Half-Life: Alyx was released today in what feels like one of the strangest watershed moments in recent video game history.

Alyx is the first new official entry into the Half-Life narrative released in the last 13 years. For so long, we thought we’d never get a new Half-Life game. Developer Valve, after all, was making too much money with Steam to even think about bothering with such things. Now, here we are with a brand-new Half-Life adventure just sitting out there waiting for us.

The problem, though, is that Half-Life: Alyx isn’t waiting for us. At least it’s not waiting for most of us. Actually, the legacy of Half-Life: Alyx may be that of a $1500 game that many of us will never actually get the chance to play.

See, Half-Life: Alyx isn’t just a new Half-Life game. It’s a VR game. It’s the first VR entry into the main Half-Life franchise, and it’s almost certainly the most anticipated VR game ever made. Some are already saying that it may be a VR system seller.

That last part is where we run into a bit of a problem as it concerns you and your ability to actually play Half-Life: Alyx.

Let’s say that you don’t own a gaming PC capable of properly running VR. That might be somewhat unlikely considering the popularity of gaming PCs in general, but it’s not a stretch to suggest you don’t. It’s also not a stretch to suggest that you don’t own one of the VR headsets supported by Half-Life: Alyx. If that is the case, then you’ve got quite a bit of catching up to do.

It starts with that gaming PC. There are some PC builders who argue you can build a VR ready gaming PC for as low as $500. That feels optimistic (especially if you want said VR games to run smoothly), but for conversation’s sake, let’s say that you can get a pre-built gaming PC capable of somewhat respectably running VR for about $700. Actually, just for fun, let’s say it’s $600.

From there, we come to the matter of a VR headset. This is where things get even more interesting. The Valve Index, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets all support Alyx. The price of these units varies somewhat based on availability, sales, and other factors, but despite an increase in market competition, you’re probably looking at about an $800 investment for a VR headset, controllers, and everything else you need to party. Again, the numbers can vary, but you’re not going to be disappointed by the VR buying process if you start it with that number in mind.

That brings us up to about $1400 to realistically play Half-Life: Alyx with a fresh start. Oh, and you’ll need a copy of the game too, we suppose. That will be an extra $60 unless you find some kind of bundle promotion. Put it all together, and you’ll see that it’s really not unrealistic to suggest that Half-Life: Alyx is, essentially, a $1500 game for the unprepared user.

That’s a problem. Half-Life: Alyx is good. Early reports indicate that it is very good and is likely the best VR title ever made. The idea that it is so good that it’s worth $1500 seems…unlikely. There’s not really any game that is so good that you can easily recommend spending $1500 to play it. It’s also reportedly about 12 hours long, which certainly doesn’t help its overall value.

Then again, that’s really less of a problem with Half-Life: Alyx and more of a problem with the entire concept of a VR system seller.

Valve was well within their rights to make Half-Life: Alyx a VR game. By all accounts, they’ve done things with the medium nobody else has. The problem is that selling people on the idea they should invest in VR to play Half-Life Alyx is really about selling them on technology that has rightfully been largely limited to trade shows and the home of enthusiasts thus far. Valve obviously knew that Half-Life: Alyx wouldn’t be enough to really sell people on the idea they should pay about $1500 to play it, but the idea that we’ve got to wait for other studios to make enough great VR games to justify finally owning a fully-fledged VR system just to play Half-Life: Alyx is undeniably frustrating.

Maybe that day will come, but if Half-Life: Alyx ends up being a gem of an ultimately failed technological experiment which millions of people never get the chance to play (and perhaps the last new Half-Life game will get for another decade) there will ultimately be some who rightfully look at it with feelings of scorn and anger.

Today Steam announced the “Play Next” experiment that uses an algorithm to help you decide what games you should play. This process uses similar technology to the Interactive Recommender Valve released some time ago. While I’ve only tested the Recommender, it did suggest games that I already had interest in or would at least like to try.

Digging into my extensive backlog, the first set of games wasn’t particularly impressive. All three were very old games. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine has been in my library since 2012. They were even suggested based on games I haven’t played in years. I think there might be some bugs to be worked out in this process.  

Personally, my method for attacking my ever-growing backlog is to play what seems most interesting. Plenty of games are going to slip through the cracks, but I can’t dwell on lost opportunity. I find it more enjoyable to play a classic game people would want to talk about from the past few years than to dig into some obscure indie title I might have overlooked from 2014. That’s just my perspective though. This tool on Steam may be your new best friend in defeating the multi-headed hydra that is the video game backlog.

Here’s a full article discussing how I decide what games to play.

If you haven’t been paying attention to the Steam sales charts, you may not have noticed that a game called Temtem is quickly becoming one of 2020’s runaway hits.

What is Temtem? Well, there’s a lot of things you can say about it, but Temtem is essentially a Pokemon MMO.

Yes, there are differences, but we’re talking about a game where you run around various locations, catch and tame new monsters, and use them to battle other monsters and their trainers. Of course, the big difference in this instance is that you can do all those typical Pokemon things with a large online community of other players trying to do the same.

You should know that Temtem may be surprisingly popular, but it’s also quite buggy, suffers from some questionable grinding mechanics, and doesn’t really feature that much end game content or extra content beyond the grind of the experience. It’s a seriously flawed game that has nevertheless captured the imaginations of millions.

Of course, that just raises two questions that many find themselves asking: “Should Nintendo make a Pokemon MMO?” and “Why haven’t they made one already?”

The answer to that first question is “Probably.” You can argue whether or not MMOs are quite as popular as they used to be, but titles like Destiny and even the resurgence of World of Warcraft show that the genre does have life left in it and is capable of capturing the attention of a variety of gamers.

More importantly, you can kind of just see a Pokemon MMO working even if Nintendo chooses to only utilize relatively simple genre mechanics. While it’s not quite this simple, you can basically imagine a single-player game of Pokemon where most of the other trainers are real people. We’ve even seen raids in recent Pokemon titles, and Pokemon Go showed that people love the idea of Pokemon as a communal experience.

If that’s too hypothetical for you, then you’ve really just got to look at how Temtem has become a hit by just offering the basic framework of a Pokemon MMO. Imagine what Nintendo could do with that concept with their budget and resources.

Naturally, that leads us to the question of “Why hasn’t Nintendo made a Pokemon MMO?” which proves to be a much more difficult and frustrating query.

This may be controversial, but there are some who believe the answer to that question has something to do with Nintendo’s doubts regarding what the future of Pokemon is. Pokemon Sword and Shield were actually mostly pretty good games, but they fell way short of fan expectations for the first proper console Pokemon adventures.

You just get the feeling that Nintendo (and Game Freak) is hesitant to really take the Pokemon franchise beyond its early formula. That may sound odd given the various Pokemon spin-offs that exist and even the success of the aforementioned Pokemon Go, but when you really look at it, Nintendo at least seems hesitant to release a major Pokemon game that (ironically) evolves the core Pokemon concept from a gameplay perspective.

That seems to be the root of this problem. Again, Temtem shows that a truly successful Pokemon MMO won’t be able to entirely rely on the novelty of that concept. At some point, it’s got to be as compelling as an MMO as it is as a Pokemon title. Besides, Nintendo and Game Freak really don’t have that much experience with creating such elaborate online experiences. Finding out what makes a Pokemon MMO special beyond some superficial encounters and the inherent fun of the genre would require them to take some notable steps outside of their comfort zone.

A Pokemon MMO could be special, and there are probably a lot of people that would love to see one. However, if Nintendo isn’t willing to make a Pokemon Switch title that feels like something more than a slightly larger (though often oddly smaller) Pokemon handheld game, then is there really a chance they would give this concept the attention it deserves?

Don’t get me wrong, the trailer for Half-Life: Alyx looks great. It seems like it is channeling just enough Half-Life 2 to make it immediately appealing to fans, but it also leaves no doubt that it’s a full-blown VR game. However, it is important to remember that this game, from the start, was Valve trying to build up VR and Half-Life was where they settled.

This isn’t my opinion or an assumption, it’s an answer to a question by David Speyrer, one of the developers for Half-Life: Alyx, during an interview with Geoff Keighley. Within this interview, the group of developers building this game goes through some of the more obvious questions relating to the subject. Geoff asks why they decided to go with Alyx rather than Half-Life 3.  Robin Walker replied,

“Back in 2016 when we started this, Half-Life 3 was a terrifyingly daunting prospect. I think, to some extent, VR was a way we could fool ourselves into believing we had a way to do this.”

The fear of not living up to the high expectations of the franchise isn’t unfounded. After the scrapping of Half-Life 2’s episodic design due to it being ineffective at delivering content quickly, every day since has made the fan base desire more. Building a game that could follow up the significance of Half-Life 2 and its episodic expansions only became more intimidating as time went on. At this point, that third iteration would have to be a masterpiece to avoid heavy criticism given the 12 years since Episode 2’s release. 

Geoff also asked, “Why does this need to be VR only?” The condensed answer to this was simply that the goal was initially to build a VR game. They built the game from the ground up to be an experience that involved complex movements and that is something that can’t be translated to a mouse and keyboard. This further expands on the fact that Half-Life: Alyx isn’t a game that is necessarily for the longtime fans of the 21-year old franchise but to convince more people that a VR headset is worth owning.

The name “Half-Life” carries with it all of the masterful work of the franchise as well as all of the disappointment from its modern shortcomings. Creating something experimental to try to grow a very limited segment of the market will be risky, to say the least. Even the most popular VR games haven’t had sales anywhere near what Half-Life 2 sold (4 million copies). Therefore, it is clear that the goal is to lift up VR with the strength of the Half-Life franchise.

I don’t believe that this process will have Valve Indexes flying off the shelves now or any time in the near future, but I do see this being a catalyst for VR in general. People who have been hesitant to buy a cheaper headset may now be looking to get one during the upcoming holiday season. The $1000 Valve Index VR Kit probably isn’t going to be the biggest benefactor, but more affordable compatible kits will benefit from a premium game with high production value. It’s hard to say right now, but luckily we have only four months before people get their hands on Half-Life: Alyx and let us cheap folks know if it’s worth the investment.

Today EA finally confirmed its return to Steam by allowing preorders for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order on the platform. EA was one of the first companies to move on from Steam to its proprietary platform, Origin, back in 2011. The controversial choice to remove Crysis 2 from Steam and release future EA titles on Origin lead to a somewhat muted backlash as the new platform presented an adequate resource for playing these games. Little did we know, this was only the first of many similar moves large publishers would undertake for the sake of profit.

The issue, as they saw it, was that Valve takes 30% of the sale for each game sold on the platform. By creating Origin, EA was able to take the full profit from the sale of their digital games. On paper, that seems to be an easy way to justify building and supporting the Origin client. For years now, we’ve seen PC versions of EA games exclusively on Origin while Steam continued to thrive with games from other publishers as well as indie titles.

Recently, Epic Games created the Epic Games Store and made an effort to put not only games they develop and publish but also other games on their platform exclusively. This exclusivity issue has caused quite the backlash and has put pressure on Valve. The question that some people have raised is whether this move with EA is Steam’s effort to get a taste of those exclusivity contracts. While it may not be possible for us to know to what extent this may be the case, I think there could be another reason for EA’s change of heart.

EA has had extremely limited success lately in releasing games like Anthem and Battlefield V. These games rely on the concept of “live services” to try to maintain a revenue stream that builds with time. Both games saw major drop-offs after launch and EA’s stock prices have remained stagnant since after taking a significant dive last year. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’s advertising has promoted having no microtransactions or post-launch DLC, which is the polar opposite of what those tent pole “live service” games attempted in the past. This means that the initial sales of the game are the primary way that EA is going to make money from the launch of the game.

The establishment of microtransactions in modern gaming is now the most popular way that publishers can turn games from just “profitable” into “cash cows.” It lets ongoing development fuel the sale of cosmetics and small pieces of content to players months or even years after a game has gone live. Its use in Fortnite is one of the primary reasons Epic has been able to leverage millions of dollars in exclusivity agreements. Without this, EA is going to have to make Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order one of the bestselling new games of the year to see similarly good profits. Perhaps with Steam on their side promoting to their millions of active users, they’ll be able to appeal to the numbers they need to make this happen. 

On Apple hardware, the Steam Link app is supported on any iPhone or iPad running iOS 11.0 or higher and on Apple TV running tvOS 11.0 or higher.

The release of the app comes about a year after it was originally rejected from the Apple App Store due to “business conflicts.”

To use the app and play games from your library on an Apple device you just have to pair an MFI or Steam controller to the Apple device and connect to a computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux) running Steam on the same local network.

Valve says for best performance:

* Connect your computer using Ethernet to your 5Ghz WiFi router

* Connect your iOS device to the 5GHz band of your WiFi network

* Keep your iOS device within a reasonable range of your router

The Steam Link app uses the Steam Remote Play technology that’s utilized in the Steam Link hardware. H.264 video is encoded in real-time and sent over a custom low-latency network protocol. On a 5GHz network, the Steam Link app targets a resolution of 1080p at 60 frames-per-second.

The Steam Link app also supports the Steam Controller and other input devices using Bluetooth.

On Android devices the app is still in beta so Valve can “do more exhaustive testing.” It’s worth noting however, that while you can purchase games on Android devices you are not able to on iOS or tvOS.

Valve has released a documentary film titled “Free to Play” that focuses on the Dota 2 International Tournament. The film premiered on Weds., March 19 during the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, and was then made available for free viewing on Steampowered.com, iTunes, and YouTube.

The Valve-produced film runs approximately one hour and fifteen minutes, featuring professional gamers Dendi, hyhy, and Fear and the Dota teams they play on who compete for a one million dollar tournament prize.

There are also several shorter videos including “Behind the Scenes: The World of Dota,” “Behind the Scenes: The Finale,” and “Historical Tour of L’viv with Dendi.”

Contrast is a game I’ve been looking forward to since I first saw it on Steam Greenlight over a year ago. The intriguing vaudeville-inspired setting, unique platforming that transitions between 2D and 3D, and catchy jazz soundtrack on display in those first early peeks was enough to make Contrast one of the first games I ever voted up on Greenlight. Apparently I wasn’t the only one drawn to the title, as Contrast was approved in one of the very first batches of Greenlit games. Now, having played through the full release, I can say that the game fulfills many of the hopes I had for it, even if there are some missteps along the way.

The story follows a young girl named Didi in a fantastical version of 1920s Paris. Didi has a rough family life: Her mother is a rising cabaret star that often leaves her home alone into the early hours of the morning, and her father is a bumbling ex-con artist who is desperately trying to make things right between the three of them and make an honest living, but always seems to fail miserably at it. When she’s alone, Didi entertains herself by talking with her invisible friend Dawn, an acrobatic young woman and the character that the player controls.

The game deals with some pretty heavy subject matter, as seen through the eyes of a little girl. Her mother is often seen as unfit to take care of her due to the long hours she works and the general disapproval that is associated with her chosen profession, while her father is struggling to repay mobsters that he made deals with in an attempt to get back on his feet following a prison sentence for his previous cons.

Contrast takes a unique approach in the way it portrays characters besides Didi: Everyone is depicted as merely shadows, with the implication being that you are Didi’s imaginary friend and exist only within some sort of mysterious shadow realm. Many of the details regarding Dawn and this shadow dimension are left unexplained, with some of the collectables dropping hints about what’s going on. It’s clearly a deliberate storytelling decision by the developers to keep Dawn and the shadow realm only vaguely explained, in an attempt to get the players to find the collectables and try to piece things together on their own. Your millage may vary on how well they achieved this goal.

The voice acting and soundtrack are another high point of the game’s storytelling. The dialogue is all fairly well-written and acted, if hammed up to go with the game’s vaudevillian setting. Didi in particular stands out as a memorable character backed with a solid voice acting performance. The game’s catchy jazz music is also very high quality, enough so that spending a few extra dollars on the deluxe edition is worth it.

While the story, setting, and characters are all charming enough, the game unfortunately slips up a little on the technical and gameplay sides. The core gameplay is all about solving puzzles and platforming by manipulating light and shadow. Much of the game is spent as a 3D third-person platformer, however, Dawn has the ability to shift into a shadowy figure that operates on a 2D plane. To do this you’ll typically need to turn on or adjust lights to make shadows, and then move objects in the world around in ways that cast shadows at just the right angle that allows you to travel on these shadows in the 2D plane. Some puzzles require you to actually phase objects into shadows with you.

To the game’s credit, it does create some fun and clever puzzles that give the player an admirable degree of freedom in coming up with a solution, but unfortunately it seems that they ran out of ideas on how to use the shadow-manipulating gameplay in other, more interesting ways. The puzzles and platforming are by no means bad in any way, it’s just that the core mechanics aren’t really shaken up much in the rather short experience that the game provides. By the time you reach the game’s halfway point you’ve already seen most of the ways that the light and shadow mechanics work, and nothing really new or more complex is ever introduced in the latter half of the game.

The platforming also isn’t quite as smooth or fluid as it could be, especially when in the 2D shadow form. Dawn’s movements, particularly her jumping capabilities, are just a little too clunky for a character that is supposedly an amazing, circus-quality acrobat. When combined with how glitchy the game can be, Dawn’s awkward movements make the platforming portion of the game’s puzzles feel unpolished. The puzzles are also way too easy. I never encountered any puzzles that had me genuinely stumped for a while, requiring me to sit back and carefully examine and think them through. This is coming from someone who is generally terrible at puzzle-platformers, so if I found the game too easy then a really hardcore fan of puzzle games will likely breeze through Contrast effortlessly.

Even worse is the fact that the game is quite buggy in its current form, adding to the general awkwardness of the platforming. Getting stuck on terrain isn’t that uncommon, and I encountered two instances of bugs so severe that a checkpoint reload was required. One involved shifting into the shadows and clipping right into the bottom of the level. All attempts at shifting back into a shadow involved me running around on the back “wall” of the level’s geometry. Another involved a crate that must be turned into a shadow and repositioned with a spotlight. The crate hit an uneven part of the wall and catapulted into the air, where it then proceeded to hover around in the sky like a highly confused and oddly-shaped UFO. Luckily, the game’s checkpoints are very generous, but that doesn’t excuse the sheer volume of glitches I encountered.

The game isn’t very long either. It took me just over 4 hours to beat, and I found all the collectables and achievements within that timeframe. The ending is also a bit abrupt, like the developers were rushed for time. That said, it’s still a pretty satisfying ending, and more content is welcome assuming it’s the right price.

I wish I could be a bit more positive about Contrast, because what it does right is all great. The story, characters, aesthetic, and music are all well-worth experiencing for yourself, it’s just a shame that the rest of the game has a few warts to overlook. While the light and shadow, 2D-to-3D mechanics make for some clever and fun puzzles, it’s unfortunate that the puzzles are just too easy and the platforming isn’t as smooth as I wish it was. The bugs are also a concern, and the developers are actively working to fix them. Even with my complaints, I think that the game is still worth experiencing at some point, if not now then a bit later on once the developers have ironed out a few of the game’s kinks. You can find the game right now on Steam for $15. If you do pick up the game, the collector’s edition is a worthy purchase to get the game’s excellent soundtrack.

Welcome to the Release Valve, formerly the Greenlight Spotlight. I finally found a better, more creative name for the series at the suggestion of a friend.  Since my last article, Valve has announced two new batches of Greenlit titles, totaling 69 games between them. A few highlights from the first batch include Eldritch, latest Kickstarter mega-success Hyper Light Drifter, the PC port of the critically acclaimed iOS platformer Nihilumbra, and Race the Sun, the procedural racing title that struggled to find an audience when it launched without Steam support. The second batch brings us the shmup classic Ikaruga, a space colony sim reminiscent of Prison Architect named RimWorld, Starship Corporation, Steam Marines, Wrack, and Universum, a bizarre title made by just one guy that mashes together RTS, MOBA, and FPS gameplay in a sci-fi setting. Even with this huge list of new Greenlit titles, I still managed to find seven promising games:

Colossal Kaiju Combat by Sunstone Games

This one looks pretty janky, even by the standards of many games I highlight in this series, but it still shows some promise if they can pull it off. Colossal Kaiju Combat isn’t so much a single game as it is a planned franchise spanning multiple PC games and even physical mediums like card games and miniatures. The first installment, called Kaijuland Battles, is a kaiju fighting game set to enter open beta next year. Their plan seems to be to release a competitive multiplayer fighting game for free on PC and OUYA to build interest, then make their money on the episodic single player series and the physical merchandise. They are even looking into acquiring the licenses to use kaiju and giant robots from existing franchises like Godzilla, Gamera, Ultraman, Voltron, and more. Pacific Rim reignited my old childhood love for kaiju films, so I hope they can create something better than the pretty awful official game based on that movie. There is also a Kickstarter campaign seeking $45,000.

Skyjacker by Digitilus

In Skyjacker, you take on the role of a ruthless space pirate as you hijack and loot your way across the galaxy. The game features AI wingmen or the ability to bring in friends with drop-in/drop-out co-op. An interesting feature of the destruction physics is the ability to shoot off individual parts, assuming you don’t have the accuracy of a TIE Fighter pilot, to loot after the battle. This allows players a huge amount of ship customization by welding on the parts they salvaged from wrecked enemy vessels after combat. The game’s ten different alien races each have drastically different specializations and philosophies to ship design, forcing players to adopt different strategies in combat and rewarding them with a variety of odd and unique parts to loot. Finally, the game will come with a mission editor and support for Oculus Rift. You can find a Kickstarter here.

Mark of the Old Ones by Hit the Sticks

Please note that almost all the gameplay footage of this title is from the concept prototype. In other words, no art assets have been added in yet. With that in mind, Mark of the Old Ones is a Lovecraft-inspired “upside down” physics-based platformer. You play as a character who had his leg severed in a plane crash. A strange parasite has attached itself to his back, giving him these tentacle-like appendages that allow him to grab onto the ceiling and other objects. This is where the “upside down” part of the platforming comes from, as you can see from the prototype debug footage. Sadly, the Kickstarter isn’t doing very well, and the chances of them reaching their goal is fairly slim. The developers have already stated that, should the Kickstarter fail, they will try again later once they have some basic art assets covering up the debug lines.

Spark Rising by Wicked Loot

If you took Minecraft and gave it a wave-based defense mode with a fleshed out combat system, you’d get something along the lines of Spark Rising. Spark Rising features both a single player campaign and extensive multiplayer modes, in addition to the Minecraft-like building components. As a Spark Bot, it’s your duty to guard rare resources on floating islands. To accomplish this, players construct massive fortresses with defensive turrets and guard bots, as well as get personally involved in the action with exosuits. The user generated construction aspect extends even to creating new enemies and creatures to fight against, both alone or online with other players. It has a lot of good ideas going for it, taking the Minecraft formula and merging it with more developed combat. Unfortunately, the Kickstarter has an uphill battle to fight; by the time this article goes live it will be over or nearly over, and they still have quite a bit of money that needs to be raised.

Lords of Discord by Herocraft

If it hasn’t become apparent yet from my articles and reviews, I love Heroes of Might and Magic and similar fantasy strategy games. A similar franchise I have fond memories of is Disciples by Strategy First. That is, until the rather abysmal Disciples III. Luckily, Herocraft is here with Lords of Discord, a fantasy strategy game that takes quite a bit of inspiration from the earlier Disciples games. Admittedly, the fact that Herocraft is known mostly for mobile games is a bit concerning, but their strategy games seem to have decent enough reviews. It promises two campaigns and multiplayer, with two different races to choose from with dozens of spells and around 30 units each. There seems to be some sort of terraforming ability that can be used to alter the landscape, though this isn’t really explained too well yet. Like most of the games in this article, you can find a Kickstarter for it here.

Dragons of Elanthia by Simutronics

Dragons of Elanthia is a free-to-play dragon combat game that is currently in beta. While there are only six dragons to play as so far, one of the big features (besides the fact that it’s a freaking dragon aerial combat game) is that you can customize your abilities by combining different riders with different dragons. The four slot skill bar is based on the two skills of the rider and the two skills of the dragon. Both rider and dragon also seem to have one passive, so switching combinations can add a lot more variety than at first glance. Game modes so far include multiplayer standards like deathmatch and team deathmatch, up to more objective-based modes like sieges. I can’t speak for the game’s business model quite yet, which is always a concern for free-to-play titles, but Dragons of Elanthia still looks like a game worth looking into.

The Mandate by Perihelion Interactive

The Mandate is utterly impossible to explain in a single paragraph. Trust me when I say that it looks to be one of the most ambitious games I’ve seen in some time. It both excites and terrifies me; if they can pull it off, it could be one of the greatest RPG experiences ever, but the sheer number of components in this game means that they could fail horrifically with just a few missteps. You play a disgraced captain given one last chance to redeem himself on a mission sent directly from the Empress of a galactic empire in a desperate state. It features management in the form of building a crew and a fleet, ship construction, space combat, XCOM-style tactical combat in the form of boarding operations, crew interaction and relationship building, diplomacy, trading, space exploration…and all wrapped up in a sci-fi universe filled with a rich backstory and lore inspired by Tsarist Russia. Just go check out the Greenlight and Kickstarter pages and watch all the videos.

One more thing I want to bring up is the game’s absurd character creation system. They aren’t joking when they talk about the setting having a very detailed and fleshed out backstory and this extends to the character creation. Most RPGs regulate player character backstory to some throwaway comments, but in The Mandate about 90% of character creation is detailing your character’s backstory and their fall from grace. You determine such details as the colony ship your ancestors are from, your home planet, your military career, your political sympathies and leanings, the events that ultimately lead to your court martial and imprisonment…and all these choices have a drastic impact on how people and the game’s factions interact with your character once you reach the actual game itself. I’ve never seen a game with a “blank slate” character place so much emphasis on their backstory.

Wow, that was way longer than I intended and still had to leave out quite a few games I wanted to mention. As usual, remember to vote for any of these games you find interesting so they can get on Steam. If you have some spare cash, consider donating to one of the Kickstarters I mentioned as well. Also, if you know of any games struggling on Greenlight that you would personally like to see on Steam, let me know about them in the comments section.

Steam, often regarded as the main conduit for the video game industry’s PC-based games, is currently beta testing its up-and-coming new operating system. The Steam OS is being designed based on Linux and meant to run on a PC in your living room. The goal is to give players the option of playing PC games on a big screen HDTV. We see this as a major step up for the future of the PC gaming industry that will set the bar even higher for PC game developers. The Steam OS is also implementing four new features to give even more benefits to their users: they’re adding in-home streaming, music, TV, movies, Family Sharing, and Family options.

In-home streaming is the file sharing from your Steam account to the TV inside your living room and will allow you to play games from your Steam library. They’re also adding movies, music, and TV shows to Steam and Steam OS, which we see as a great expansion opportunity for our Steam libraries as well as unifying our PC experiences. Finally the Family Sharing and Family options are the implementation of easier Steam game and library sharing between family members, and the ability to setup specific family settings for your family’s Steam and Steam OS experience.

Steam has captivated and organized our PC gaming experience since 2003 and we are looking forward to the new implementations that Steam is going to be adding with their new OS. Steam is still in the throes of beta testing the OS, but plan on releasing it sometime during 2014. Steam is also working concurrently on Steam Machines – a line of PCs built specifically for gameplay, and the Steam Controller, which we caught a glimpse of in this demo.

If you want to find out more about Steam’s new OS please visit their webpage.

Valve has released a demo of the new Steam Controller in action, playing a variety of Steam games including Portal, Civilization 5, Counter-Strike, and Papers, Please. The controller, of course, is a prototype. But the demo shows off the controller functions that will be shipped to 300 steam users. According to Steam, the controller was “built with high-precision input technologies and focused on low-latency performance.” The Steam Controller touch pad is still a bit of a mystery though, as the touch pad is now represented by four blank squares. (In the first pictures released, the touch pad area was covered by the Steam logo.) We’re hoping Steam releases another demo soon that may tap into the features of the touch pad, and offer some explanation of the area which will supposedly act somewhat like a laptop track pad, but is controlled by your thumbs.

Flippfly, developer of Race the Sun, has made no effort to hide just how poorly their game has done without that valuable Steam release. Race the Sun may have finally been Greenlit recently, but that hasn’t stopped the small indie team from trying to spread the word on just how damaging it can be to release your game without getting it on Steam first. To accomplish this, Flippfly got together with a small army of other indie developers in a hybrid sale/promotional campaign called the Not On Steam sale.

Most of these games are around 25-50% off and not a single one of them is on Steam yet. Nearly all of them are still waiting in Greenlight limbo and just haven’t received any attention due to their absence from Valve’s monolithic platform. To help push their Greenlight campaigns, most of these games will also include a free Steam key with your purchase, assuming the game gets on Steam. Some standouts I noticed include Race The Sun, Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages, Tower of Guns, Full Bore, and Inescapable, but there’s dozens of other games to browse through. Remember to visit the Greenlight pages too so that these games can reach a wider audience by getting on Steam.

In addition to driving sales for games that slipped under everyone’s radar and getting a boost to their Greenlight campaigns, Flippfly also hopes to convince PC gamers that Steam isn’t the only place to buy games, and that many great games that never make it to Steam get released on a regular basis.

Flippfly, developers of procedural racer Race The Sun, have released some rather depressing stats that prove just how important a Steam release is for a small indie game. Race The Sun came out a month ago and has only sold 771 copies, earning the two man dev team about $7400. Their worst day of sales ever was apparently the 16th, with a dismal two copies sold.

As Aaron, one of the developers, is quick to point out on this blog post, Race The Sun has been a critical success among those few who do own the game. There are a number of positively-received Let’s Plays and first impressions videos on YouTube, and the handful of reviews the game does have put it at an 81 Metacritic score. Moreover, statistics from their leader boards show that the average session length of Race The Sun is around 2.5 hours.

So what happened? Aaron admits that they have done pretty much everything they can do short of getting the game on Steam:

“About a year ago, we decided to pivot as a company, and re-focus ourselves on the PC platform, rather than mobile. Mobile has largely moved to “free to play”, and this wasn’t a direction we wanted to focus on as a two-man company. We felt that the PC audience was largely still happy to pay decent money for a good game, and so we focused our efforts on PC and Steam. It was about this time when Steam introduced Greenlight – and at first, we saw this as an opportunity.

However, we’ve now been on Greenlight for over a year, and our launch has come and gone, and we’re still seemingly a ways off.”

Aaron says that a lot of the feedback they are getting from gamers who haven’t purchased the game usually boils down to “Steam or no buy” or “I’ll get it when it appears in a Humble Bundle,” an attitude that seems to be getting more and more common amongst PC gamers as Steam continues to be the dominate digital distribution platform. Aaron suggests that Race The Sun also has a perception problem, as some gamers view it as yet another one of the many simple “endless runners” that flood iOS and Flash game sites:

“The other thing we feel is a factor in our sales, is that we inadvertently shoehorned ourselves into the “Endless Runner” genre, without realizing the damage this would do. We felt the concept of an arcade-style, highscore focused game deserved a pure, HD treatment, free of microtransactions and with a focus on depth – and our customers seem to agree. But there seems to be an immediate and general stigma around this genre (thanks to the mobile revolution no doubt) – that “runners” should be free, and they don’t belong on PC.

The final straw that convinced me that this perception has hurt us was the rejection feedback from Indiecade last week:

“I really appreciated the simple 3d visual design, and the progression was very well tuned. Also, procedurally generated levels … are a nice touch. However, this genre of game is fairly well played out. I hope you are releasing it for iOS and Android.”

Ugh.”

Aaron feels that Race The Sun‘s best bet at success stills relies on the game being Greenlit and getting onto Steam. In the meantime, Flippfly is looking into other digital distributors that might be a bit more lenient than Steam:

“We’ve had talks with Kongregate about updating the web version of the game there, and we’ve even talked with Facebook, and considered how to do a mobile release. The truth is, those platforms are filled with gamers who prefer a free-to-play model, and we’re not ready to jump into redesigning the game with that model in mind – not yet.

In the meantime, we’re exploring other platforms, and distribution channels like gog.com, Amazon, and Desura, in hopes of finding sustainable income. We’re also preparing our first update, with “featured user worlds” and other tweaks, and we plan to continue improving the game. But as I write this, we’re running out of money, and will likely need to take on some other work to keep ourselves and our families fed for a while.

It’s also worth pointing out that we’ve been approached [by] publishers wanting to add Race The Sun to their portfolios. These were pretty appealing, but ultimately we decided that we want to retain our independence, and keep Race The Sun as a flagship Flippfly title.”

Currently, the only place to buy Race The Sun is Flippfly’s official website. You can vote for it on Steam Greenlight here.

Considering the rant I wrote about the failings of Steam Greenlight a while back, it’s only natural that I cover Paranautical Activity. This modest little FPS Roguelite by Code Avarice had a difficult time getting onto Steam. A publishing deal with Adult Swim fell through because it was arbitrarily denied release by Valve, who seem to be making up the rules for Greenlight as they go along. But, finally, Paranautical Activity managed to get Greenlit and is now available on Steam’s Early Access program for $10. So, how is the game in its current beta form? Pretty solid, actually.

Being yet another entry in the sudden surge of “Roguelite” indie games over the past few months, Paranautical Activity merges the ideas of randomly generated levels, items, and permadeath found in Roguelikes with another genre, in this case that of the old-school FPS. Paranautical Activity plays like Quake or Painkiller, with fast movement and the ability to change direction mid-jump. Enemies also shoot large projectiles and telegraph their attacks, meaning that you always have a chance to dodge if you’re quick enough. Kiting, strafing, and jumping are the key to surviving the rather challenging combat in Paranautical Activity, unlike most modern shooters that consist of advancing slowly while crouched with your super-tacticool rank 57 red dot sight glued to your eyeball.

A playthrough of Paranautical Activity works much like other recent Roguelites: You pick a class with different starting weapons and statistics and try to go through as many floors as possible. There are currently five starting classes, each of which are differentiated by weapon, number of bombs, health, and speed. The Gorton is very fast with little health and a throwing sickle that must be charged up to deal the maximum amount of damage, while on the other end of the spectrum is the Tank, with its shotgun, slow movement speed, and massive amounts of starting life. I do wish that the classes had maybe an extra ability or something to make them even more unique. As it stands, the weapon you have is the only really drastic difference between the classes.

In fact, more variety is really the only issue I have with the game in its current (admittedly still unfinished) state. Each level has a shop, a mini-boss room, and a boss room that blocks the elevator to the next floor. You’ll find items in shops, and after killing bosses, that modify your character in some way. The main bosses often give you pretty drastic upgrades, like the ability to double jump or increasing your max health. Problem is, these upgrades never really expand your combat options. You have one gun and your bombs. You might find upgrades that alter your bombs, or find new weapons to pick up, but you can only have one weapon at a time. I’ve seen this complaint from other people, so this is certainly an issue that Code Avarice should try to resolve. Maybe some sort of sub-weapon system, or maybe upgrades that can add more drastic alterations to your weapons like an alternate fire mode. As fun as the shooting in the game is, it just needs more options available at any given time.

Room layouts could use some more variety too. It seems that Paranautical Activity has a number of premade rooms that are simply connected in different, semi-random ways to create a level. The number of these room layouts seems pretty small right now, as I’m constantly encountering the same rooms with the same configuration of enemies. Then again, that could be because I suck and keep dying on around the third floor. You do find more interesting layouts the deeper you go, such as rooms with lava and other traps. Enemy variety is pretty good so far. You’ll generally encounter a new type of basic enemy each level, and the bosses in particular are all pretty solid. They are challenging and generally don’t drag on for too long, a combination that some games often fail to get right.

All of these problems can be summed up as “this game is still in beta, more content coming soon.” These are all issues that Code Avarice has said that they are actively looking into. The game still has no official full release date, and a recent successful Kickstarter, combined with the early access sales on both Steam and their official website, ensures that they have a bit of cash to throw around, too. Hopefully my demands for “MORE CONTENT!” will be satisfied when the game transitions out of beta.

Putting aside the need for more content (which, again, can be attributed to its unfinished, beta state), Paranautical Activity already has a really solid foundation. The core mechanics are all there, with fun yet challenging action and that “one more run!” compulsion that any good Roguelike/Roguelite needs to be successful. I put about four hours into the Early Access build before writing this, and I’m enjoying myself enough to keep playing despite the game’s need for a bit more variety. If Paranautical Activity appeals to you and you are fine with buying a game that isn’t quite finished yet, you can check it out on Steam Early Access.

Wow, so Valve has been busy since my last article. There were two normal sized batches over the last few weeks, then Valve went crazy and released a mega batch of 100 games today. I’m happy to see that Paranautical Activity has finally been Greenlit after all the controversy surrounding it being snubbed previously. I see a lot of games I’ve highlighted in previous Greenlight Spotlights on these lists, but many of them still haven’t made it, so go check out some of my previous articles to find more games that could use your help getting on Steam.

Needless to say, even with this massive batch of 100 games being Greenlit, my work here with the Greenlight Spotlight series isn’t done. New games are being added to Greenlight every day, and there are still interesting games that have been sitting there for months that need your votes. Most of today’s highlights are relatively recent submissions, so it’s no surprise that they were omitted from today’s big Greenlight batch.

Eschalon: Book III by Basilisk Games

Eschalon: Book III is one of those games that shouldn’t even be on Greenlight. The first two games have been on Steam for years, so why is the third chapter being forced to go through Greenlight? I honestly don’t understand Valve’s reasoning for forcing games by companies that have already sold previous titles on Steam to go through the Greenlight process. In any case, Book III is the final game in the Eschalon trilogy of isometric, turn-based RPGs. The Eschalon games are very traditional, old-school experiences, like CRPGs from the ’80s and ’90s, featuring an open world and nonlinear storyline. Book III promises a whole host of improvements, many of which were requested by fans of the series, in addition to bringing the story to a close. I must admit that, despite owning the first two games, I’ve never actually played them. Such is the nature of Steam Summer Sales.

Rogue Shooter by Hippomancer

Rogue Shooter popped up on Greenlight just over a week ago and is aiming for a release later this year. As you might expect from the title, Rogue Shooter is a mix of FPS action with roguelike elements, such as randomly-generated levels, weapons, and permadeath. What really got my attention was the charming, cheesy graphics style and gameplay. The game obviously looks and plays just like a shooter from the ’90s. From the aesthetic to the clunky animations, the level design to the mighty boot melee attack, the game just screams Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and Shadow Warrior. As someone who grew up with those old shooters, and has a new appreciation for roguelikes, Rogue Shooter looks like just the sort of game I could get into.

Candle by Teku Studios

Candle has been getting some attention lately after its successful Kickstarter, reaching 130% of their goal. The game is set to be done early next year, and Teku Studios is aiming for a $12-$15 price point. Candle blends elements of both point and click adventures with some platforming and puzzles. The main mechanic is based around your character’s candle, which is vital to solving many of the game’s puzzles. You must also fight to keep your candle lit, or else you may find yourself unable to solve some puzzles or find secrets. One of the big draws of this title is the gorgeous, hand-painted graphics style. All the backgrounds and characters are drawn and painted using watercolors and inks before being scanned into the Unity engine. Likewise, all the animation is done via traditional, frame-by-frame methods before being imported into the engine; none of the art or animation is done digitally.

Monochroma by Nowhere Studios

A number of major sites and gaming personalities have been excited about the upcoming monochromatic puzzle-platformer Monochroma. We even have an interview right here on Gameverse about it. Often described as a blend of Limbo and Ico, Monochroma  follows the tale of two brothers in a dystopian, alternate 1950s. You must carry your injured little brother around with you, but doing so limits your mobility and capabilities to solve many of the game’s physics and light-based puzzles. This requires you to find safe places to put him down before coming back after you’ve cleared the path ahead. The characters are also silent, meaning that the story is told entirely through the environments and nonverbal interactions between the characters.

Aaru’s Awakening by Lumenox Games

Continuing the theme of games with great art assets, here’s Aaru’s Awakening, a fast-paced platformer where you play as a rooster-gorilla thing on a quest to stop an evil entity. Much like Candle, Aaru’s Awakening‘s environment and animation are done entirely by hand before being imported into the game engine. The game is themed around the balance between Dawn, Day, Dusk, and Night, with visuals and music designed to evoke an ethereal, dream-like vibe. Your character, the rooster-gorilla thing named Aaru, has two movement abilities. The platforming is all based around using these two abilities, charge and teleport, in different combinations to navigate the various obstacles and enemies in your path. Lumenox is aiming at a late 2013 release date for this one.

Now go out there and get to voting! The surge of 100 Greenlit titles today was a pleasant surprise, but there are still many, many games sitting in Greenlight limbo that need your help. Until Valve comes up with a better way of getting these promising indie titles on Steam, all we can do is show our interest in them by voting and discussing them on Greenlight.

I started playing Papers, Please around 7:00 on a Thursday night. Around 45 minutes into my session, I distinctly remember thinking to myself that I couldn’t see how the game, while fun, could keep being compelling for much longer. My wife then poked her head in the door to tell me she was going to bed. “Isn’t it a bit early for bedtime?” I asked her, looking at the clock on the wall to my left. It read 10:15. Not a mere 45 minutes, but a full three hours since I had started working the Grestin Border between Arstotzka and Kolechia, and I wasn’t even close to calling it a night yet. Papers, Please is a triumph of indie game development, and one of the best games I’ve had the pleasure of playing this year.

On the surface, Papers, Please is not a complicated game. You are an immigration officer working for the fictional Eastern Bloc nation of Arstotzka. Your job is to check the papers of people trying to enter the country, and grant or deny access based on whether those papers are all in order. The basic gameplay hook is easy to spot, too. You get paid by the person, and must process enough to keep your family warm and fed. Make mistakes, however, and you start to receive docked pay. The key is to go fast enough to pay all your bills, but slow enough to make sure you get everything right, and the game strikes this balance very well.

Of course, it’s not that simple. By the third week, all foreign visitors must have a passport, an entry ticket, an ID supplement, and a certificate of vaccination. All these forms must be legally issued, match each other, have valid information, and not be expired. Diplomats, asylum seekers, workers, and Arstotzkan residents have different papers. Entrants must look like their picture and be of matching height and weight, with fingerprint records available to check discrepancies. You may be ordered to refuse all entrants from a certain nation, or confiscate all passports issued from a certain district. Your pay per person doesn’t increase, but your rent might. Or you might need to buy medicine. Or a birthday present for your son. The increasingly complicated puzzles coupled with the fine balance between speed and accuracy makes for quite a compelling game all by itself. But Papers, Please is much more than a simple puzzle game, even one as well done as this.

Where Papers, Please really starts to stand out is in its attempts to get you to willingly make a mistake. Do you separate a husband and wife when one has legitimate paperwork and one doesn’t? Do you reunite a guard and friend of yours with a girl he met during the war, even if she has no papers? Remember your family, and that doing these things will get you penalized. Do you condemn people with false papers to your nation’s prison system, or simply send them away? What if a guard cuts you in on the bonus he gets for each detainment? Is it worth taking a 10 credit bribe to let someone with bad papers in? What if you know they’re smuggling a bomb and plan to kill people with it? What if you couldn’t afford food yesterday and your son is sick? Without getting too much into spoilers, there are many of these questionable decisions spread throughout the story’s 31 days, and they elevate Papers, Please high above shuffling papers and stamping passports.

Speaking of shuffling and stamping, Papers, Please does a great job of conveying a real-world feel in a virtual space. Moving everyone’s papers around by hand on the small desk makes everything feel very tangible, and it isn’t long before you figure out your own efficient way of checking names and dates and seals that works around the limited desk space. The color scheme, art style, and lack of music all accentuate the grim feel without making it oppressive, and the satisfying “ka-chunk” of the stamp wonderfully punctuates each inspection. Papers, Please just feels satisfying, which is important considering the otherwise quite depressing subject matter.

At its core though, Papers, Please is a game that defies solid explanation. Any attempts to explain it to friends and family have made even me feel like it can’t be that much fun. Words have a hard time explaining the pride of knowing an issuing city is wrong purely from memory, or the paranoia of knowing that no matter how careful you were, you probably forgot to check something. It’s difficult to convey the range of feelings you get when you spot a mistake early, get excited because it means that you might be able to process an extra person and maybe afford a birthday present for your son, then realize that you’re happy because of the random misfortune of another human being. All in all, Papers, Please is a game that everyone should know about, but also a game that must be played to truly understand. Luckily, it’s absolutely worth playing and comes at a bargain price, leaving most gamers without an excuse to not pick up this masterpiece of indie gaming.

Papers, Please was created by Lucas Pope, and can be purchased on Steam, GOG.com, and via Humble Store on its own site.

Another batch of titles made it through Greenlight a few days ago. The total this time is eleven, with eight games and three pieces of software:

• Actual Multiple Monitors (Software)
• FL Studio (Software)
• Leadwerks 3: Steam Edition (Software)
• Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller
• Day One: Garry’s Incident
• Guncraft
• Homesick
• In Verbis Virtus
• Super Motherload
• Vector
• Verdun

To be frank, the only game on this list that I’m really interested in is Verdun, a Red Orchestra-style multiplayer FPS set during WWI. I was actually planning on highlighting this one in my next Greenlight Spotlight article. Guncraft has quite a bit of hype behind it for essentially being Minecraft with Battlefield-like multiplayer FPS action, but I’ve honestly never really been a Minecraft fan. In Verbis Virtus, an action-puzzle game where you cast spells by reciting them into a microphone, is an interesting concept, but every time I hear “voice recognition” I just can’t help but think back to the many examples of rather mediocre games that have tried to use the gimmick of voice controls to make them seem more interesting. Shouting “Squad 1, attack Point B!” into your headset in EndWar is amusing at first, but the gimmick becomes tedious when you realize that the game is much quicker and more precise when played with traditional controls. Plus, yelling at your monitor is kind of silly.

As I pointed out in a news article several days ago, another wave of games was recently Greenlit. This time, Assetto Corsa, DreadOut, Ether One, GunZ 2: The Second Duel, Stonehearth, and The Forest made it through. It’s nice to see The Forest in this list, a horror exploration/crafting game I brought up in my previous Greenlight Spotlight. I remember some of our writers discussing Stonehearth rather enthusiastically back when the Kickstarter was announced as well, and after looking into it more, I think that Ether One looks pretty interesting.

Unfortunately, the point of Greenlight has again been brought into question. The recent Paranautical Activity debacle created even more controversy surrounding a service that has been viewed as poorly-implemented for some time now. Valve’s bizarre decision to deny Paranautical Activity a Steam release, despite acquiring a publishing deal with Adult Swim, has become even more nonsensical when it was announced that Fist Puncher was getting the same deal without any issues. Fist Puncher was in the exact same situation as Paranautical Activity. They had an active Greenlight campaign before being noticed by Adult Swim…Except this time, Valve had no problem letting Fist Puncher through, and it has been on Steam for a couple of days now. So why did Paranautical Activity get denied? Is Valve just throwing a temper-tantrum in some misguided attempt to “make an example” of Paranautical Activity? The whole situation just proves how inconsistent Valve’s decisions can be, and how much they screwed up with Greenlight.

I myself agree that Greenlight is very poorly implemented. There is no transparency, no clear rules or guidelines. I feel that Valve’s intentions were good (then again, Greenlight was created to solve a problem Valve brought on themselves), but the way they have gone about handling Greenlight is flawed at best. Even still, Greenlight has allowed games to get on Steam that were repeatedly denied by Valve in the past. So, with that in mind, I’ll continue to write these articles in an attempt to help out interesting games until Valve comes up with something better. Games like the ones I’m about to mention:

Door Kickers by KillHouse Games

Door Kickers is a unique top-down strategy game that feels almost like Frozen Synapse and the mission planning phase of the old Rainbow Six games. You command SWAT operators in real-time with an active pause system that allows you to adjust orders. The alpha demo has a large number of missions right now, with increasingly complex building layouts and objectives that range from rescuing hostages to disarming bombs. The way you issue orders is still a bit rough, with your operators occasionally having their orders reset when you go to adjust the orders of another unit, but there is still a lot of promise here. The missions are fast and challenging, with a single mistake capable of getting your whole squad killed in half a second.

Escape Goat by MagicalTimeBean

I’m technically highlighting two games here; both the original Escape Goat and the still in-development sequel Escape Goat 2 are looking for votes on Greenlight. I know that 8-bit, “retro-themed” puzzle-platformers are a dime a dozen, and it doesn’t help that this one has a groan-worthy title, but I found the original game pretty enjoyable. I bought it when it first came out on Xbox Live Indie games for $1, and it is one of the few games from that cesspool that I would actually recommend. You control a talking goat imprisoned in a dungeon, and with the help of a mouse, you must navigate over 100 levels that constantly change shape to impede your progress. The sequel, due later this year, has really turned up the visual quality, trading in the 8-bit retro look for hand-drawn environments with pretty nice lighting effects. Escape Goat may not look or sound very appealing, but trust me and give the original a chance.

Nekro by darkForge Games

Nekro is a game I’ve been excited for ever since it went to Kickstarter around a year ago. Its Kickstarter struggled for a while, but made it just in time with a sudden surge of support in the final few days. It has been mostly quiet since then, before suddenly reappearing with a Greenlight campaign earlier this month, and the game has come a long way since those rough, early prototypes shown in the Kickstarter campaign. Nekro is a ARPG/RTS-like hybrid where you control a necromancer who has recently been released and is ready to conquer and enslave the land. Over the course of a randomly-generated, semi-open world campaign, you’ll acquire tons of abilities and items that allow you to use the corpses and souls of dead enemies to raise increasingly powerful minions. The art direction has this nice blend between really stylized, almost cartoony, yet dark and twisted.

Tower of Guns by Terrible Posture Games

Tower of Guns, which is supposed to still be very early in development, is an FPS with some roguelike elements being made by just one guy. The core gameplay is heavily inspired by the fast-paced shooters of yesteryear like Doom, Quake, and Duke Nukem. Levels also take inspiration from these old titles, with lots of secrets and power-ups to discover. The roguelike elements come in the form of permadeath and randomly-generated levels, enemies, power-ups, and weapons. All the guns are essentially blank slates where random qualities are applied each playthrough. For example, you could find a shotgun that fires volleys of rockets. The game is designed to be beaten in an hour or two, assuming you make it that far, and then replayed over and over again to see what crazy levels and weapons you find.

Underrail by Stygian Software

Anyone still annoyed with the direction Bethesda took with Fallout 3 might want to pay attention to Underrail. This game is pretty much the indie-developed, spiritual successor to Fallout 1 and 2. In this isometric turn-based RPG, inspired by the classics from the ’90s, you control a single character in a post-apocalyptic future were humanity lives underground in giant “metro-states” after the planet’s surface is rendered uninhabitable and barren. Underrail is shaping up to be a promising isometric RPG with everything that made the old classics so great: extensive character customization, challenging tactical combat, a huge emphasis on exploration, and a deep crafting system. Pretty impressive for just one guy.

Dark Matter by InterWave Studios

Dark Matter is a Metroidvania-style survival horror being made by the same developers behind the highly underrated Nuclear Dawn. I decided to include this game at the last minute because of its struggling Kickstarter campaign. The game is nearly done, but InterWave needs to raise £50,000 to finish up and apply that final layer of polish before releasing. The campaign has nearly a month left, but so far they have raised a surprisingly meager amount of money. One of the main highlights of Dark Matter is the dynamic lighting effects. Beyond merely looking nice and allowing you to see in the dark corners of a derelict starship, the lighting has an actual gameplay purpose. All the aliens in the game react differently to light, be it merely becoming more aggressive or even exploding into showers of acid. There is also an emphasis on interacting with the environment. One video shows the player using a control panel to slam a large metal door onto an alien, smashing it into goo in the process.

As usual, remember to check out previous Greenlight Spotlights for more interesting games that need your votes. Of all the games I’ve highlighted in these articles, only Cradle and The Forest have made it through, so let’s see if we can change that before the next article.

This news seems to have slipped past most people’s radar in the wake of last week’s E3 fervor. Once again continuing the trend of smaller, more frequent batches of Greenlit titles, Valve recently announced that six new games and a piece of software have made it through Greenlight:

• Assetto Corsa
• DreadOut
• Ether One
• GunZ 2: The Second Duel
• Heaven Benchmark (Software)
• Stonehearth
• The Forest

Seems like the survival horror fans have been browsing Greenlight a lot lately. The games that jump out the most, to me at least, are The Forest, Stonehearth, and Ether One. I highlighted The Forest in my previous Greenlight Spotlight, so it is good to see it Greenlit. I recall Stonehearth getting a lot of hype not too long ago due to a highly successful Kickstarter that generated 626% of its original target goal. I haven’t really paid any attention to Ether One until recently, but it seems to have a cool concept. You play as a “Restorer,” someone who is sent into the minds of people with severe mental illnesses and trauma so that they can restructure their shattered memories and help them lead a normal life. DreadOut looks like Fatal Frame with a smart phone and an Indonesian setting.

The only game on this list I’m weary of is GunZ 2: The Second Duel. I know nothing about this sequel, but I remember playing the original game many years back. It was kind of fun, but it was also a really grindy Korean free-to-play that tried to “encourage” you to buy boosts and weapons by making the progression process as slow as possible, so forgive me for not being too enthusiastic about the sequel.

Ever since I first heard this story around a week ago, I knew I would need to write something about it eventually. After all, much of my work here at Gameverse has been promoting indie games languishing in Steam Greenlight limbo. I’ve had some time to really gather my thoughts on the whole Paranautical Activity issue, and now I think it’s time I finally wrote a piece about it.

For those who haven’t heard the story yet, Paranautical Activity by Code Avarice was denied a Steam release for what seems like arbitrary and rather petty reasons. Code Avarice started a Greenlight campaign for their game some time back, however they were then approached by Adult Swim and offered a publishing deal. Adult Swim has already published two games on Steam, so this deal should have allowed Paranautical Activity to bypass Greenlight. Then, for unknown reasons, Valve stopped the release because they “didn’t want to send the message that indies can seek out publishers to bypass Greenlight.” One of members of Code Avarice even said on Twitter that he “hasn’t touched a line of code in days” after the deal fell through, because now all their efforts have been shifted away from development and towards promoting an old, abandoned Greenlight page.

I think this whole mess illustrates one thing: Valve has no clue how to make Greenlight work the way it was intended, and are just making crap up as they go. I’ve criticized Greenlight before in my Greenlight Spotlight series here on Gameverse. Valve’s approach to getting indie games on Steam is like a Cerberus, where each head has a different idea of how things should work. Greenlight was created because many quality indie games were arbitrarily denied the chance to release on Steam, with no explanation as to why. Unepic and Space Pirates and Zombies are two of the most-cited examples of this.

Greenlight has actually made the process significantly worse because of how inconsistent Valve has been. Just looking at the top 20 new release on Steam, nearly half of them are indie games that didn’t need to go through Greenlight. So…why is that? Who chooses what indie games have to go through Greenlight, and which ones get on Steam automatically? There have even been examples of games by companies who have already released successful games on Steam needing to go through Greenlight for their newest titles. Why did Mode 7 have to push Frozen Endzone through Greenlight after the success that Frozen Synapse has seen on Steam? Wadjet Eye had previously released seven games on Steam, but Primordia had to go through Greenlight for some unknown reason.

Moreover, why does it even matter that Paranautical Activity was trying to bypass Greenlight with a publisher? Isn’t the whole point of a publisher to get your game distributed and released? The whole issue just seems petty to me. Valve has hinted before that their policies are in place to keep terrible games off Steam, but bad games get on Steam all the time. I’m sure everyone remembers the War Z scandal, and even Greenlight has allowed questionable games to slip through because of the very nature of the system. Towns made it through Greenlight and is still being sold on Steam as a complete game, despite being an alpha full of bugs and unfinished content. There is no disclaimer anywhere on the Steam page about it being a paid alpha, and it hasn’t even been moved to the Early Access section yet.

According to YouTuber Jesse Cox on the latest TGS Podcast, the whole Greenlight process is even more screwed up than Valve tells. Jesse, along with Josh from IndieStatik, has a video series called The Greenlight where they highlight games struggling on Greenlight. Jesse pointed out on the podcast that indie developers waiting on Greenlight have the ability to see where they stand in the current rankings, something that is hidden to the average user. It seems that, instead of just releasing the top however many games on Greenlight, Valve picks and chooses whenever determining the next wave of Greenlit titles. This leads to situations where a game that has been sitting in the top 5 on Greenlight is passed up in favor of games further down the list. If this is indeed the case (again, we can’t be sure because of Valve’s lack of transparency) then what is the point in us voting for games on Greenlight? Just what arcane rituals does an indie developer need to perform to get the chance to be on Steam?

What this whole situation proves is that Valve is far from perfect. They clearly have no idea how Greenlight should work. Valve’s lack of transparency and inconsistent decisions can be infuriating, both for indie developers and gamers who want to see unique, good games get the attention they deserve. I’ll still continue to highlight games with my Greenlight Spotlight series. Indeed, this whole series exists because of how screwed up Greenlight is and how difficult it can be to get noticed among the sea of…not so great games waiting for votes. I may not have the same amount of influence as others that have spoken up about the subject, but I’ll continue to do what I can. Remember to go give Paranautical Activity a vote on Greenlight, if you haven’t already.