black-cat-games posts

As promised, Alien Swarm has been released as a free PC game download by Valve via their Steam service. The sci-fi themed top-down co-op shooter comes with both the game as well as the source code for developers to use as an example of how to make a stand alone game using Valve's Source Engine. It contains co-op suppor for up to four players, four player classes, over 40 weapons and items and a map generating tool.

As we reported last week Alien Swarm started out several years ago as a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 that won many prizes during Epic Games' original Make Something Unreal mod contest. The mod team, collectively known as Black Cat Games, then announced plans to release a stand alone version of Alien Swarm using the Source Engine. Valve silently brought in the Alien Swarm team members to work for their company and in between working on major Valve games the team continued to develop Alien Swarm.

Once again the summer doldrums continue to hit the PC game release calendar. A new driving themed MMO game gets its official launch this week. Also a surprise free game is due for its release later today from one of the biggest PC game developers.

Need For Speed World: Electronic Arts makes its second attempt to make a driving themed MMO game world (remember Motor City Online?) with this title. Players can race online using an array of super fast licenced sports cars. While the game is free to play up to a point, players will have to pay for a $19.99 starter pack to be able to race through all of the game's tracks and levels. Buying the starter pack gets you in the game starting on July 20. Everybody else gets to play on July 27.

A while back a group of mod makers called Black Cat Games created a top-down sci-fi shooter total conversion for Unreal Tournament 2004 called Alien Swarm. After the mod was released the mod makers announced plans to release a stand alone Alien Swarm game using Valve's Source Engine. However there's been little info about the status of that game's progress.

What we didn't know at the time was that Valve decided to hire the members of the Alien Swarm team two years ago. Since then the team members have worked on Valve's games like the Left 4 Dead series and the upcoming Portal 2. However the team never forgot about Alien Swarm and continued to work on the game in between their official Valve duties. Today Valve announced that the game will finally be released on Monday as a free download. In addition the game's source code will also be released for free.

Alien Swarm will feature co-op gameplay with up to four players, four player classes and eight unique characters. There will also be 40 weapons and items to use and a title based map generation tool. It will also support Steamworks features like achievements, matchmaking, Steam Cloud save game storage and more.