Today, Steam announced the third round of titles coming out of the Steam Greenlight process. Steam Greenlight, which is driven by fans voting on projects to be developed and sold for Steam, had stuck solely to games for the first two installments. But today's roster revealed - in addition to games like Dragon's Lair and more - a group of six non-game applications which will soon be available through the store. Here's a rundown of them.

Above: Action! Screen Recorder is an HD desktop recording application that can capture full or selected desktop activity and audio, including 60fps gaming.

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Bandicam: Game Recorder

Bandicam is also a HD desktop recorder that can be directed to capture selected application windows, and comes with dedicated compression software.

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Construct 2

Construct 2 is a light game making application that allows you to create your own custom games using a drag-and-drop system with a built-in physics engine. With no coding required, make your own game for multiple platforms.

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DisplayFusion

DisplayFusion is a multi-monitor organizer/manager that allows you to implement synchronized task bars across multiple monitors and create custom monitor/window configuration functions.

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HitFilm 2

HitFilm 2 is a multi-track video editor with a built-in visual effects suite, including 3D rendering, color correction, and green screen functionality.

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You Need A Budget 4

YNAB 4 is budget management software designed to optimize monthly personal spending with simple methodology.

The good news is you never hit the ground in Sky Hero. The bad news is that it's not the landing that kills you every time, it's the fall.

You'll still have a fun ride on the way down in Kokonut Studio's quirky twist on an infinite runner that screams of game-jam origins. That's my guess based on the crazy retrofitted premise to why your brave soldier, John, would fling himself from a burning tower that is, well, it's very tall, let's put it that way.

John's enemies aren't content to let him plunge to his death after destroying his castle, either. He's pursued to the bottom by a laughing anthropomorphic fireball, and must evade mustachioed barrels, clumps of spikes wearing propeller beanies, birds carrying saws and cannons that materialize and fire at you from the sides. Now do you see what I mean about crazy game-jam origins?

I don't know that for a fact, of course. The oddest inclusion of Sky Hero is also its most distinguishing in a crowded genre: using location-specific weather. I've only contemplated this as a value-add in sports titles, but here, the background to your plunge will reflect what's going on outside your door, provided you enable location services.

Unfortunately, it was sunny and clear both days since I picked up Sky Hero. (Did I really just call sunny and clear weather unfortunate?) So what I saw never really changed. But if it's windy, the gusts will blow John side-to-side. Clouds will obscure what's on the screen, as will snow or rain, and the light will change, from day to dusk to night.

As for the action itself, Sky Hero poses a stout enough challenge that leaves you feeling not only that you can beat your all-time best distance on the next try, but that it's worth doing so. Put simply, hitting one enemy puts Mr. Fireball hot on your tail. Hitting another with him right behind you means game over. You steer around the foes by using touch controls left or right (recommended) or tilt controls (not).

You can put some space between John and the fireball by picking up speed boosts (represented by down arrows) but it doesn't stack. Picking up a boost with the fireball not on your screen doesn't give you three hits before death, in other words.

On a small screen, the powerup icons are small and low-contrast (white orbs with a question mark inside them) so you really have to look for them. So far I've unlocked two special abilities: a suit of armor (invulnerability for a few seconds) and a shower of coins, the in-game currency that allows you to unlock additional bonuses, one-use boosts, and a closet full of silly costumes.

If Sky Hero has a drawback it's in its virtual economy. An average fall will net you between 150 and 200 coins. Powerups begin at 2,500 coins. That's a long way down just to give John a little extra advantage. You'll unlock some of these abilities simply by dropping a cumulative distance, but those totals are steep, too. I just unlocked the gold shower (snicker) and I'm 12,913 meters to my next reward. My last drop was 1,678 meters, and the game lasted about two minutes.

With free stuff taking so much work to acquire, it feels like Sky Hero is steering you to its in-app store to buy up coins, put John in a Superman suit and give him a couple second-chance revives. (They're sold in lots of 99 cents, $1.99 and $3.99) That's fine with me because the basic game experience, at 99 cents, is still enjoyable, and falling without using powerups (or using them sparingly) is a kind of personal-honor challenge I've set for myself.

Still, I've got 95,414 meters to go before I unlock the second of the game's two (2) skins, Dragon's Temple. (As of this writing, a day after release, only six people have unlocked it.) A third is "coming soon." I get that the point of an infinite runner is to set demanding incentives that keep people playing, but that seems a little too far out of reach for some visual variety when you're having nothing but great weather outside.

All told, Sky Hero is worth the buck. I enjoyed the simple gameplay and charming, how-does-this-fit-together presentation. You could even say I fell for it.

Sky Hero [iOS, $0.99]

Like a mysteriously silent walker lurching out of the woods to sink its teeth into your face, Skybound's comic book based The Walking Dead Assault came out of nowhere this morning to take a large bite out of fans' free time.

Normally when a game based on a major property arrives with little fanfare on the iTunes App Store it isn't a good sign. Instead of a quick and dirty cash-in, however, Assault is a meaty chunk of squad-based survival horror that faithfully follows Rick and crew through several arcs of Robert Kirkman's award winning comic book series.

The game begins with Rick waking up in the hospital, rendered in striking sketchy black-and-white 3D. Using a fingertip to navigate, the player guides our hero through the hospital and out into the surrounding area, scavenging supplies and auto-attacking walkers with melee and ranged attacks. Completing the chapter and earning achievement unlocks The Walking Dead goodies like trivia and wallpapers.

In the second chapter we gain control of Rick's "friend" and fellow officer Shane. Together they form a squad (up to four characters can be mixed-and-matched up at a time, once unlocked), sweeping the city for supplies, taking down walkers side-by-side and searching for lucky survivors.

For $1.99 The Walking Dead Assault takes players through ten chapters, following the early stages in the comic. The next installment picking up around the time the survivors find the safety of a (mostly) abandoned prison complex. It looks like the plan is to keep this up until the entire comic series is covered.

What a pleasant surprise this game is. Most unexpected and greatly appreciated.

The Walking Dead Assault — $1.99 [iTunes]

The Wii U just launched in Europe last night. And, just like the console's U.S. launch, pictures of long lines and complaints about the long day-one update popped up on Twitter and Facebook. But good things appeared, too, like this sharp video by graphic designer Anthony Veloso.

I really dig how the music and motion graphics in Veloso's video make the assembly of the NES, Gameboy and other devices feel like a high-energy dance. And something about the parade of logos tickles the ol' nostalgia instinct, too. Excellent work.

(Thanks, tipster Pierre!)

Yesterday, a patent filed by Sony Computer Entertainment way back in May of 2011 was finally published, revealing designs for a new PlayStation Move controller that's essentially a Sixaxis crossbred with the OG Move and given the power to split in twain. Combiform team, eat your heart out.

The patent application (dug up by TheSixthAxis) shows that, while the idea for the "Hybrid Separable Motion Controller" is some kind of bold, the execution is mostly what you'd expect. It's just two Move-orbs jammed on top of a slightly more rectangular Sixaxis. Each half of this bad boy is also stuffed with an accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, vibration capability, and (ooh!) a speaker.

With the Sixaxis already weighing in somewhere between "a feather" and "aerogel," you've gotta wonder how satisfying it would be to wield just a chunk of one, to say nothing of the fact that it would have attachment components and a big glowing sphere sticking out of it. Several drawings even depict twin wrist straps extending from each handle. Riiiight...

Whether this Seth Brundle level creation will ever hit production remains to be seen, but coupled with last month's revelation of a temperature reactive Move, it certainly seems like Sony has designs on shaking up their peripherals. I admire the gesture towards synchronizing traditional controller and motion gaming, but somehow this doesn't look like the future. Missing from the patent: Autobot or Decepticon?

Following the tragic treasure chest explosion that decimated Ponyville, Gameloft is working on ways to keep their My Little Pony game from collapsing under the weight of the community.

As it turns out, Gameloft wasn't expecting My Little Pony players to have so many friends. Apparently I wasn't alone in my troubles, as other players that had gathered hundreds of in-game pals had experienced the same issue — so many friend-bestowed treasure chests popping up on the playing field that the game would crash upon loading.

There is a solution coming. In the next game update the amount of chests a player can receive will be limited to 100 a day.

Considering the players experiencing the problem have likely already purchased everything there is to purchase with the heart-shaped currency contained within the chests, that seems like a good plan. If not, there's still time to stock up.

As for my ruined game, I've started over, as you can see above. I will make it stronger. Faster. I have the technology.

I like to say that the couple that games together, stays together. I'm not alone in that sentiment, either. I'm sure there are tons of couples who integrate gaming into their day-to-day interactions and manage to get along just fine.

But just because I like to say it... well, that doesn't make the statement true. Unfortunately, I only know this through first-hand experience.

My husband and I met online, like a lot of people do these days, and he liked to say that he fell in love with me on that very first date.

I have a habit of hiding behind a gaming handheld when I'm really nervous with someone new. It wasn't long into that first meeting when I dug into my purse. I pulled out my Nintendo DS, and just kind of fell into it for a couple of minutes before closing it and going back to him. He swears that that moment, right there, was the moment he fell in love with me.

I still don't know what he saw in me at that moment. Was my nervousness merely indicative of the sort of unshaped person he was looking for? Did it make me look more submissive, perhaps? Maybe he just wanted someone who played more games than he did. I haven't really gotten an answer, and that's okay. I'm not looking for answers these days.

***

This year, we separated, and the divorce process has yet to really get underway, despite the fact that we're both pretty happy with other people at this point. What I realized most recently about our separation is that the way we played together this year said a lot about where we were in our relationship.

Two games managed to show me it was all over. There wouldn't be any turning back. No rolling a new character for a fresh start, no "maybe I'd be a lot happier in this marriage on ‘Very Easy.'" These games, which were very different from one another, weren't the problem, but they were certainly illustrative.

I wasn't an idiot. I knew when the snowball started rolling down the hill. After one of our (increasingly common) serious talks that left me bawling, I told my husband that we needed some time to ourselves. We needed a couple of hours away from the distractions (read: other people) just to see if there was anything to salvage. I wanted to make it a weekly thing, even.

Okay, so I wasn't an idiot then, but I sure was stupid to think that a couple of hours was going to do a lot for us. Maybe hope kills brain cells.

I wanted counseling. He said no. So, us being us (or perhaps me just being me), we picked a recent downloadable PlayStation 3 release to play together—The Simpsons Arcade. He'd played it a lot as a kid, since he could visit an arcade on a semi-regular basis. I hadn't ever managed to play it before, but the show, as well as the game's genre, are among my favorites. The best part (to me, for this occasion) was that it was all co-op. No fighting each other allowed, only working together.

In a sense, going back to this kind of game was the perfect thing to do. We were going back to basics, trying to figure out the essence of "us," whether that was particularly painful or not.

Here, the pain was minimal. We actually finished the game in about half the time that was allotted in our schedules, but we didn't want to go back and do it again so soon, so we perused the menus and that was really just... it.

I don't think playing something together really "worked," but then again, I don't know what I expected. We came, we played, we went back to our (increasingly separate) lives. Honestly, we never even spoke about the nothing that happened again.

And playing together weekly never happened, either. That time would be the next-to-last.

The absolute last time we played a game together was the Diablo III launch. He'd been waiting the better part of a decade for this game and I'd only been waiting the better part of a year. The way he talked of high school LAN parties made its predecessor sound like the ultimate in companionship gaming. Bonds were forged, and loot was had. I wanted in on this.

I got my chance during the game's press preview for the beta. I could finally get a real sense of what the game was like (and find out just how well it would run on my MacBook Pro). I installed the game and started playing while my husband watched, and man, it's like something was just weird in that room all of a sudden.

I didn't deserve to play, he said. Mostly because of the fact that I'd never touched a Diablo game in my life. Does that really compute? I'm not sure. I offered him my computer and told him about that last open beta push before the game's release, but I don't know if he ever went for it.

In any case, we finally made it to release night, and after his late-night gym excursion, which could bring him home well after midnight most nights at the time, we booted up, avoided error messages (perhaps due to blessings from Deckard Cain himself), and went for it.

I made my gal a Demon Hunter named Ariadne (named after my similarly-classed WoW toon), he got started with a Barbarian, and off we went.

Since I'd already done all of this before, I was directing things pretty well, but trying not to be too overbearing about it. It was, in my opinion, so, so cute to see my husband so excited about exploring New Tristram. We went on for about an hour, and then it happened.

He let me die.

In co-op, enemies scale with you and the size of your group. When I'd played before, there wasn't much of a problem (with the exception of that damn Skeleton King) because my enemies were scaled for a single-player game.

So, here we are, fighting our way through the very beginning of Act I and we separate and all of a sudden I manage to aggro everything in a pretty large radius and I don't know how that happened and they're attacking and oh my god sweetie I don't wanna die hey can you help me they're killing me um seriously can you help because I can't get range and I'm mostly good for range attacks and... dead.

He let me die. In a room where we would often simultaneously play our respective MMOs with chairs sitting literally next to one another and desks that were touching, he let me die.

With me verbally asking for help, he still let me die.

Yes, it's just a game. Yes, I could come right back to life and keep going (and I did). But I still cried that night before I went to bed because he. Let. Me. Die.

Yes, he was wearing headphones, but he heard me. I confirmed as much later, when we were done for the night. Oh, "it's just how you play," he said. Oh, so it was normal to ignore your partner. It's just "normal" to not even deviate from your loot-grabbing activities to save your wife from monsters. I gotcha. (Except everyone I've ever told this story to who has any Diablo experience is always as shocked as I was.)

I guess it's too much to expect "‘til death do you part" to extend to the virtual world, to avatars that aren't even programmed to express the sentiments behind such vows.

While Ariadne came back again, prepared to handle the onslaught alone, part of me didn't. We were over. Really over, and nothing could save us. It wasn't until after this moment, though, that I really accepted that as fact. It wasn't just that He Let Me Die, it's that he was so nonchalant about it, even while tears ran down my face.

I left our home the next week. I've spent the majority of this year in the kind of depression that you really only seem to get after someone very close to you dies and there's nothing left to take its place. Once I left, things got better, but I've really only been replacing one kind of sad with another.

***

There is a spark in my life, thankfully. If there wasn't, I probably wouldn't have made it to today, to be honest. I have a boyfriend now (and I've had him for over a year now, so you do that math—I'm a cheating cheater (my husband had been, too), and while that isn't the only thing that made us fall to pieces, it certainly is among the reasons).

I'm not like Patricia Hernandez, who wrote not too long ago that she just plain doesn't list gaming as a thing she's into on her OkCupid profile anymore. It's there, it's something I'm open to talking about, but if you're creepy as hell about it, I'm just going to ignore you. My guy... he's not a gamer. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. He's pretty "meh" about most games these days, despite still fitting in the occasional Age of Empires game (and this is the very first version of the game). He has a Wii, but who doesn't? The thing's ubiquitous.

So, okay. He doesn't play a lot of games. That's fine. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. But when we first started getting a little more serious, or at least as serious as an online long-distance relationship can get while you're still married, he did mention having a copy of Portal 2. This, by the way, was the best thing ever.

I'm a Portal maniac. I love GLaDOS' acerbic humor more than almost any game character as a whole. She may be what amounts to a sentient operating system, but still, my point stands. Best character. Oh, and the part of Portal where you play with portals is pretty good, too.

So I knew Portal 2 pretty well by this point. Hell, after my town was flattened by a tornado and I used the game as a bit of a way to return normalcy to my life, I wrote to the game's co-writer, Erik Wolpaw, to thank him. (His response was to say thank you, "but you didn't actually say the game was any good." For the record, sir, it's excellent.) I had been through the co-op campaign with someone else, but I didn't know it like the back of my hand yet.

So it was only natural that I bugged him to play it with me. After a lot of IMs, he finally installed the game and it was on. Part of the beauty of online play is that despite having about 1,300 miles between us at the time, it only felt like mere inches.

We stumbled, together, through it again. What struck me most was the fact that this time, it felt truly cooperative. My first partner, to whom I'd lost my co-op virginity (gasp!) was smart enough and well-versed in game design, so if we were stuck, he almost always figured it out. When I tried to play with my husband, it fizzled out after about a half-hour, because the portal mechanic just isn't his thing. I get that. (Sort of.) Also, I don't think he liked taking too many directions from me. (It's possible that this theme may have existed for a while.)

You know, he and I hadn't even met in person yet. But here we were, handing off edgeless cubes and hitting buttons and being willing to try things even if they don't work. I was able to actually teach him some things about the game—no, you can't carry things through the emancipation grids—and, as a bonus, the game did feature voice chat. So it was a fantastic Skype replacement, too.

Playing with him just felt right. I don't know how else to explain it. Maybe I should just say it was like having the knowledge that there's someone out there in the universe who just understands you. Maybe this means more to me as a woman, but if things weren't clear, he would wait for me to explain them and ask questions until he completely understood whatever task was at hand. Like, oh my god. Dream guy.

It wasn't long after that first play session before he decided to ask me something. This something was prefaced as a "weird" something, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

He wanted to know if I would have his children.

And perhaps this sounds stupid, or like an uninformed product of lust and at-the-time completely unfulfilled sexual tension, but I... uh, I said yes.

I said yes not just because I love him, but because while we were playing, I literally had the thought, "Huh, this feels like real teamwork. I honestly think I could have kids with this guy if this is how well we interact."

It'll be quite a while before I have to live up to any of that, sure. That is, if both us as a couple and the plans for everything that happens before kids shake out. But over time, I've felt like a game—a silly game about screwing with physics—is really a better litmus test for relationships, having children with someone, and other serious endeavors than anything else I've encountered (you know, aside from actually doing any of these things). It's puzzling, challenging, and occasionally you just want to throw up your hands and give up. All of that sounds like parenthood to me. Except for the part of parenthood where you don't get to sleep. I hear that's a thing.

Ultimately, I think we can learn something about ourselves and our relationships with others when we take the time to play with other people instead of against them. Maybe you don't always like what you see, sure, but it's worth the effort. How's that competitive personality going to work out with another person? Are you the sort who gives up control too easily on a shared screen? Does that translate to you giving up control in your life? It's something to examine, for sure.

As for me, well... I'm ready to learn some more about the people I love. Just as long as it doesn't involve Diablo III. That one still hurts a little.

Tiffany Claiborne is the former news editor at GamingAngels.com. You can reach her on Twitter at @kweenie, or by email at tiffanydaniellec@gmail.com.

For the past couple of years the social network Facebook and the social gaming company Zynga have enjoyed a rather cozy relationship. Zynga games have been a substantial source of revenue for Facebook, and the game maker has relied on the network to drive millions of players to its stable of titles. It's been a good run, but with Zynga-driven Facebook revenue dropping and social gaming evolving, new agreements downgrade the companies' relationship to just friends.

As reported by Inside Social Games (hi, AJ!), after March 31, Zynga gains more flexibility in the games it can offer on its own website. Games launched on Zynga.com will no longer be required to be on Facebook as well, paving the way for real-money gambling games and other items currently not supported on the social network.

This is great for the players, as it's much easier to keep track of rewards via Zynga's site than it is on Facebook. Seriously, it's like night and day.

The downside for Zynga is that it will now be governed by the standard terms of service that other social game creators agree to when integrating Facebook with their sites. Facebook will no longer guarantee social and mobile growth targets to Zynga in exchange for continuing to invest in games for the platform.

The terms of the new agreement also grant Facebook the ability to create its own games, but that's not something the social network seems keen to do at this time.

"We're not in the business of building games and we have no plans to do so," a Facebook spokesperson said. "We're focused on being the platform where games and apps are built."

While the revised agreement opens up new avenues of growth for Zynga, the loosening of ties with Facebook could have an adverse effect of the troubled company's stock. After closing at $2.62 per share yesterday, Zynga stock is currently trading between $2.38 and $2.47.

Leveling the playing field on Facebook can only lead to good things for developers and players of social games. Perhaps one day soon we'll see some fresh names topping the Facebook most-played charts.

Some people think Halo 3: ODST is a very underrated entry in the Xbox 360's signature franchise. But, based on the image above (which has been lightened to be viewed more easily), one of the last Halo games that Bungie worked on might have been important for other reasons. Could they have been teasing Destiny three years ago? Well, there's the one inhabited planet with the smaller white globe, just like in the Destiny image from the leaked document. Sure seems like it was staring us right in the face, guys.

(Thanks, tipster Christopher!)

Update: As noted in comments below, a Halo level artist seems to confirm that the sign in ODST was in fact a teaser for Destiny

There are local characters in Japan called "yura kyara" ("weak" or "laid back" characters). They often promote local businesses or produce. And being Japanese characters, they're generally cute.

So to promote Yubari melons, which are generally seen as being "cute" as well as often expensive, you'd think the yura kyara would be cute. You'd be wrong.

The Melon Bear character is TERRIFYING. And the character has a Facebook page dedicated to scary-assed photos. Besides frightening small children, this mascot even tussles with rival yura kyara.

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If the prices of Yubari melons don't scare the crap outta ya, this mascot will!

恐怖のメロン熊 [Facebook via IT Media]

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