by Did you know there are free games on Steam that don’t have Steam pages? In fact, the only way to get them is to enter the install links into your browser directly. So here’s a special 5-for-0 deal on hidden Steam games. First up:
This one is a flash game made by Valve. An entire dimension has been stolen by the Combine, and it’s up to you and your scientific prowess to recover it. It also only runs full screen at 640×480. I can forgive it this time since this game doesn’t actually exist.
It’s a pretty self-aware game (at least as far as the first level goes), and it’s not a bad little experiment. Certainly not an actual Half-Life game, but hey: it’s free. I can definitely see myself trying this again some time, so I think it deserves a solid Tier Two place.
This may actually be a demo – I’m not sure. In any event, it’s Peggle with a Valve theme, and I’m a fan. I never actually played the original Peggle, but the combination of Valve’s G-Man, Team Fortress, and a unicorn isn’t a bad way to spend half an hour. Again Tier Two.
I’m not really sure what Smashball is. It’s somewhat like a sports game with guns. It’s also multiplayer, so playing alone didn’t help. The graphics are pretty dated (though it’s the first to support modern resolutions so far) and I’m not a fan of sports games anyway, so it must go to Tier Three.
Apparently this was “published” by Telltale Games, and it appears to be a multiplayer version of Asteroids. Based on that, it’s my favorite game from Telltale – at least the asteroids don’t “remember your actions”. Sadly, no one seemed to be playing. Tier Three.
Our last entry didn’t let me take screenshots, unfortunately. It’s a fun, if quite simple, racing game. The tracks are very short, but I do appreciate that you can have a ghost car that runs the track in Gold, Silver, or Bronze time. That’s a pretty cool feature, but is sadly wasted on such short tracks. To be fair, since I only played the first few tracks, it’s possible things get more complicated later. Tier Two.