By now, it's no longer a secret that Valve is thinking about killing off Steam Greenlight. Until it actually disappears though, it's still fertile ground for stories like the one you're about to read. Call it a tale of how social media can be a double-edged sword when trying to drum up support for your indie game.The game in question is called Zombies. The period is actually part of the name (hey, it did the job for fun.), though there are no actual zombies in it. Plus it's changing to Corporate Lifestyle Simulator anyway.Like many indie games, this pixelated action-shooter is a part of bundle deals on several popular sites. Some of them promised that buyers would receive Steam keys for the game if/when it was greenlit (or greenlighted, as I never know which way is proper) - a common though not universal feature of these bundles.The game was greenlit, but there was a bit of a catch: as explained by NeoGAF user chubigans, the developer had no intention of giving bundle buyers Steam keys, regardless of what the deals stated. At issue was his feeling that he should receive the customer data for everyone who purchased his game, unwilling to hand over "thousands of keys" to the bundle sites.
On Wednesday, Steam announced that fifty new titles had been approved through the Steam Greenlight program. One of those fifty titles is Tri, from developer Rat King Entertainment. Like many games, Tri originated from a game jam, the 2011 Ludum Dare 20 game jam, to be specific. While Tri did not receive any awards during the jam, the developers felt encouraged enough to produce Tri into a complete game.Obviously their instincts paid off, as Tri is now on its way to becoming available on Steam."The original version of Tri is still available to play online. Hosted on Kongregate, players can get a very basic taste as to what they can expect from the full version, which is set to release later this year.In short, Tri has players utilizing a "tri force field gun" to construct triangles that are then used to solve puzzles and traverse through the game's five levels. Things can become very tricky, straightaway, but for the most part the game does a good job of easing players into the various scenarios.
On Thursday, Tiny Build Games' SpeedRunners received a substantial update that integrated Steam Workshop support and unlocked a level editor within the game. The announcement post explains that players who participated in beta testing the level editor will be able to instantly upload their locally-stored levels to the Workshop. As of this writing, there are over 70 user-made levels for players to download and check out.SpeedRunners is a 2D multiplayer platformer where players race one another in an attempt to reach the finish line as quickly as possible. The game is currently in Early Access and available on Steam for $9.99."To develop SpeedRunners, Tiny Build Games teamed up with DoubleDutch Games, who developed the original SpeedRunner, which can be played on the DoubleDutch Games website for free. Previously, Tiny Build Games developed No Time To Explain, which received a level editor of its own, last year.Read the announcement post in its entirety on the SpeedRunners' Steam Community profile.
The latest batch of games approved through Steam Greenlight was announced on Wednesday. Fifty titles were chosen, including Lost Decade Game's A Wizard's Lizard, Rat King Entertainment's Tri, and Cecly's Galactic Princess. Some of these titles have already been released on other platforms or storefronts and are just now making their way onto Steam, while others are still in development. Galactic Princess, for example, is just over a week into its Kickstarter campaign."These titles were selected on the same criteria we have been using in the past: Votes in Greenlight give us a hugely valuable point of data in gauging community interest along with external factors such as press reviews, crowd-funding successes, performance on other similar platforms, and awards and contests to help form a more complete picture of community interest in each title," Valve community spokesperson Alden Kroll explained in the announcement post."You can use that very same link to the announcement post to view the complete list of all fifty games that made the cut this time around. And when you're done doing that, why not pick out a few of your favorites and get to gaming?
Don't you just hate it when some days you have a whole bunch of errands to run, when all you really want to do is stay in bed and browse all the latest free games and sales going on around the internet? Take right now for instance: I'm long overdue for a haircut, and I've been putting off going to the DMV for a solid two months now. So what am I doing instead? Stocking up on more games at almost next-to-nothing prices!In fact, if buying new games at incredible deals were daily errands in their own right, then I would get more accomplished each day than you could ever imagine! First I would hit up the iOS App Store and download a few premium games I missed out on for absolutely nothing. Then I would scoop up the latest Humble Indie Bundle before circling back to Gamezebo for a few more last minute deals there as well. Talk about being a productive adult member of society!"And as always, if there were any other deals I may have missed while I was "waiting in line at the DMV," then be sure to let us all know about them down in the replies!
Steven Alexander has faced a lot.Twelve years ago he had just returned to school after some time trying his hand at a musical career, touring northeastern New York. At that time he fell repeatedly ill and on New Year's Eve of 2002 he was taken to the hospital."I got dragged to the hospital ER where they told me my kidneys had failed and I would need to start dialysis immediately," he explained during our interview. "So this completely changed my world."About then he and his soon-to-be business partner Shawn Mills, from Australia, got the idea to start making video games. To that end, they started Infamous Adventures, a studio inspired by the work of Roberta Williams' King's Quest series and Lori Ann and Corey Cole's Quest for Glory. There was just one problem; neither of them knew the first damn thing about making video games.
Earlier in the year, I received an email from the CEO of Industry Entertainment, Nemanja Bondzulic. The sole purpose of the email was to promote Industry Entertainment's upcoming space game, Astroids: Space Game of The Year, an ambiguously-titled game that involves flying a spaceship through an asteroid field.Immediately I was confused, believing I had somehow missed the standard release that typically comes before a Game of the Year edition. So I did some searching, and it turns out that the developers were actually calling their yet-to-be-released game, the "Game of the Year". The phrase "game of the year" was actually its own bullet, on the bulleted list attached to the press release. I noted the fact that the developers were based out of Serbia, so I dismissed the questionable title as an attempt at humor which was lost in translation.Atari, on the other hand, wasn't cool with the title. A recent email from Bondzulic explains that Atari, likely in the defense of their classic Asteroids property, is requiring that Industry Entertainment rename Astroids: Space Game of the Year to something else.
While the endless debate about what does and doesn't constitute a clone will forever rage on, I found myself playing a little something this past weekend that was a perfect homage to two of my favorite things: Donkey Kong and Alien.Donkey Me, a freeware trip down memory lane from developer Bruno R. Marcos, takes the Donkey Kong formula and reskins it using classic movies from the 1970s and 1980s. Star Wars, The Exorcist, Big Trouble in Little China - the selection is surprisingly rich. I won't spoil all of the surprises, so I'll just say this: Alien/Donkey Kong is exactly the game you want it to be.Instead of battling against the big ape, the first stage gives you the space jockey. Rescuing Kane at the end of the second stage results in a pixelated chest-burster. There's even an appearance from Jones the cat if you can push through to stage number three.