Steam Greenlight was announced by Valve in July as a way for gamers to support games that they wanted added to Steam. It went live a few weeks ago, and the first ten titles have been announced.
Many games in the Steam Greenlight program are of the indie variety, made by smaller teams/companies, and this is a way to help make them available through Valve’s cross-platform Steam deliverer system.
Half of the first ten games announced happen to have Mac ports, and I’m all too happy to highlight them. Without further ado, here are the 5 cross-platform games with Mac support, in no particular order, with the trailers that helped them win over the Steam community.
Routine – Game Website – Lunar Software – Twitter
Routine is a first person Survival Horror set on a abandoned Moon Base designed around an 80’s vision of the future, Your job is to find enough data and survive long enough to uncover the truth behind the strange disappearance of everyone stationed on the Lunar Research Station.
While all of the games look interesting and are definitely unique, Routine is the one that interests me quite a bit, as I love the premise of it being designed around a 1980’s vision of the future. Maybe it’s because I watched Moontrap the other day. Or because I was a teenager in the 1980s. I don’t know. I do know that it’s non-linear/open world and that there is a perma-death system, which ratchets up the tension. It’s being developed by a small company of just 3-4 people, Peter Dissler, Jemma Hughes, and Aaron Foster with sound/music from Mick Gordon. It’s based on Unreal Engine 3, and they are hoping to have a release sometime in early 2013. You can read more about the premise in an interview posted on MMGN Australia.
Towns brings a fresh new take on the citybuilding/management genre by introducing many RPG features.
Drawing inspiration from games such as Diablo, Dungeon Keeper and Dwarf Fortress, the game has you managing a settlement on top of an active dungeon. Instead of playing the hero who delves deep into the dungeon, how about playing the town that houses and caters to the hero’s needs?
Towns interests me quite a bit as well – I’m a SimCity fan and like a lot of city/civilization building games in general, loved Dungeon Keeper, have played Diablo 1-3. While some online have tried to compare it to Minecraft, I don’t think the comparison is justified. Not that Minecraft is not a great game – it is, but this game actually has a very narrow focus, as you can see by the description above, and it puts you in a support mode of those who are exploring the dungeons, instead of you being the explorer/builder. Towns is actually a currently playable and stable alpha (fully playable no less) at version 0.5. If you currently own Towns, you will get a Steam key when it’s available on Steam. You can download a demo here, and you’ll need JAVA installed to play it.
Dream from HyperSloth’s Workshop (Twitter)
The narrative is split into 3 acts with multiple endings that are possible based on how much you as a player have explored. Each act immerses you in new worlds that help to decipher Howards past, emotions and ambitions. Confront Howard’s mislaid concerns in the form of nightmares and reconcile the loss of his uncle.
Dream is planned to launch in the Summer of 2013, and is a 3D first-person exploration game, set in a dreamworld with puzzles. It’s somewhat of a sandbox/open-world game, in that you do not have to explore in a linear fashion.
Project Zomboid is an open-ended zombie-infested sandbox. It asks one simple question – how will you die? Whether surviving in Knox County free-roam or controlling Indie Stone hero Baldspot in his quest to save his injured wife Kate – death is always a certainty. Quite how long you manage to put it off is another matter…
In the town of Muldraugh survivors must loot houses, build defences and do their utmost to delay their inevitable death day by day. No help is coming – your continued survival relies on your own cunning, luck and ability to evade a relentless horde.
Project Zomboid is actually in a state of public testing for those who have purchased the game already. Before it’s available on Steam, the developers have quite a bit of work to do, according to their comments on the Steam Greenlight site – they plan on fully supporting the Steam experience!
Warning: The next game is NOT WORK SAFE!
McPixel is a save-the-day guy that you guide through short challenges in an oldschool point’n’click fashion. The goal in each challenge is to prevent stuff from blowing up using available tools! You have only 20 seconds to save the day! Think quick!
There are some interesting challenges in this one. It’s going to have 100 levels, free DLC, and a level creator. No official word on its availability on Steam (appears to be available elsewhere).