I get the feeling that Kero Blaster—Studio Pixel's platforming follow-up to its rightly revered Cave Story—slipped under many peoples' radars when it released last year. That might be because it's a slightly different type of platformer to Cave Story; it might be because it wasn't on Steam; heck, maybe people just really hate frogs. Well, Kero Blaster gets another shot at success with its imminent Steam release (opens in new tab): the game is coming to Valve's monopolistic distribution service on November 11. Look, here's the game's publisher Playism announcing just that (opens in new tab). And with a cute picture too.
Now, 'game coming to Steam' isn't particularly noteworthy, but this is a good chance to tell you about Kero Blaster's recent big update, which added a new mode, extra stages and more story to the game. Zangyou mode went live on Playism three days ago, and will be included in the Steam release.
(Don't worry: if you bought the game on Playism, you'll be given a Steam key (opens in new tab).)
Kero Blaster has had two free spin-offs—separate small games set in the same world. I've mentioned Pink Hour (opens in new tab) before now, while another, Pink Heaven (opens in new tab), was released last month.
Wes reviewed (opens in new tab) the original version of Kero Blaster last year, and found it "refreshing to play a game with such mechanical purity, even if it doesn't do much we hadn't seen by 1993."