Interesting on Steam

Raptor – Call of the Shadows is one of the best top down scrolling shooters ever made. But you can get it on GOG DRM-free and I don’t see anything different about this version. Available now for 4.5$ (6$ on GOG).

Etherium seems like an RTS in the old fashion but, so far the world building seems kind of shit but it’s very pretty and we could always use another high-production-value RTS, as far as I’m concerned. Coming in 2015, pre-purchase for 27$.

Asteroids: Outpost is Asteroids. Except it’s not Asteroids. It’s a massively multiplayer, open world, 4X game? Somehow, this sounds like it can go very very wrong. “Coming Soon”.

 The Escapists is a dynamic, crafting-infused, prison break game that doesn’t look like much – I didn’t really think much of it at first – but it appears to hide a challenging and exhilarating experience of outwitting a very smart system. Available now for 18$.

Void Destroyer looks like it’s Battlezone if it was Homeworld. While that sounds cool in and of itself, their stylistic choices go way too far and the space combat itself doesn’t seem that exciting. Besides, when you call yourself “the best space combat sim ever made”, you’d better have some very convincing pluses over Privateer, Tachyon and Star/Freelancer. And it doesn’t. And if it’s a 3D RTS, it’d better be at least half as good as Homeworld, and it isn’t. Available now for 15$.

Running Shadow looks like a dungeon crawler if it was, well… a runner. It looks good and if it plays well, while not exactly my thing, I can see the audience for this. And it’s available now free to play so you can just try it and see what you think. Update: After trying it for a bit it seems rather simplistic and grindy. Then, again, I wasn’t expecting much more from it.

Shiftlings is a comedic puzzle platformer about two aliens connected by a cord that exchange farts with each other to become bigger and smaller on demand. It seems cute and harmless. Available March 3rd for 15$.

Sublevel Zero looks like Descent if Descent was a dungeon-crawling Rogue-like. It’s still a long way out but if they can ramp up the graphics somewhat, get in some interesting gameplay beyond the just shooting and if they can match the Descent AI… then I’m really looking forward to this. Coming in the Summer.

Social Justice Warriors is a game in the wake of the GamerGate phenomenon in which you try to tackle trolls and other people online. It’s an art game and mostly about conveying the feeling but I’m interested in at least trying it out. Available now.

Hidden Object Bundle 5 in 1 is a marketing disgrace. It’s a bunch of HOGs for just 9$ right now but I cringe at the description text. Look carefully: “Enjoy hidden object madness for 20 hours and don’t forget to present this bundle to your mom, sister, nanny, girlfriend, wife as they will definitely like it!” Did you get it? If not, then here it is again: “You’re a gamer on Steam so you’re male and maybe you like HOGs (don’t know why, but what the hell?) but your mom/sister/nanny(because gamers are obviously 12)/girlfriend/wife must absolutely love them so shove this at their faces!”. Well, to that I say, “Fuck you and your HOG bundle.”


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