Cheerful Ghost: An Awesome Community For Gamers

Valve shares Steam Machine prototype details

Valve is giving us a peek at what 300 lucky individuals will get their hands on during the Steam hardware beta. They're going for a balance of power, quietness, and not looking like a behemoth under your TV. The beta machines give a range of quality in CPU and GPU, but look at the RAM/Hard Drive space. That's quite nice. No pictures of the beta hardware yet, but they will share that soon.

Without further ado, the specs:

The 300 prototype units will ship with the following components:
GPU: some units with NVidia Titan, some GTX780, some GTX760, and some GTX660
CPU: some boxes with Intel i7-4770, some i5-4570, and some i3
RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600 (CPU), 3GB GDDR5 (GPU)
... Read All

Shovel Knight Reveal Trailer + Pre-Order Drops

"Shovel Knight is planned for release this winter, but you can preorder the game now for PC/Mac/Linux and Steam below (you’ll have to wait for WiiU/3DS). If you would like to learn more about Shovel Knight’s incredible journey, you can find out more information on our"

I am glad Yacht Club Games is planning on launching Shovel Knight in the winter, I enjoy dispensing Shovel Justice a bit before Christmas. If you were interested in boarding the Shovel Train to Awesome town, you can pre-order the game from the Yacht Club site on the Humble Store. $15 gets you the game DRM free on Linux, Mac and Windows + a Steam Key. $25 nabs you the same + PDF Artbook & Manual.

The... Read All

A.N.N.E. Update Shows Really Great Progress

"Travel on foot or use your ship, carry heavy objects and explore new areas. A.N.N.E is a platformer, shmup hybrid served in an open world-like structure with RPG elements."

Back in April the awesome Blaster Master/Metroid-vania 2D pixel beauty, A.N.N.E. was successfully Kickstarted. A.N.N.E. was a special Kickstarter in that it has some absolutely amazing Kickstarter rewards, including a Super Nintendo Styled USB controller and a ton more. The game is making steady progress to its release goals and Mo, the creator of A.N.N.E. has released a new video showcasing some of the new stuff such as the map system and A.N.N.E. as a fully playable character.

When the game was... Read All

Wizardry 6+7+8 Giveaway Winners!

The Wizardry giveaway is over, and we have ten lucky winners getting a copy of these awesome games! Winners are listed below. If you see your name on this list, check your private messages on the site-- you should have a key waiting for you.

Congrats to:

Hardeyez

wartinald

Jung_MY

Gleikara

gaidalcain85

Docwe_Weirdocz

Nhor

Marko_Krivokapic

Zabaton5

This contest was made possible by Night Dive Studios who made these games available on Steam. Be sure to give them some love:

https://www.facebook.com/NightDiveStudios
https://twitter.com/NightDiveStudio

Planetary Annihilation Early Access Comes To Steam

"Planetary Annihilation takes real-time strategy to a planetary scale. Colonize solar systems, smash entire worlds, and crush your foes in epic battles with multiple players and thousands of units. Don't just win, annihilate!"

Planetary Annihilation is the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander. The team that was largely responsible for making those games have been working tirelessly to finally bring Planetary Annihilation to Steam Early Access. Planetary Annihilation looks really awesome and brings quite a bit to the table as part of its early access list of awesome:

Game Key: Access the game now, during the Beta period and after Planetary... Read All

Game/Show: Do Video Game Stereotypes Hurt Men?

"Are videogame stereotypes... hurting MEN?! There's been a lot of discussion about female portrayals in games (re: our last episode), but maybe we should be talking about dudes, too. Games continue the cultural narrative of big and strong men, "manning up" and being the hero."

After Game/Show's last episode about gaming and feminism they decided to follow it up with a segment about Men and gaming. As always, its a pretty nice showcase of the arguments. This show is a bit different in than it doesn't just stick to gaming entirely.

Great js13k game -- Radius Raid

http://js13kgames.com/games/radius-raid/__big.jpg

What's a js13k game you ask? Well it's a javascript game that is less that 13kb big... This one clocks in at 13,278 bytes.

It's a fun shooter reminiscent of asteroids with powerups and multiple enemy types.

So... Go... Play... now... :)

http://js13kgames.com/entries/radius-raid

and yes there are a bunch of other entries to the contest off this page http://js13kgames.com/entries

Prison Architect Alpha 14: Dog Handlers

"Guard dogs have arrived! You can now hire dogs from the staff menu, and they come as a team with a dog handler. Dogs will sniff any nearby prisoners and hiding spots, and can smell drugs and other forms of smelly contraband from several squares away. Assign your dogs to patrols within busy parts of your prison to have them sniff everyone during the day.

Dogs can also sense escape tunnels, although it isn’t quite as easy as that. They will scratch at the floor and bark a bit, but you need to keep an eye on them to notice this and perform appropriate searches within your jail. If they happen to be scratching the floor when there is an actual prisoner digging directly... Read All

Terraria 1.2 Drops: Cheerful Ghost Server Opens

Last night the Terraria 1.2 update hit and after playing it for a few hours I can say that it is a great update. A few stand out elements of the patch are the new map system, tier 1 armor, snow and cactus crafting. Plus there are just a ton of other little changes that make the update really awesome for long time Terraria fans. I haven't seen anything quite like this in terms of a free content update and Re-Logic is really showing its focus on the game community here.

As such @Travis and I spent some time last night setting up the new Cheerful Ghost server and it is ready for people to play. If you haven't already, check out the event and join up. We will be... Read All

Rumor mill: Valve files trademark for Half-Life 3

Someone on NeoGAF found this trademark info earlier today. The site has gone down due to traffic overload, but someone caught the images before it went down.

http://imgur.com/a/FojoD#0

This isn't any kind of guarantee of Half-Life 3, but if they use every extension they are allowed to use, they have around 2.75 years to release something tangible.

I hope that, now that there's a ton of internet buzz about this, Valve will make some sort of an announcement soon, but it could still be a while before we know if this pans out.

Again, this is nothing more than a trademark, and I'm in no way saying HL3 is confirmed.