Win free Steam games with Spiral Knights and Rusty Hearts
If you've been checking out this year's Christmas Steam sales, you'll undoubtedly have seen the Great Gift Pile giveaway. By completing various game achievements and objectives, Steam users unlock prizes that can be anything from a lump of coal to discount vouchers or even a full copy of any game on Steam. There are reports of people winning massive prizes like Skyrim or the Valve complete pack, and even if you just get a lump of coal, it's still a valuable prize; seven lumps can be exchanged for a new random prize, and those left over at the end of the holiday event will count as tickets in a lottery to win a copy of every single game on Steam.
While many of the achievements require the purchase of cheap indie titles, there are several ways to get your hands on a gift from the great pile absolutely free. Checking your Steam inventory page and trading any item with another user will get you two free gifts, and joining the 2011 Holiday Group will net you a third. Two more prizes can be collected by completing the Son of a Nutcracker! achievement in Spiral Knights and the All I Want for Christmas is Sewers achievement in Rusty Hearts, both of which are free-to-play MMOs available through Steam.
Skip past the cut for details on how to beat the Steam gift achievements for Spiral Knights and Rusty Hearts, including full walkthrough videos.
Spiral Knights: Son of a Nutcracker!
This achievement can take as little as 10 minutes to complete once the game is downloaded. Simply create a new character, run through the starter area, and then find your way to an elevator to join a team exploring the Abandoned Warehouse. The purpose of running this area is to collect 200 coins, and you should be able to reach that amount in just one play-through. Once you have 200 coins, return to the game lobby and sign up for a match of the Lockdown game mode.
Once you're in a game of Lockdown, pick up a snowball from one of the snowball spawners are just throw it at the first enemy you see. You will get the achievement immediately on hitting an enemy with the snowball, and you can leave the game to find out what prize you won. For those having trouble with the achievement, YouTube user RandomHelpings has kindly uploaded the walkthrough video below:
Rusty Hearts: All I Want for Christmas is Sewers
This achievement will take a little longer than the Spiral Knights one but is equally straightforward. Just download the game through Steam, make a new character, and play through the game normally until you reach the quest A Simple Task given out by Technical Officer Ryan. For those having difficulty with the achievement, YouTube user andimalloutofgum has kindly posted the full walkthrough video below showing the game from character creation right through to quest completion.
Keep an eye out for tonight's Not So Massively column, which includes details on how to win two more prizes by playing the free-to-play titles Rise of Immortals and CrimeCraft: Gang Wars.
