all too easily hold forth about the pros and cons of the Greenlight system, enthuse about the potential democracy it might mean, muse about whether it's an attempt to prevent Kickstarter stealing Steam's thunder, wonder why a company so boundlessly rich can't just employ a huge team of experts to assess every game submitted to them, why the blue blazes they'd include the troll-gift that is a downvote option, and offer hope that it means a bright new age of bold games finding larger audiences.
But I'm just some shmoe. So, far better to talk to the people Greenlight actually affects - the indie developers who are (or are considering) using it as a way to attain profile+profit for their projects. Specifically, developers who've worked on games including Gratuitous Tank Battles, Time Gentlemen Please, Waking Mars, Revenge of the Titans, Kairo, Kenshi, Leave Home, Redshirt and InFlux. In part one of this feature, read on for their thoughts on the joys of Greenlight in concept - but the possible problems in practice.
]]>Steam Greenlight - the new system by which Valve will allow Steam users to vote for which indie games they want to see available on the service - has just gone live.
It's launched with around 40 games available to choose from, including familiar names like Incredipede, The Intruder and Project Giana. There's a bunch of info about each game, along with screenshots and videos, with the option to vote for those you're interested in playing.
]]>Crowd-sourcing. Crowd-funding. The next big thing. A flash-in-the-pan fad. Call it whatever you want, but right now, the gaming industry's fallen in love with the idea of putting its fate in the hands of heaping piles of people. Double Fine Adventure was - so clearly that you could see it from space - the point where everyone took notice. Shockingly, crowds did, in fact, exist before that moment, but DFA caused them to really, truly become a thing in the industry's eyes. Last week, however, saw Phase Two of that movement kick off with things like Penny Arcade's Kickstarter, World of Warcraft's Guild Mentoring Program, Steam Badges, and Steam Greenlight. Problem is, with the exception of the latter, we're sort of doing a really miserable job of leveraging communities, you know, well.
]]>Oh wow. This came out of nowhere, and it seems basically brilliant. Valve just tossed up a webpage for Steam Greenlight, wherein "developers post information, screenshots, and videos for their game and seek a critical mass of community support in order to get selected for distribution." So basically, it's Steam Workshop for entire games, and - in theory - it gives a wartime-battlecry-like voice to smaller developers who felt they weren't being heard by Valve. Further details and thoughts after the break.
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