Valve Co-Founder Gabe Newell Is Now A Playable Video Game Character

A retro-styled indie game called "Crawl" has a big surprise for gamers: Gabe Newell. The co-founder and acting president of Valve appears in Crawl as a fast-acting, no-holds-barred boss. And he's pretty badass.

Eurogamer saw the news on a Powerhoof blog post. Here's what the devloper had to say:

So, what did he make? What did he put in Crawl? Turns out, it was a giant, knife-wielding Gabe Newell.

Gabe Newell is already a hero in the gaming world for being pro-consumer, so it's kind of odd that he's a villain in the game. But that's not the trippy part. The trippy part is that you can play as Gabe Newell in Crawl. Though, this isn't the first time Newell has been playable in a game; he was also featured in DotA 2.

So, you're probably in need of a bit of explanation for this game to understand how you can play as Gabe Newell. Crawl is a rogue-like, dungeon-crawling, hack-and-slash game. One player takes on the role of the hero, set to eviscerate any enemy that stands in his way. And three other players take on the role of the game's monsters. That's right, players take on the roles of the enemies.

You can see how the game stacks up with the trailer below.

After one of the enemy players kills the protagonist, he or she takes on the role of the hero. It's a little like juggernaut or tag modes from games like Halo, Quake, Unreal Tournament, or Call of Duty. Except, it's a dungeon-crawling experience. There are a few other games out there like that, but they're all mostly experimental indie titles. Technically Crawl fits into the same category, but given that it's on Early Access, has Gabe Newell in it, and is now getting a lot of exposure, it's becoming a game to watch.

Crawl has been out since August of last year. It supports single-player, local-co-op, full controller support, and the Steam cloud. The reviews are overwhelmingly positive and gamers seem to love it.

Crawl hasn't been updated since February, but now that Gabe Newell has been animated, Barney mentions that he's likely to make it into the next update. You can grab the game from Early Access right now for only $9.99 over on Steam.