Alien Swarm

The team that has been working on the Left 4 Dead series and Portal 2 has also had a side project- Alien Swarm.  Valve has been helping this team build it little by little in between other Valve projects until the game is ready for release.  That time has finally come.

Want to play?  Of course you do.  It’s a beautiful remake of an old classic and it’ll be sure to thrill computer gamers.  You have the option of making it single player or tactical four player co-op action with a top-down perspective and can unlock persistent items by gaining levels.  Other features include complete game code and mod tools, over 40 weapons and equipment with countless loadout configurations, four unique classes and eight unique characters, 64 achievements available, tile-based map generation tool, and its powered by Source and Steam.

The best feature of them all?  Today (July 19), Alien Swarm is being released for free.  You have to have a minimum of Windows XP to grab it, but one would hope that everyone’s up to speed in that regard by now.

If Valve wasn’t being nice enough, they’re also giving you extra background info on the game.  ”In addition to the game, Valve will also release the complete code base for Alien Swarm. This includes updates to the Source engine SDK and full Steamworks integration. If you’ve ever thought about developing a mod on the Source engine with Steamworks, this release provides more insight and examples for using Steamworks in game production,” says the Valve news site.

So are you going to grab Alien Swarm?  I’m not going to lie, I’m tempted.