how is something like this fair to the people in the later time zones that don't even wake up until after the contest is over?

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Hello Glen

It doesn't seen fair, but unfortunately, the giveaway team could 'only' secure 10 000 keys. The giveaway community is much larger than that. It will always be first come first served in situations like this, unless someone suggests to the giveaway team that they split the giveaway into two segments to give those who don't wake up until several hours into the giveaway a chance, for example the West coast of America where game giveaways go live around 12 midnight on Friday compared to 8am Saturday morning in the UK. Giving away 10 000 keys is very generous, though sometimes we've had over 30 000 Steam keys given away.

I'm still not sure whether the giveaway has been suspended bearing in mind the message the team posted several hours ago regarding the broken .exe file? I've downloaded it several times since getting the activation link early this morning (I got it around 11pm Friday evening (GMT), but only because I have access to the admin panel and was able to access the giveaway page to get a key, which I was intending to play and write up a review for this morning. Unfortunately it was missing a data folder, so I was unable to play the game. I re-downloaded it about 30 minutes ago and it's still not working. Maybe once it has been fixed the giveaway will resume? Just in case I suggest you check back later to see if it has returned, regards W.R.

Very disappointed. I went to the Game Giveaway Site at 7:30 Pacific Time and all the 50 license keys had already been given away. I did not even have a chance to enter. Maybe if you did not start picking winners until later in the day I might have a chance to make a useless entry. 17130 entries and only 50 winners. It does not even seem like a giveaway.

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Hello Jim

The New Queen has been live since Sunday 15th Jan 8am (GMT) last weekend and was the second game to go live that morning together with a global giveaway called Crusaders of the Lost Souls Epic Starter pack, which is a dlc pack for the free to Play game.

Most community members would have garnered up to 240 entries if they completed the tasks every day. The competition ended this morning at 8am GMT six days after it went live. it wa snot a new game giveaway specific to Saturday 21st January. Even if you managed to get one days worth of entries in (i.e 40 entries per day), with approaching 172000 entries for 50 keys, you'd have to have been pretty lucky to have won a key (around a 1 in 86 chance of winning, i.e less than a 1.2% chance of winning a key. If you'd entered every day you'd have stood a much better chance of winning a key i.e. almost 7% chance or a 1 in 14.3 chance of winning a key. I entered over 200 times and didn't win a key, thankfully I'd already got the game. (Was applying for my daughter), I got the game from the developer via the giveaway team so that I could post a review.

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The giveaway tech team have spent a lot of time looking into this 'so called' farming issue and so far have not found any evidence that hackers or community members have been farming/stealing multiple Steam keys. The only time farming of Steam keys from this site was proven to be occuring was when the the very first Steam key giveaway for the game Amygdala was given away last Spring. The giveaway was stopped several hours after it went live and all keys that had not been redeemed at that time were invalidated.

As I have already said several times over the last month or so, the Steam community has grown massively over the last few years. When I first became a Steam user 8 years ago (Jan 2009), the average number of Steam users online was around 2 to 5 million at weekends, that number has grown to between 12 to 14 million users online at any one time over the weekend (out of over 140 to 160 million active Steam members). Since the first Steam keys were given away last March 2016, the Steam community have become very aware of the key giveaways from this site, which easily explains why Steam key giveaways evapourate so quickly. There is no proof apart from the very first key giveaway when giveaway community members reported cases of multiple Steam keys of Amygdala being sold or exchanged on sites dealing specifically with key sales/trades coincidentally after the game went live on the gamegiveawayoftheday. Following that incident, the giveaway team changed how Steam keys were distributed; where you had to validate your Steam account via the giveaway page before a key was sent to your email. I'm sure there are some Steam users who are applying for more than their fair share of keys because it is possible, but only by using different Steam accounts and emails for each key applied for.

I know this can be accomplished because on a couple of occassions my family have applied for more than one key for a particular game giveaway Steam key, i.e. at least one of my children has wanted particular games for example the Forge of Gods dlc packs and Nihilumbra. I'd already applied for these and both of us received keys for most of the dlc packs, but neither of us won keys for Nilhilumbra. Only the other day, after reading about a couple of community members not being able to get a key (i.e. Tom and C.Wild), my daughter graciously took time out of her revision schedule to apply for a key, she was successful, and gave the key to me to pass on to one of those community members; which I did. It's possible that there may be some community members applying for multiple keys, which could be considered farming i.e. more than two or three keys) and are also possibly attempting to trade those keys for a profit (unless they have very large families), but they are almost certainly a very small insignificant miniority. Sadly there will always be dishonest/selfish/greedy/unprincipled/ignorant people wherever you go. As mentioned above, there is no actual proof of this going on so all the posts accusing community members of farming are just supposition. Whereas, the reason I've given for keys going so quickly although not actual evidence, supports the reason why keys run out so quickly at the weekends.

I don't understand why you'd find it so funny? If it was true or proven to be true that most keys were being farmed, then I'd expect the community to be up in arms and supportive of those losing out because of the selfish behaviour of the few, instead of admiting they would be laughing their heads off at the reaction. Why even post such nonsense?

Pretty old-school, looks decent. But I'm not gonna bother entering - I figure most of the OVER-20,000 entrants want one of the 50 keys more than I do.

Got a copy of the game today. I've been checking it out, and will post an initial review later today and finish it off tomorrow morning.

regards Stephen

The New Queen

In Brief

A casual RPG adventure.

Suggestions:

If you win a key for The New Queen please give some feedback about your opinion of the game, for example, what you liked or disliked about it, or how it could be improved from your point of view . If you don't like this genre at all, please explain why. What, improvements, if any, would change your opinion? There are thousands of subscribers to the game giveaway of the day every weekend which makes this an ideal forum for giving developers ideas as to what their consumers (i.e you) would like to see in a game. For example, you could suggest extra content such as better or more original mini games, or a level editor that you would like to see that would make it more appealing to you. Maybe you think the graphics are a little dated and are in need of re skinning, or maybe you've just had enough of the genre and want to see something different or something with more originality?

If you don't win a key, don't mind playing games via Steam or miss the offer totally you can get the game 24/7 via Steam HERE. It usually costs £5.59/$7.99, but is on sale at the moment until the 20th Jan for £5.03/$7.19

Introduction:

The kingdom is on a bad situation, as followers of the rebellion attack, steal, and hurt what Lorelai loves the most: the people of Uboro. The queen must find a solution, and for this she depends upon three friends: Victoria, Alkor and Celine.

Reference accessed HERE

Installation:

Assuming you win a Steam key for The New Queen once you've found it (should be sent to the email you used to enter the giveaway - it must be the email you first used to sign into the game giveaway site. If you’ve used a throwaway email there may be problems getting a key, because the key may be sent to that email. If you have any problems use the contact form. Hopefully the giveaway team will re-post the information they posted several weeks ago explaining the email situation. ) you have to activate the game via your Steam client. Once activated it will be permanently tied to your Steam profile and you'll be able to install the game at any time, anywhere on any computer, so long as you can validate who you are (usually via emails etc.). If you don't have a Steam account you will first have to download and install the Steam client HERE

Then create a Steam profile/account. Once that has been completed you can input the Steam code that you've received (after completing the form filling) via the game button along the top of the Steam client, (located between friends and Help - see image below). From the drop down menu select 'Activate a product on Steam'. This opens a product activation window. Just follow the prompts to complete activation. Once the Steam code has been accepted, the game will be permanently associated with your Steam account and can be installed any time you wish.

If you have a problem installing or activating or getting The New Queen to work, please visit the problems section over in the Game Discussion forums, which I've now incorporated into the FAQ's thread, and which you can find HERE

The Game:

Originally Released Mar 16, 2010 released on Steam 13th January 2017.

For years, Lorelai has ruled over Uboro, with a fierce but kind hand. She has always treated her people as family.

It seems the good years are over. A mysterious group has arrived in Uboro and is attempting to start a revolution. They claim that Lorelai made her way to the throne with deception and fraud.

The kingdom is on a bad situation, as followers of the rebellion attack, steal, and hurt what Lorelai loves the most: the people of Uboro. The queen must find a solution, and for this she depends upon three friends: Victoria, her adopted daughter and one of the strongest warriors in the kingdom, Alkor, a former outlaw to whom Lorelai granted forgiveness in exchange of his services, and Celine, a girl raised by white mages.

The game starts in a very small window similar to the old VGA monitors of around 640 x 480. There appears to be no options menu, or any way to make the game full screen, though you can minimise the game to your task bar. The main menu consists of three buttons, New Game, continue and Shutdown. The buttons don't respond to a mouse. The arrow keys allow you to select a button and the return key or space bar will activate the button and to go back from one menu to the previous one you can use Esc or the X key. You can access information about your characters using the Esc key. There are only four save slots. I'll explain how to save your game below.

On the right side of the information panels there is a menu with several buttons that includes Item, which shows what items all characters in your party are carrying in their inventory, for example within the first few minutes of game play you should acquire healing herbs, a stimulant, some magic fruit and an antidote. These can be distributed to anyone in your party by clicking on the item you want to give to that character, then using the arrow keys selecting the character you want to take the item. Use the space bar or return key to activate the transfer. To back track on any menu or list you can either use the Esc or X keys. The next button is for skills, you can see what skills each character has acquired at any time by checking this list. The next in the menu is Equipment, When you select this button, you then select the character you want to check and it will then list what weapon the character is holding as well as other items if they have them such as shields, body armour, accessories and head gear. Also the characters stats are shown. These include Atk (attack), Def (Defense), SPI (Intelligence) and Agi (Agility). At the start of the game weapons will be basic, for example the Character Celine who is a cleric holds a quarterstaff and her body armour is a leather coat with no accessories or head gear and the Knight Victoria uses a windlas (a type of sabre), has a Iron bascinet (a Medieval European open-faced military helmet that evolved from a type of iron or steel skullcap, but had a more pointed apex to the skull, and it extended downwards at the rear and sides to afford protection for the neck) on her head and brigandine armour (It is a cloth garment, generally canvas or leather, lined with small oblong steel plates riveted to the fabric). The next item in the main menu is Crest Equipment. I've not played the game long enough at this point, so haven't figured out fully what this is, but I think it refers to weapon and armour enhancements, for example Flashing Steel, these enhancements are restricted by the characters attributes, for example with Flashing Steel you require an attack strength of 22, defense 23, SPI of 25 and agility of 25, an ideal skill for enhancing a knights sword. The character Vitoria cannot use this skill initially because her attributes are lower than the requirements of the Crest equipment. Attributes are increased by gaining experience. Another example of Crest equipment is Piercing Strike, which requires an attack strength of 18, Defense of 19, SPI of 28 and Agility of 28. Ideal for a cleric such as Celine. The next item in the main list is Quests. here you will find any quests that are picked up during your game. Finally there's a save and end game button, which are self explanatory.

There are three types of enemies represented by smokes. first type has regular speed, the second is a bit faster and the third won't stop until it reaches you. There are various enemies such as the Vorpal wolves and the Grizzlor. Your first mission will be to find a guy called Byron who is hiding out in the forest. While searching for him you will meet various enemis that you can either fight or run away from. If you get the third type of enemy, you will have to stand and fight. Enemies are easy to dispatch early on in the game. Every time you win, you gain experience points and gold. As you increase in level, so to do the enemies you meet. While you are exploring you will also come across verious chests that contain collectible items, either weapons or other useful items such as potions.

Other Reviews, Videos and a Slideshow of images :

No reviews of this game have been posted on Steam yet, but it was only released less than a week ago. I also spent a good 15 minutes looking for anything that looked like a review on the net, but couldn't find anything apart from the basic introduction found on Steam. Considering this game was originally released way back in 2010, I'm surprised. The only video of game play I could find in the short time I looked was the one posted on Steam HERE. You can see a slideshow of over 100 images HERE, that show the initial dialogue stages of the game, plus the first mission and encounter with enemies. (the images show from the last to the first.

Conclusion:

A standard adventure RPG game with dialogu boxes, enemies and missions. It was okay. If you like RPG games this should keep you happy for a few hours. Personally I prefer first person RPG's like The Elder Scrolls or Fallout 3/4 , third person RPG's like Two Worlds I and II or or the older RPG's with an isometric viewpoint such as Icewind Dale and Baldurs Gate, but I did enjoy playing this for short periods, which would make it an ideal game for coffee breaks. :)

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the developer Warfare Studios for giving away 50 keys for this Adventure RPG and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games, in this case a Steam key.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

The problems section that used to be posted here in the Game review is now included in the Game Discussion FAQ's thread; which you can find HERE.

I've updated the games section that used to be posted with the review. The thread is now called 'Weekly round up of game deals', formerly the games section of the weekly reviews. You can find the new thread (which I've posted in the sticky section of the game discussion forums to make it easier to find if you are perusing the game discussion forums) HERE.

If today's game was not to your liking, you may find other games either free or for less than the price of a cup of coffee (from your favorite coffee house) via the 'Weekly Roundup of Game Deals' thread which I've posted a link to above, or HERE.

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The latest free game over on Origin has now changed to the excellent Sci Fi Shooter RPG Mass Effect 2. You can get it HERE. Please note that you do require the Origin game platform to be able to download and install the game.

Check out some of the Indie Bundle Stores such as Indie Gala, Bundle Stars and The Humble Bundle stores as well as the Indie Game Stand and Daily Indie Games (DIG)Stores for some excellent game deals. The Indie GalaGala store also has a free game called Between Me and the Night a surreal action adventure game worth £9.99/$14.99 if you spend more than $3 in the store (bundles are not included in this deal)