Tabletop Simulator (2015) and Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (2015) are the two virtual reality-enabled games nominated for the very first Steam Awards. The winners will be announced on New Year’s Eve after a period of public voting.
Introduced during the Steam Autumn Sale, Valve invited the community to nominate their favourite games for the first ever Steam Awards, a rather eccentric initiative that seems to be more about keeping Steam Sales fresh than being a serious new award program, with categories such as the “I Thought This Game Was Cool Before It Won An Award” Award, and the “Best Use Of A Farm Animal” Award.
The full list of finalists were recently announced on Steam. As the entries weren’t limited to this year’s releases, it’s pleasing to see two VR-enabled titles make the shortlist, alongside classics such as Age of Empires II (1999) HD (2013).
It’s fairly self-explanatory why Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is nominated for the “Boom Boom” Award—which aims to recognize the game that makes the best use of explosions—and with a vast number of tabletop games available via Steam Workshop, from the thousands of board and card games through to traditional role playing games, Tabletop Simulator is a worthy nominee for the “Game Within A Game” Award. Neither are VR-only games, but both support the HTC Vive, while Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes also lists Oculus Rift and OSVR support.
Public voting begins on December 22nd and continues until the 29th, with each category open for 24 hours. The four community-titled categories open together on the 30th, with the winners announced on New Year’s Eve.