Believe it or not, I’ve been quietly working away on my Five Hundred game – and I’m now happy to announce, it’s coming to Steam!

If you have a Steam account, you can wishlist it now to be notified when it goes live! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2824200/Five_Hundred/

At this point, long time players will likely be thinking “Steam? But the game is already out!”. That’s true, but there’s exciting developments for you guys as well, so please keep reading!

Reasons to Publish on Steam

There are a few reasons I’ve been looking into Steam, even though my 500 game was first released back in the Windows XP days. Let me share some of them…

Computer Safety

Lots of people simply will not download and install random .EXE or .ZIP files they find on random websites like mine anymore; and honestly, I can’t blame them – it’s good practice! Using a distribution platform like Steam comes with a lot of reassurance built-in that playing the game is safe.

Discoverability

Having my game hosted on my own website is fun, but it does limit “average Joe in the world that wants to find and play a Five Hundred game”. Search engines are getting worse, not better, for non-corporate websites – if I want a reasonable chance that Joe can find and play my game, I need to publish it somewhere he’s going to be looking – and Steam is the largest PC game platform in the world.

Multiplayer

This is a big one. Five Hundred naturally suits multiplayer perfectly, but the it’s almost impossible for a solo five hundred player to be able to find someone else to play with online! I could write and host a dedicated matchmaking server, but this is seriously hard work (and costs serious money). Steam comes with support for public lobbies, searching, friend invites etc all built in and free.

If I have a dream that one day, two people that I don’t know (and that don’t know each other) are going to end up playing my game online together, this is the way to do it.

Fun and Learning

I’ve never released a game on Steam before, and this game is relatively simple, so why not start here? One day, I’d like to release a serious, full-length game on Steam – but that can’t be my first game, so this makes sense to learn some of the “what to do” and “what not to do” type lessons with.

I plan on making the game available for a nominal fee – I’m still figuring out how Steam’s pricing works, but it will be less than the cost of a single coffee. If I can recoup the cost of signing up for Steam’s developer programme ($100US), I will be more than satisfied. Given I’ve already spent over $1000US on development, web hosting and licences, I’m obviously not in it for the money.

New Features

For existing players, here’s the good news. The version I’m working on for Steam will include many, many new features – some which I’ve identified myself, and others which commentors or emaillers have asked for. This is a (non-exhaustive!) list of the things I’m working on, or have already completed:

• Improved performance on really low-spec PCs (e.g. old office PCs with integrated graphics)
• Multiplayer – anywhere from 2 to 4 human players, online, in co-op or competitive options
• Improved computer player intelligence!
• Misere bids
• Statistics tracking and leaderboards
• More achievements (and Steam achievements)
• Options to pause at key stages
• Auto loading and saving games in progress when you exit the game
• Improvements to the user interface
• More cardsets, cardbacks, and table options built in
• A fully-featured Cardset Editor, so users can create their own cards with custom artwork
• Background music (possibly)
• … and more!

Right now, I’ve identified a total of 44 tasks to improve (21 already complete), and my estimates are roughly 200 hours of effort remaining to complete everything. My plan is to post regular updates on this and track how I go here, along with a couple of deep-dives about game systems as I review and update them…