9. Towns
Towns was one of the first games submitted to Steam's "Greenlight" program, which they have set up to help smaller developers fund their projects. They tend to be of a lower price than standard new releases, and allow gamers the chance to see a game through from Alpha/Beta phases till it's a final product. A typical hook is that people can pay perhaps £10 for the game now and get the game for free upon release, instead of paying, say, the £19.99 rumoured retail price. According to Steam's own page: "Steam Greenlight is a system that enlists the community's help in picking some of the new games to be released on Steam. Developers post information, screenshots, and video for their game and seek a critical mass of community support in order to get selected for distribution. Steam Greenlight also helps developers get feedback from potential customers and start creating an active community around their game during the development process." The issue with Towns was the version of the game they released was nowhere near finished, despite being billed at the time as a polished end article. Images placed on the developers' website were shown to be false and made with mods or were simply Photoshopped to mislead the paying public. The premise of Towns was to make a town or village to attract warriors and heroes, who will in turn stay and help fight off monsters. However, many people had technical issues despite having computers that met the recommended requirements, and there were rumours Steam didn't check on the status of the game before releasing it to the masses. To date, Towns is still "in development", and a demo is available for people to try prior to purchase...