Cave Story dev's Kero Blaster hitting Steam with Zangyou upgrade

Kero Blaster

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: the game is coming to Valve's monopolistic distribution service on November 11. Look, here's the game's publisher Playism announcing just that. And with a cute picture too.

Kero Blaster Steam

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.)

Kero Blaster has had two free spin-offs—separate small games set in the same world. I've mentioned Pink Hour before now, while another, Pink Heaven, was released last month.

Wes reviewed 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."

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.