RPS Feature Farewell Garden
All good and freeware things must eventually come to an end and the very same applies to my dear Freeware Garden and its all singing, all dancing games. This, wonderful readers, is the final post in the series and my chance to admit how much I enjoyed writing it and to thank team RPS for giving me the chance to take this huge freeware burden off my chest. Oh, and to let you know which five games I covered I loved the most. These:
Rarely have I seen a game of such elegant and excellent dice mechanics as those found in Malleus Goblinficarium. Well, not rarely. Never. This deterministic tactical dice-based combat game simply has to be experienced to be fully appreciated, though I do suspect that transferring it to tabletops worldwide would be the wisest course of action.
FROGGY (It’s Hungry) is not Frog Fractions 2. I know you might be inclined to believe it is, but, really, it’s not. Even its dev said so, though admittedly only after describing it as the Citizen Kane of frogs, which it could actually be if it were a bit longer, which, well, it isn’t.
Fork Parker’s Holiday Profit Hike may just be one of the best known freeware games recently released, being a little something by indie mega label Devolver. It’s also, yes, a holiday-themed game, but that’s okay – I’m pretty certain there’s a blizzard waiting to happen somewhere in the coming months. It’s too good to ignore, anyway.
Fork Parker’s platformer is built around Devolver’s balding CFO mascot’s attempts to climb a snowy and rather festive mountain of money in a cunning bid to help raise his company’s revenue. Among the lovely pixelated graphics, happy enemies and spiky spikes, Mr. Parker will try to collect wads of cash and avoid any falls that might lead to ludicrous medical bills.
Compared to iOS gamers we are tragically short on runners, so it’s a good thing we get to play the unfinished but generously freeware Serious Dave. As is traditional, you move your onscreen avatar moving up and down between three lanes and either avoid or shoot enemies – provided you’ve bought a weapon bought with the in-game currency that is, which is earned by gathering of beer for the shop-keeper.
VoYD is a simple, minimalistic game and this is exactly what allows it to be a super fast, brutal hack-and-slash arcade offering that’s still completely playable, and which flows in the most zen-like of fashions.
I was 13 years old when I first encountered Brian Moriatry’s Loom. It was on a friend’s ninja PC that sported both VGA and AdLib cards and I was, understandably, blown away. The complex, whimsical story, the wonderful graphics, the unique musical interface and the amazing music itself were unlike anything I had ever seen. Or have seen since.
Playing Deadbolt, the latest 2D arcade shooting thing by Risk of Rain developers Hopoo, allowed me – for the very first time in my life – to picture an indie version of the Grim Reaper breaking into a zombie infested mansion via its plumbing and emerging, armed and deadly, from the toilet. Now, I may not know art, but I know what I like: death by toilet. And stylized, hyper-violent action gaming.
Text adventures, interactive fiction if you will, does not have to look plain. I know, it’s the words and, in certain cases, the puzzles that count, but it really can’t hurt if a texty game looks as lovely as Code 7 and its intelligent, elegant interface do.
Admittedly, the excellent voice acting on offer does also help quite a bit, but I would never dream of demanding such bells and whistles. I’m merely content with appreciating them when available; they give a cinematic flair to the proceedings. Even more so when supporting sci-fi horror offering Code 7 establish its atmosphere and very successful horror vibe.
IAMJASON is a dystopian sci-fi point-and-click adventure about losing something. Well, everything actually, though it does let you fight and defeat corruption. The corruption to be exact, which is quite an honourable thing to do, especially when accomplished in resolutions as low and chunky as 160×90.
Professor Pokrovsky, with the invaluable help of his lab assistant Bob and secretary Pinny, delights in breeding new species of worms, colourful little insects and disgusting, hungry little critters. Happily, you too can now play Insatia and get to experience a short and agonizing life as one of the good doctor’s test subjects.
Ah, yes, a cowboy duel on a virtual tabletop complete with beats and a step sequencer. It’s what we never knew we wanted and what Team Pyros divined we all needed and wonderfully wrapped up in the excellent The Beat, The Step, and The Cowboys.
You are the prodigal prince of the sun and, less spectacularly, the protagonist of incredibly polished and consequently very short first person offering the Path of the Empyrean Pyre. You seek help on a mysterious space cruiser and will face a single, difficult decision in this stunning game, created by eight people in just two weeks. In its brief running time, it creates a splendid atmosphere of sci-fi mysticism.
You have been prepared by Does Canned Rice Dream Of A Napkin Heap?, but the time has come to show off your skills of upward mobility. Stop telling aliens stories for a mere plate of food and start writing for The Coop Times for a decent and honest living.
The Coop Times, besides being a fictional newspaper run by an eternally disappointed editorial committee, is a wonderful little web game by Linebreak Collective that aims to once again get those creative fluids running by having you write.
Turn it Up plays exactly like the arcade game you swear you can remember, but never really existed. You hectically move left and right and jump and rotate the pixelated world around you in an attempt to score as many points as possible.
HASTE (Time-bending action) is still an extended prototype, but it’s an accomplished, sleek and impressive first person parkour-’em-up that took me over two hours to beat and definitely not to master. Borrowing ideas from such clever games as Super Hot and Mirror’s Edge, HASTE has you constantly running away for survival. Interestingly, when you run, time runs slower for everything and everyone but you.
In the case of Mussel, mussel stands for Miniature Underwater Strange Squid Eradication Liner and not any kind of bivalve mollusk with a brown or purplish-black shell. It is the name of the underwater fighting vessel you’ll be piloting in the shiny new indie shmup by brothers Jonathan and David Whiting.
It’s the jaggy, shaded, colourfully filled polygons that make SEAQUEST1992 look like an obscure Japanese oddity for the N64, and in practice it feels like the Sonic/Nights Into Dreams crossover the Saturn never got. Add in a touch of traditional trinket collecting and Ecco’s underwater adventuring and you should have a pretty solid idea of what this beautifully weird free game is all about.
If you have played Galcon or Phage Wars you are essentially familiar with the mechanics and central idea of Strange Gravity. What you definitely couldn’t expect though (unless you cheated by looking at the screenshot above) would be that this is not a simple, hectic RTS, but, actually, a unique RTS/FPS hybrid.
Would you like to tell a story? Of course you would, you are only human, but why rush over to Twine when you could craft your story by playing through Does Canned Rice Dream Of A Napkin Heap? and sharing it with a couple of aliens, a life-hating robot and a dog in a space bar (also, the internet)?
