Facepunch, much to the internet’s chagrin at one point, develops a lot of games. While Rust and Garry’s Mod have the most attention dedicated to them, and do the financial heavy lifting, the developers there are hard at work trying to find what’s next. This leads to a lot of prototypes, either from individuals or small teams. Now they’re releasing all of these publically, needing you to only own one of their games to get access.
Which of these could end up on our upcoming PC games list?
The prototypes are distributed via a Steam app, for which they’re providing keys. It requires you have one of Facepunch’s games on a Steam account you log in with, which they say is to make sure only real humans get keys, rather than wanting you to pay for the privilege of seeing their unfinished work. Given I entirely accidentally have a copy of Garry’s Mod, it’s not exactly a stringent demand.
As for the games themselves, here’s a rundown:
- Absorb – competitive Katamari in a 3D environment. If you’ve played Agar.io you understand the basic concept.
- Beep! – an open world driving game that is in active development.
- Space Usurper – twin stick shooter with a rudimentary level editor using image files, making them easy to share.
- Troubleshooter – RPG/twin-stick hybrid using procedural generation. Been in development for two years, still active.
- Bill’s Game – crime-based PvP in a procedural city, creator Bill Ford hasn’t come up with a good name yet.
- Surf Shogun – local co-op arcade surfing combat game. Also on itch.io.
- Deuce – a tennis game that takes inspiration from fighters, it stopped being worked on earlier this year but is still playable.
- Approval – a mish-mash of genres in the framing of approval tests for mobile apps. It evolved into…
- Arcade – arcade management and mini-games rolled into one.
- Facewound – one of Garry Newman’s old projects, a side-scrolling shooter with bullet time.
There’s a few more described in the official post, as well as details on who is making them and screenshots. They’re looking for feedback and have set up a subreddit for doing so. 10,000 new keys were released yesterday, and if you want one just head over here – there’s 6,577 remaining at time of writing. Check out our list of the best IO games to start playing some great browser games.