Rock, Paper, Shotgun

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.
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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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More news from PAX East, this time via the electronic eyes of Polgyon. Dean Dodrill and Alex Kain told the world that their side-scrolling ARPG, Dust: An Elysian Tail, will be coming to Steam in April. There’s a trailer below, which is handy for people like me who haven’t played the XBLA original, because Dust means two things in my gaming world: a shooty EVE thing or a platforming sweep ‘em up. This Dust has lots of hacking and possibly some slashing, and anthropomorphic characters.

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It’s a dark time to be a mulitplayer server. From the day you’re born, you’re living on borrowed time, and that goes double if any sort of sequel has your cushy spot on the rack in its sights. Which brings us to the original Company of Heroes. It’s coming up on its seventh birthday, Company of Heroes 2 is about to drop a fresh blanket of powder on the hot summer months, and a sudden publisher shift threw everything out of whack. It is, in other words, a prime candidate for the big server farm in the sky. But hark, against all odds, there is hope. Relic’s keeping its relics up and running by switching services. So long, apparent Aztec wind deity Quazal. Hello, Steamworks.

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I’m in the process of moving to a new house, just had to resuscitate my poor little shoe car from the brink of death, and was recently informed that the meticulously stone-hewn, full-sized medieval castle required of all RPS writers isn’t tax deductible. I cannot, in other words, afford anything. On that note, do you want to buy some dirt? Or how about this nice clump of air? Oh, look at this slightly used chewing gum. It’s fresh from your mouth as of three seconds ago. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. You’ve done a good thing here today. You won’t regret it! I’ll get my life back on track. You’ll see! [Immediately slinks off to Old Man Newell's back alley Steam Sale emporium to squander it all on indie games.]

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The Swapper sounds like a name for either a bang-up cleaning product or a not-very-clean banging product, but I assure you it is (thankfully) neither of those. Instead, it’s an extremely intriguing platforming adventure in which you can clone yourself at will and hop between said soulless vessels to give some mean old brain-teasers what-for. Also, as John pointed out, Penumbra’s Tom Jubert is on writing duties, promising a tale about the nature of our being and whether leaping between countless clones somehow perverts that. It sounds well worth getting into an excitement tizzy over, in other words. One made up of equal parts frothy flailing and existential befuddlement, as all the greatest tizzies are. And the best part? Swapper’s coming to Steam. Fairly soon, in fact.

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“Oh boy! I can finally get into prison early!” Oh videogames, don’t ever stop allowing me to create phrases of such ear-perking outlandishness that people could mistake me as ringleader of a merry band of elves. Other gems now possible thanks to Steam’s paid-alpha-centric Early Access program include “Hooray! Frighteningly authentic war’s happening even sooner than I thought” and “I wasn’t planning on being shipwrecked with no hope of escape today, but I certainly can’t complain.” But Prison Architect, Arma 3, and Under The Ocean are only three of the 12 inaugural games on offer. The rest – and perhaps even some freshly baked wordthinks – are after the break.

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