Super Crate Box sneaks onto Steam, play for free

Super Crate Box slyly shuffled itself into Steam's range of free games last week. It's been available for free download from developer Vlambeer's site for, like, ages , but has quietly launched on Steam as an experiment. According to Joystiq , Super Crate Box creator Rami Ismail didn't make any noise about the release because he wanted to see how well the game would do on its own merits, without media championing.

It's worth championing, though. The premise is straightforward enough. You simply snatch super crate boxes as they spawn within the enclosed arena. Killer blobs (not them again!) fall in through the ceiling and flop right into fire pit at the bottom. Then they fall out of the sky again, this time on fire, angry and faster than before. Soon the screen's a-swarm with an army of the crazy blighters, and you're having to use the machine guns, bazookas and flamethrowers hidden inside those boxes to pick them off.

It'll be interesting to hear how Super Crate Box has fares when Ismail reports back, especially in the light of the furore surrounding the $100 charity donation Valve now request of developers submitting to Greenlight. Here's a Super Crate Box trailer to watch during the short free download.

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.