Yet, for all these success stories, many more Kickstarters fail. Many people have been talking about “Kickstarter fatigue” almost as long as video game Kickstarters have been a thing, yet recent successes like Hyper Light Drifter and Mighty No. 9 seem to prove otherwise. Perhaps the problem isn’t Kickstarter fatigue, but a lack of coverage. Crowd funding campaigns like Project Eternity, Wasteland 2, and Torment: Tides of Numenera had major industry names attached to them, so getting the coverage they needed wasn’t an issue. This is an edge that many indie developers looking into crowd funding don’t really have.

My goal with this article is to highlight some promising games I found on Kickstarter that could use a bit of a boost to reach their funding goal, much like a crowd funding version of my Greenlight articles. Considering the sheer number of games that turn to Kickstarter and Indiegogo these days, it will likely become a somewhat regular series

Paradise Lost: First Contact by Ashtree Works

Paradise Lost has a funding goal of $70,000 and, at the time of writing, is sitting at 83% of its goal with 20 days left. It also has stretch goals going all the way up to a Wii U port at $250,000. In this 2D stealth/action game you play as an alien plant that has been captured by an organization called GER and transported to a bio-engineering lab for study. It features some Metroidvania elements in the form of acquiring new abilities as you progress that allow you to access previously unreachable areas, and some RPG elements in the form of evolution paths. It seems to be primarily a stealth game along the lines of Mark of the Ninja, but there appears to be some combat-focused abilities like spore bombs and armor plating. The minimal tier for a copy of the game is $12, and also includes a PDF with some artwork.

STASIS by Christopher Bischoff

STASIS is currently hovering at around 53% of its $100,000 goal with 26 days left. At its core, STASIS is a traditional point-and-click adventure game played from a 2D isometric perspective. The game promises a mature sci-fi horror storyline with an aesthetic and atmosphere heavily inspired by Alien. The game puts you in the role of John Maracheck, a man who has just awaken from stasis on a repurposed mining vessel called the Groomlake, a seemingly abandoned ship that is secretly used to hide horrifying and illegal experiments conducted by the massive medical conglomerate the Cayne Corporation. At the $20 tier you’ll receive a DRM-free copy of STASIS, a wallpaper, your name in the credits, and access to the backers only area of the forums.

Confederate Express by Maksym Pashanin

This game is already at 308% of the $10,000 goal, but I’m including it so they can hit some more of the stretch goals before the campaign ends in a week. Confederate Express is an isometric tactical shooter where you play as a member of a sort of high risk delivery service in a future filled with zombies and rogue androids. Your goal is to deliver packages and earn money to build up a crew and purchase more advanced weapons and upgrades to tackle increasingly difficult deliveries and even bosses. As with many indie games lately, Confederate Express also features permadeath. The fairly impressive lighting effects deserve a special mention in this 2D pixel art title. A mere $10 is enough to get a Steam key of the game once it’s finished.

The Mandate by Perihelion Interactive

I mentioned The Mandate in my last Release Valve, but this extremely ambitious title is still at only half of its $500,000 goal with 20 days left. The Mandate looks to be a really odd space opera that blends mechanics and elements from several different genres. You have a very story-driven RPG with character interaction, relationship-building, political negations, trading, and galaxy-changing choices to be made, yet there is also ship-based RTS combat as you slowly build up a fleet and XCOM-style battles during boarding operations. Part of me worries that the sheer amount of different mechanics in the game could easily cause the game to fall apart somewhere during development, but the more optimistic side hopes that the developer’s ambitions are fully realized as an excellent and complex space RPG. The $20 tier for this game is very generous, including a DRM-free copy of the game, the soundtrack, digital artbook, wallpapers, backer exclusive ship decals, and avatar profile pictures to use on your favorite social media websites.

The Girl and the Robot by Salim Larochelle

This charming adventure game is at 83% of its $15,000 goal with 17 days left. The Girl and the Robot looks to be a more combat-focused version of Ico, made by an international indie team that includes beautiful artwork reminiscent of Studio Ghibli’s work. As the title suggests, it is the story of a girl and a robot who must work together to find a way out of a mysterious castle ruled by an evil queen. Gameplay is divided into puzzles that require the unique abilities of each character to solve, and combat as the knight-like robot. The combat looks slow and deliberately clunky, not unlike Dark Souls, and even promises to have very hard difficulty settings. At $9 you receive a Humble Store key for a DRM-free copy of the game, access to the current alpha build, and a digital artbook.

Dwarven Delve by TinkerHouse Games

This game is currently at 35% of its actually rather modest goal of $30,000 with 18 days left to go. Based on the videos I’ve seen, Dwarven Delve looks rather far along in development and is targeting an early 2014 release. As for what it is, Dwarven Delve is a unique blend of puzzle gameplay and dungeon crawling where you control a band of six dwarves through maze-like caverns full of monsters. The most unique aspect of the game is the ability to rotate corridors to change the layout of the dungeon, avoiding really strong foes or leading pursuing monsters into traps. As the developers describe it, the goal is ultimately to reconfigure the dungeons in a way that maximizes rewards while minimizing risks. For $10 you get a copy of the game, your name engraved on the “founder’s stone” on the official website, and an art pack containing wallpapers, avatars, and icons.

That’s it for now. Even if you don’t plan on actually pledging money to these games, still remember to at least check out their Greenlight pages. Most of them have one, with a link to it somewhere on the Kickstarter page.

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.

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.

Earlier this month we had another wave of Greenlights, with three pieces of software and eight games: Actual Multiple Monitors, FL Studio, Leadwerks 3: Steam Edition, Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller, Day One: Garry’s Incident, Guncraft, Homesick, In Verbis Virtus, Super Motherload, Vector,and Verdun. Verdun is the only game on that list that seems really appealing to me, if I’m totally honest, but more games getting through Greenlight isn’t a bad thing if they are games that people actually want. With the Steam sales going on this month I don’t expect to see any more Greenlights for at least a few weeks. Speaking of Steam sales, I’d like to start this Greenlight Spotlight with two games that recently came out and have largely been ignored because they are A.) not on Steam and B.) launched during the sales:

Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages by Triple-B-Titles

This top-down space shooter came out last week on GOG.com for $15. The developer said on his Twitter account that the game’s sales so far have been abysmal, likely due to not being on Steam and releasing at a bad time. It’s a shame too, because I’ve been playing this game to review it and I have a pretty positive impression so far. The campaign starts pretty slow, with linear levels and nothing in the way of ship customization, but eventually opens up later on. The controls take a bit of getting used to, with the game’s large emphasis on Newtonian movement and physics, but once you get the hang of it you can pull off some really satisfying maneuvers. The multiplayer modes show a lot of promise too, but I can’t really speak of them because of aforementioned disappointing sales leading to a lack of players.

Humans Must Answer by Sumom Games

This quirky shmup by some of the ex-S.T.A.L.K.E.R. devs also released on GOG last week and was largely ignored. I’ve not played it yet (mainly because I’m terrible at side-scrolling bullet hell games), but the responses that I’ve read on forums so far have been rather positive. It’s a challenging side-scrolling shooter that takes a lot of inspiration from older ’80s and ’90s classics such as Gradius. It also involves two intelligent space chickens piloting an eagle-shaped ship on a mission to punish humanity for their fried chicken-eating ways. Expect lots of bird and egg puns.

Strike Vector by P.E, Pao, Elliot, and Sano     

Strike Vector, an Unreal Engine-powered aerial combat game, has been getting a lot of coverage from some major game websites lately because of how impressive it looks. The footage currently being shown off was made by just four guys in just under a year. It reminds me a lot of Hawken, yet another extremely visually impressive multiplayer game that was made by a small group of developers. In Strike Vector, you pilot an advanced VTOL jet fighter that can switch between the blisteringly fast jet mode and a hover mode for more precise aiming and defensive capabilities. I personally feel that aerial combat games really need to get that sense of speed just right to be enjoyable, and Strike Vector looks like it has nailed it. The game will be focused mostly on multiplayer, with a variety of game modes and plenty of customizability for your jets, but the developers are considering some form of solo play last I heard.

Kingdoms Rise by Flyleap Studios

Speaking of impressive, Unreal Engine-powered indie games, here is Kingdoms Rise, a multiplayer-focused fantasy sword combat game made by two Australian dudes. After watching the videos, I have to say that Kingdoms Rise reminds me a lot of Fatshark and Paradox’s War of the Roses. Kingdoms Rise features a 360 degree directional combat system, much like War of the Roses, but hopefully not quite as floaty. There are no classes in Kingdoms Rise, you instead just build your character and fighting style based on what weapons and gear you equip. It looks like they are shooting for a full release at the end of this year.

Maia by Simon Roth

Maia is an interesting crowdfunding success story because it managed to get fully funded on both Kickstarter and Indiegogo, while many indie titles struggle reaching their goals in just one campaign. It’s clear that this Dungeon Keeper-esque sci-fi management game has a lot of gamers very excited. In Maia, it’s your job to establish a functioning, stable colony on a distant, alien world. It’s visual aesthetic takes a lot of inspiration from the gritty, low-technology sci-fi of the ’70s. You’ll not only have to deal with the problems associated with colonizing a new planet, but also the needs and mental health of your colonists. It might be sci-fi instead of fantasy, but I’ve been waiting for a solid management game along the lines of Dungeon Keeper for many years now, so Maia definitely has my attention.

Teslagrad by Rain Games

Teslagrad is yet another perfect example of a game that should be going straight to Steam. The early builds have been receiving an overwhelmingly positive reaction from critics, and the devs have already announced PS3 and WiiU versions after negotiations with Sony and Nintendo. So why does this game have to wade through the Greenlight process to get on Steam? I have no idea. As for what it is, Teslagrad is a 2D puzzle-platformer with a charming graphics style set in some sort of steampunk dystopia based on Europe circa the early 20th century. The game’s puzzles all involve the manipulation of magnetism and electricity, using a mysterious gauntlet you acquire early in the game. Teslagrad is nearing completion, with an estimated release date towards the end of the year.

Satellite Reign by Five Lives Studios

Satellite Reign is the spiritual successor to Syndicate that we’ve been waiting for, made by the lead designer of Syndicate Wars. The game is still early in development, with an active Kickstarter campaign that could use a boost. The pitch has some grand ideas for emergent gameplay and advanced enemy and civilian AI. We are talking enemy AI that might get frightened and run away when outnumbered, or enemy soldiers that get bored and deviate from their patrol routes. You can use propaganda to manipulate civilians into rising up in open revolt, or hack their brain implants and use them as living shields to cover your squad. I try not to get too hyped about games this early in development, but Syndicate is one of those franchises I’ve always wanted to see a proper reboot or reimaging of, using modern graphics and technology…Which is one reason why I wrote many angry rants when EA tried to reboot the series as an uninspired, mediocre corridor shooter.

Dungeonmans by Jim Shepard

This was a last minute addition to the list because of an active Kickstarter that could use some attention. I’ve become addicted to lighter, more accessible roguelikes recently due to games like FTL, Sword of the Stars: The Pit, and Dungeons of Dredmor, so I’m always looking for similar games. Dungeonmans has a lot in common with the recent Rogue Legacy, but played from a more traditional top-down perspective with turn-based tactical combat. There is an overarching gameplay mechanic of building an academy to help prepare new heroes, based on the knowledge and artifacts acquired by the heroes that came before them, so that each slain hero and unsuccessful attempt still contributes something towards future tries. The fairly modest funding goal (compared to many other Kickstarters) could easily be reached in the two weeks left with just a bit more support.

Warmachine: Tactics by WhiteMoon Dreams and Privateer Press

In an even more last minute addition, I decided to highlight Warmachine: Tactics. The tabletop miniature game’s first foray into the medium of video games has already been met with a successful (and currently still active) Kickstarter before just now adding a Greenlight page. The video game adaptation looks like it will play very similar to the tabletop game, but on a smaller scale. For gamers who aren’t familiar with how Warmachine plays, think XCOM: Enemy Unknown in a steampunk world where battle-wizards wearing magical power armor, called Warcasters, control huge, ten-ton steam-powered robots called Warjacks. The initial game will launch with a campaign for Cygnar, following a new character named Lt. Allison Jakes, and a multiplayer mode where you can play as any of the four main factions. The developers are already talking about supporting the game long after release, with more maps, campaigns for the other factions, new units, etc.

As always, remember to check out previous Greenlight Spotlights for more promising indie games that could use your help getting on Steam.

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.

My previous few Greenlight articles focused primarily on games with active crowd-funding campaigns. Most of those campaigns are over now, so let’s take a quick look at the results: Among the Sleep was struggling for a while there, but a surge of support in the final hours allowed the Kickstarter to end with $248,358, hitting three of the five stretch goals. A.N.N.E. closed with $100,272, allowing the game to reach three of the seven stretch goals. It was pretty close, but Ghost of a Tale‘s Indiegogo campaign managed to close at 48,700€, just over the target goal of 45,000€. The Stomping Land still has a few days left, but it is already raised more than three times its original goal. Unfortunately, The Realm was over £100,000 short of its goal. The developers plan to try again sometime in the future.

There has also been some new games Greenlit since my last article, which I mentioned here. Those titles include Bleed, Game Dev Tycoon, The Legend, Legends of Eisenwald, RIOT, and Stardew Valley. The PC versions of Bleed and Game Dev Tycoon are already out, so I expect that we should be seeing Steam releases before too long. Now that the Greenlight updates are out of the way, we can get on with this week’s five game spotlights:

Cannon Brawl by Turtle Sandbox Games

Cannon Brawl is an interesting mix of a 2D RTS/artillery game. You control an airship and must use it to construct towers in an attempt to destroy your opponent’s base. The terrain is 100% destructible, and you can use this to your advantage to pull off some pretty impressive strategies. The game is close to being finished, with a set release date sometime this summer for $10. There is an alpha demo that you can try that gives you a good idea of what to expect from both the campaign and the multiplayer.

Darkwood by Acid Wizard Studios

Darkwood is a top-down, open world survival horror game that has been getting quite a bit of hype lately because of its ongoing Indiegogo campaign. It features some roguelike elements in the form of permadeath and the world’s randomly generated nature, so each playthrough will be different. The game’s use of line of sight and lighting looks fantastic, and adds a lot to the tension of the game’s already oppressive atmosphere.

Wrack by Final Boss Entertainment

Wrack is a fast-paced, old school-style FPS that borrows heavily from classics like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and Quake. In fact, one of their big selling points is that Bobby Prince (of Doom and Wolfenstein fame) is working on Wrack‘s music and sound effects. The level design looks to be another big plus for this game, with large, multi-tiered levels full of alternate paths, secrets, and hazardous terrain, just like in the old days. The game will ship with the so-called WrackEd software, a fully-featured level editor and suite of mod tools.

Starship Corporation by Ratakari

Starship Corporation is exactly what it says on the tin: a management sim about running a starship manufacturer. You design starships, making sure that the internal layout is optimal for the starship’s role, and sell the finished product to other companies and groups. You can create everything from mining vessels to gigantic battleships using over 50 types of rooms divided into 6 categories. You can also take on missions with your ships to gauge their performance, and even create your own private fleet to defend your interests. There is a playable alpha out right now that is really rough around the edges, but such is the nature of early builds.     

The Forest by SKS Games

I heard someone describe The Forest as a higher resolution, more survival horror-focused version of Minecraft, and that description seems fair enough. In The Forest, you play as the lone survivor of a plane crash that leaves you stranded in a mysterious forest with aggressive, cannibalistic mutants. The goal is simply to survive by any means necessary, be it by building fortifications to bunker down in at night or by crafting crude weapons to try and fight off the mutants. The environments and lighting effects look amazing, and SKS is looking to launch with full Oculus Rift support.

That’s all for this week. Remember to check some of my previous Greenlight Spotlights for more interesting games. Of all the games I’ve highlighted, only Cradle has made it through so far. My hope is that these articles can do at least a little to help change that.

Continuing Valve’s recent push towards more frequent, smaller waves of games to make the Greenlight process faster, six new titles have been Greenlit. This time around we have Bleed, Game Dev Tycoon, The Legend, Legends of Eisenwald, RIOT, and Stardew Valley.

The games that immediately stand out to me are Bleed, Game Dev Tycoon, and RIOT. Game Dev Tycoon is perhaps best known for its ironic and novel approach to combating piracy. I own the 360 version of Bleed and it is a fun, if somewhat standard, action-platformer for a cheap price. Yes, the “16-bit indie retro platformer-thing” genre is really oversaturated at the moment, but if you have $5 to spare and want a challenging action game with old school charm and a few memorable moments then you may want to give Bleed a try.

RIOT was generating a lot of hype a while back, even finishing with a 241% funded Indiegogo campaign a few months back. It tackles some provocative subjects that don’t really get explored in video games, and the developers have a relevant message they want to express with this game. In fact, the devs are so devoted to this topic that they are apparently planning to travel around Europe and the Middle East to experience and document real, ongoing riots and civil unrest.

With this recent wave of releases, the total number of games that have been Greenlit is sitting at 93. So far, 33 of those games have made it onto Steam, either as a full release or part of the new Early Access program.

My previous article focused on Greenlight games with active Kickstarters. Three of those Kickstarters have since ended, and I’m happy to report that C-Wars, Chasm, and Worlds of Magic were all successfully funded. C-Wars was extremely successful, ending with $95,574 (goal was $32,000) and reaching every stretch goal. Chasm only met two stretch goals, but still made a respectable $191,897 (goal was $150,000). Worlds of Magic ended with £45,593 (goal was £30,000) and was just shy of getting its final stretch goal. Worlds of Magic also has an alpha funding campaign, and any money earned from that will go towards the content promised in the final stretch goal.

Among the Sleep has 4 days to go and has only reached $184,247 of its $200,000 goal. A.N.N.E. still has 8 days to go and is just over its goal of $70,000, with a long list of stretch goals to hit. Since my last article, I also wrote a short article about Ghost of a Tale and its Indiegogo campaign. The Indiegogo campaign has 8 days left and is sitting at 34,612€ of its 45,000€ goal.

Since my previous Greenlight article there was also a mini wave of three Greenlit games. Papers, Please, Edge of Space, and Venetica made it through this time around. It is great to see both Papers, Please and Edge of Space make it. Papers, Please is an oddball game that sounds like it wouldn’t be too interesting, but manages to be very compelling with fun gameplay and a real message worth exploring. Edge of Space looks very promising as a fun alternative to Terraria and the other increasingly popular block-based building games. Venetica is an action RPG that has been out for some time. It also wasn’t very good, but it isn’t really my place to complain about such things here. Valve has stated that they will do these mini waves more often to help speed up the Greenlight process.

Now that the updates are out of the way, time to get on with today’s Greenlight Spotlight. This time I wanted to focus on some so-called “Concept Games.” This section of Greenlight is mostly devoted to games that are extremely early in development. The goal here isn’t so much to get Greenlit as it is to get as much feedback as possible, or even find people who would be interested in helping out with development. Because of this, most of these games are primarily concept art, target renderings, and extremely early prototypes, but they are all interesting and unique in their own ways.

The Somme by TopHat Studios

The Somme is marketing itself as the first commercial attempt at making a multiplayer-focused WWI shooter. Like Red Orchestra, The Somme will be heavily focused on teamwork and tactics, and TopHat Studios is doing everything they can to make it as authentic as possible. It will use a class-based system and feature the ability to ride horses and use vehicles. The tanks in The Somme will operate much like they do in Red Orchestra, where you need a whole crew to effectively use them. So far they are looking to include Somme, Passchendaele, and The Battle of Lake Naroch as maps, with more coming later. The renderings and animations look pretty good so far; TopHat Studios is using Unreal Engine 3 to make The Somme.

Junkers by syaped

Junkers started as concept art and videos created by just one animator, and the developer is currently looking for people with the necessary skills required to make this game a reality. In Junkers, players manage a crew of scavengers in space, so-called “junkers,” as they raid derelict spaceships for anything worth selling on the black market. Gameplay will be made up of both real-time tactical battles during the raids and a management screen where you have to handle your crew’s finances, hire new crewmen, trade and sell materials that you scavenged from derelict ships, and more. The target renderings look really charming; it reminds me of Syndicate and many other classic isometric tactical games from the ’90s.

Ludus silva by Jayelinda

Ludus silva is an interesting sandbox strategy game where the goal is to build a thriving forest by using an editor to design plants best suited for the current environment. The editor looks quite robust so far, and you’ll have to consider many environmental factors to ensure that the plants survive. One example the developer gives is that plants with big, broad leaves are more effective at gathering sunlight, but also susceptible to UV damage if you don’t carefully consider where you put such plants. This means that to create a thriving forest you’ll need a diverse range of plant species of various shapes and sizes. Some examples of environments to expect are fertile plains, deserts, swamps, and mountains.

The Realm by Atomhawk Design

This game has been getting some buzz lately because of its active Kickstarter. The Realm is an adventure game set in the distant future, where some event has caused our world to be reclaimed by nature. Humanity is now limited to small, sparse rural communities where magic exists and our modern technologies have long since been abandoned and forgotten. Players will control a young girl named Sarina and her giant stone golem companion Toru on a quest to find a cure for a mysterious illness afflicting Sarina’s mother. The game will focus heavily on solving environmental puzzles using the strengths and special abilities of both characters. The Kickstarter could use a boost; The Realm is only 31% funded with just over a week left. The game is mostly a concept at this point, but the art direction is gorgeous.

The Stomping Land by Alex Fundora

Like The Realm, The Stomping Land also has an active Kickstarter, but it is already over 200% funded with nearly a month to go. The Stomping Land is an open-world multiplayer survival game where you play as a primitive hunter on an island full of dinosaurs. The goal is simply to survive by hunting smaller dinosaurs. The process of hunting is made difficult by the fact that the smell of fresh blood attracts larger carnivores, giving you a limited window to gather meat from a kill.

You can improve your chances with traps, distractions, or simply forming tribes with other players. Creating tribes and hunting parties with others is a pretty big part of the game. It not only improves your chances at a successful hunt, but also allows you to more easily stockpile food and other resources vital for your continued survival. The game also incorporates the idea of raiding other tribes and fighting for access to prime hunting grounds.

That’s all for today’s Greenlight Spotlight. Remember to check out the previous articles to find more interesting games. Of the 15 games I’ve highlighted in this series so far, only one (Cradle) has been Greenlit. Also remember to check out the Kickstarters I’ve brought up in both this article and the previous one.

Greenlight Spotlight 1

Greenlight Spotlight: Kickstarter Edition

Ghost of a Tale is an action-adventure game where you play as an anthropomorphic mouse in a medieval setting who finds himself on a mysterious, haunted island that was once a garrison for an army of rats. There is combat, as the alpha trailer shows, but the main focus is on exploration and trying to unravel the mystery of what happened to the island. This game is still a very early concept and is full of incomplete assets, but what is on display looks pretty promising. It heavily evokes the charm and general feel of many classic animated films from the ’80s and ’90s, which admittedly was Lionel’s goal.

In addition to the Indiegogo campaign, you can also support Ghost of a Tale on Steam Greenlight. Assuming that Lionel gets the funding he needs, the target release date is sometime in 2014.

Recently we got a chance to hop aboard with Yacht Club Games for a long chat about the already popular upcoming title, Shovel Knight. Along the way we discuss their origins as a team, their inspirations for the game, the Kickstarter campaign, the story, and other amazing details. Let’s take a look!

Could you say your name and what your responsibility on the team is?

Woz: My name is Nick, I go by Woz. I do everything that is not programming or music. I’m not solely responsible for that stuff, but I do contribute a lot of stuff to the game.

Sean: I am Sean Velasco, and generally I have designer, directorial duties [at WayForward.] That’s pretty much what I’m doing here, too, except since we’re a smaller group we have to wear a lot of hats. So I’ve been doing a lot of pixel work.

Ian: I’m Ian Floyd. I’m primarily a programmer or gameplay programmer on the project. But, just the same, I’m involved in various areas of the project.

Erin: I’m Erin. I do a lot of the illustrations, the graphic work, logos, and character design.

Sean: Yeah, every pixel model that we put together Erin does a sketch of it on paper first.

How did you all end up coming together on this project?

Woz: We worked as a pretty close team at WayForward. We did Double Dragon Neon recently.

Sean: We’re part of the team…

Woz: Right, not us exclusively, but a lot of us are part of the core team.

Sean: The majority of all our careers have been in WayForward. I assistant directed Contra 4, and then I directed A Boy and His Blob. Then there was BloodRayne: Betrayal, which Erin did concept designs for, and Woz did a lot of the effects for. So we’ve been working together for quite a while. That’s how we all got together.

What stage of development are you at right now? Alpha? Pre-alpha?

Woz: Way before that.

Sean: Basically we have kind of what you’ve seen in the PAX demo and what’s on the Kickstarter page. Other than that, we’re still in the very early stages of development. So…we’re maybe like ten or fifteen percent done.

Has it been hard to get back into development since your Kickstarter came to an end?

Nick: Once we’ve been in the weird pitch mode on Kickstarter for so long, it is a little bit daunting to get back into the actual production.

Sean: Just starting like that, it’s been all hands on deck doing the Kickstarter, doing promotion, getting the word out about the game, responding to comments. We’re just going start getting back into development now.

Often when you see the ‘making of’ footage it shows progressive character designs that resemble little of the final product. Did you guys go through a lot of variations before his final look?

Sean: There were a couple [designs]. We knew from the beginning that he was a diminutive knight with horns that carried a shovel.

Woz: We knew the basics of it. Sean did a basic sprite of it, and then I took a pass at it. It kinda went back and forth a little bit and finally landed on a sprite we all liked.

Sean: The sprite Shovel Knight and the Illustrated Shovel Knight are two different models, basically. So it was two different efforts. Shovel Knight also went through some revisions and you can even see that the models on the Kickstarter page are slightly different, because we were still getting the character design one hundred percent locked down.

Woz: Yeah, figuring out if we can get it to look right in-game and if it feels NES-y enough. The best example I can think of is if you look at the King Knight sprite on the front page. You can see he’s pretty detailed, but in the actual gameplay footage you can see he’s not totally rendered the same way and has a lot of simplifications. That way he feels more NES-y.

So what about the bosses? Did that go fairly quickly once you nailed down the Shovel Knight’s appearance? Did you have a pretty good idea of what you wanted them to look like?

Sean: I think the bosses went through more revisions than Shovel Knight. We spent a lot of time working with those.

Erin: Just seeing what we could what can we do with a knight mask, or how can we implement different masks for each boss was a big part of it. And then sewing on a simple, yet pixelable character was a big deal. Color choices came from what was available on the NES palette.

Sean: We wanted to make sure all the knights fit in together as a group, so we wanted to make sure we had good representations of big characters and little characters. We wanted to make sure each one felt different, so they went through a lot of revisions, and I think we ended up with a pretty solid lineup.

They look pretty fun. The Polar Knight is my favorite so far. What do you guys go to for inspiration? Have you found yourselves getting a little creative block, and if so what do you go to in order to alleviate that?

Sean: We play a lot of games together obviously. It’s like we’re embedded with each other. The whole Yacht Club is together almost all the time, so it’s a free flowing of ideas. Art is happening all the time. So I think generally if one of us is having a block, we just talk to the whole group and then you can work through it.

Woz: And that means writing down our ideas, having a brainstorm session the whiteboard, or just getting lunch together and hashing out a concept or an idea. If it’s a character creation, Erin spends time getting inspiration from various other artists. We kinda source everything, right?

Erin: Real knight helmets for the bosses in particular.

Sean: It’s just a big group effort for the most part. Now the cool part is, with Kickstarter we have the Director For a Day and Design Hangouts, so now we’re going to start bringing some of our Kickstarter backers into the fray to help come up with ideas and to implement cool stuff. We haven’t really started with that yet, but we have done a few livestreams where we have a lot of creativity and wackiness.

How many backers did you have for that?

A couple hundred actually.

Wow.

Sean: We probably won’t be bringing in each person individually. Instead, we’ll do like a Twitch TV stream or Google Hangout style of thing. Everyone will be in the channel, we’re going to talk through the problems, maybe we’ll be at the whiteboard, maybe we’ll be typing it into the [design] document, and then people can throw in ideas, and we can have a dialogue with the whole group.

Woz: Yeah, we want to make it feel as organic as it does when we’re actually designing stuff as a group together. If somebody has an idea and other people latch onto it, then we’ll talk about that idea. It’s not just people observing what we’re doing, it’s a lot of interaction and getting ideas from the group.

Sean: Whatever makes us laugh the loudest.

Woz: Basically.

So you’re kinda pushing the record for largest indie team with that number.

Sean: Yeah. [Laughter]

Let’s talk about the story. What kind of format are you presenting it in? Is it going to be cut-scenes? Are we going to meet characters mid-level? What can you tell us about that?

Sean: That’s something we’ve been talking about a lot recently. We’re really big on story, and theme, and tone, but we hate it when it gets bogged down with too much narrative. So imagine you’re playing a game and you stop and all your momentum is lost because you have to have a cut-scene interaction with a character. That’s something we definitely want to avoid. So we’re looking for ways to make it so we’re not stopping the action. Maybe we’ll do, like you were saying, conversations or talking heads, but it would be in a pretty limited capacity. Like maybe before boss battles, or if we were to do a town or a merchant I imagine you would have some dialogue lines there where we could inject some more personality.

Woz: But a lot of the story is going to be situational. In gameplay, what you see in the background, how we decorate certain things, you’re going to get a sense of what’s happening without being overtly told that you’re going to the last boss of the game, or whatever.

Sean: Like in Super Metroid, right before you fight Kraid, there’s a dead space marine that looks sort of similar to you. I feel like that one sprite just sitting there tells more story than a lot of other games. That type of thing. Or if you’ve played A Boy and His Blob, that’s another game that I directed that some of us worked on, that game does a lot with story without too many cut-scenes. There’s actually no written dialogue in the entire game. We want to go more that direction. That’s our approach to story.

Aside from the bosses, the level design is so neat to watch because it’s nostalgia, it’s excitement for what’s coming and what we get to do again. It hearkens to all the great things that made gaming awesome growing up. When you were designing levels, how many different games did you reference as far as your inspiration for what you wanted to do?

Woz: For the level design specifically…how did that work out?

Sean: We had a brainstorming session and the only level we’ve really gone through is the King Knight’s level from the PAX demo. We went through a ton of different gameplay objects, the falling chandeliers and the book that makes the pages appear. And even enemies, like the wizard that shoots at you that you can reflect back, the knight that you have more of an actual dual with. We planned out how the flow of the stage was going to be, so we said in the beginning that you’re going to be outside the castle, then you’ll be sort of storming the interior, and then you’ll go down into the abyss like into the actual proper interior of the castle which is the library room, and then you’ll come out of it get to the throne room where King Knight is.

We thought about it in the context of a story, and we thought about how these gameplay objects would all interact with each other and with enemies. Then we just started putting it together and iterating.

Woz: The level design comes from games we played in the past like Mega Man, or other Capcom titles like Duck Tales.

Sean: The screen transitions are entirely Mega Man.

Woz: It feels very solid. You have a good sense of what a room is, and where you can actually go. There’s not a lot of weird camera movement. That’s captured pretty well in Mega Man, and we wanted to retain that. A lot of the combat ideas we’ve been talking about have come after playing Zelda II a lot. There’s a little bit of Dark Souls in there, how we deal with the player’s value systems and how death incorporates into that so you want to keep the things you have because dying makes you lose a lot of it.

Sean: That sense of fear…

Woz: The tension, yeah. So, it is a lot of games but it is starting to feel unique. We definitely are obviously referencing Nintendo games. Nintendo is who we are, it’s in our blood, and it’s where we’re going with this game. It’s an NES palette, so it feels like it’s on the NES.

What makes it feel like its classic is that it’s done design first. How is the fun going to work, how will the interactions work, and what is the gameplay going to be like? We built everything around that. So because we did that, it’s a more abstract sense of fun, and that’s what you generally find in Nintendo. Not just ones from the past, but modern day ones.

It’s really cool to see the way that this project has spread out. It got the attention of the original Mega Man composer (Manami Matsumae), who is contributing two songs. Where will those songs appear, and how will you be collaborating?

Woz:  That was a really random thing for us, too. Like you said, she reached out to us. She was working with these guys over at Koopa Soundworks. He saw Shovel Knight and wanted to support it, so he looked us up. She’s real excited about it. She wants to get back into the Western Market, and be relevant to the current gamespace. It’s pretty cool to be able to facilitate that.

Basically they are doing chip tune album with a lot of notable composers on it, and she was one of them. So that’s how we got hooked up.

Woz: We don’t really know where she’s going to fit as far as like what songs specifically in the game. We’re hoping she does a couple level tracks.

And perhaps a collaboration with Jake. Kind of like a dueling banjos sort of thing, where they are contributing to a single song.

Erin: That’s going to awesome.

I’m sold.

Woz: Yes! I want the soundtrack so bad.

Thanks guys! Next up we’ll talk about Kickstarter rewards, Director For A Day, future game designers, and recapturing the glory of the NES days! Tune in next week for Part Two!

Before I get to the real meat of this article, it’s time for a quick Greenlight update. As I reported, 18 games have been Greenlit since my previous article. Of the games I featured in the last Greenlight Spotlight, only Cradle made it through this recent wave of titles. Sadly, Rekoil, 99 Levels to Hell, Driftmoon, and GoD Factory: Wingmen are still waiting in Greenlight limbo. Please remember to go check these games out and leave them a vote and comment if you are interested in seeing them on Steam.

One other sad piece of news to report is that one of the games that made it through the latest wave of Greenlit titles has since been canceled. After a failed Kickstarter and alpha funding campaign, Death Inc.‘s developer Ambient Studios announced that they will be closing their doors. They simply don’t have the money to keep operating, and will be issuing full refunds to the alpha backers in the coming weeks.

Things aren’t all doom and gloom though. Some pretty promising titles made it through the Greenlight process and will hopefully be on Steam before too long. The steampunk action MMORPG City of Steam made it through, as did Frozen Endzone, the next game by the developers of the critically-acclaimed and commercially successful Frozen Synapse. After highly successful Kickstarters, both Shovel Knight and Battle Worlds: Kronos also made it through.

All this talk of Kickstarters brings us to the common theme shared among today’s five spotlighted games: each one currently has an active Kickstarter campaign. If any of these games interest you, and you have some money to spare, perhaps you should also consider a pledge to their Kickstarter campaigns in addition to a vote-up on Greenlight.

Worlds of Magic by Wastelands Interactive

By the time this article is posted, Worlds of Magic‘s Kickstarter will have less than two days left. Luckily, they have already exceeded their funding target of £30,000, but as with most Kickstarters there are always stretch goals to hit.

Worlds of Magic is yet another 4X fantasy title trying to recapture the feeling of the classic Master of Magic by Microprose back in 1994. The game still looks really rough, as expected of a pre-alpha, but it seems to have the foundation of a solid 4X fantasy game. There is set to be nearly 100 units spread across six factions, twelve diverse schools of magic, multiple planes to explore and conquer, and who knows what else could be added if the Kickstarter campaign is successful enough.

Among the Sleep by Krillbite Studio

This rather unique take on the Amnesia-style of classic horror gaming gained quite a bit of buzz when it was announced a while back and now it is on Greenlight and Kickstarter. As I write this, their Kickstarter campaign is just over halfway to its $200,000 goal, and they still have plenty of time to reach it.

For those of you who’ve yet to hear about it, Among the Sleep is an atmospheric, exploration-based horror game from the perspective of a two-year-old child. The idea of playing as a toddler in a horror game is actually pretty brilliant, and based on the trailers Krillbite seems to be doing a great job with the concept. Everything seems so big and monstrous through the eyes of a young child with an overactive imagination. The game will be tackling the themes of how surreal dreams and confusion over the way the everyday world works can make things seem more frightening than they actually are.

Chasm by Discord Games LLC

Action RPG Chasm‘s Kickstarter has just under two weeks left, but they are pretty close to their $150,000 goal. At the time of writing, they are about 78% of the way to being fully funded.

Chasm is a 2D Metroidvania-style action RPG/platformer that creates a procedurally-generated dungeon with each play through. In other words, each time you play should be a unique experience as the dungeon layout and loot drops are randomized. Bosses will also be randomized in the same way that items are. Multiple modes allow you to tackle the game as either a “score attack” or slightly more roguelike experience with permadeath.

A.N.N.E by Gamesbymo

On the subject of 2D Metroidvanias, A.N.N.E has been getting a lot of attention over the past week or so. It’s Kickstarter campaign went up around a week ago and it is a little over halfway to its rather modest $70,000 goal. Most of the stretch goals are related to porting the game to other platforms like PSN, the WiiU’s eShop, and the OUYA.

A.N.N.E is an open world 2D Metroidvania/action RPG where you can explore both on foot and in a ship. The game seems to have a basic physics system where you can use your ship to pick up and move heavy objects, thus allowing you to get to new areas.  The game is meant to be truly open, in the sense that you can theoretically get to areas you “shouldn’t” be yet if you are smart and skilled enough to overcome the obstacles and higher level enemies blocking your path.

C-Wars by Onipunks

C-Wars is doing really well for itself on Kickstarter. They are well past their target goal of $32,000, and they are now focusing on stretch goals that include ports to other platforms and contests where fans can vote for new weapons and options to be added to the final game.

C-Wars is an oddball game that is pretty hard to describe. I’d recommend watching one of the trailers. It is a combination of an action RTS/RPG roguelike where you fight on a grid in real time. You micromanage a powerful hero unit while also deploying various allied units that fight with you. It looks a lot like the old Mega Man Battle Network games on the GBA, combined with some sort of tower defense/action RTS and permadeath. If nothing else it is quite a unique game that looks pretty fast-paced and hectic.

As with all Kickstarters, remember that just because a game has reached its funding that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pledge some money if able. Every little bit counts, and a campaign meeting its stretch goals just means that the final product will be that much better. Also remember to leave these games a vote on Greenlight. A successful Kickstarter is great, but getting the chance to sell your game on Steam is even better.

Today, Valve announced the sixth set of games and software to make it through the Steam Greenlight process. This set includes 20 items in total, with 18 games and two pieces of software:

• Agarest: Generations of War
• Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures
• Battle Worlds: Kronos
• City of Steam
• Cradle
• Dead State
• Dead Trigger
• Death Inc.
• Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey
• Elsword
• Faceless
• Frozen Endzone
• Hammerwatch
• Legend of Dungeon
• Pinball Arcade
• Planet Explorers
• Rush Bros.
• Shovel Knight
• PlayClaw (Software)
• GamePlan (Software)

Quite a few good-looking games on that list. I mentioned Cradle in my Greenlight article last week. Sadly, Cradle was the only game in that article that was Greenlit, so remember to go vote if any of the games I mentioned look interesting to you. I personally find it bizarre that Frozen Endzone even needed to go through Greenlight. This is the next game made by the developers of the critically-acclaimed and rather successful Frozen Synapse; you’d think they wouldn’t need Greenlight since their previous title was such a hit on Steam.

With this sixth wave, a total of over 90 games and pieces of software have made it through Greenlight. Roughly 28 of these titles have since been released on Steam.

Even though Valve seems pretty indie-friendly, actually getting your game onto Steam can be a mysterious, arcane process. If you look around, you’ll find a lot of horror stories from indie devs about how they were repeatedly rejected from Steam and never really told why. It is a complete mystery why infamously bad and critically-destroyed games like Revelations 2012 and The War Z made it onto Steam, yet rather well-received titles like Unepic and all the stuff by Puppy Games had to struggle to get their chance.

Steam Greenlight is Valve’s attempt to rectify this by giving the customers a voice. Unfortunately, Greenlight has had its share of bumps along the way, and still isn’t really where many of us hoped it would be. The first few days saw the service flooded with joke submissions, forcing Valve to add a $100 fee to the submission requirements. Even with the fee, I’ve personally seen some shady games get listed. I remember one awful-looking Chinese MMO that shamelessly stole art assets and character designs from a number of popular animes. The devs didn’t even try to hide their blatant copyright infringement, and it took Valve a solid week to remove the game from Greenlight.

Like all things related to Valve, Greenlight also has a real lack of transparency. The average Steam user can’t really see stats on Greenlight, such as how many votes a game has, how many it needs, etc., giving some people the feeling that their votes don’t really matter. When it first launched, each game’s Greenlight page had a progress bar. However, the progress bar didn’t really tell you anything, and Valve eventually got rid of it. As far as I can tell, only Valve and the person who submitted a game can actually tell how a game is doing on Greenlight.

Even when games get through Greenlight, there is still controversy. The game Towns is still in alpha, yet as soon as it made it through Greenlight the developers released it on Steam. The Steam page for Towns doesn’t make it clear that the game is still very much in development, which led to angry customers who bought the game and realized it is still buggy and full of unfinished mechanics. “Paid Alphas” are popular on Desura and some other indie sites, but Steam users expect the games they buy to be finished. The new Early Access section provides a place for customers to buy paid alphas at a discounted price, but Towns isn’t under this category.

Despite the four paragraphs of criticism, things aren’t all bad about Greenlight. Quite a few genuinely good and critically-acclaimed games have been given their chance to shine on Steam because of Greenlight. Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams, Forge, and Kentucky Route Zero are just a few such examples.

I think one of the biggest obstacles preventing people from using Greenlight more is just how overwhelming it all is. At the time of writing, there are 1,192 games on Greenlight. That is a lot to sift through, especially when many of them are…less than good, to put it kindly. That’s why I’m writing this article. Despite all the muck, there are a lot of very promising titles sitting in Greenlight Limbo that could use an up-vote. If any of these games look interesting to you, remember to give them a thumbs-up and maybe even leave a comment for the devs. Many of the developers of these games are open to ideas and criticism, and can often be seen interacting with users in the comments section. So, enough of this overly-long intro, let’s look at some games:

Rekoil by Plastic Piranha

At first glance, Rekoil may look like yet another fairly generic modern military shooter. However, upon closer inspection, one will find that Rekoil is actually a more old-school, skill-focused shooter that caters heavily to the modding community and eSports scene. Rekoil is a shooter that has stripped away many of the more common tropes and mechanics of modern military shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield. It isn’t focused on progression systems, unlocks, and kill-streak superpowers.

Rekoil is designed from the ground up to be a competitive, balanced shooter. Mod tools will be available from day one, and the modding community has the developer’s full support. For the eSports scene, Plastic Piranha will be implementing fully-featured replays, a spectator mode, and even LAN support on top of the game’s highly customizable dedicated servers.

99 Levels to Hell by Zaxis Games and B-evil

99 Levels to Hell is an action-platformer roguelike along the lines of Spelunky that came out back in February. If you want to know more about it, you can check out my review here. The basic idea is that you fight your way through 100 increasingly tough, monster-filled levels with bosses every 10 stages. Along the way you’ll pick up all sorts of weapons, power-ups, and spells. The roguelike elements come in the form of permadeath and semi-randomized level layouts and item drops. The game is already on sale at places like Desura and GOG.com, but getting a Steam release could really help out this obscure little gem.

Cradle by Flying Cafe for Semianimals

Cradle is a rather odd-looking yet gorgeous point-and-click adventure that was announced quite a while back. I don’t usually like the genre, but something about this particular title has really grabbed my attention. The player is dropped into a yurt in the middle of the Mongolian hills without any company except for a malfunctioning mechanical girl. The player needs to restore the robot girl’s functions, and also uncover the secrets behind an abandoned amusement park not far from their yurt. The way the player interacts with objects in the environment looks quite interesting, and the game promises multiple endings to its rather mysterious story.

Driftmoon by Instant Kingdom

Driftmoon is yet another game that came out back in February, and like 99 Levels to Hell, was also reviewed here on Gameverse. Driftmoon is a bit of a hybrid, featuring the combat of an isometric RPG and the sort of puzzles one would expect from a traditional point-and-click adventure. The game also doesn’t take itself quite as seriously as many RPGs out there. While the game itself isn’t exactly long (For the genre, anyway) it does feature full mod support and apparently has a fairly healthy little community creating new content for the game. The game can already be purchased on GOG.com, Desura, and GamersGate, but once again a Steam release could bring in both more sales and new mods from the Steam community.

GoD Factory: Wingmen by Nine Dots Studio

Finally, I’m going to wrap things up by mentioning GoD Factory: Wingmen, a DOTA-like 4v4 space combat game. The core gameplay involves players trying to destroy the other team’s big carrier ship. The carrier ships also fire at both each other and enemy players, so the game is specifically designed in such a way that matches can’t drag on past around 30 minutes. Spaceships are fully customizable, allowing you to switch out weapons and parts between missions. There are also four distinct races to choose from, with each offering unique special abilities and combat philosophies. The game is strictly multiplayer at this point but, depending on how well Wingmen does, the developers have plans to expand the game with single player campaigns. Oh, and they are shooting for Oculus Rift support at some point.

                Driftmoon is a quaint little RPG released by Finnish developer Instant Kingdom. This title has been in the works for a long time, the website claims seven years, and it was part of Steam’s Greenlight program for the summer of 2011. Since then, there has been a demo available which the user community has been very supportive of and there are already a ton of mods available for those that want to continue their time in the world of Driftmoon. Everything from simple aesthetic alterations to complete missions and side-quests are available and the game just officially launched at the end of February 2013 in its final form.

The magical story that IK has put together is amazingly immersive and a blast to play for old-school RPG fans like me; give me a sword, a bow,  and some magic and I will defend/save whatever kingdom you have programmed. Now, when I say quaint and little, I do mean that, Driftmoon’s main campaign takes only about ten or eleven hours to play through but there are enough side-quests available in the game’s various locations to keep you occupied for about twice that time. You play as a young man whose world is flipped upside down when he returns to his home village, Northrop, only to have his own mother push him into a well. It turns out that this was the only way to save you from the evil descending upon the people of Northrop in the form of angry magic-capable lizards known as the Rakan who are searching for the broken pieces of an Amulet of Life. These “lizard wizards” are being used by an evil king from the past, Ixal, who is also the creator of the amulet.

                As you embark upon the main mission to locate all the pieces of said amulet and purify it so that it will never be used for evil purposes again, there are plenty of memorable characters you meet along the way that have as much riding on Ixal’s final defeat as you. A firefly by the name of Fizz, an uppity panther queen whose attitude about your current actions was her most memorable trait, and your own brother, who spends part of the game as an actual person and the later part as a skeleton are a few of the personalities that assist you throughout the story. The story itself is really, really in-depth and fleshed out, the time I spent reading notes, books, and old newspaper articles was relative to ten hours spent in a much bigger example of the genre such as Bioware’s Dragon Age or Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series. I even noticed many passive and obvious references to established fantasy worlds like the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail.

                The combat system was a bit watered down compared to some other RPGs but it worked well with the scope of the rest of the project and the story was more than enough to make up for the lack of action in this title. You have the option to carry a melee weapon, bow, and eventually a magic staff but this serves as your melee weapon, there are no magical spells to hurl at enemies so no pure mage gameplay here. Each enemy vanquished as well as completion of the various quests provide experience points to level up your character, I ended the game at level twenty-two and I liked that I was able to level up right into the end-game. The only issue that I had with the game was the camera angle, it is a top-down perspective which is very normal in a game like this, but the levels were sometimes difficult to traverse in this restrictive viewpoint. Speaking of the levels themselves, I loved the visual style of this game! It was perfect for the story that was being told; the color palette and environments could be described as absolutely enchanting and were possibly my favorite aspect of this experience.

                Overall, I enjoyed my time in the world of Driftmoon, I got it for fifteen bucks at desura.com, through their app that is very similar to Steam or the GameStop app and I am perfectly okay with spending that money on a game like this, the editor and availability of so many mods work to extrapolate the value. If you are a fantasy fan of any level and you long for the warm fuzzy feeling that you used to get when you booted up Baldur’s Gate, try out Driftmoon, it is a move in the right direction for Instant Kingdom and I will be watching hopefully for more of their releases in the future.

Title: Driftmoon
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Release Date: February 25, 2013
Where to find this title: InstantKingdom.com, GOG.com, Desura.com, and GamersGate.com

Q1.  Why did you decide to make this game?  How long did it take to develop?  Has this become your “day job?”

Calvin French: The game started as an experiment with a user interface system. So I originally had in mind to just create something very simple. However it quickly expanded from there. It took about 5 years all told to make, and I’d say until about year 2 or 3 there wasn’t really a “master plan.” In the end I was able to pull a lot of different threads together into something I hope is meaningful and also makes a certain amount of logical sense.

I guess the main thing is that after personally living in the Texas purgatory universe for so long, and being so familiar with the characters, it took on a live of it’s own. The characters were one of the first things I put in so I had a lot of time to get used to it.

Based on sales of the game I have been able to quit my day job, so that’s great. While I was making it, I worked half-time as an indie developer and half-time as a database administrator and web developer. I was lucky to have a well-paying job with a lot of flexibility, but it’s been nice to just do game stuff full time.

Q2. What are your thoughts on preproduction?  Do you plan everything out or go straight to prototyping?

CF:  My thoughts on preproduction is that it’s well worth it to have a core theme and also core mechanics in mind, but don’t go overboard. If you have absolutely no plan, you’ll be all over the place and it will take a very long time to reign it in (however, the results of this can be interesting– it’s just costly!) With Texas, I ought to have planned out a little more, but then, I lacked the experience to really do this effectively so I can’t have too many regrets.

However: if you have too much of a plan, or you stick to it too solidly, or you idealize your game mechanics, then you’ve just taken it too far in the opposite direction, in my opinion.

What I mean I guess is, have a plan, but don’t feel you need to stick with it. Let the game take on a life of it’s own as you are building it, and don’t be afraid to make huge changes as they come to mind. Something magical happens when an idea goes from being in your head, to physically in the computer. Don’t stifle that magic by trying to bend it to something it just has decided that it doesn’t want to be.

Q3. You have a wide selection of freeware that you used; how did you decide on what to use?

CF: I really like working on Linux. I like the freedom from walled gardens (even gentle ones) and also the ability to be easily multiplatform, yet native. OpenGL + SDL will get you on almost any platform. XNA and other technologies are (I’m sure) fabulous, but then you are implicitly discouraged from porting your games to other platforms. You can see this with XNA or DirectX games and also with iOS games that never jump to anything else. I think that’s too bad.

Over the years I have developed a way of working that lets me transition more or less seamlessly between Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. I know what to expect on all three, and my tools have really not so far let me down.

In terms of the non-programming tools I use, it’s mainly GIMP for textures and other graphics work, and sfxr for sound effects. GIMP is essentially a FOSS photoshop “clone”, as you may know. I’m not sure if there are better alternatives, but the main reason for using GIMP over another tool is chiefly just the cost. Adobe products I’m sure are great but I’ve never really had the means to buy them, and now I am so familiar with GIMP that it doesn’t seem to make sense to learn something else. I’ve been using GIMP for as long as I’ve been using linux, which would be at least 10 years.

sfxr is extremely important, because sound design takes on a life of it’s own only when you have enough variety of sounds. Generally what I find, and what other people have said as well, is that once you start filling in sound effects, it starts to become very apparent which ones are missing. Every action that has a certain physicality to it will ideally have a matching sound effect. So for instance, opening a drawer in The Real Texas is not animated, but it feels very real because there is a special sound effect for it. All in all there are more than 500 separate sound effects in the game. Working on my own, sfxr lets me get a huge variety of different sounds in very quickly. I actually made a modification to sfxr to allow it to dump .wav files from .sfxr files from the command line, as well as running a compressor (not file size but acoustical compressor, to level the sounds out) automatically. This speeds up production a lot.

All 3D models are made in software. The most involved is the revolver and other guns which have something like 500 lines of code to define their physical shape. Most objects have much smaller programs, for instance a table is really just a few dozen lines of code. From this code I can easily define many types of tables. I mention this just because I do not use any 3D modeler at all. In the past I have used Blender, which is a really fantastic tool, even when I used it (5 years ago). However much like recording custom foley sounds would be, 3D modeling quickly gets out of hand in terms of the time spent. So for Texas I decided early on that all objects would be procedural. It was slow going at first but by the time I was finished I had a really good method of working, and of course once you have a program for a table or chair or whatnot you just reuse that program whenever you need a new type of said object, tweaking the parameters such as thickness, height, length and width and texture appropriately.

I should mention lua, as well. Most of the game is actually in lua with the underlying time-sensitive code mostly in C++. Lua is just a great, properly abstract high level language that integrates very easily with C/C++ so it’s a great choice. Something like python would probably also work well but lua is decidedly lightweight compared to python (which has it’s advantages as well as it’s drawbacks.)

Q4. Your game is up on Steam Greenlight; what are your feelings on the $100 fee?

CF:  Ugh! I don’t know how to feel about it. Honestly my biggest concern with Greenlight stems more from the available time that actual bedroom coders will have to dedicated to a PR platform. If you ask me, although Steam can be an excellent avenue for indies (as is borne out many times) I don’t think it’s a silver bullet. So I realize I’m not answering specifically on the $100 fee, but think of it this way: as an indie, you should be a bit serious about raising money in order to support your game making (don’t make games to get rich though, that will basically just make you miserable.) So the point is, should you spend time and effort (and $100) on Greenlight, when other avenues (GamersGate, Desura, and others) are possibly just happy to look at your game and help you get selling it today? If your whole business plan is “get on Steam” you likely need a more flexible business plan, and one that you can control.

I think the bigger issue is maybe to do with unfinished games. There is, I think, a large disconnect between developers or potential developers, and players who maybe perceive the process of how a game comes together as much lower-risk than it is. Sometimes very “complete” seeming demos are a long way from release, and so having these projects on Greenlight probably dilutes those games which are more legitimate, by which I mean are finished today =) Of course this is also a potential problem with kickstarter, but on the other hand it’s cool to see that some of these games are now being finished, which is really amazing and cool! (case in point FTL of course)

So I guess I would say, if the $100 is a lot of money to you, well, look at other avenues than Steam/Greenlight. Don’t be afraid to JUST SELL YOUR GAME FOR MONEY. Bug press people to cover it, sometimes they might not get back to you right away but you know what, these people do love covering and writing about games and they are human beings. And you’ll maybe be surprised that people will gladly fork over 5 or 10 or even 15 smackeroos for your game, and if you put love into what you do, players will get it.

So, how I feel is I’d rather spend time, energy and money on things I can control. I’d love to be on Steam, obviously, and more than that a lot of players have said, “can you get this on Steam?” and so I want to provide that avenue; others have asked for Desura and so the game will be there, too. And right now Valve is trying out Greenlight, and I think they have good intentions (sorry– I don’t really buy those who rant that they are just “crowdsourcing” the vetting process, out of laziness; I really think it’s more to do with trying to develop community involvement which is great.) So yeah! Complicated feelings on the matter, and don’t ask how I feel about kickstarter– hahaha! =)

To other devs though I’d say, one lesson I had to learn, is don’t pin all your hopes for success on one thing or another. Really just get out there and do those things you can do, and don’t waste too much time on those things you really just don’t control.

Q5: McPixel recently received a lot of good press because of how he dealt with The Piratebay.  What are your thoughts on piracy?

CF: Genius-level marketing. What Sos said specifically was that, sometimes you can’t afford games, and so well– if you can’t TPB is there for you. Technically I think his promotion was PWYW but distributed through TPB torrents or something. Anyhow I think this (affordability) is definitely a good attitude to have, too. So I think what he did was very cool and he had a huge success with it, too!

But on the whole piracy is a complicated issue and I feel more than one way on the matter. As a developer, it’s not good to get too stressed out over it, on the whole. I guess it falls into the “stuff you can’t control” category.

I know some people are avidly pro-piracy, but personally I think copyright is a progressive law. I guess I would say you can’t be pro-piracy and pro-copyright but maybe that’s not true, I don’t know. Honestly I don’t follow it very closely, like, I don’t read much in the way of opinions on it and truthfully I don’t pirate in any meaningful sense of the word. But I’m not really judgemental of those who do, I guess I just don’t care that much about it! I know people who are avid pirates and for them it’s kind of like, a hobby? Like they mostly just want to download stuff for the sake of having it. This is much different than like, not wanting to support the creators.

But without copyright law, big business would gladly swoop in, steal every interesting creative product, and rebrand it as their own. Big business would have the advertising power to exploit every artist in whatever way they wanted, and wouldn’t need any kind of consent at all. So for instance, you’d have Minecraft on XBLA but Mojang would be left out in the cold. The Real Texas would be offered for sale by like, well, whatever publishers wanted to sell it, but maybe I wouldn’t have gotten quit my job to make more games. Maybe people would find out about who the actual creator was and send money their way, but it seems more likely that it would be chaos, really, and mostly people just want to play their games. So big business certainly benefits from copyright law, but at the same time, so does the small guy, at least sometimes.

I mean it happens now in AAA industry where the actual creative people are hidden away, because publishers don’t want game development “stars” if they can avoid it. In this case the publishers have enough power to keep the creators somewhat anonymous, which is a shame.

On the other hand, stuff that is done to combat piracy (DRM) is just, well, terrible. Unless you count Steam as DRM, I won’t knowingly buy or install games that use DRM. Ubisoft seems to have terrible DRM these days, so I’ve not bought any of their games. Likewise Diablo III is a non-starter for me. This is my loss in a sense but I guess I’m just old-fashioned in that respect. And to be honest I didn’t quite understand the Steam subscriber agreement at first, I love the Steam service but feel I should own the games I bought. So… mixed feelings there. I think in Europe, the government has forced Steam to make it so you own the games you bought, but not in NA. Well, I could be wrong about all of this.

So with respect to what I make, well, you bought it, please play it and do whatever you want to it and then like, burn it to CD and give it to your friend. Please don’t upload it to a pirate site or try to sell it yourself, because that’s basically just not really fair. If you can’t afford it, email me and I will probably give you a free copy. Really. It’s a download but please just treat it like you would a physical copy of something. I love that. I guess if you are super honest you’ll delete your copy if you give it away, which seems right, but like, I’m not going to install malware onto your computer to make sure you can never give it away to somebody. This is insanity and it’s fundamentally disrespectful to people. Money ought to buy SOMETHING, right?