From relaxing in a cute world full of flowers, to being a ninja relying on coffee to do their job – this week’s free games cover some interesting topics. Did you ever wonder what a world populated by potatoes would do if an asteroid was to strike? What if you, a potato with a super power, were their last hope? Maybe that’s too much pressure and you’d rather just be a swordfish trying to survive inside your ocean by destroying other fish with your sharp face. If you are up for a challenge, you can try being a knight that can only attack in time to music – if the note isn’t hit, the music punishes you. Read on… Read the rest of this entry »
Prismata is a bit of a hard sell because I can’t think of any other strategy game quite like it. It looks and controls like a Magic: The Gathering inspired card game, but flows like an RTS, and while you do gradually expand your construction options between matches, there’s no randomly drawn booster packs or loot boxes.
While previously the only way into the game’s early access release was to buy the $25 Founders Edition, this weekend you can jump in and play multiplayer and the start of the solo campaign free, from now until Monday, 10am Pacific, with those who get in on the free weekend seemingly able to keep this cut-down edition of the game.
I do have a soft spot for pigeons, strutting around city squares and cooing like a flock of gossips fussing over a biscuit tin. Better dottering pigeons than murderous seagulls, that’s for sure. But real-life pigeons can be a bit manky and mangled, so thank goodness that modern technology has enabled the creation of simulated pudgy pigeons in the aptly-named Pigeon Game. It’s a free little doodad set inside a small virtual park, where we can throw sunflower seeds to orbic pigeons, chase them, and even pet their squidgy bodies if they come to like us. What a future we live in! Read the rest of this entry »
I’m honestly taken aback by how good game giveaways have been in recent years. In the past few months alone we’ve seen some genuinely great stuff given away for nothing but the time it takes to click a button. Even if most of the giveaways are promotional in nature, there’s enough available for nothing to keep even the most fervent player going for months. For the next 44 hours (give or take a few minutes), you can score the Ultimate Edition of Stardock’s well-received sci-fi 4X strategy game Galactic Civilizations 2 here on the Humble store, free to keep forever.
Galactic Civilizations II may not be the greatest strategy game ever made, but according to our once-resident master of war Adam Smith, it’s in the top 25, and that’s not to be sniffed at.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been two and a half years since Undertale was the talk of the town. While pangs of early nostalgia are still easy to feel, a recent return to the underground reminded me that yes, it really was every bit as good as the hype suggested. Possibly moreso, even – it’s a modern classic, which makes it quite unsurprising that its fans are still picking it apart and reassembling it in fun new ways.
Undertale’s fans continue to be an industrious and driven lot, using the game’s rich blend of gameplay systems and easily-written characters to piece together their own stories inspired by Toby Fox’s low-fi RPG opus. Among them, a full-length Team Fortress 2-themed retelling of the tale. Step inside for a tour of this and other great free games you could play today.
There’s tons to offer this week. Take on a magician in a boss battle which seems never-ending. Or move through two worlds simultaneously in a challenging platformer. Maybe you would rather be non-violent, and solve puzzles based on the movements of Chess pieces, or instead bounce a colourful ball around, smashing coloured blocks along the way. This and more await in this week’s free games. Read the rest of this entry »
It is apparently a good week to not spend money on games. Not only is The Flame in The Flood still gratis via Humble, but the similarly delicious-looking cartoon action-adventure Stories: The Path of Destinies by Spearhead Games is currently free on Steam. Grab it now, keep it forever and play it a whole bunch of times because this one is built for the long-haul, if you don’t mind a little repetition.
Is it any wonder that people are struggling to sell games when everyone and their dog is just throwing lovely free stuff at us? This time, they even threw in the dog to sweeten the deal. Apocalyptic rafting survival adventure The Flame in The Flood is free for the next 48 hours (minus a couple) via the Humble store, and you should probably pick it up while the going’s good.
Even in these days when we have so very many wonderful free games to play, it’s still a little exciting to be offered for free a game that usually costs money. Today, it’s Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee going free for keepsies. Free! No pennies at all! And only twenty years after the puzzle-platformer first came out and I missed it because I bought Blade Runner instead. Well well well, looks like I was savvier than I knew. Gotta take the long view, yeah? I bet anyone who bought Oddworld in 1997 feels a right mug. Read the rest of this entry »
The gushing spring of free games known as Ludum Dare has once again spittled forth a small treasure. Pick it up, rub the muck off, it’s Roulette Knight, an RPG about playing round after round of Russian roulette. There’s no journey from one end of the kingdom to another, no evil lord to vanquish – that stuff’s for SQUIRES. Here, you just sit in a room, slip bullets into a revolver, and pull the trigger for cash rewards and XP. It’s short, silly and fills you up with giddy stress. Read the rest of this entry »
Organise your life by talking to your friend, organise a postal warehouse by filtering out illegal packages, and solve puzzles in a creepy library to stay alive. Save all of humanity from giant bugs by controlling a giant mech with your estranged sister, or fight monsters by firing projectiles at them in a story-driven Breakout-inspired game. All of this is waiting for you in this week’s free games. Read the rest of this entry »
Sometimes, all you need on that first day back at work is something to make you smile. I’ve yet to wipe the big daft grin off my face from playing around with Froach Club’s Titonic Fisherman, a little browser-based software toy/music synthesizer with an adorably doodled aesthetic, and a very silly range of samples to annoy the neighbours with.
If you’ve played through The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3, you’ve spent hundreds of hours with the character of Geralt of Rivia. But have you ever taken the time to go back to the beginning? I… absolutely have not. But I played enough Witcher over the years to have encountered people and quests from the first title that I had to fill in via Wiki work later. So I can see the value in going back to figure out where they all came from.
Today (and possibly tomorrow, there’s no end point listed), you can get the first game in the series for free from GOG, along with a card keg for Gwent — which contains five free cards. The process should only take one minute of your time and we have the details below.
From creating documentaries about coping with loneliness to beating up ninjas to save the president – dive into the world of this week’s free indie games! Become a spider, spinning webs and collecting bugs or you could follow the story of Haru who is just looking to enjoy the hot springs at her friend’s birthday party. Maybe you’d rather solve some challenging puzzles that have a very simple look or just beat up ninjas with your fists. All of this can be found in this week’s free games… Read the rest of this entry »
Total Annihilation was an influential real-time strategy game where resources flowed like water, where armies blotted out the sun with their artillery-fire and where conflicts could play out on a scale where true strategy became more important than second-to-second micromanagement. Freeware RTS Zero-K is one of its best fan-made imitators, built on the Spring RTS Engine (an open-source foundation built to replicate Total Annihilation), it has been around for a while, but today it made its big debut on Steam.
Right, battle royale games have peaked. Devs: you can stop updating Fortnite and Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds. Cancel your Mavericks and your rumoured Call of Duty modes. There’s no real point now, because the browser-based Soccer Battle Royale has stolen the genre’s crown for good.
It’s a free, simple take on the formula where you’ve got to defend your goal against 99 AI opponents and an ungodly number of footballs.
Blasphemous as it sounds, I really like Halo. I like the floaty jumps, the slugfest combat where landing the first hit doesn’t always mean a win, the swooshy, slidey vehicles and the range of multiplayer modes. So naturally, Microsoft chose to release the free-to-play Halo Online in Russia only and cancel it before it could leave the early beta stages of development.
Legally fuzzy, perhaps, but thanks to a highly dedicated community and a lot of open-source poking around, development of Halo Online has quietly continued for years. Today, ElDewrito 0.6 is live, and it’s the best PvP Halo experience you can find on PC today.
Do you know how many different ways you can move a string and some pegs? Let me show you, because you will certainly find out if you play the next game listed. Bending a string around a bunch of pegs leaves so much open space to wrap your string around and so many pictures to create. If you aren’t interested in the simplicity of string based puzzles, you can attempt to connect planets together to trade, frantically try to clean your room before your mother comes home, take on a bunch of monsters by blowing them off your platform, and flee from a cat in a world of hazards. Check out this week’s free games and read on… Read the rest of this entry »
Free stuff is always cool, and when that free stuff just happens to be two polished and relatively well-received strategy games, all the better. For the next 48 hours or so, you can snag Syndicate revival Satellite Reign via the Humble Store and the Heroes of Might & Magic-ish Eador: Masters of the Broken World via its Steam page here completely free to keep forever, no strings attached.
