Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
In Sethian you find an alien computer and, as an archeologist of such things, you must decipher the language of its ancient users. It’s a very clever piece of interactive fiction that I happily recommend despite a glaring central problem, which was summed up perfectly by a comment on my original review:
“You’re essentially trying to talk about philosophy with a chatbot,” it said, “while possessing the linguistic ability of a toddler.” Read the rest of this entry »
Do you want a homecoming tale but don’t want to put up with those deplorably cute animals of Night In The Woods? No worries, here’s Norco: Faraway Lights [itch.io page], a neon text adventure of conspiracy theorists in a cyberpunk New Orleans. Or more accurately, here’s a demo for the opening chapter. The story is: You’ve come back home because your mum has died and your brother has gone missing. Why are brothers so rubbish? Read the rest of this entry »
Sethian [official site] came out, perhaps unwisely, in the midst of the annual November deluge. It’s a little niche – a single-screen mystery about typing commands into an alien computer to find out more about the extinct race behind the device. But the computer functions only in the local extraterrestrial tongue. As an xeno-archeologist out to save your career from ruin, it’s up to you to decipher and translate much of this language, a symbolic script that is inspired by Chinese, American Sign Language and other languages but also includes features which “have no real world counterpart.” At its heart is a central question: where did all the aliens go? Read the rest of this entry »
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
When I first reviewed interactive fiction masterpiece Endless, Nameless in 2012, I just begged that people go play it without reading the article. I suggest the same right now. Just go play the game.
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Hell is other people (gathered at a business meeting). Nowhere does that butchered Satre quote become more clear than in this interactive fiction by Matthew Seiji Burns and Tom Bissell. You are the lead writer at a AAA videogame company, working on the imminent ShatterGate: Future Perfect, and it is becoming clear, even before release, that the game is not up to snuff. The Writer Will Do Something [official site] is about the fear and blame that follows.
Hello there! I’m sorry to bother you like this at your computer screen but I have a cart full of free games here and I heard you were interested. Of course, have a look! Yes, some of them are falling apart, but some of them are precious and rare. What? Oh no, I wouldn’t take that one if I were you. Well, yes, I suppose it does have some intriguing chiselwork. Are you sure? I’m afraid I won’t be back for some time. How much? Ha ha! Didn’t you hear me? It’s free! Anyway, I will be off now. Goodbye, stranger. And… good luck.
The professor takes you into his basement laboratory. Rows of jars are lined against the wall and the smell of formaldehyde is overpowering. You ignore the professor’s chattering and look at some of the glass baubles. Inside, twisted ganglia and membranes lie perfectly still, preserved. What are they?
“Free games,” says the professor, appearing behind you. “A life form we struggle to comprehend.”
You awake to the gentle motion of rocking. The train carriage is empty. How did you get here? Behind you, a thump. You spin around but there is only a large trunk in the aisle – it must have fallen from the rack above. After a while staring at the box, your curiousity takes hold. You click open the first latch. Did the box just twitch? You click open the second. You peel open the trunk and — Oh god! Get it off! A free game has leapt from the luggage and is devouring your pectoral muscle like a lamprey eel and you tear at it in horror but more free games are slithering out of the trunk, they’re latching onto your ankles, your shins, your belly, oh god, you feel light-headed, oh god, how did it come to this. What maniac let these games on board!?
I was at the swimming pool this week and an old lady asked me what I did for a living. I told her I write about free videogames on the internet. “Oh,” she said, “Like SpillTender, Trills, Monster Streaking, Morse and Maddening Relapse 2?”
I stared at her.
“You know, you should write about Birdland too.”
“Shut up,” I said. “You’re fictional. This whole damn pool is fictional. Shut up. Just shut up.”
HAPPY HALLOWEEEEEEN. From showing your demons the middle finger to backflipping your way past pumpkins and vampire bats, we have lots of skin-crawling, Halloween-themed free games for you this week. But also some normal games so that you do not become too frightened. I know how sensitive you are.
I told my brother I had to write a column about free games today and he said: “Free games like when you bundle a load of socks up and then get your mates to add their socks and it keeps growing until you have a football?”
You awake in a pool of ooze. What colour is it? You don’t know, because it is completely dark. But it definitely feels like ooze. You stand up and claw for the lights, at the spaces on the walls where you think lights ought to be. You can hear a faint sound. Something warm brushes against your leg. Then again. Finally, you find the switch.
Oh God. They’re games. Free games. Oozing all over the floor. More than a dozen of them, stretching and panting and climbing on top of one another, like crabs. The sight of them is making you gag, and yet you cannot turn away. Look at them, they are so pure. So… free.
In this new column, Brendan will be rounding up the best free games every week. Because, let’s face it, we are all broke.
Hello! The great Porpentine may have stepped down from her giant pixellated throne when she decided to end her column “Live Free, Play Hard” but that does not mean RPS can slack off. There’s a skipload of free games out there, just sitting in the street. This cannot be allowed. So they have recruited me (sorry) to dive into that giant steel container and rummage around like some sort of game-crazed raccoon. I may not be able to do justice to our errant Cyberqueen’s dream, but I can honour her with lots of HOT PINK TEXT. If you have something I might like, please fire it at me via the tweets. I am @Brendy_C.
