While only the Boomer made an appearance in the demo above (and is actually tougher than your typical infected, compared to the original), creator Eric Ruth assures us that the finished product, to be made available for free this January 4, 2010, will be more complete. Q & A detailing the game below!

Q: Is this just an animation or an actual game?
A: An actual game. It will be available for free download on PC around January 4th, 2010.

Q: I only see one “special infected.” Will there be more?
A: Yes. All 5 special infected appear in this game regularly.

Q: How far along are you currently?
A: As of November 15th, I am completed with the first “mission: No Mercy” as well as most of the core game play mechanics.

Q: Does Valve know about this? And would they approve?
A: No, Valve doesn’t know about it yet, but I’m sure (with their love of community creations) that they will find this mildly amusing at worst, and hilarious at best.

Q: Will this version have all of the campaigns from the original game?
A: Yes. All 5 maps of all 4 campaigns will be present in the final product.

Q: Like your other games, did you make this one all by yourself?
A: With the exception of a few friends backing me up in the QA area, yes, the coding, debugging, sound effects, music and pixel art are all original work of Eric Ruth.

Q: Will there be more videos that show off more of the game?
A: Maybe 1 or 2, but that’s about it. If you want to see every campaign and fight every zombie, then you will have to download and play it.

This should just about wrap it up. When more information becomes available, I will display it somewhere here. Thanks a lot guys, and keep watching!

Post from: The Gadget Blog

And a bunch of people playing Defense of the Ancients:

Obvious fakes? Well, here’s what I think: the flooding levels in both pictures are high enough that wall sockets would be submerged. Even if somehow the gamers are drawing power from a wall socket located higher than usual, other sockets exposed to water would necessitate shutting down power—to prevent any overloads.

Here’s more definitive “proof”: look at how still the water is. No one playing on a computer would keep so still so as to not cause any waves in the water.

Post from: The Gadget Blog

Courtesy Left 4 Dead blog

Since I’ve been having so much fun on Left 4 Dead lately, here’s a post simply containing info related to the game, and its upcoming sequel, Left 4 Dead 2 (duh):

• You can become a Facebook fan of Left 4 Dead here.
• …and for Left 4 Dead 2 here. To paraphrase one supporter: “screw the boycotters”
• Hands-on previews of Left 4 Dead 2 are available here and here (includes video). Snippets:
  

  “But on the evidence so far, it’s hard not to be thrilled all over again by the prospect of headsetting it up with chums and pounding through the new locations, with the new characters and weapons. And in the meantime, once the blistering heat and SEGA-blue skies give way to familiar concrete grey misery, I suspect more than a few will still be locked away in dark rooms romping through the original.”

  “Left 4 Dead 2 is shaping up really well, and with four new characters, the group dynamic has changed once again. We played as Coach, a huge dude with an attitude; and Rochelle, a smaller female character. There was also the white-suited Nick and the jocklike Ellis. We loved our time with the game, especially playing with other journalists in the LAN setting. While Left 4 Dead 2 certainly doesn’t do anything drastically different, we’re confident that it will offer another highly addictive experience of the zombie apocalypse. The full game is out on the PC and Xbox 360 in November, and we should be able to bring you more between now and its release.”

• The Left 4 Dead blog is here. Kooky reason behind Left 4 Dead 2 logo (pictured) here.
• Nice third-party maps available here.
• And of course, you can buy Left 4 Dead here.

Now leave me alone. Need to get back to my squeeing.

Post from: The Gadget Blog

If we take Left 4 Dead (by far my most favorite Steam game), some of the trends made clear by the achievement tally make sense. For instance, only 0.5% of L4D players have achieved “Legendary Survivor”. Achieving that means holding off endless waves of zombies for at least 10 minutes—in five different situations while hoping your 3 teammates know what they’re doing.

But only 36.5%—nearly a third—of players have achieved “Grim Reaper”? That only requires finishing the last campaign of the game; you can do this by playing single player on easy. Maybe a significant number of players simply don’t have the time to play Left 4 Dead for at least the hour or so required to finish a campaign?

In any case, given that after-gameplay updates from Steam are apparently unavailable anywhere else, here’s the full post:

This week, we added some new pages to the Steam Community which make it possible to view each game’s aggregate achievement stats. Check out the complete collection. While browsing them, we think you’ll find there are some interesting things to learn about Steam games.

Sometimes, achievements reveal what should already be blindingly obvious to all criminal masterminds. For example, you, dear reader, undoubtedly already know that the way to cause “Death From Above” is to fire an orbital laser.

But in a stunningly non-obvious counterpoint, who would ever have thought Steam could pop-up a notification that reads “You have achieved: Divorce (Defeat Mom and Dad)“? Where has that message been all our lives? All we had to do to get that sweet revenge was just play a Steam game? We wish someone had told us sooner.

And then there are the truly inspiring achievements. As of this writing, 13.5% of one game’s players have officially gained the status of “Pervert”, after inspecting a pair of withered binoceros testicles with genuine enthusiasm.

All in a day’s work, we say.

Post from: The Gadget Blog