The mobile gaming space is finally exploding, growing at a faster rate than all other gaming segments combined. And while many game devs are finally embracing the platform, many of them aren’t really factoring in the importance of growing a community for their mobile games.

As an indie developer, we face some serious challenges when it comes to building a community of fans for our games on mobile. This isn’t really a big surprise if you already play mobile games. Chances are, you stumbled across a mobile game because it was featured in the app store. There aren’t many other great ways for people to discover your game unless you are willing to spend good money advertising your game. Which is always a challenge for indies since our budgets are tighter than that wool sweater you accidentally shrunk in the dryer.

And if you are an indie developer having a loyal community of gamers following you is hugely important. They aren’t just the ones buying your game. They are the ones telling their friends about your game. They are the ones giving you valuable feedback on what’s fun and what’s not. Without an easy way for gamers to engage in dialogue with you, it’s hard to nurture a community. So what are some ways you can grow your community?

• Indie devs could form a loose network where we promote each other games in our games. A tit for tat approach. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. A simple menu called “Other Games That Will Catch Ur Fancy” (or something like that) that can be easily updated without having to do an app updated through Apple’s long process.
• Simple forum software integration right in the game app. Even if you have to push people to the web browser, make it easy for them to sign up, and start chatting. You need to constantly engage these users with your own posts as well to show that you are invested in their gaming experience.
• While many game devs use Gamecenter as a way to help gamers see how they stack up against others on leaderboards, it really doesn’t allow for conversation. There are a few worthy alternatives like Jibe’s social platform that allows for in game video chat, and an easy way to see if your friends are playing the same game.
• Even if you have a simple “wall” that allows people to post up any comment they like, knowing that the developer of the game is reading, is a start. You can keep it simple by not having a registration process, and not having the comments show live in the app (because you know someone is just going to draw a penis using Ascii text for everyone to see…) To complete the conversation loop, you can either have a simple blog that captures and aggregates comments that you can post up to the mobile app, or ask for an email address so you can ping people back.
• Building tools that allow gamers to share content they created in game.

The solutions I’m proposing aren’t meant to be mind blowing. It’s to get you to realize that without investing in your community, you will always be challenged growing the user base in each successive game you create. As we move further along into our mobile development process, we’ll share with you some of the things we’ll do and what worked (and what didn’t!)

I remember growing up how I was the only real gamer on my block, and if you were a gamer, you knew the type. Someone like… me. It was my #1 hobby, and as such, I spent a great deal of time and money on my hobby. Til recently, there really was only one definition of a gamer to most people (though true gamers knows the distinction between a PC game, a console gamer, and who the Nintendo fanboys are, and who the Sony fanboys!) It’s impressive to see how things have changed.

Gaming has exploded to become the #1 entertainment medium, eclipsing the movie, music, and book industries. And as such, there are now multiple segments of gaming as well, stretching all the way from hardcore gamers to casual gamers on multiple platforms. Because of that, there’s been a desire to clearly define the various segments of gaming, and the one area that Wicked Loot finds most interesting, and seems to be most misunderstood, is the mid-core gaming market.

So I tapped into the brain of my friend Peter Warman, CEO of Newzoo (a market research firm for gaming, not a next generation sanctuary for wild animals!) He’s been talking about the mid-core gamer for some time, so I took what he’s been evangelizing and summarized it neatly into this FAQ below.

What exactly is the definition of a mid-core gamer?
To put it simply, it’s a gamer that sits between hardcore and casual. These gamers want gameplay to be more easily accessible but have the deep and immersiveness they been experiencing throughout their gaming life.  Too many core games require an excessive level of commitment just to enjoy (fun fact: less than 20% of all gamers ever finish a game).

What does accessible mean?
“Accessible” for mid-core gamers comes down to several things. First, the game shouldn’t require a 5 hours tutorial just to get into the meat of the game. It should be easy to figure out what’s going on the minute you jump into a game. Second, the game should allow for quick gameplay sessions. There’s no specifics on this, but I’m gonna say 5-15 minute sessions. This doesn’t mean we won’t play longer (we often times do), but don’t force us to do a quest 1 hour long and only allow us to save once the quest is complete. Third, the game needs to be on accessible platforms. These days, mobile is all the rage. PC gaming has also increasingly become a very accessible platform, thanks to digital distribution and indie games.

Where did all these mid-core gamers come from?
Most mid-core gamers come from a core gaming background. At one time or another, they had the time and commitment to power through a big complex game, buying as many as one new full priced game each month. Due to various reasons, often times associated with dedicating more time to careers and family, these gamers now just don’t have the time like they use to play. They still desire that immersive experience that core games provide, but without the +40 hours a week commitment to enjoy a game.

So does a mid-core gamer even play core games anymore?
Sure. Take me for example, I love playing in-depth games like Borderlands 2. I may not be able to brag like I use to in saying that I was the first person among my friends to beat the whole game, and can only put in a few hours each week on the weekend, but I still beat the game, and leveled up 2 characters to max. But I have to admit, I can only do this for a few games a year now. To supplement, I play a lot more indie games, mobile games, and other games that allow me to get in and out fast. As an example, you’ll see me get into a game like Clash of Clans, an iPad game that makes fort building, strategic warfare, and PvP very accessible, so I’m sinking in several hours a week playing the game, but in 15 minute spurts. I spent over $40 on the game to accelerate certain parts of the game, because to me, time is money.

What are the typical types of games that mid-core love to play?
It would seem just about every type of game you can think of could be a mid-core game, whether sports, puzzles, to RPGs, and many games are now proving quick access gameplay experiences (EA touted one of the key features for their latest Madden game was how they dramatically reduced the time it took for you to get into a game and just start playing.) What truly defines a mid-core game though is that it’s quick and easy to get into and doesn’t have steep learning curves. Gamers can step into a game and start playing relatively quickly, and not feel like they have to stay on top of it all the time. I personally don’t believe whether a game is $60 or free 2 play is much of a factor that influences a mid-core gamer, beyond giving them an extra incentive to try out a game for the first time.

So here’s an easy way to frame this:

• Bejeweled – Mostly casual gamers
• Clash of Clans – Mostly mid-core
• League of Legends – Mostly mid-core
• Skyrim – Mostly hardcore

What are the typical platforms that mid-core gamers play on?
Just like the question above, the answer is really just about every platform. Mid-core gamers will play on PC, mobile and console. Again, it goes back to accessibility and depth. Naturally mobile platforms are known for this, which is why so many mid-core gamers have bought a smartphone or tablet that can play great games. The game needs to be easy to get into, but have the depth that creates an immersive experience.

Are mid-core gamers mostly male or female?
Right now, it still is predominantly male. Mid-core gamers mostly were hardcore gamers at one point, and that demographics has been over 90% male for many years.  We’re sure that after a few more generations, it’ll become more evenly split.

Why this explosion of the demographics?
We can peg the explosive growth of the mid-core gaming segment to several things happening in the marketplace.

1. First, many of the gamers who grew up playing games as a hobby are now out of school, and are working and starting families. The average age of a gamer has slowly been climbing for years and is now 30 years old. This generation of gamers is naturally evolving from core gamers to mid-core gamers.
2. Second, the advent of mobile/tablet gaming as well as digital downloadable games on Mac/PC has finally provided an ideal platform for a quick pick up and play game experience.
3. Third, new technology in both game creation and distribution has also created a whole new way for game developers to create and deliver a game that a core gamer could appreciate, but without the massive AAA budget that typically was needed to serve that market.  This has been fueled by the rapid embrace of indie gaming where some of the best and innovative game concepts have been suddenly breaking through the charts that were once dominated by the big blockbusters.

How big is the mid-core gaming market?
The market has potential to be more than +$2.6 billion in size in the US and Europe. This represents over 5-7% of the overall gaming market.

How quickly is the mid-core market growing?
The market is already seeing double digit growth at +23% just this past year, with potential to keep this up in the future.

Do you got any fancy graphs or charts? I love that stuff.
Sure, here you go.

Why is this mid-core market so interesting to Wicked Loot?
And let’s bring it back to us! Perhaps you know someone like this: It’s that guy who says “Yeah, I want to play World of Warcraft, but I don’t got the time.” Drives us nuts when we hear this. Not just because this person is missing out on one of the great games of all time, it suggests that he would play a game like WoW if someone actually created it to be more accessible. Or perhaps you are one of those guys who hears all about those amazing user created mods for Skyrim, but doesn’t have the time to try them all out. We hear this more and more each day. In other words, there’s a huge untapped market, and it still hasn’t been properly served. These are the gamers who are willing to spend money on gaming, but just don’t have the time to commit a work week just to keep up. Traditional game makers simply don’t get it, as they are so entrenched in the old way of making games. Our goal at Wicked Loot is to create the kind of games that evolve the thrill of gaming, but without the steep accessibility curve that holds up back. And by accessibility, we mean both how you buy and how you play.

For some more interesting reading on the mid-core gamer, check out this article here and here. On other note, another friend of mine Shawn Foust, a game designer at PlayMesh, argues that there is no such thing as a mid-core gamer (equating it to a unicorn.) It’s something we’ll tackle in another post sometime, as he brings up some good points!

So I run an indie game dev studio called Wicked Loot, and while we got team members all over the world, most of us live in the San Francisco bay area. Over the last year, the team I had some discussions of where we set up shop for Wicked Loot, often times in a fun filled conversation over drinks. We joke about being able to code on the beach, or on a villa somewhere south of the border, somewhere warm, and somewhere that inspires you. And the funny thing is, we always end on an awkward pause thinking “well, why can’t we do that?” After all, we’re not just building a game, we’re building a game studio too, and if we had our druthers, why not factor in where we work as part of this adventure we’re on?

We were inspired enough to look one step further than just chatter over beer and nuts, and actually look into some interesting possibilities. So we all agreed on this set of criteria: It’s gotta be somewhere more laid back. It’s gotta be somewhere warm and sunny. And there’s gotta be access to great food, entertainment, and people. We didn’t just want to factor in warm climate and fun atmosphere. And  being the analytical person I am, I thought I’d break it down by some key criteria we looked at. Perhaps it’l be useful for other indie studios as well. As an example, we wanted to take a look at whether there were any particular locations that could really help us thrive. What place has some great incentives in place for us to create games?

Great Incentives For Game Developers

Many states offer great incentives for building a game dev studio. We were surprised that California, where our HQ is located, wasn’t one of them! Louisiana has tax break incentives that reduce your costs by over 60%, the best in the nation. Ooh… imagine working in the French Quarter in New Orleans and eating beignets! Hawaii has a 20% tax credit for game developers… working on the beach, eating Kalua pork! Wisconsin probably has the second best incentives in place for game developers, with both Georgia and Connecticut up there as well. It’s nice to see these states view game development as something worth wooing. It’s nice to be wooed.

BTW – If you want to read up more on some the interesting tax incentives each state has to try and woo game developers to their locale, here’s a great place to start.

Happiest States

So apparently there is a way to measure happiness, and someone decided to rank the states by a Happiness Index. Guess which state came out on top in 2012? Hawaii! Surprisingly, all the other top 10 states are northern bound where frigid weather prevails. Also surprising, California was ranked 17th, as I figured it would be ranked much higher. Apparently it’s been falling in ranking over the years.

Cost of Living

California is obviously the hotbed of game development, thanks to its mix of creative (LA) and tech (Silicon Valley.) But working in Cali has a price. Namely… the price. Ultimately though, your cost of living is dependent on which city you live in. So if you wanted to compare something like San Francisco, CA, to something like Las Vegas, NV,  you can see that the housing is over 500% more expensive in San Fran and the cost of living is 111% more expensive. Which means that if you made $100K in salary in Vegas, you would need to earn an equivalent of $211K in San Fran. It’s even cheaper to live in New Orleans! The most expensive state? Hawaii.

So what does 2013 have in store for us? A new game, a new office, and a new adventure. Hopefully an adventure that includes with hula dancing showgirls serving beignets! Til then, I’ll just stare at this cat with envy. Why must it taunt me so?

I came across an article on Fast Company recently entitled “Why Your Brand Should Piss Someone Off”, and it really got me thinking. Not only because I take a particular interest in marketing techniques (although I do–residual from college). I think it really struck me because I love finding applications for hypotheses like these in real life. I have had the the privilege of playing “fly on the wall” for far too many hours of discussion related to getting an indie studio off the ground: what the first game should be, how it should be structured, who the target market is, and (according to this article, more importantly) brand identity. It’s all about grabbing your audience by the shoulders and shaking them.

At the risk of stereotyping, consumers, especially consumers of indie products, want bold. They’re a niche market looking to have certain creative outlets fulfilled. They certainly don’t want the same run-of-the-mill experience they’ve been handed by the dinosaurs of the gaming industry for the last several decades. The way I see it, that means an indie game studio has to do the following to stand out: create a unique and interesting product and market it in a way that speaks to someone specific, at the risk of pissing someone else off.

Immediately I’m reminded of one studio in particular. While I’ve never gotten into their games, I’m familiar with them because my boyfriend used to work there. In general, they try to set themselves apart in the industry as the social gaming studio for “hardcore gamers”. If you’ve been tuned in to industry news recently, you’ve heard about them. They are called KIXEYE, and your friends have probably sent you the link to their over-the-top recruiting video “The Interview”, which took blatant swings at competitors EA, Zynga, and Kabam. The video alienated some and thrilled others, but at the end of the day, the company has reported a record number of applications. And despite criticism from some, their executives insist that the video is a good lithmus test for determining whether someone is a good culture fit. If you “got” their video, chances are you want to work on the type of games they create – Facebook games for hardcore gamers.

As an indie studio, you have a chance to finally tell your stories, through both your brand identity and your game idea, without a publisher homogenizing your ideas by committee. And sadly, if IndieGames.com feels need to ask ”Are indie developers censoring themselves?” then you’ve got to wonder if indies aren’t taking advantage of one of the greatest benefits of being an indie. If you are going after a certain type of gamer, be unrelenting about it. Gamers will love it. Well, except for the ones you piss off.

If you love indie games, or make indie games, you gotta check out the documentary Indie Game: The Movie. It’s the sort of flick that can stir something up. In the last month or so, I’ve joined in several conversations about the movie, and interestingly enough, I found that people took different things away from it. All thought the movie was worthy of the indie scene. But for different reasons. Here’s two interesting takes!

John Master Lee’s View

As someone that is knee deep in making indie games, I found the movie particularly inspiring, while at the same time quite depressing. And I’m not just talking about the way the film is structured, which was clearly designed to get you to root for the underdogs and then bask in the glory of their triumph in the end. It’s clear the devs in the movie struggle to make their games, and the twists and turns and trials and tribulations are worthy of any big screen drama, as well as their epic wins in the end (just so happens every game dev featured in the movie went onto making it big. That’s just not the case with most indie devs, unfortunately.) What inspired me was how these guys stuck to being indie, no matter the cost to their sanity, or livelihoods, because to them, it was the ultimate creative freedom they knew they wanted.

Any of these highly talented creators featured in the film, from the creator of Fez, to Braid to Super Meat Boy, could have gone and worked for a big game developer/publisher, and lived comfortably. But they didn’t. They knew they wanted to do it indie style. And they knew that if they didn’t they would have lost the one form of expression they had that eased their soul. For these creators, making games was their outlet. Their voice. And whether or not they were disillusioned, they felt like doing it this way was their only salvation. That strength in self belief is simply uncommon in so much of today’s generation of creators.

That being said, it was depressing seeing how these guys suffered for their art. Especially because so much of it was avoidable had they been part of some network that provided some guidance for them. Simple guidance on project management, or business negotiations, or even marketing, could have saved them much of the heartache they felt throughout production. Or even a simple support network where people can turn to so they don’t feel so isolated in their journey. It’s even more depressing to think how some game publishers know this and prey on this knowledge, making life even tougher.

Quite frankly, it’s because of this movie that inspired me to get this site going. And why so many people wanted to help out. Indie devs work in a vacuum at times, denied access to best practices and or even a support network because they just don’t know where to turn to. Making indie games should an inspiring tale, and it should feel like that through the creative process. But man, seeing how these guys struggled just might turn off some prospective indie devs because it all feels so daunting!

Drew M-M’s View

I was equally impressed with Indie Game: The Movie, but walked away with a different take than John Master Lee. The thing is, the movie does two things really well, but those two things don’t necessarily compliment each other all that well.

First, Indie Game: The Movie argues that game design is a real skill, a worthy artform, and something worth analyzing, just like plot structure in film or tonal structure in music. The idea was clearly to defuse that old argument about games not being art, but just having art in them. Indie Game: The Movie don’t have sections on the beautiful visual design of David Hellman, or on the kickass music of Danny Baranowsky, for the simple reason that those sorts of detours would distract from the topic at hand. The topic at hand is game design, which only games have, and which is amazing.

So then there’s the other thing that Indie Game: The Movie does beautifully: it builds a myth of what an indie developer should look and act like. Now, it does that freakin’ beautifully, even though doing so is arguably not a great idea. I mean, there are plenty of indie developers out there who are not straight, white, male, living in North America, making some form of platform game, and/or initially releasing that game on the Xbox Live Arcade—but you won’t see those folks here. Indie Game: The Movie serves as an introduction to indie games overall (and even positions itself as an introduction to games as such with its awesome breakdown of how level design works), but then limits its scope one particular corner of the indie scene. There’s no malice there, but there is definitely myopia.

Which is not to say that the three games are identical, of course. For starters, at the time of filming, they were at three very different points in their lifecycles. Braid was already enshrined and beloved. Super Meat Boy was in the process of becoming a massive hit. And Fez showed immense promise but also stood a decent chance of never being released.

And the games themselves, heavy Mario influence aside, really couldn’t be more different. Braid is anaerobic and philosophical. Super Meat Boy is endlessly kinetic and has poo jokes. Fez is machine logic incarnate, full of hidden patterns and the kind of glitchy reasoning you can only find in games.

Still, this is a specific species of scraggly auteur—”Why do we all have fucking shitty beards?” asks Tommy Refenes on Team Meat’s commentary track—positioning themselves as spefic kinds of folk heroes: Jonathan Blow as an obtuse guru, Team Meat as a manic-depressive garage band, and Phil Fish as a mercurial visionary. All of which is only half-true, but as other writers pointed out, that myth-making is right in the tissue of the film, from the text to the editing to the cinematography.

So yeah, introducing the world to indie games, and making a case for why they matter? Amazing. But then immediately calcifying our collective image of the people making indie games? I don’t know, that seems like it might make the indie scene seem way more exclusive and way more homogenous than it actually is.

It’s true, I have found myself playing a lot of Awesomenauts lately. How I missed this little gem when it was first released, I do not know. Perhaps it had to do with the overly colorful and cutesy marketing of the trailers and screenshots. Many potential players dismissed the game as a simple kids’ title, myself included. But upon reading more about the game on various forums, I was surprised to learn that Ronimo Games had created a quite challenging and addicting entry into the Mutiplayer Online Battle Arena genre. I decided to give the game a try and downloaded it on the Xbox Live Arcade.

After a few rounds, I was absolutely hooked. Here was a very simple MOBA premise with exciting platforming elements incorporated. Imagine Defense of the Ancients or League of Legends as a platformer where all character movement and attacks are fully controlled by the player, and you have the gist of Awesomenauts. As a gamer who loves MOBAs, but is not quite adept at frantically clicking all over the place like my hand has Tourette’s, here was a game I could play comfortably with my controller. To make the the deal even more awesome, I was able to get my girlfriend (who absolutely detests games like League of Legends) to get into and actually enjoy playing the game with me.  On the console version of Awesomenauts, there is a very simple couch co-op feature that allows three friends to go at it as a team. This ability to play a MOBA with your friends on the same gaming device is astounding and exciting for the genre.

And there, I believe, lies the charm of Awesomenauts, a game that takes a notoriously complicated genre and makes it accessible to all sorts of players. I mean, in what other MOBA do you do anything besides move your character around with a mouse? And what other MOBA could be mentioned int he same sentence as couch co-op? Ronimo games has really done something special here.

And to think, Awesomenauts almost never came to fruition. Shortly before the release of Awesomenuats, Ronimo Games’ German publisher, dtp entertainment filed for bankruptcy. It is hard to believe that such an important and innovative title narrowly avoided the chopping block due to publishing issues. It’s a concern that many gamers never consider or hear about, and it makes me wonder how many other amazing games never see the light of day because of some sort of financial issue or publishing concern.

And it reminds me that, if we as gamers want to continue to see fun, exciting, and genre-pushing games in our futures, we have to support the developers. Support does not just mean financial support (though that’s certainly important), but also letting developers and publishers know that the fan base is interested. It means community interaction and discussion as well as outreach. Most importantly, it means giving games outside of your comfort zone a shot. Investigation into indie games often reveals a vibrant community ready to bring you up to speed. Quite simply, gamers need to support good games.

As much as Awesomenauts is a fun game to play in its own right, I can’t help but feel that it points toward something even bigger. New concepts, when added to the MOBA genre, can really breathe new life into the games. Imagine a game like Awesomenauts with even more refined platforming, more characters and stages, and new gameplay elements. I’m excited just thinking about it, and maybe even more importantly, so are my MOBA-hating friends.

Ronimo Games should be congratulated for Awesomenauts, and the game deserves success and support. In a genre where clicking a mouse is all the rage, it is exciting and refreshing to pick up a game that can be played just as well with a controller and some platforming-savvy. Games like this should be supported and new innovations should be encouraged in all sorts of established genres. This is exactly the kind of thing that makes indie gaming so fun and exciting. Creative minds can come together to infuse their ideas with the tried and true gaming mechanics to make absolutely stellar titles.

If this piece didn’t convince you to go out and buy the game, then perhaps this trailer will.

Once upon a time, some people at Fire Hose Games had a conversation wherein it was noted that there are a lot of games out right now that feature zombies, but not so many with dinosaurs. Truly, a travesty. An affront to polite society. “It was one of those things that started as a joke, but people got more excited over,” said Eitan Glinert, Fire Chief and founder of Fire Hose Games. Hence, Go Home Dinosaurs, a game to satisfy your sauropoidal needs (sort of – more on that later).

Go Home Dinosaurs is a tower defense game wherein you control a gopher who must defend his BBQ from ravenous yet adorable dinosaurs. There two main wrinkles that distinguishes Go Home Dinosaurs from other tower defense games: Your gopher avatar can travel all over the screen to collect coconuts (which are then used to create your different towers), and the game also uses a card system, something Glinert said Fire Hose has worked hard to implement.

“We like games with deckbuilding,” said Glinert. “We like the idea of you use an item and then it’s gone.”

The card store that you visit between level to replenish your towers. The gophers would be really screwed if they didn’t have this, or dinosaurs didn’t become coins when they die.

At the beginning of each level, you have a certain number of cards, each one representing a different type of tower – standard towers, frost towers, rapid fire towers, area of effect towers, etc. Towers that you would find in most other tower defense games only with the added benefit of being manned by zealous gophers that spout puns based on their tower type. You can only build towers that you have cards for, and you’re limited to 10 cards per level, at least currently; since the game is still in open beta, Glinert said many of the elements are subject to change.

“That is one thing that will be changing; there will be variable hand size,” he said.

Fortunately for you, I’m here to warn you to be conservative with your cards. In the first few levels, beating the level will shower you with a cornucopia of cards, essentially fully replenishing your stock. After the early tutorial-ish stages are over however, the level rewards drop from “bountiful” to “niggardly,” which can leave you in the lurch for a level or two; as someone brought up on tower defense mods for StarCraft Broodwar and Warcraft III, I had been trained to build towers as soon as I had the resources, because you never know when that one level with three times as many baddies is going to come along and overwhelm you. Newer tower defense games like Plants vs. Zombies and Kingdom Rush also reinforce this philosophy. But in Go Home Dinosaurs, you’re better off conserving you cards if you can. You will gain coins each level, which can then be exchanged for additional cards, but you would do well to make any attempt at card conservation you can (at least in the beta – this is all subject to change, obviously).

The aforementioned gopher avatar does a lot of work to defend his BBQ from hungry dinos. In addition to burrowing all over the map to collect coconuts (because gophers love coconuts… I guess?), he also serves a tower if he’s in range of dinosaurs. This is more refreshing than you might think, as he’s actually a decent “tower,” packing a reasonable punch, with a decent range, that can attack land and air dinosaurs. It also makes you feel like you have control and can do something to affect your situation in between coconut collection and tower placement. This element is something else that Glinert says the team is working on enhancing.

“One of our favorite parts of the game is the gopher,” he said. “We’re going to double down on that and give him some cool new abilities.”

The game as currently constituted should certainly sate any superficial desire for dinosaurs you might have. Just try not to think about the fact that you’re throwing coconuts at them until they burst into coins, and that you’re spending all your time denying them a few steaks – even the herbivores. Quibbles aside, Go Home Dinosaurs is a pretty fun take on tower defense, and the final version should be even better. The beta version is currently available for free on the Google Chrome store.

Necrovision

Necrovision is a cross between Left 4 Dead, World War 1, and the Evil Dead series. By granting the player a powerful demonic arm-thing made by vampires and enough weapons to rip the Kaiser a new one, gamers get to lay waste to zombies and ghouls on a quest to stop a mad German scientist from becoming the King of Hell. Of course the plot doesn’t make a lick of sense, but Necrovision does offer a whole lot of bang for your $12.99 with excessive gore, swearing from undead German and Scottish soldiers, and guns that actually feel powerful like they’re supposed to. The game also sports a neat kill combo tracker that makes you feel like a total monster when you’re racking up the enemy bodycount.

Terraria

If you haven’t heard of Terraria, you probably have a boulder the size of Alabama on your head. Terraria does for 2D sidescrolling what Minecraft does for 3D world-building. Essentially, players are tasked with mining and building their own weapons and such to fight baddies. Sound familiar? Oh, and you can build and entire world with the toolset as well. Sure, it sounds a lot like Minecraft, but it has its own unique aesthetic and identity and manages to be a compelling creative sandbox, attractively priced at $9.99.

Clutch

I hesitated to add Clutch to the list because it treads on familiar territory of car-combat and zombies. By now, there are probably sixty different titles alone in that category, making it hard to distinguish Clutch from the rest. However, this zombie racer is a little different in that it is far more brutal, there are sharper visuals, and it has a PS3 port. It also came before all of the other competitors, appearing in a little known corner of the Steam market. For $9.99, it satisfies that small niche of gamers who want to run over zombies while enjoying a little post-apocalyptic street racing.

Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony

I’ll admit this one kind of threw me for a loop. Jamestown is supposed to be a “neo-classical top-down shooter…..set on 17th-century British Colonial Mars.” This game makes no sense, but it doesn’t need to. It’s a ridiculously entertaining isometric arcade shooter, and frankly, that’s all that matters. The weapons and enemies are all well-balanced to give everything a punchy feeling while keeping the difficulty just right. The best part is that Jamestown supports four player co-op. That means that as long as one player is still alive, victory can be snatched from the jaws of defeat. As the game’s description says, “Win or lose, your team will do it together.” What’s even better is the $9.99 bargain price tag.

Chaser

An older FPS title, Chaser is not innovative in any way, shape, or form. There’s not much to this game except spraying a bad guy’s brains on the walls and shattering some plastic-looking windows. But you don’t play Chaser expecting a flawless game. You play it because Chaser is the videogame version of Total Recall. The protagonist (called the Chaser, obviously) awakens on a ship with a bad case of amnesia. By the end of the game, the player has fought his way off Earth and is on Mars ‘looking for the truth.’ Chaser really is as campy as it sounds and revels in its inspiration, though the gameplay isn’t as strong as the cheese factor. Regardless of its faults, anyone looking to relive Arnie’s adventure should give this $4.99 budget shooter a chance.

Iron Warriors: T-72 Tank Command

Iron Warriors is a rare bird; it’s a tank combat simulator that is based on the conflict in the Balkans. Beyond the weird setting (it’s a Russian-made game), Iron Warriors prides itself on realistically depicting the operation of Eastern-bloc mobile weapons of war. I cannot speak to the game’s level of authenticity, but I can say that it is a punishingly difficult game. Players will perform cold start-ups of tanks and lead small groups of troops and support vehicles into battle, mowing down the opposition. Be forewarned; a single mistake can lead to a flaming wreck, so choose your targets wisely and maintain constant situational awareness. Priced at $4.99, Iron Warriors provides a tank sim experience rarely found in most games.

Universe Sandbox

Universe Sandbox isn’t a game so much as it is a playground for screwing around with physics and the universe. Want to see what happens when you chuck a meteor the size of Mars at the Earth? Go ahead. Care to witness the Sun supernova and blow our entire galaxy away? Sure thing. You’re given free reign to do as you wish, whether it be reordering the Solar System or generating a wormhole large enough to swallow Saturn. While it may be difficult at first to grasp all of the intricacies of this game, it’s hard to resist the cheap price of $9.99.

Inside a Star-Filled Sky

If the movie Inception were given a booster shot of steroids, Inside a Star-Filled Sky might look a heck of a lot like it. Masquerading as a top-down, cutesy little shooter, this game will mess with your mind. You see, any enemy, power up, and player avatar can be entered. If that doesn’t make sense, think of how Leonardo went inside a person’s dreams. Essentially, their dreams were levels that were based upon the person’s characteristics. That’s kind of how the representations of the insides of objects are presented in Star-Filled Sky. If it still isn’t clicking, check out the Youtube trailer below. There are no real objectives other than killing and collecting upgrades, so those who don’t like to wander probably won’t enjoy this game. But if you’re okay with experiencing a weird, head-trip journey unlike every other game on the market, the $7.99 Star-Filled Sky is an absolute must-have.

Detour

Out of all the strategy games I’ve seen, Detour has to be the strangest. Instead of building bases and creating armies of troops, players are tasked with building roads. Why make concrete pathways? The goal is simple: escort three trucks to a tunnel at the other end of the map. The journey is not so simple. Players have to contend with a rival who has the same objective, all the while managing gold reserves via mines and deploying offensive weapons against enemy roads and trucks. Matches are quick and intense, and defeat is swift if extra care isn’t taken to monitor resources and truck progression. Clocking in at $9.99, Detour is a great way to test out your strategic reflexes.

Magicka

Magicka is ridiculous. It isn’t the game’s non-existent plot. It isn’t the typical fantasy monsters. It’s the absolutely spell-binding (pun) combat system. Magicka is fun because it gives players power over several different elemental spell types. Spells can be combined to create totally new attacks, like ice meteors (Earth and Ice). Adding to the chaos is the fact that there’s four player co-op, the only way to play Magicka. Default settings turn friendly fire on, so accidental deaths due to team-killing with ludicrous spells is commonplace and hilarious to watch. All in all, Magicka is a heck of a lot of fun and a great co-op package for the $9.99 asking price.

Additional Contributors: KC