shatter posts

We are starting to see a trend happening; developers that used to work on retail games with major publishers are now moving to the downloadable self-publishing route. Team17 made that decision in 2010 and released the Alien Breed trilogy and Worms Reloaded. Now another developer, the New Zealand-based Sidhe Interactive, is doing (almost) the same thing.

The developer's co-founder Mario Wynands told our sister site Joystiq this week that it has decided to " .. run the studio on the basis of royalties and download revenue alone, as opposed to being somewhat reliant on third-party publishers." While it is still making retail games, we can expect to see more original titles like Shatter, the arcade shooter that's available for several platforms including the PC.

2010 was a stellar year for indie gaming. We didn't think that 2009 could be beat, but this year really brought out all the stops. From classical platformers like Super Meat Boy to disturbing adventure games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, there was an aboslute flood of excellent indie games this year. From paid to free, players who wanted to try something a little different had a huge selection of titles to choose from in 2010. Here's our favorite picks from 2010 to roll in the new year! Click on the image to check out our gallery feature.

The next chapter of Steam's holiday Treasure Hunt contest and sales promotion has now gone live with some new objectives to achieve in the next two days while using the PC game download site along with a couple of new two day game sales. We won't go over the particulars of the contest and giveaway portion of the Treasure Hunt again; you can check out our earlier posts to get the info you need. In any case here are the new objectives for this next episode:

Send a gift to a friend
Make a Sacrifice in Call of Duty: Black Ops
Set a leaderboard score of at least 11,200,000 for 'Bonus Mode' in Shatter
Create a Crass Menagerie in Left 4 Dead 2.

In addition to the new objectives, Left 4 Dead 2 is on sale for just $4.99 for the next two days while Shatter is on sale for a mere $2.50.

It's the last day of June. Has it been a great month for you? Perhaps June could have treated you better? Whatever your disposition you can't deny the fact that Steam's summer sales event has been pretty spectacular so far. Today the PC game download service has got a new batch of games that have had their prices cut drastically for just one day only. Check out the games before the sales end at 1 pm Eastern time on Thursday:

• Flatout: Ultimate Carnage - $2.50
• Shatter - $2.50
• Red Orchestra Ostfront 41-45 $2.50
• The Void - $5
• Red Faction Guerrilla - $5
• Torchlight - $5
• Left 4 Dead - $6.80
• The Guild II + Expansion - $12.49
• Mass Effect 2 - $23.99

The Playstation 3 has a number of downloadable games that are not available for the PC, including the recently released arcade shooter-puzzle title Shatter from New Zealand-based developer Sidhe. The game has apparently sold well (about 30,000 units on the PS3 a week after its release) and now, according to Gamasutra, PC owners could be seeing a version coming to their hard drive.

In a new chat with Sidhe's Managing Director Mario Wynands he states, "We already have working builds of Shatter on PC and XBLA but are reviewing the situation to see whether it makes sense to continue investing in those versions to bring them to completion and release them. So far, it is looking likely we will bring the game to other platforms."