Written by Bo Moore

In May 2013, Tom Francis opened preorders for his 2D stealth hacking game Gunpoint. By the time Gunpoint actually went on sale, a week later, Francis had already made enough money to quit his job at PC Gamer and focus on game development full-time. But for many people, the biggest surprise came not from the game's amazing performance three days after release, but rather the way it was made that it was developed using a tool called GameMaker.

GameMaker: Studio, the latest version of the tool, has been developed by YoYoGames since 2006. Its goal is to break down the game development process into something approachable and easy to learn, shifting the main challenge facing game designers from technical knowledge to creative ability. But in part because of this ease-of-use, GameMaker has carried a stigma that it wasn't capable or worthy of powering high-quality, "professional" games. ("I can't believe you made this in GameMaker!" Francis recalls people saying. "That's so impressive!")

At first the tool was mostly used by hobbyists wanting to dabble in game making not anyone looking to sell a game, let alone make a living from game design. But since 2008, a slew of successful, high-profile indie games have emerged using GameMaker Spelunky, Nidhogg, Hotline Miami, and Francis' Gunpoint, to name a few. Slowly, all the game design hopefuls who found coding hopelessly daunting have an approachable way to turn great ideas into great games.

"For me it was Spelunky that tipped the balance," Francis said. "Just from name it sounded like it would be easy to use. And I figured, if you can make something that good in GameMaker, then there's really no excuse the only limit is how well you can design your game."
A Problem With Perception
GameMaker has existed in some form for more than a decade, and it really hasn't changed that much over the years. Technologically, it's been capable of creating games like Gunpoint (which was built in 2010's GameMaker 8) and Hotline Miami (built in GameMaker 7, an even older version) for some time.

"The definition of what a professional game is has changed," Francis said. "You can make things that are technologically simple, but still be financially successful. Those things have always been possible in GameMaker, it just wasn't possible to get them out there." Digital distribution services such as Steam have helped otherwise obscure games have a chance at widespread recognition and distribution things built using GameMaker included.

A sampling of games showcased on GameMaker's website.

But the indie revolution has been happening for years. Steam has been the mega-behemoth distribution service it is now since at least 2007. So then why have we really only started hearing about GameMaker in the past year or so?

It really comes down to a problem with perception. Jordi de Paco, creator of the recently-released GameMaker-built Gods Will Be Watching, says he had been aware of the software for some time, but his prejudgment kept him from giving it a try.

"I felt this preconception that if you made games with GameMaker," de Paco said, "it was like using RPG Maker, where it wasn't really a game. But at some point I realized that the players don't care what tools you used to make a game, they only thing they ask is if the game is fun."

"GameMaker appealed to people who were more into being creative than they were good at programming," said Jonatan S derstr m, creator of Hotline Miami. "Many of these people needed a couple of years to build up their skills before they could finish a cool big project." In other words, game development takes time, so we're only now seeing the output of these early adopters. (It took Francis three years to complete Gunpoint, for example.)



But even so, GameMaker to some degree still carries a stigma a problem that largely stems from confirmation bias. "There's nothing about many great GameMaker games that's particularly technologically advanced," Francis said. "The problem is that if something looks good, people don't ask themselves how it was made. They just see a game. But if they see something really crude that was made by a complete amateur, and then they find out it was made in GameMaker, that's the perception that sticks.

"Lots of great games have been made in GameMaker, but for a long time it just wasn't knowledge that's how they were made because people didn't ask that question."
Starting From Scratch
YoYo Games' vision for GameMaker is all about democratizing the game development process, breaking it down to something simplified and approachable. "For most game development processes, the limitations of the process dictate what can go into the actual game," said YoYo Games CTO Russell Kay. "GameMaker is all about taking away those barriers."

In GameMaker, you build a game by creating "rooms," placing objects inside, and assigning events to affect those objects all via a drag-and-drop interface. Rooms are not necessarily physical rooms an adventure game might give each scene its own room, for example, or a space game could use a single giant room for the entire galaxy and objects can either be physical things in the game or abstract things you never see or interact with, such as the camera or a level generator.

An example "room" in GameMaker.

Most of a game's code is housed in "events" that affect objects every time a frame is rendered. For example: movement would be handled by an event that tells an object to move a certain distance in a certain direction every single frame whenever a certain key is pressed. Using a traditional engine like Unreal 3, you would have to write that event as a script from scratch in GameMaker, you simply drag-and-drop the pre-built script event and apply it to whichever object you like.

An example scripted event in GameMaker.

"It just depends on how much you want to use this drag-and-drop interface, or how much you're ready to start coding," Francis said. "The cool thing for me is I wasn't confident enough to start coding, and so I was able to use these drag-and-drop actions to define how I wanted things to work on a very basic level."

As games get larger and more intricate, it becomes more and more useful to build them using code not so much out of necessity, but more of convenience. The more complex an event, the more space it takes up in GameMaker's visual interface. "If I feel like something's going to be a pain in the ass with the drag-and-drop interface, I'll just look up what the code instructions are for those particular actions and write them in a little script," Francis said. "I only need to learn one bit of code at a time, so I can gradually build up from there."
The Right Tool For The Job
Now that GameMaker is coming into its own as a respected development tool Gunpoint, Hotline Miami, Samurai Gunn, and many others have more than proved that the next issue is finding its niche. It will always be outclassed in terms of power and ability by things such as Unity, or even further, an in-house triple-A development platform such as Ubisoft's Snowdrop, EA's Frostbite, or Valve's Source engine. So when should GameMaker be used?



The software does have its limits. First and foremost, GameMaker is primarily focused on making 2D games. 3D is possible, but it would be far more effective to use a 3D-focused engine such as Unity. Furthermore, while the drag-and-drop interface is great for beginners, it becomes cumbersome for more complex games.

"Now I work entirely in code," Francis said," and the drag-and-drop interface is, at best, a way of organizing code. But even for that I'm starting to think it might be better to just write it all in text."

Another issue is that, while GameMaker is a great entry-point for someone with zero programming experience, its user-friendliness can end up being a double-edged sword if you want to progress into more advanced game development. Most development programs use standard programming languages people usually program Unity in C#, for example which must be written in a very specific, strict form. But GameMaker uses its own language, GML, which is extremely forgiving in how it interprets inputs.

The 2.5D Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime was built in Unity. Unity 4.3, released in late 2013, included dedicated 2D tools.

"For any given statement there are a hundred different ways of writing it that it will accept and understand," Francis said. "So you can write things in a way that make sense to you, and it will try to guess what you meant."

While this can help someone learn how to code, it doesn't teach them how to code correctly. It doesn't teach the proper habits needed to wrangle with a stricter, more complex programming language, making it difficult to ever transition.

But do you ever need to transition? S derstr m says he never felt limited by the capabilities of GameMaker while building Hotline Miami, but Francis admits that his Gunpoint code ended up fairly convoluted after three years of tinkering.

"If I was fluent in Unity I might use that, but I'm still more comfortable in GameMaker," Francis said. "I've made one game in Unity, but it's a very small game and it took me a long time to learn how to do everything."

Even if he were fluent, Francis thinks it would still take a long time to get everything working in Unity at least a bit longer than GameMaker. When you factor in price, GameMaker is the clear winner. (GameMaker's base edition is now free, while the Professional and Complete editions cost only $60 and $800 respectively, compared to upwards of $1500 for Unity.)

"It might not be as powerful in the long run," Francis said, "but in GameMaker, you'll have your thing working much much faster." This makes GameMaker perfect for quick-and-dirty mockups of gameplay concepts. Professional devs can use it to quickly prototype singular game mechanics just to test if they're fun and game jam participants can use it to build moderately complex games within the time constraints of a jam.



The original version of Gods Will Be Watching was created during a game jam using the HTML5 language Impact JavaScript, and de Paco estimates he spent around eight hours coming up with the concept on paper and 50 or more actually programming the thing. Soon after that, he joined another game jam with the express purpose of learning GameMaker.

"It really saves a lot of time," de Paco said."Learning the documentation and applying it was all in the same weekend. I was able to learn GameMaker and make a game in just 72 hours. It was awesome. I couldn't do that in another language."

Now de Paco says he can take on more ambitious game jams thanks to GameMaker. "You sacrifice part of the optimization or performance of the game, but you can just forget all the technical and focus on making a fun game."
The Future of GameMaking
Will GameMaker, or something like it, ever fully replace traditional coding-based game development? Certainly not for triple-A developers, but for indies maybe. The upcoming Hyper Light Drifter, which was Kickstarted to the tune of $645,000, is yet another high-profile game being developed in GameMaker, for example.

Additionally, many of the problems Francis encountered making Gunpoint outdated DirectX support and resolution scaling issues, to name a few have been addressed in the 2012 release of GameMaker: Studio, which completely overhauled the entire development software, notably adding the ability to compile games for Mac and Linux. YoYo Games has since continued to add more advanced features for more experienced users, such as shader support and the ability to import third-party developer services in-engine without having to integrate additional SDKs.



While GameMaker may not be the direct inspiration, bigger engines like Unreal are becoming easier to use, too. Epic's Unreal Engine 4 uses a scripting system called Blueprints Visual Scripting to make design more approachable to non-programmers. It's now becoming more and more feasible for anyone with an idea to make a game, even without the ability to code. Even better, it's cheap. GameMaker has a free version. A UE4 licence costs a mere $19 per month.

The next step for YoYo Games is a game marketplace soon to go into Beta which would give GameMaker developers more options for visibility and distribution of their creations before trying to break onto Steam, as well as a way to share individual game components, such as sprites, audio bits, objects, and scripts.

"It's all part of the democratization of making games that we're going for," YoYo's Russell Kay said. "By allowing developers to share content that they're creating, we hope to spur on the whole community in terms of the quality level of what they can attain."

Gearbox Software was slapped with a lawsuit last year over the hot mess that was Aliens: Colonial Marines, and specifically that the final product was a far cry from what was promised in "actual gameplay" demos displayed at E3. Gearbox quickly dismissed the action as "frivolous" but otherwise remained quiet on the matter until yesterday, when lawyers for the studio filed multiple motions seeking to have it removed from the action.

The crux of Gearbox's argument is that it made the game under contract, and that the publisher, Sega, called all the shots and was responsible for all the marketing. Thus, any legal action should be aimed at Sega and in fact, according to the claim, Sega asked Gearbox to keep quiet about the suit so it could handle the situation itself.

"Gearbox never belonged in this lawsuit. Gearbox is a videogame software developer. It was neither the publisher nor seller of the videogame at issue," the suit states, as reported by Polygon. "For more than a year, Gearbox has quietly abided the plaintiffs' claims so that Sega, the game's publisher and the party responsible for the game's marketing and sale, could assume the defense of this lawsuit. Gearbox has honored its publisher's request in spite of plaintiffs' highly-publicized-and highly-misplaced-claims against Gearbox. At this point, however, Gearbox is obligated to pursue its rightful departure from this case."

In a deposition filed separately, Gearbox Marketing Vice President Steve Gibson denied claims that Gearbox used a separate engine to create pre-release demos, saying Epic's Unreal Engine "was the only game engine Gearbox used in the design and development of the game." He also said that Gearbox lost a lot of money on the project.

"During the development process, Gearbox supplemented Sega's development budget with its own money to help Sega finish its game; Gearbox's contribution to A:CM totaled millions, none of which was ever repaid," he said in the filing. "Gearbox never received money from Sega's A:CM purchasers, nor has Gearbox received a single royalty from any such sales by Sega."

Gearbox also filed motions to have the suit's class status removed, while attorneys for the plaintiffs filed a request to remove the original plaintiff, Damion Perrine, from the suit without prejudice or costs because he is currently incarcerated on an unrelated matter and thus "unable to continue his service as class representative."

Firefall, the free-to-play MMO shooter, is now available. As per PC Gamer's reviews policy, MMOs aren't scored until our reviewer has spent time with the public release. This, then, is part two of a review-in-progress, charting Phil's initial impressions with the game. You'll find part one here.

Things get off to an interesting start. I log in and head towards a new area, and the new campaign mission I've unlocked. As I make my way toward the mission flag, I'm alerted to some "seismic activity". The warning is coming from a resource node. Sensing it would be a bad idea, I blow it up anyway. Yes, it was a bad idea. An insectoid creature emerges from the ground, much higher than my current level. It's takes a few swipes from my health, but, with plenty of jetpack strafing, I manage to bring it down.

That's seemingly how Firefall's combat functions, at least at these relatively early levels. My class doesn't appear to be that tough, but the jetpack enables them to evade the attacks of melee enemies. That upward thrust doesn't last forever, though, so fights become a sort of mid-air see-saw of jukes and dodges. I stand by my criticisms of the combat's feel, but I do like this particular aspect of each fight.

That done, I continue towards the mission. This time, I'm distracted by a Wounded Bandit. He asks me to grab a nearby medkit, clearly setting me up for a trap. I do it anyway, and, fully expecting him to spring a trap, I dutifully heal him. He springs a trap. It comes in the form of a second, grenade firing bandit, calling for more strafing and, eventually, more killing. At the end of my last post, I asked for more variety. So far, Firefall has responded admirably.

I've also been reassessing the graphics mostly by rubbing my face against some walls. I'm coming to the conclusion that they're inconsistent. At times the game looks really good, especially when you're looking out at a vista...



...But there are definite lows when it comes to texture quality in particular, large surfaces of rock and terrain. Part of the problem is the way textures are streamed in. I've noticed textures visibly 'pop' into their higher quality version, as the the game catches up with what I'm looking at. All that said, the aesthetic remains strong as I work through New Eden, and that's definitely a point in the game's favour.

Okay, finally it's time for that mission. 'Oilspill', a pretty shady character from the campaign's first quest, asks me to grab an auxiliary engine from a scapyard. First, I must pick meat off the corpse of a nearby animal, so as to distract the yard's patrolling dogs. Only, I don't really need to distract the dogs the junk stacks are so high that they can't reach me as I jet between them. I find the item, kill the robot that tries to steal it, and make my way outta there. After all the build up, it's a bit of an anti-climax.

Maybe I'll get more out of the ARES mission now showing on my map. These are a type of dynamic world event designed to be a bit more involved than crashed LGVs or Thumpers. Here, I'm asked to recover some tchotchke from a cave filled with Chosen. It's a fetch quest, then, but one versus an encamped army equipped with specialised weapons. It's an enjoyable fight, and satisfying to complete. These higher level Chosen provide a more interesting (and life threatening) challenge. More importantly, they're humanoid. Much of the game has, up until now, been based around fighting small, annoying bugs. Hopefully, from this point on, I'll be fighting more not-small, not-annoying not-bugs.

As I return to the nearest mission hub, I stumble across another Wounded Bandit. So maybe not that varied after all.


Currency and Crafting
Let's talk about the free-to-play stuff. There are three main currencies in Firefall: Crystite, Credits and Red Bean. Crystite is earned out in the game's world. It drops from enemies and is awarded for mission completion. It's used to purchase items from many of the worlds merchants, and can also be cashed in for Credits. These are the currency of the trading market. Here, you can buy almost anything from other players from items and equipment, to advanced battleframes.

Finally, there's Red Bean, which is acquired either with real money or through the trading of Credits. The Red Bean store favours customisation and time-limited VIP boosts, most of which are also available on the trading market. My worry is that certain systems for instance, crafting seem designed to favour those willing to spend. It's never a hard necessity, but Red Bean makes life in Firefall easier. And while it can be acquired without spending real money, the necessary exchange of Crystite to Credits to Red Bean is a potentially grind-heavy process. You'll need a decent chunk of Crystite to get a single Red Bean. The question will be how easy is it to collect at the game's higher levels, and how much will the market prices fluctuate?

Crafting, then. There are three possible actions: researching, refining and manufacturing. Researching uses the science points earned by salvaging items to unlock the blueprints for better equipment. Refining turns raw resources into craftable materials, and occasionally spits out a rarer bonus. Finally, there's manufacturing: spending your materials to create the desired item. So far, so standard. There's no complexity to these interactions you just pick and click but each process takes time. You have two activity spots initially, with two more available to buy at an extremely cheap Crystite price. Choose an activity, and it will fill one of those spaces for a set time anything from seconds to hours. Of course, you can skip the wait by spending Red Bean.



For some, that will be fine, but it really depends on how you approach MMO crafting. Traditionally, I craft in spurts dedicating a single day to building my skill, then forgetting about it for weeks after. Here, there's no mastery just a constant need to engage with a system that I don't find engaging. The result is that I'm instead planning to get gear via loot drops and trading.

My last few hours with Firefall have been somewhat better than the first. Really, though, the thing that I keep coming back to is how arbitrary this week's launch feels. From what I've seen so far, Firefall certainly doesn't feel finished more like a placeholder for what's to come. There's potential, sure, but I don't think this release version comes close to achieving it.

Three Lane Highway is Chris' column about Dota 2.

When someone describes something as a Gordian knot the presumption is that it's waiting for the sword. There's virtue associated with solving complicated problems quickly and decisively the legend of Alexander and the knot expresses a cultural preoccupation with the notion that twisted impossible things are deserving of a direct and just and violent 'solution', normally at the hands of somebody with unusual power and perspective (read: some dude with a sword.) Anything else, it follows, is a waste of time.

There are other ways of telling that story. In 333BC, a longstanding and much-revered Persian multiplayer puzzle game was hacked to pieces by a singleminded Macedonian powergamer who valued his experience above that of the other players. The game's (possibly real) forum must have been in uproar; I imagine they had something to say about it in the pages of Phrygian Hemp Gamer. This Alexander guy, they'd write, cared nothing for the intent of the game's designers or the rules that they'd created to ensure an optimal play environment. He didn't have the taste or patience to value complexity for its own sake, and his reductive actions had curtailed everybody else's freedom to enjoy it too. What a scrub. Broke game Midas fix.

Whether you agree with Alexander's imagined critics depends on whether you place greater value on the solved or unsolved version of the puzzle; whether the knot means more to you as a symbol of enduring quasi-divine complexity or as a demonstration of curt terrestrial pragmatism. This is one of those useful notional binaries that worms its way through civilisation linking myriad historic acts of virtue and evil and art, from military interventionism to Romantic poetry to "truthiness" to Lovecraft to the guy in every comments thread on every article on the internet who begins by typing "well, actually..."

In this case I'm bringing it up because it helps to explain why you can't forfeit matches in Dota 2 and why that is broadly a good thing. This week's column is a response to Arthur Gies' argument in favour of a 'white flag' option on Polygon, in which he kindly cites my own writeup of the TI4 Grand Final. I don't entirely agree with Arthur but I can see where he's coming from, and I hope the fact that I've spent the first three paragraphs of this column framing him as the Alexander the Great of free time helps him to forgive me for taking the other side, at least to the extent that I'm going to.

A given game of Dota 2 is a Gordian knot awaiting solution by one team or the other. By withholding the 'forfeit' button, Valve withhold the sword. The only way you are going to untie this knot is by picking at it with your fingers while nine other people attempt to do the same some helping your effort, others hindering it. This principle is the source of the game's enduring complexity and its capacity to continually create new stories over time.

The life and value and charm of Dota is bound up in the notion that it is this absurd and vastly complex system of rules that players encounter socially. In order to bring out the best results from that system the last-minute upsets, the extraordinary moments of collective skill an underlying structure is needed to ensure that all of the game's variables have the opportunity to resolve themselves appropriately. That means keeping people in the game. It begins within a couple of from-on-high commandments ('Thou Shalt Not Abandon') and extends to social conventions like condemning people who rage or deliberately feed or sulk in the fountain.

Your ability to forfeit the game or not, as is the case here is part of an unwritten contract between yourself, your teammates, your opponent and the game's developer. Giving up under the wrong conditions constitutes a breach of that contract on multiple fronts: you deprive your allies of the right to try, your opponents of their right to win, and the developer of their right to provide you with an appealing alternative to not playing their game at all. The game asks you to grant it a certain amount of your time a commitment extended, as Arthur rightly points out, by the punishments levied at people who bail early on the basis that it will always be more interesting to stay than it is to leave. The implication is that the systemic potential of the game is fundamentally devalued the moment an individual or a team gains the ability to hit the 'nope' button.

In return for your commitment to a given match, the developer promises to provide a game system that continues to generate new possibilities over the course of its lifespan. In the aftermath of the International, that's not the case for Dota 2: the laning phase determines too much of what follows, comeback mechanics aren't effective enough, and the midgame is becoming an interstitial phase before a foregone conclusion rather than the second stage in an evolving debate. Before version 6.82 arrives to throw the system back into welcome disarray, pro-surrender arguments like Arthur's are given weight by the fact that the game itself is falling short of fulfilling its part of that four-way contract. You're being asked to commit your time to play but not being provided with a sufficiently diverse system to play with. As the sword is withheld, the knot tightens and atrophies. You're owed a better experience.

It's understandable to ask for your sword back in this scenario, but incorrect because the problem is within the game, and you can't fix a systemic problem by shutting the system down.

The current structure is appropriate at the level of players like Arthur and I, people who play Dota under substantially variable social conditions. Maybe we're solo, maybe we're with a few friends, maybe we're in a full party; maybe our opponents are solo, maybe they're a stack, and so on. Maybe they're assholes. Maybe we're assholes. When the composition and disposition of a game's participants are this diverse you can't leave the point at which the game ends up to group debate. Democracy doesn't work that well. Dota 2 has a problem with players who mentally or physically abandon the game as it is. Playing until the ancient explodes is the only way to manage that degree of chaos.

It's different in pro games, where the composition of each team is a known quantity and the social environment in which the game takes place carries with it an assumed level of participation. Professional players are obligated to play, so they can be trusted with the power to end the game early when appropriate. A competitive context grants the 'GG' call tremendous significance it becomes a feature rather than an external imposition, and in many cases ending a game early is a key part of ensuring a team gets off to a good start in the next one. It's about creating the best environment for continued play, rather than simply cutting the experience short to avoid discomfort.

There's an argument to be made for extending these powers further down the chain to the point where they're available to other types of player. They used to be before team matchmaking was changed, formally registered teams of five could queue for matches against one another and the surrender power was available. I miss the feature. It has become far harder for my fledgling team to practice efficiently since team matchmaking was merged with ranked. Games take too long; where before we could get two or three done in an hour we now get one. This is partly due to the metagame and partly due to changes to the matchmaking system, and it's a problem that we've had to look outside of the game client to solve. Where before we had a functioning way to practice in-game, now we're looking to scrim groups and in-house leagues.

It was very unusual to see teams abuse the forfeit option in team matchmaking because, like pro players (and this is probably the only point of commonality at the level I play) everybody involved had agreed to be there. They'd made a prior commitment to the game and their teammates. Valve should consider this: the social conditions that make surrendering viable extend beyond the competitive scene and private lobbies. Really, any time two full parties clash it can be assumed that there are lines of communication and understanding in place to offset the potential downsides of allowing players to wave the white flag. It's a more stable environment by default, and therefore Dota's vulnerable systems need less protection from rogue elements.

I'd like Valve to reintroduce the 'GG' option to team ranked matchmaking and perhaps five on five matchmaking as a whole because it's a change that encourages people to play more Dota, not less. Better Dota, too: this is a game designed to be played by a full team, and finding a full team would become the best way to ensure that you can't be fountain-farmed at the conclusion of a losing match. The solution to Arthur's problem would be to turn his three-stack into a five-stack. A well-implemented surrender power restricted to certain parts of the game could encourage greater socialisation between players and more exciting games as a result: an act of pruning, rather than cutting.

There's a 'swords to plowshares' analogy to be made here, but let's not.

To read more Three Lane Highway, click here.

Every year, PC Gamer's global team are locked into a inescapable hell-world of their own creation. It is a time of pain, of suffering and of brutal, violent arguments about whether Doom 3 is better than No One Lives Forever 2. We call this waking nightmare The PC Gamer Top 100, and we've only gone and done it again. You'll find this mega-list inside the September issue of PC Gamer UK, on sale now. We're sorry that didn't make it to .

With the list done, Evan escaped into a fantasy world of Bioware's making. Our cover feature this month is Dragon Age: Inquisition. We get exclusive access to the RPG sequel, and see how its makers plan to once again reinvent the RPG genre. Meanwhile, Sam, Chris, Tom, Phil and Ben sign up for even more punishment this time at the hands of Andy in Arma 3's Zeus DLC. As well as a great story, their adventures produced one of our silliest photoshoots in some time.

Ruddy hell, there's more! This month, we're giving readers a Steam key for Shattered Haven, Arcen's chilling game of environmental puzzles and survival. The issue, which is in shops now, can be ordered through My Favourite Magazines. Digitally, you'll find it on the App Store, Google Play, and Zinio, and you can subscribe to get issues delivered directly to your door. Read on for a look at the subs cover, and a round-up of the features to be found in issue 269.



This month we...


Bring you a new, hotly debated, PC Gamer Top 100.
Get an extensive hands-on with Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Take on Zeus Andy in Arma 3, and also force Andy to dress up like this.
Preview Homefront: The Revolution, Hunt, Pillars of Eternity, Batman: Arkham Knight, Dreadnought, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris and Lords of the Fallen.
Review Sniper Elite 3, Grid Autosport, Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare, Valiant Hearts, Spintires, Shovel Knight, Divinity: Original Sin, Xenonauts, Company of Heroes 2: The Western Front and Sunless Sea.
Group test Intel 9-series motherboards in The Hard Stuff.
Become massive space-jerks in Now Playing.
Reference Swedish electronica in the Top 10 Downloads.
Return to the slammer for a Prison Architect update.
Take another trip through Hellgate: London.
Catch up with Chris's quest to master Blade Symphony.


Until next month...

Our five-week, five-million-key giveaway has come to an end. Here's the thing: we've still got some Steam keys left over. This, then, is Giveaway Redux. Over the next few days, you have one final chance to grab a bundle of five games. That's $40 of entertainment, for free. If you missed any of our featured games from the last five weeks SpaceChem, Dino D-Day, Really Big Sky, Gun Monkeys or GTR Evolution they're all now back, and available to claim just one last time. Head below for this final set of free Steam keys.

As always, we're running this giveaway in association with Bundle Stars, a digital store that sells a wide range of games, and arranges them into bundles to offer discounts of up to 97%. You'll also find plenty of discounts on individual games on their front page. Newly available this week is the Reboot 6.0 Bundle, which lets you grab Postal, Expeditions: Conquistador, Knytt Underground, Blockland, Steel Storm: Complete Edition and Rock of Ages for an astonishingly low price. Buy it before 1st August, 4pm BST, and this bundle of Steam games, worth $67, can be yours for just 1.49/$1.99.

This last chance giveaway will close forever on Sunday, 3rd August, at midnight PST. Be warned, once the keys are gone, they're gone for good, and may well run out before the deadline. Grab them now, before it's too late.
Spacechem

Dino D-Day

Really Big Sky

Gun Monkeys

GTR Evolution


The remaindering Steam keys must be claimed by 00:00 PST on 3 August 2014. The offer is open to owners of eligible Steam accounts. By taking part in this giveaway you agree to be bound by these terms and conditions and the further rules which can be viewed at www.futuretcs.com.

This promotion is managed by Bundle Stars, a division of Focus Multimedia Limited. Future Publishing Limited are not responsible for the Steam keys relating to GTR Evolution. Contact Bundle Stars directly by emailing support@bundlestars.com if you have any questions or concerns about entering your key or downloading the game.

A helpful nudge from IndieGames reminds me to check the PC Gamer news vault for the words 'Nelly Cootalot', only to find that we've never even alluded to one of the loveliest AGS games ever made, Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy! Given that it came out in 2007, well before this site was launched, perhaps that can be forgiven, but if you haven't played it, and you enjoy games that make you click on things to make other things happen, you should probably give the (free) game a try.

Why am I going on about a freeware game from a million years ago? Because a sequel is on the way. It's named Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet, and it's on the Steam Greenlights if the following video inspires you to put your clicking finger to work.

Nelly Cootalot creator Alisdair Beckett-King has teamed up with Application Systems to develop the belated sequel, and as you can see from the enjoyably tongue-in-cheek Greenlight trailer, it appears to be shaping up rather well.



The Fowl Fleet will see pirate heroine Nelly Cootalot supplying answers to the following questions: "What is Baron Widebeard planning? Can he be stopped? In what way is a frozen volcano involved?" Questions that have plagued us all at one time or another, I'm sure. There's no word on a release date yet last year's Kickstarter suggested a June 2014 release, although that's obviously come and gone.

I'll leave you with another trailer, which reassured me that the voice acting might be on the right track:

Prison Architect's latest update is a particularly important one, adding remote access systems to Introversion's prison management sim. As we know from movies and TV, no prison worth its salt would be complete without a big security room switch that opens all the cell doors at once. That's finally a possibility in Alpha 23, which will now allow players to connect doors to remote switches, or to set it so that they'll only open at a specific time of day, say 14:37. You probably have your own favourite time of day. CCTV has also been reworked a bit to fit in with the new system.

In the new update, guards can now operate doors while sitting on their backsides in a security room, and there's even a new breed of metal door resistant to the guards' 'jail key' weapons. Remote access doors must be wired together using the new Connect tool, while the same thing now applies to the CCTV system, which requires cameras to be connected to monitors. Advanced Logic Circuits have also been added in the update as an "experiment". These won't be necessary for normal prison operation, but should result in some fun player creations.

And now we come to my favourite part of the patch-notes-news-post process: taking changes and bug fixes from developer update posts and presenting them entirely out of context. Here are some gems from Alpha 23:

"Intoxication is now a type of Misconduct, and is 'detected' when a Guard searches a prisoner. He will notice they are high/drunk."

"Fences are no longer free (YOU try getting hundreds of metres of fences for free)."

"Kitchen Sinks now require a water pipe connection."

Here's a video of Introversion showing off the game's new features:

Codemasters has announced their latest F1 title and, weirdly, it's not adhering to the tradition of being named after some hypothetical future year. F1 2014 will, instead, release in 2014 (spooky), leaving the 'next-gen' F1 2015 to the numerically appropriate 2015 F1 season. This year's entry will likely be a little less visually sparkly than next year's, but Codies are still promising big changes to the business of driving fast cars around a track, including a "driver evaluation system" that will analyse your skill level during play, before suggesting game settings tailored to your ability or lack thereof.

In addition to that evaluation system, expect an expanded scenario mode and a new 'Very Easy' difficulty option basically, pretty typical sequel stuff. More interestingly, the various rule and regulation changes that came into F1 this year will also be taken into account. None of these details are really reflected in the following trailer, but it does at least confirm that F1 2014 won't be a kart racing game or anything like that.

F1 2014 comes out October 17th (October 21st in the US).

Hot...well, lukewarm on the heels of Path of Exile's Sacrifice of the Vaal "mini-expansion" back in March, Grinding Gear Games has announced another one. It's named Forsaken Masters, and it's not about your MA in Media Studies but rather a bunch of legendary trainers/quest-givers who, too, have been exiled to PoE's monster-filled rock. The details are here, but basically: seven new skill trainers, the inclusion of hideouts, upgradeable crafting benches, more.

Whenever you're tempted to think that all free-to-play games are wretched abominations, remember the extraordinarily generous Path of Exile. In addition to a fulsome main game, devs Grinding Gear are releasing regular free updates. First there was Sacrifice of the Vaal; now there's Forsaken Maasters, although sadly I had to add that extra 'a' myself. What's in it? Seven masters, who will do things like train you and give you missions, and if they trust you enough take you back to their secret hideout (essentially your own little personalised town). New modding options, items and challenge leagues await in the expansion too. I particularly like this sexy image of some modded gloves:



Phwoar. Two of Forkaken Masters' forsaken masters have been revealed so far: Haku the armour dude and Vorici the "master assasin". The others will be revealed in dribs and drabs up until the expansion's release date of August 20th.