Pancake Week Festival Has Started!

Why did no one tell me?

Looks like we got a hidden game festival here! This has barely been featured, if at all, on Steam’s front page and I only found out when I happened to go look at a game’s store page that was participating. Which is pretty weird as even last year’s obscure game festivals were featured somewhere. Anyway, while Pancake Week is a game festival, it’s also meant to celebrate Slavic traditions with everyone on Steam. Hosted by META Publishing, there are more than 200 games participating with the event ending on March 14. You can check out some upcoming games and games already released (most of them featuring discounts) from Eastern Europe. Check out their Steam Page and perhaps find some games you didn’t know about yet.

There are also a couple of demos available from some upcoming games:

• Anomaly Hunter
  A hidden object game where you’ll be finding objects to fix time anomalies. This plays better than it sounds, trust me.
• Despot’s Game
  A rogue-like tactics game where you have a squad of puny humans that have to go up against other teams. You’ll be preparing your squad and letting them fight on their own rather than controlling them.
• HordeCore
  A side-scrolling shooter set in a post-apocalyptical world where you’ll become the leader of a group of survivors, manage your resources, explore, and craft contraptions to defend yourself. And this isn’t even all as it also said to have survival gameplay, base management, RPG elements , and a collectible card game.
• Make Your Kingdom
  A city-building game where you’ll be founding a new settlement and must win the favor of your people by meeting their needs. Though, you’ll also need to develop your settlement, so more people will be tempted to join and hopefully survive natural disasters and climate shifts.
• Sayri: The Beginning
  After fleeing from their homeworld, Sayri finds themselves crash landing on Ayris and decides to make this beautiful planet her home. Though, she must find a suitable place, which will have you running into puzzles, locals, and secrets for you to find.
• The Last Shot (March 13)
  A platforming adventure game set in a war-ravaged diesel-punk world where you take control of a humble mechanical engineer who goes from producing the shells being used to destroy cities to saving your city and friends.
• The Wild Case (March 31)
  A 2D point-and-click adventure where you’ll meet colorful characters, experience mysterious encounters, and puzzles to solve as you arrive at a remote village deep in the forest.
• Through The Nightmares
  An atmospheric hardcore action platformer that follows the Sandman wandering through children’s nightmares and rescuing them.
• Time Loader
  A story-driven physics-based puzzle-platformer where you control a small robot traveling back to the 90s to prevent a tragic accident.

There’s also a recipe for blini (thin pancakes) included, which is made during Maslenitsa. I’ll put a screenshot of it here just in case it won’t be able to be found after this

[Transcription]

In Slavic mythology, Maslenitsa is a sun festival: a celebration of the imminent end of winter in the Northern hemisphere. The most characteristic food of Maslenitsa is bliny-thin pancakes or crepes. That’s why we decided to call our festival Pancake week, so you could enjoy blini, play games and stay awesome!

Here is a quick and simple recipe from grandma:

– 2 eggs
– 2 cups of room temperature cow’s milk
– 1 tbsp of sugar and 1/3 tbsp of salt
– 1/2 tbsp of baking soda
– 1 tbsp of vegetable oil
– a stick of butter (you won’t need all of it)
– 1 cup of flour to rule them all

Now your goal is to create a mixture of ingredients that stays liquid enough to spread on the pan on its own and has no lumps. Here is how you do it:

– take a bowl, whisk eggs and add milk first, then add sugar, salt, soda, and vegetable oil. Mix it together.
– gradually add flour to make a consistent mixture
– heat a pan over medium heat, put a bit of butter on the center, and swirl it, so it coats a pan with a thin layer
– pour one tablespoon of mixture into the center of the pan and cook for about 30 seconds on each side. Make sure it is baked properly on one side before you flip it. You’ll nail it with your next attempt, we promise!
– get your pancake off the pan, garnish it with your favorite toppings – or just dip into something cool – and be amazed. Repeat for as long as you want.
– Voila!