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Steam’s Punk Games Showcase Hates AI Slop, Loves Blowing Up Nazis
Punks are taking over Steam starting on October 9 with the Punk Games Showcase, a week-long, curated digital festival celebrating games made with and expressing a punk spirit.
Over 400 games were submitted for consideration, and the final list includes over 100, with the intention of filtering out any that included generative AI, among other factors. Many featured games have already been released, while others are still to come. A few of them are even out this month or during the event.
I'm still digging through the lengthy list of games that will be featured, but a few that have my heart include:
* Too Many Fucking Nazis: A fast-paced first-person shooter about creatively destroying Nazis. You can also flip them off before you blow them up, naturally.
* Punk Juice: Join a band, go thrifting, play dead-end gigs, and get mad at code-locked bathrooms.
* Wax Heads: Work in a struggling record store, slacking off with your buddies while tending to customers and listening to music.
* Club Soko: Turn the mosh pit into a puzzle as you navigate around security, crowd-killers, and those people who stand at the edge of the pit and then get mad at others about it.
* Tonight We Riot: A 2D "crowd-based brawler" where you play protestors resisting tyranny in the streets, developed by a worker-owned indie team.
* 10 Second Mixtape: A music game where you create songs, then upload them for others around the world to remix and perform.
* Tetherpunk: Kitbash a spaceship from scrap parts taken from the corporate overlords who ruined your world, then use that ship to destroy what they've created.
Some of the many games to be featured in the Punk Games Showcase.
Brad Smith of studio Milky Tea, the creators of Club Soko, has been involved in itch.io's Hardcore Punk Jam since 2018, and is organizing the Steam showcase that will run alongside the game jam's latest edition.
Smith said the showcase has a few simple goals: to highlight games that "feature this style of music, are about the subculture, or are from creators who understand this scene, and it shows significantly in their games." He also hopes the showcase will influence Valve to add a "punk" categorization label on Steam, so developers can tag their games accordingly and players can find them more easily.
I caught up with Smith for more insight into the upcoming showcase and the movement to uplift games that wear their punk roots.
GameSpot: How did you choose participants for the Punk Game Showcase?
Brad Smith: With 443 games submitted, it was tough to curate, but I did my best. I basically had to create arbitrary categories to help lock in a decision, which looked like: Does this game have punk music, or is it about punk culture? Does this game align with the general vibes of this showcase in its aesthetics, tone, or intent? Does this game/developer have design intentions that feel genuine?
Often the deciding factor would come down to what people wrote in their application, a lot of which was deeply moving and relatable to read. It helps if devs have collaborated with punk musicians or are also in punk bands, which many of the selected are! Also, released games that were self-published get special treatment in the showcase, as to me that isn't too different from punk musicians folding the sleeves of their own albums or starting a label, like how Dischord Records did, you know?
Were there certain qualifications teams had to meet?
Haha, not really; maybe the only qualification is to go out and buy a punk record, or attend a show (just kidding)! I realize how silly and gatekeepy this whole thing might come across as labeling what game is punk in a "real recognize real" manner is so subjective and broad.
Ultimately, I just want to celebrate the underground and see more games from true creative people who aren't solely motivated to make money in this industry or that simply feature aggressive hardcore punk music. I always felt like certain depictions of punk culture in video games seemed oversimplified, disingenuous, or compromised in some way. What I've learned from this music, its community, and attending hardcore shows felt so much deeper in that sense; it's almost become sacred to me, which might sound weird.
On the flip side, was there anything disqualifying, like generative AI usage or certain themes?
Yeah, I consulted with an illustrator Camille Carpentier, from the Belgian scene who has a good eye for spotting AI-generated art. We did our best to curate and filter that stuff out in our spare time but there was a lot! Hopefully nothing slipped through the cracks.
I think some people saw the word "punk" and submitted their cyberpunk- or steampunk-style games, which is far from what all of this is about. Submissions from studios with known questionable ethics toward their employees or shady business practices get binned off too, by the way.
What are some of your favorite punk games, from this showcase or just in general?
I have a real soft spot for CRUST SHMUP; it's free and feels like the game equivalent of Napalm Death's 1987 record Scum. Its crusty style influenced how I ended up doing some of the graphics for the event Steam page, too.
A game releasing soon that's worth checking out is Beat, Heart, Beat, which has cool grungy Midwest emo vibes. Others to keep an eye on in the future are 4MECHEROS, Urine Nation, CHILDREN OF SATURN, and Creatures Like Us.
The one game that's not in the showcase that deserves to be would be VILE: Exhumed, [which] Cara [Cadaver] entered in the Hardcore Punk Jam back in 2022, and I've been a fan of her work since. Also, shoutout to Teenage Blob, which is an older favorite of mine!
You're hoping to get a Punk label on Steam eventually. What's that process look like?
Yup, that's the plan! I can see why some people think labels are a bit silly, as I do feel like the term "indie" has lost a lot of its original meaning these days. But I figured it makes sense to have an intention behind organizing all of this and to try to help represent these kinds of games differently to the wider industry.
I'm currently unsure what that process will look like with Valve, to be honest, but I'd love to be able to easily find more games like this on Steam. It already exists on itch.io! Maybe with a few more emails and as new moshing/stage-diving games with aggressive music emerge into the world, the tag will get added.
My plan is to continue running Hardcore Punk Game Jams where submitted entries are guaranteed a spot in any future Punk Game Showcases on Steam until this happens!
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The Punk Games Showcase will be featured on Steam from October 9-16, with the Hardcore Punk Jam kicking off at the same time on itch.io. You can follow the Punk Game Devs community on Bluesky and Instagram to learn more.
