Free Loaders: Flipping the bird in Helping Hand

Humans are great communicators. We’ve developed not only spoken langauges, but reams and reams of written ones throughout history. Not to mention Braille and sign language. Truly, the human ability to express emotions, needs and desires is an unparalleled proof of our shared greatness as the planet’s most wonderful species.

Hey! Quit doing that rude gesture! Stop it! I mean it!

Sigh. Here’s some free games.

Looking for more free games? Check out our round up of the best free PC games that you can download and play right now.

Helping Hand by Ben Crooks, Andrea Hayes and Aidan Cammell

Aw no, you’ve been in an accident and you done wrecked all your body parts except for your left hand. Looks like you’ll have to communicate entirely using your fingers and thumb – handily mapped (ha ha, “handily”) to the 1, 2, 3 4 and Space keys. Let’s see, what gestures can you make with just that? Oh, here’s one! Yes, it is a very rude thing to gesture at the nurse, but she’s horrible and rude back. Although, yes, you do need her to empty your slowly filling bag of urine, and replace your blood bag. Your visiting wife, she can have a nicer gesture. How about THIS? Well, no, I guess not everyone is into rock and roll. Oh, here comes the priest. This will be good. Keep up your silent hand movements for as long as you can and try not to die in a strange or mundane way.

Unluck Quest by Noah Ratcliff and Aidan Markham

Friendly adventure full of joy and rocks. You know how it goes, you’re happily floating down the river, just like every day, when suddenly the bridge ahead is boarded up with police tape and two police beavers are telling you that more floating isn't allowed until the UNLUCK GOBLIN in the nearby cave is taken care of. Ho hum. Splash out of the water and help out the unlucky inhabitants of… whatever this place is. There’s a poor broken mirror, a salt shaker whose insides have been spilled, and a ladder who won’t let anyone walk under it. A bunch of bubs who need lots of help and guidance from a good-hearted stranger. Or just a rando from the river who only wants to carry on floating in peace. Either way, there’s some great dialogue and delivery in this, like the moment a talking boulder you mistake for a salt rock exclaims “I’m granite!” in a wobbling rainbow text. And there’s a happy ending in store for those with a kind and lucky heart.

Unbound Atlas by grreuze

Tiny but infinite sound and light toy. Double-click on the wibbling central star to open up an endlessly recurring field of draggable stars. Experiment with this nebulous, rotating night sky and get some sounds and new shapes, new colours. It’s small, simple, a wee bit relaxing. Like an abstract snowglobe or something.

Yo! Let’s UP by Folmer Kelly

Itty bitty one-button jumping game. The blocks come in from the side and you need to jump and land on them to make then stop, forming a tower as you go. When you hit a coin, the tower will straighten out, but it might be wobbly until that point. Better than that: the coins you collect go towards unlocking neat hats. Keep hopping, cute little jumping dude! I believe in you. I’ve ALWAYS believed in you.

Find Him by a.constant

You’re looking for someone. From the lobby of what appears to be a giant hotel, you’re given just one instruction: find him. Who knows what he looks like or where he might be, but he’s here somewhere. Everyone in the building (and on the streets outside) is a grey-faced nobody with a slowly rotating head. Is that symbolic? It might be. Whatever the case, there are a lot of people in this first-person wanderer and they are doing lots of things, yet frozen in time. Dancers fill the dancefloor of a large club/restaurant, businessmen (I guess they are businessmen) make calls in the seating area, there are guests in every room, on every floor. Some of them sit and watch TV alone. Some lie on the floor, possibly unconscious. Others have bodyguards, or take photographs of one another. But which one is him? I’ll refer to the creator's instructions: “You know when you find him what he has been doing.”