With the winter holidays now firmly behind us the Greenlight resumes for the first batch of the year. The greenlight system for anyone who does not know works on a system that allows users to upvote games they wish to see on Steam. Valve then push the top ten games from the greenlight platform onto Steam when the developers see fit. In the wake of the IGF 2013 finalists being announced last week a lot of the top contenders for this Greenlight will be taken out, due to Valve agreeing to get any IGF 2013 finalist directly onto Steam.

This left the field wide open and has generated a few interesting surprises, so here are the Greenlit  game this month:

Software greenlit:

• Articy:Draft | Game Design Tool
• GroBoto

Games greenlit:

• Akaneiro: Demon Hunters
• Asylum
• DLC Quest
• Eador. Masters of the Broken World
• La-Mulana
• Leisure Suit Larry
• MaK
• The Age of Decadence
• Unepic
• War For The Overworld

It has been an interesting list of games put through this month with some brand new entries such as War For The Overworld which only finished its Kickstarter at the beginning of the month, along with some long time contenders. The Greenlight project has proven to be a great success so far giving indies a new way onto Steam, but sadly there are of course those that did not quite make it this time. I would like to congratulate everyone greenlit this month and remind the others who came so close to stay positive for the next Greenlight.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – The Next Ten To Pass The Gatekeeper That Is Greenlight

For better or for worse, Valve Software really do seem to be maneuvering themselves into position as a cornerstone of the indie gaming business, and now they’re getting right in on the ground floor. It’s been known for some time that Steam was going to be expanding to support commercial software soon, and now it does – the very first app on the pile? YoYo Games’ incredibly popular GameMaker Studio.

It makes sense – GameMaker has been the development software of choice for a lot of indie classics over the years, including the original version of Spelunky, Immortal Defense, freeware hits such as Iji and Hero Core and even the Cactus’ upcoming hyper-violent 80s action game Hotline Miami (coincidentally Steam-bound soon) were all developed using the package. Just about the only thing it can’t do consistently well is 3D graphics – Unity, UDK and Cryengine fill that niche, though.

What makes the Steam launch of Game Maker so important? Steam Workshop integration. Previously, games were showcased, launched and often completely lost on YoYo Games’ own showcase site. Now, games developed with Game Maker can be directly uploaded to the Steam Workshop where players can find, download, play and rate them. It effectively turns Steam into an almost Newgrounds-esque freeware hub filled, if you know where to look.

As with the regular site-bound version of GameMaker, the Steam edition comes in Free, Standard and Professional editions, and with optional upgrades to export titles as iOS, Android & HTML5 packages. Right now, there’s a 10% launch discount on all the software, and there’s even some strange Steam-specific perks, such as achievements… Yes, achievements. An amusing lot, including ones for racking up a certain number of compiler errors. Guess you’ll be able to see which of your friends suck as programming.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘GameMaker: Studio’ Debuts on Steam’s New App Store

Valve has already greenlit ten games with the most notable of the ten being Black Mesa, a Half-Life remake created by the Black Mesa Team. It seems everything is a success so far with Steam Greenlight as Valve is also preparing to Greenlight 10 more games chosen by the community on October 15th. The names of the games haven’t been revealed as of yet, but we should expect to see what they are on October 15th. So far, Steam Greenlight seems to be a really great system to promote and support indie games. There are a few problems with it, which you can read about here, but overall everything seems to be going really well with it all.

My speculation is that we’re going to be seeing a game called Folk Tale by Games Foundry mainly because it seems to be a higher rated game and also a lot of fun, as it is a medieval city builder where you get to command your very own stereotyped peasants. Everyone likes doing that, right? What I would love to see on this next wave of greenlit games is Heaven Variant, which is a side-scrolling shoot ‘em up based off of old classics like Thunder Force. It’s not likely this game will make it in this wave of games as it seems to be pretty far down the list, but I can only hope.

With the announcement of these next ten games so close to Valve’s last Greenlight announcement, we might be picking up speed here and seeing a whole lot more games appear on Steam more frequently as the community surrounding Steam Greenlight continues to grow and vote on a bunch of different games.

Time will only tell what truly gets the go ahead, but what games do you expect to see in this next batch of games?

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Next Wave Of Steam Greenlight Games To Be Announced On October 15th

It is no surprise that the community project Steam Greenlight has gotten a lot of press and an ever growing collection of hopeful games waiting for the greenlight. Valve say the number of titles has reached over 700 submissions so far and still climbing, sadly within this collection there is a significant number of titles that are of the shovelware variety with many being submitted for a joke and thus obscuring the actual legitimate titles they are trying to promote.

Valve therefore have decided to change the way posts will be placed on the Greenlight project with the first update imposing a fee of $100 to post a title on the Greenlight, however don’t worry about Valve being out for money because all proceeds from this will go straight to the charity Child’s Play. The only purpose Valve want to fulfill with this is to reduce the noise and illegitimate titles currently being posted whilst not trying to alienate the vast majority of legitimate titles and don’t worry if you already have titles posted as they will not be affected.

The second change Valve are going to be making with regards to Greenlight is to try and tailor the titles you see when you open the Greenlight project by showing “your kind” of games. In the hopes you will have a much smaller list more accurately tailored at you which is easier see potential titles you personally would be interested in.

It is an interesting change to the system which did have problems from the start with it was very open to abuse, hopefully this will help to create a more fair system for the better of the community as a whole. This is no doubt only the first step to better tailor the Greenlight project so be sure to check back to The Indie Game Magazine for all the latest new as and when it develops.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Valve Alters The Greenlight Project Hoping To Prevent Abuse

The fine folks at Ronimo have dropped Awesomenauts PC players a cute, murderous gift in the form of a new playable character, Gnaw. Apparently, his gameplay will be centered around poisoning and ensnaring enemy players, all while staying relatively mobile and, for the most part, just plain annoying. Gnaw looks perfect for antagonizing enemy players and keeping their entire team busy so that your allies can push forward and destroy the ever obtrusive turrets found throughout all of Awesomenauts’ maps.

Also accompanying Gnaw’s gnarly addition is the inclusion of a minor patch to be made available later today. The patch will contain “various minor fixes” with a larger update planned for release very soon according to Ronimo. Awesomenauts and Gnaw will both be playable at this year’s Gamescon in Valve’s booth for anyone still on the fence about purchasing the 2D MOBA styled mashup. As of now, there’s no word on if console players will get to spew poison ooze with the doglike little critter anytime soon, but one would assume that he’d be made available as some paid DLC some time in the near future.

To checkout more info on Awesomenauts or Ronimo’s other strategy based offerings head on over to their homepage. For Awesomenauts exclusive stuff checkout the game’s newly relaunched site here.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Awesomenauts Adds Another Merc to the Mix

Ah – this again! Yes, Valve have now launched The Potato Sack Reunion which contains the same 13 games from the original Potato Sack deal at a money-saving price. That price being £14.99 or $19.99 instead of a much steeper £54 or $84. Of course, if you bought into the Potato Sack back in April 2011 then you’ll already have the games being offered, but maybe a poor friends of yours doesn’t? If so, this would make a lovely surprise, would it not?

If you look around the internet you’ll see a lot of speculation regarding this Potato Sack Reunion, largely due to it originally being part of the Portal 2 ARG. We’re thinking that maybe it’s just a sweet deal that Valve are offering up again for those who may have missed it. We’ll have no part in this pondering. Head over to the Steam page to grab yourself the large discount on the games – they can be bought individually for half price as well as a pack.

The line up is as follows:

• 1…2…3… KICK IT!
• AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome
• Amnesia: The Dark Descent
• AudioSurf
• BIT.TRIP BEAT
• Cogs
• Defense Grid: The Awakening
• Killing Floor
• RUSH
• Super Meat Boy
• The Ball
• The Wonderful End Of The World
• Toki Tori

Head on over to the official Steam page to begin your mass purchasing, either for you or a friend.

If digital distribution can be likened to the gunslinging days of the Old West, then Steam is undoubtedly the sheriff in town. Sure, some may disagree with some of its principles, and others may find its policies a little heavy-handed at times, but they all respect it as the voice of reason in a hive of ne’er-do-wells and hoodlums.

Recently, though, a challenge has begun to pose itself in the face of Valve’s once undisputed position of authority. After several years of tentative baby steps, the men and women at GOG.com, champions of DRM-free digital gaming goodness, are now ready to forge their own identity in the expanding world of digital distribution.

And what, pray tell, is set to be a major step along the way? Indie games, of course.

Just prior to GOG’s first foray into the indie games market, I was blessed with the opportunity to the company’s PR and Marketing Manager, Michal Dys.
[This Content is Exclusive for Insider]
Check out gog.com for a large selection of older games and now new games too – the indie game section is a growing one, and can be viewed here.

Amidst widespread industry speculation, most recently earlier this month, the biggest hint yet has been dropped that Valve’s Steam service is coming to Linux operating systems in the near future.

That’s what Michael Larabel of Phoronix assures us, in any case. Having been invited to Valve’s Bellevue, Washington office, Larabel bore witness to a pretty gosh-darn convincing indication that Left 4 Dead 2, one of Valve’s most iconic gaming franchises, will soon be commercially available to play on Linux clients. The evidence? He saw the game itself running on an Ubuntu 11.10 installation, of course.

While a sceptic may speculate that this could merely be footage of the game running through a third-party support program, such as Wine, Larabel is adamant that this isn’t the case at all. He notes with almost 100% conviction that this is bona fide proof of the game running natively, and with remarkable stability, through the Linux platform.

Larabel was also keen to accentuate the fact that Valve’s Gabe Newell was intent on spreading the scope of the planned jump to Linux far beyond the reaches of a few simple Source Engine ports. With a number of established games that currently form part of Steam’s exponentially expanding library fully functional on Linux via other digital distributors, not to mention several more titles arriving within the next few months, it seems as though the future business relationship between Valve and Linux will be one of mutual understanding and co-operation. Of course, it would be amiss of us not to mention that the majority of these Linux-friendly products happen to have been conceived and developed within the independent space forged out in the gaming market during the last few years, meaning that our beloved indie games could well act as the fulcrum forming the tipping balance between the accelerated growth of this new initiative.

With a myriad of positive reviews under its belt, one of which being from our own Emerson Smith, Lone Survivor has been making quite the name for itself in the world of independent video games. It’s just as well, then, that it’s apparently making its way onto Valve’s Steam service.

Though not confirmed by Valve or, indeed, the game’s creator, Jasper Byrne, a little bit of sleuthing the Steam app registry archives indicates that the game’s Steam release is in the pipeline. Needless to say, that’s pretty good news for Byrne’s reputation as an upcoming indie developer, not to mention his wallet, but it’s also great to see a genuinely poignant, atmospheric game like Lone Survivor getting an extra slice of exposure in an increasingly comptetitive market environment.

Lone Survivor may, at face value, be described as a survival horror game, but its wider appeal is more deep-rooted in its flavoursome elements of role-playing and point-and-click adventure dynamics and objective pacing. To find out a little more about what makes the game tick, check our aforementioned review or take a look at the pearls of wisdom emanating from the mouth of Indie Statik’s Josh Mattingly.

April 12th marked the birthday of Caspian Prince of Puppy Games and to celebrate he decided to give away a single copy of one of his games to anyone who wanted it. The result? Spam bots, abuse and now banned Steam accounts.

So it’s your birthday, you’re feeling a bit good about it – perhaps even a bit generous. So to share your birthday cheer you decide that, as a game developer, you’re going to offer some free games to the internet. It’s an act of goodwill; nothing more, nothing less. Caspian Prince of Puppy Games did this exact thing on April 12th and announced his generosity via the following tweet:

That one tweet ended up pretty much going viral through retweets, posts, articles, the lot. People rushed to grab a free game, even more so when they learned that Revenge of the Titans and Titan Attacks were Steam codes at first. Once those codes had run out, BMT Micro had to deal with the eager customers, giving direct downloads for those two games along with Droid Assault and Ultratron. As you might have predicted, the servers crashed within the hour and continued to struggle the entirety of the day.

It turns out that this wasn’t just thousands of users rushing to grab themselves a free game, according to Caspian a number of persons originating in Eastern Europe “quickly created scripts to generate hundreds of Steam keys for themselves” and these were then traded in bulk. Due to this, all of these keys will be invalidated by Valve “who will also at their discretion be completely banning accounts who took advantage of the abuse.” From the 22,500 “sales” of the games made that day, only 11,200 of them were legitimate, with 3,137 also taking all four games rather than just the one as was offered.

This, on top of the many mishaps of the day which included running out of Steam keys, the shop page getting shut down and the server’s email sender dying; meant that Caspian’s birthday turned quite sour. That’s not even mentioning the backlash after Caspian was forced to request for these keys to be invalidated, which included a couple of users threatening to report Puppy Games for fraud, calling out cheap PR tactics and telling friends not to buy their games in the future and some saying they were asking Valve to remove the company from Steam.

There is good news though – Ultratron 3.0 – a completely revamped version of the game – will be coming in the next few months and Droid Assault will be coming to Steam shortly.

You can read up on the full account of what happened on April 12th as written by Caspian himself over on the official blog.