Within the narrow halls and rooms of an ancient structure, a ship delves ever deeper in search of treasure and secrets. Monolith eschews the screenfuls of bullets or open arenas of more traditional shmups and shooters for tight claustrophobic dungeons. The action however is no less frenetic.

Games where you can play as a dog win me over instantly, and Balthazar's Dream is no exception. With the promise of a tender story, coupled with side-scrolling adventure and enemy-thwarting, Balthazar's Dream looks to deliver the puppy package.

Early Access can feel like a minefield. Involving your player base in the game development process always bears certain risks. A vocal community is able to offer constructive feedback and greatly improve upon your ideas, but its demands can quickly become unreasonable or too hard to implement. Risking the ire of a large group of people heavily invested in your game is definitely not recommended.

It's a gamble worth taking, though - after all, this is what Early Access is for. Now, if you want to take this idea one step further, why not build a whole game around your players' ideas and demands?

Roaming around a post-nuclear U.K. can be exhausting work, especially when you're part of a band that has seen a sudden upsurge in popularity after the post-apocalyptic world finds that they love terrible music. That still doesn't put you above running errands, JRPG-style, and trying to keep the irradiated germs from taking you out in Gamey Rot.

You'll find intense bullet hells, artistic swordplay, and sci-fi battles in this diverse collection of Screenshot Saturday Highlights

Something that I think most gamers want is to stand in the action - right in the thick of it. The Midnight Sanctuary lets you do just that, taking players into a VR vision of its world and story. With the use of powerful, artistic visuals and a strong voice cast (including Yu Shimamura, who some may recognize as Annie from Attack On Titan!), The Midnight Sanctuary promises to deliver an immersive story-telling experience.

Data.Expand is an arcade game about moving around and dodging enemies, but it is also a procedural art piece created out of the player's failures and missteps, creating striking visuals and pleasant sounds out of what, under normal game circumstances, are considered to be mistakes.

Mirage, that sounds... light. Airy. Like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. A fata morgana in the desert heat. A daydream... until the big dude with the giant axe chops you in two. So you just died. Again. What a bloody mess. Mirage: Arcane Warfare, the latest multiplayer brawler from Chivalry developers Torn Banner Studios, may be a lot of things, but "light and airy" is definitely not one of them.

Cheating in videogames often has a bitter aftertaste. It smacks of being a bad player, or of not playing the game the way it's supposed to be played. With that in mind, you'll probably be surprised that the first thing you see when booting up Splinter Zone is a cheat menu. That's right, just like those cracked games of old, Splinter Zone lets you fiddle with the difficulty - or even banish all enemies from the game.

"Some people have told me that it has encouraged them to keep doing what they're doing, which I think is always a positive thing. We lose so many because all that they get in return for their hard work is little feedback or complete silence."

After taking the time to speak to Steve Cook about the 1000 Game Makers Thread - a collection of gifs and links to unique, personal, and interesting games from around the world that Cook wanted to see supported, we sought out the developers who had been touched by his work. Collecting responses from all manner of developers, we got to see the widespread positive effect Cook's efforts have had on the people whose games he curated, and how, with one person's efforts, many artists and creators got to feel a little bit more appreciated, and a lot less alone, in their works.