PC Freebies Roundup

The PC FREEBIES ROUNDUP rises from the ashes as a semi-regular mini-review series. Lewis Denby looks at some of the more notable web games and free downloads of the last while.

The independent development scene is overflowing with talent. But while we try to ensure Resolution covers as many wondrous indie gems as possible, some of the smaller releases – those glorious freebies to be found dotted around the world wide web – inevitibly end up slipping through the net.

That’s why we’ve chosen to reinstate our forgotten PC Freebies Round-Up. There are a few changes to the formula, in that we’re treating these more as reviews now – although it should be made absolutely clear that the scores at the bottom of each one are in no way to be compared to those we award commercial games. But the ideology remains the same. We want to uncover some of the absolute best in amateur game development, and through this semi-regular round-up, we hope to stumble upon a few spellbinding little gems.

The picks this time are varied and eclectic, which I hope is a theme that continues. After all, it seems to reflect the diversity of the indie gaming scene as a whole. There’s a reasonable range of quality displayed by these titles, as is to be expected, but they’re all at least worth a quick look. These developers are working outside the constraints of the industry proper, and precisely because of that, more than one of the games below is truly unmissable. Long may Christine Love and Ken Grafals keep writing games. If we’re especially lucky, and they’re especially selfless, they might even continue to give us them for free.

Onwards, then!

Teleportower

Link
This is a neat and distinctly Japanese puzzle-platformer in which you must navigate your way around a series of mazes and collect a prize at the end of each one. The twist is that reality is split between the left half of the screen and the right, with different obstacles to face on each side, and you’re blessed with the ability to teleport freely between the two. A translucent ghost of your character mirrors your position on the other side, assisting you in not falling to your spike-filled death should you teleport at the wrong moment.

It’s a smart puzzle game that introduces an array of new concepts fluidly, always guiding you gently by the hand until each new feature becomes second nature. That’s perhaps slightly to the detriment of Teleportower’s difficulty level, though, which remains notably low until at least half-way through the game. It took until level 20-something out of 50 for me to be stumped for a solution for more than just a few seconds, with only some fiddly precision-jumping blocking my progress up to that point.

Had it been a little more demanding, Teleportower could have been a gem of a freebie. As it stands, it’s a clever and attractive puzzle game that never quite scratches all the itches. 7/10

Specter Spelunker Shrinks

Link
I think I did a tiny squeak the first time Specter Spelunker Shrinks asked me to… no, I can’t say it. I can’t bring myself to spoil this remarkable little game’s central mechanic, just on the off-chance that you haven’t figured it out from the name, or if you haven’t upsized the screenshot to the right. It’s another puzzle-platformer based around a quirky control gimmick, but it’s one that works so brilliantly and so enchantingly that I can’t believe it’s not been put to use in a more high-profile release.

Though painted in stark black and white, with just your character rendered in blue, it’s a vivid and infinitely joyous little game. Its puzzles are never enormous, but they’re fun diversions among the platforming and make fantastic use of your character’s ability to… nnng, no, still can’t tell you. It’s such a remarkable thing to see in action that I’m genuinely half-tempted to censor the title. I won’t, as I suspect that wouldn’t do it any favours on the search engines, but rest assured you should fire this up knowing as little as possible, in order to come out as delighted as I did. 8/10

Continues…

By Lewis Denby

Another fortnight, another collection of free indie games for your home computer.  Splendidly, there’s loads of brilliant stuff to talk about this time, even if I did bend the rules with a couple of them.  There’s one older game, and one very old game, adapted for your browser.

Each and every one of these is entirely worth your attention.  Do not let us down, loyal readership.  Play these a lot, and tell all your friends they’re bad people if they don’t do the same.

//Canabalt
Adam Atomic and Danny B [link]
This is an absolutely splendid free-running game that does away with every single piece of extraneous control and strips everything down to its glorious basics.  You run automatically.  All you’ve to worry about is jumping.

I’ve already heard it described as “What Mirrors Edge should have been like,” which really fits.  Its simplicity is totally key.  There’s no fiddling around with combat, or with working out where to go next.  It’s all about the speed and the timing.

Speed increases as you go on, as well, so you’ve to be increasingly adept at watching for what’s on the horizon and making sure you clear the obstacles in time, as each hit costs you health.  See how far you can go.  And see how long it is before you find yourself hopelessly addicted.

//Little Wheel
OneClickDog [link]
This is actually quite an old one.  I first played it a few months ago, but for some reason we never actually covered it here.  Freelance Wonderboy Daniel Lipscombe mentioned it the other day, at which point I slapped my head at such stupidity.  It’s just wonderful.  Wonderful wonderful wonderful.  You could probably call it wonderful, as well.

Mindless comparisons might help here.  Imagine if Amanita Design had opted to make Machinarium into a standard web-game a la their Samorost series.  And then imagine they’d drawn it a bit like World of Goo, only in silhouette.  This is a gorgeously refined, experimental point-and-click adventure, one with a lovely little story, some fab puzzles and bucketloads of cute.

It’s not a particularly long game, but it is an incredibly beautiful one – properly tacticle, but impressively cerebral at the same time.  It’s one of the best free games I’ve played online in such a long time, and I can’t believe I’ve not thrown it in everyone’s direction until now.  You have Daniel to thank when you find out how wonderful it is.  Wonderful.

//Woosh / Waker
Poof Games / Gambit [link] [link]
This odd little pairing is more than a bit interesting to talk about.  Woosh and Waker are puzzle/platform games developed by Poof Games for Gambit, which is a collaboration between MIT and the Singapore government.  Woosh and Waker are part of an experimental, educational project, to see how players respond to different presentations within videogames.

Launching each game doesn’t immediately throw up too many similarities.  But dive into the game proper and you’ll realise they’re both exactly the same in terms of the mechanics and level design.  The difference?  One presents an anthropomorphic character and introduces a story.  The other sees you guiding a bouncy ball around the same platforms, only with a backdrop consisting purely of abstract art.  There’s no plot to be found.

It is, of course, very interesting to consider which side of the fence you fall on.  Do you prefer the abstract visual beauty of Woosh, or the more evocative, story-driven presentation of Waker?  Do you prefer guiding a living character, or a blissfully unaware rolling ball?  But what’s particularly brilliant for the player is that both are excellent, seriously clever games.  Try them both out, and have a think about the difference in your approach to each one.

//Street Fighter II
Capcom [link]
Okay, so this is obviously slightly different to the indie-empowering games I usually talk about here.  But really.  When Street Fighter II – still at least damn close to the pinnacle of the fighting genre – is suddenly available to play in a browser, for free, it’s obviously worth talking about.

You’ll already know what Street Fighter is, so there’s not much else to say here.  Predictably, it doesn’t adapt alarmingly well to keyboard controls, but for an idle distraction on the web, you honestly can’t do much better.  It’s an absolutely brilliant game.  You should totally play it right now.

By Lewis Denby

I’m falling into bad habits. I’m writing this at 11:54AM, and this has to be on the site by 1.  Blame it on trying to get roughly eight quadrozillion things done before I go away later this week if you want.  Blame it on my stark-raving-lunacy if that seems a better fit.

The reason I mention it is that there are only three games in my round-up this time.  But my lateness is not actually the reason.  I’ve played all four that I intended to mention.  It’s just that one of them seems suited to a more expansive piece, one that I’ll mega-quickly-write to ensure it can be on your screens while I’m galavanting down south to meet my iccle new nephew.  Can I get an “awww!” here?

Anyone?

Ah, screw you all.

//Window Hater
Jabberwock [link]
I mean, the name says it all, really, doesn’t it?

The premise is utterly barmy.  You play as a small, grey, pixellated man who’s harboured a deep loathing of windows all his life.  One day, a mysterious package arrives on his doorstep, containing a jet-pack and a flamethrower.  Of course, as the info screen informs, he knows exactly what to do.

Window Hater is another product of the ’stay afloat while trying to simultaneously do something else’ crowd – see also the classic Helicopter Game, as well as Auntie Pixelante’s rather enjoyable When Pigs Fly, mentioned in the last column.  The up arrow activates your jet-pack, while the space key unleashes a stream of fire.  Spray enough fire on a window and it smashes.  Get too close when it does so and you lose a life.  Accidentally fall to the ground and you perish.

Quickly, the authorities take a dislike to your manic, sky-bound ASBOing, and begin to send in the forces to take you down.  You’ve then to avoid their bombs as you scurry around each stage, trying to get rid of all the local glassware before the clock runs out.

It’s all very basic, completely mindless and averagely distracting fun.  It’s not exactly inspirational (goodness, I really hope it doesn’t inspire anyone, or I’ll be boarding up all my windows with aspestos. That’ll keep me safe, surely…), but for an easy way to pass a few minutes, it’s perfectly amusing.

//Cube Colossus
Lucidrine [link]
Considering the sort of stuff that usually crops up on Newgrounds, Cube Colossus is an astonishingly adept arcade shooter.  You control your ship with the mouse, shoot with left-click, and activate various special functions with the keyboard, as you battle EVIL CUBES through a series of stages in search for your twin sister.

The story ends up being cheerfully silly and very much entrenched in classic videogame lore, which is ever-so-slightly disappointing after the wonderful and genuinely moving set-up.  But hats off to Lucidrine for establishing such a narrative at all, and hats at the top of upstretched arms for the almost entirely professional presentation.

The battles themselves are high-octane, mad dashes around the screen, avoiding projectiles, juggling special abilities and carefully aiming.  A Metroid-esque lock-on feature is particularly handy and works brilliantly, snapping your aim to the nearest enemy and allowing you to easily circle them.

It’ll take you an hour or two to blast through the entire thing, which is an impressive feat in itself.  Absolutely, positively worth your time, and Lucidrine can be hugely proud of the work they’ve put in over the game’s eight month development cycle.

//Silent Conversation
Gregory Weir [link]
Silent Conversation is a remarkably interesting release from Gregory Weir, whose name I incidentally just typoed at “Gregory Weird.”  That’s probably quite apt, considering the completely off-beat and obscure nature of Silent Conversation.

The idea is this.  It’s a platformer, sort of.  Only each level is constructed of famous texts.  Quite literally /constructed/ of them, as in, the building blocks of each area are the letters of the works themselves.  To obtain a good grade in each level, you must touch as many of the words as possible, many of which are in hard-to-reach places.

Your enemies are the red words.  These powerful segments of text jump off the page and float towards you.  When one hits, your recent progress is erased, and you can’t highlight new words for a short amount of time.  You can usually wait it out or simply plod along and receive a slightly lower mark, so it’s never particularly difficult, but Silent Conversation is more about the odd, ethereal beauty of strolling through this exquisite literature, as gentle piano music soothes from the background.

It’s pretty much unlike, well, anything else that has ever been or will ever be.  For that reason alone, it’s well worth experiencing.

//A Night To Remember
Ethan Damschroder [link]
Nathan Carter’s a con artist, and this is his last job.  He probably didn’t expect to find himself in a situation involving a crazy murderer at a dinner party.  He probably didn’t expect to find himself captioned by grammatically woeful, misspelled and sterile dialogue, either.

A Night To Remember is often somewhat interesting, if only to see where the tale leads next.  But it is, unfortunately, a somewhat clumsy game.  Puzzles frequently rely on trial and error, there’s absolutely no inspiration to the art, and the looped music is grating.  It’s a half-hour long suspense tale that never does anything resolutely awful, but never quite lifts itself above the level of amateurish mediocrity.  Certainly one to sample if you’re into the old-school point-and-clicks, but nothing you’re likely to be in awe of come the conclusion.

//You Only Live Once
Raitendo [link]
You Only Live Once is initially a neat pastiche on Mario, complete with modernised lost princess story and instantly recognisable side-scrolling platform action.  It then gets extremely silly.  It then turns about as meta as it gets.

The name isn’t a misnomer.  It’s totally literal.  In You Only Live Once, you really do only live once: perishing ends your game, permanently.  Not ‘until you restart’ – permanently.  I imagine you’ll have to delete your temporary internet files and suchlike to reset it.  More interesting than the basic concept, though, is how it’s presented.  You’ve a game over screen and a continue button.  And, well, you can continue, but that simply makes the story progress without you, as you sit and watch the aftermath of your demise.  I fear I’m underselling this – it is, remarkably, not remotely tiresome or rubbish, but actually rather amusing, and well worth a go.

You might want to actually try to beat the game before you go dying, as I hear there is in fact a ‘proper’ ending.  I just died before I got to it, and now there’s no going back.

//Isabelle Poppy and Bling
Andy Wallace [link]
Growing from a project to promote a friend’s music, Isabelle, Poppy and Bling is an obscure title from Andy Wallace.  Shunning the notion of win/lose states, this quirky browser release simply loops each of its three mini-games until the track in question has come to its end.

The mini-games themselves are all mouse-based obscurities, with tasks including blowing a chair on a cloud from one platform to another, stacking planks of wood in mid-air to avoid flooding a boat with rain, and – um – playing arcade classic Millipede.

It’s all extremely abstract, and often somewhat awkward.  I’d imagine it’ll either be very much your thing, or not at all your thing.  But it is certainly interesting for its imaginative art style, which evokes memories of some of the weirder moments in Amanita Design’s Samorost series.  It’s an undoubtedly creative world, clearly crafted with a lot of love and attention.  It’s about as arty as art games come, but at five minutes long, it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to stomach it.

//When Pigs Fly
Auntie Pixelante [link]
When Pigs Fly manages to be at once impossibly cute and insufferably annoying.  The incessant sqeaking of this little piggy is initially enough to make you want to gouge your ears out of your skull, but within minutes it becomes endearing, tranquil almost.  Then you snap out of it, and realise that, yes, it is just a tiny bit irritating.

The game involves guiding this critter around a maze, after he falls into a hole and gets stuck on account of remarkably growing wings.  At first, it’s terribly frustrating, as clipping his oversized hit-box on absolutely anything means he perishes and you have to restart the stage.  Fortunately, each stage is only a single screen wide, so any repetition is quickly out of the way.

Essentially, it plays out a lot like the Helicopter Game, only with a pesky swine where the chopper should be.  That alone is enough to make it worth your while – especially when you eventually cave and turn the sound off.

By Lewis Denby

We started our XNA Community Games Round-Up last Tuesday, and it seemed only fair to begin a similar feature for that other stalwart of amateur game development: the big, beige box.  This new, fortnightly column is all about the most interesting, innovative or just plain brilliant PC games to come out of the indie scene recently.

A couple of ground-rules before we get going.  Defining ‘indie’ is difficult on the PC, since it seems to stretch from full-scale retail releases, right through the digital distribution channels, down to self-funded projects with a price tag, and finally hitting the realms of ‘just for the love of it’ – the free games you see dotted around the internet. Since we happily review anything that costs your dollar, this column is for the free stuff only.  It’s also going to stretch to include game mods, so while everything you’ll see here is freely available to download, you may occasionally need a particular game installed first.  If that’s the case, we’ll let you know.

This time, it’s an interesting mix of traditional genre work with those that are trying to push some boundaries in the videogame world.  The diversity of the indie scene is what makes it so fascinating, so I hope future fortnights can continue this theme.

//Heed
Ben Chandler [link]
We wrote about Shifter’s Box, a neat little adventure concept with surprisingly good puzzle logic, back in the magazine days.  Heed is developer Ben Chandler’s new game, and ventures away from the format of his previous work.

Most noticeably, there aren’t many puzzles, and the ones that are there are reasonably lightweight.  It’s all because Heed has a significantly different focal point.  It’s all about the curious story that unfolds, the beautiful visual and aural design work, and the general atmosphere of the whole thing.  Puzzles would have got in the way.  It was a brave but excellent choice to avoid them.

It’s a short game, but every section of it is crafted with clear adoration for the genre and for videogame storytelling.  A splendid piece of work, and an essential download for anyone interested in adventure games.

//Radiator 1-1: Polaris
Robert Yang [link]
[Half-Life 2: Episode 2 required]
This has actually been out for a while, but it makes sense to contextualise Part 2, released last week, by talking a little about this first.  Radiator is a series of short Half-Life 2 mods, designed to push the boundaries of what people are creating on the mod scene, and to work within small templates in order to craft emotional and expressive experiences.

Part 1 is vastly intriguing, though a little shaky.  The whole five-or-ten-minute game takes place in the woods at night, with you playing – presumably – a young woman on a date.  It comprises a sort of flashback sequence, as the woman recalls the events of the night via text-based dialogue.  The game part of the game is all about stargazing, as your date explains how to search for different constellations, and you have to correctly identify them in order to make progress.

The date concept is solid, the writing strong, and a nice twist towards the end certainly unexpected.  There are also a couple of endings to find, which is a nice – though probably unnecessary – touch.  But the act of playing the game is slightly clumsy: the fact that the game needs to spin the skybox in order to provide a challenge completely breaks the spell, and the whole thing just becomes a little tedious after a while.  Still, it’s an exquisite idea, and sets the tone nicely for further instalments.