Texas was the first state to be a test market for Left Behind games. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Left Behind Games CEO Troy Lyndon said the company is moving forward with the Walmart partnership. Left Behind’s Christian-themed PC games will soon be available in “a limited number of Walmart stores covering a broad area of states,” whatever exactly that means.

Digital Praise, the company responsible for the music games Dance Praise and Guitar Praise , has announced a planned merger with Left Behind Games Inc, most well-known for games based on the Left Behind best-selling series of books.

The two companies have had a friendly working relationship in recent months, as in December 2009 Left Behind gave Digital Praise a no-interest short term loan of $50,000.

In its latest press materials, Left Behind Games vows to move past the PC and focus on the Xbox 360 and Wii for future development (although it doesn’t mention the PlayStation 3. Maybe there are just too many heathens playing that console).

The company has also entered an agreement with videogame representative firm SMP Communications to help get Christian-themed games into more retail outlets.

Is the Christian market for games being underserved? Is there, in fact, a market for Christian games? Walmart and Left Behind Games will try to answer those questions with a test in 100 stores in the Houston and Dallas areas. These stores will stock back catalog PC games based on the best selling Left Behind book series.

Troy Lyndon, CEO of Left Behind business unit Inspired Media Entertainment, said in a recent press release that the company picked Texas because that state has the highest number of evangelical Protestants in the United States (it has more than 23,000 churches statewide)…

Just the mention of a video game made from a Christian worldview and… oh, there you go. I can hear the moans now.

The problem is that the collective opposition concerning the Christian gaming market is usually justified. The majority of the developers working in this genre have limped along on shoestring budgets with small teams, many times being only a single guy in his basement. The games are a pretty good feet under the circumstances but, until recently, they haven’t been worthy of comparison to the big budget giants. Even now it seems that this sector of the industry is still floundering, trying to figure out what’s going wrong.

The problem I see is that Christian games are either low quality, too preachy or too expensive. Look at …