While the Oculus Rift is a fine and interesting thing, I think adding it to the Source Engine might also be responsible for the death of Steam>. Think about it: Valve are looking to make a follow-up to Episode 2 and at the same time they’re looking to implement 3D goggles into the Source engine. Gabe decides to take charge, because he’s hands-on, and replays Episode 2 while testing out the Rift. He’s forgotten about that> ending. The lights flicker across Bellevue and Steam Towers power down. All of Valve’s engineers are disconnected from their Steam pods, plasma weeping from their DLC holes. They follow the smell of cooked flesh and burning hair to Gabe’s office: he’s sat in the corner, hair standing up straight, the device fused to his face. His tears at the ending shorted out the Rift, sending his sadness into the building’s infrastructure. Steam is set to emo mode and refuses to co-operate until the ending is changed. All because Valve have just added Rift support to the new Source SDK, enabling modders to add it to their games.

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I should hate and fear the concept of Steam’s virtual trading cards, decrying them as merely a cynical ploy to sell more games. Yet for some reason there’s this itch somewhere towards the back of my brain. Actually it’s less an itch, and more like a single finger prodding the part of it that makes me desire new mobile phones and graphics cards that are barely any better in practice than the ones I own already, and causing me to think want, want, want, want, want, want.> I don’t quite know why. It’s something to do with the fact that there is a thing I could collect, and it’s going to happen with undue amounts of effort. Even more so, now that these win-by-playing digi-tchotchkes are rolling out of beta and into broad public availability tomorrow. (more…)

Back in the day>, when I wore the many weighty hats of a magazine section editor yet I still weighed a stone lighter, we came across a game called Confetti Carnival. It was a strange, violent version of Peggle, where the player controls explosive blobs that would slop their innards over levels. That blurstsplosion(tm) would hopefully set off a chain reaction of bombs in the level, painting it with the colourful liquid bursts of the Splatters’ insides. While the goal was to clear the level, the real fun came with the neat aftertouch controls, allowing you to pull of tricks and blurstsplosions(tm) with style. It was surprisingly unpleasant, oddly brilliant, and a lot of fun. It never came out. > Except it did, but in the awful bondage of console exclusivity. That has now expired, and with a new lease of life the game formerly known as Confetti Carnival will be coming to Steam this month, renamed Super Splatters. (more…)

Everyone, Flying Wild Hog is remaking Shadow Warrior! Upon hearing that, a decent number of you probably tilted your heads so hard that confused dogs could hear and replied, “What’s a Shadow Warrior?” That’s understandable. The ’90s were 7,000 years ago, after all. But maybe you saw the reboot’s teaser trailer and went on a needlessly gruesome excitement rampage, or perhaps Hard Reset’s uniquely incoherent brand of robo-shootyblasting won you over. Either way, background is always nice, even when it’s kinda littered with festering piles of racism and misogyny. That’s why Devolver Digital saw fit to dust off the original Shadow Warrior and slice its price tag to confetti. Oh, and thanks to a fairly gigantic promotional slip-up, they’ve just decided to make it free “forever”.

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There are so many videogames! More than I can count with my entire, exceedingly creepy plaster hand collection. Valve tries its darndest to get the best ones on Steam, but they just keep coming>. Perhaps throwing the towering Select-O-Tron 9000 and 3/5 into hyperdrive is the answer? Valve’s having a go at it, at least, and so far the result’s been smaller batches of games at an appreciably speedier clip. Last time, that meant three games, but this time it’s six. Hooray, progress! Standouts include the piracy plagued Game Dev Tycoon, Harvest-Moon-meets-Minecraft standout Stardew Valley, and the creatively named RIOT, which is about riots. Details after the break.

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If I could clone myself infinitely at will, I’d probably just spend all my time meticulously arranging dramatic horror movie reveal moments with some unsuspecting stranger realizing that everyone in a town is exactly the same>. Bartenders, businessmen, old ladies hobbling across the street – you name it. So it’s probably a good thing I didn’t make The Swapper, because we’re instead getting a game of brain/quantum particle entangling puzzles and ruminations on the nature of the human soul courtesy of Penumbra’s Tom Jubert. It looks utterly fascinating, and every in-game object’s apparently handmade. Oh how I long for it, in the same way wannabe dystopian overlords long for soulless clone-based organ farms. Fortunately, the long and short of the situation is that my period of longing will actually be pretty short. Turns out, The Swapper is coming to Steam in just two weeks.

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There is a line, I think, between metagame-y stuff and full-on gamification, and I’m beginning to worry that Valve might have crossed it. Admittedly, Steam sales have tasked players with accomplishing special goals to earn tangible rewards for ages, but now all of Steam> is doing it. Today, Valve introduced the beta for Steam Trading Cards, which can be earned and crafted into badges. Why are badges important? Because this: “Unlike the current badges, crafting games badges earns you marketable items like emoticons, profile backgrounds, and coupons. Level up your badge by collecting the set again and earning more items.” Oh, you can level up now, too. Your whole profile. I guess it’s cool that we’re getting something of worth out of it, but remember when the point of gaming was, well, the games?

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The last time Valve updated their list of Steam Early Access games they somehow managed to switch off all the Press accounts. That was the worst hour of my life, let me tell you. This time around, with the addition of free-to-play cartoon shooter Loadout to the raft of in-development games on Steam, I cautiously looked at my library. Everything was there! Though when I downloaded Loadout nothing was actually installed. I just have a DirectX folder, not a game that promises billions of weapon and gloopy violence. Still, baby steps and all that. Having something >installed is better than having my livelihood taken away from me. Until Valve fixes this second egregious assault on my Steam library, I’ll just have a stare at this trailer. (more…)

Not so long ago, Gabe Newell sounded like he was dead-set on killing off Steam Greenlight, but still the rather obtuse game selection process persists. If nothing else, though, at least it’s not treading water. Say so long to a sludgy trickle of monthly additions, as Valve’s paving the way for a rapid-transit highway straight to the heart of the Greenlight system. From now on, it’ll greenlight more titles faster, but in smaller batches. And the first to benefit? How about surging (and completely marvelous) communist document thriller Papers, Please? Or, if that’s for some insane reason not to your liking, there’s also Edge of Space and ambitious, otherworldly action-RPG Venetica, in which you play as the daughter of Death Incarnate. Innnnnteresting.

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Oh, well this just won’t do at all. I was having a very nice day – frolicking in the bunny-infested fields and devising new ways to make game developers weep sincere, beautiful tears, as is my way – when the world decided to remind me that Shadowrun Returns exists, but it’s still not mine yet. Now I’m quite sad, and devs will have to bear the loathsome burden of their intrinsic, inescapable pain all alone. But I suppose I can’t be too pessimistic, given that I was snapped out of my willful cyberslumber by word of concrete Shadowrun Returns release details. First, the good news: it’s arriving in June, with Steam Workshop support straight out the gate. But wait, if it’s launching on Steam, what does that mean for all of Harebrained’s much-ballyhooed promises of being DRM-free? Well, it’s kinda complicated.

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