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Feature: RPS says goodbye to Priceless Play
Hey there, Priceless Pals. A melancholy day! This will be my last Priceless Play and the last Free Games Roundup here on RPS. Woe! I have had the undeniable pleasure of writing about the weird niche corners of free games for just shy of two years now, and I have loved every minute of it. Even though I won't be here to tell you what…
Feature: Hey, $.003 is basically free, right?
Priceless Play – the pick of the Itch Bundle For Racial Justice And Equality
If you exist in almost any corner of the internet which serves the intersection of video games and social justice, you've likely seen the Bundle For Racial Justice and Equality from the good folks over at itch.io. The bundle has been, by all accounts, an overwhelming success. I got to watch the donation amount tick over the million-dollar mark, then the two million-dollar mark, and…
Feature: Free games from Black developers
The past week has been filled with crises and calls for radical political change in equal measure, and (for me) an accompanying sense of radical possibility. At other times, however, a sense of impending doom. And then back again. There have been callouts and action from numerous games studios, media outlets, developers, and beyond to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in one…
Feature: The most wholesome unwholesome free games
Ok. I'll bite. What's a "wholesome game"? I watched the Wholesome Direct a few days ago, which gave me 53 examples of wholesome games, and I'm still not quite sure I know what falls under the label. Here are a few components of my working definition: wholesome games are nonviolent, often star anthropomorphised animals, and are soundtracked by ukuleles or a delicate piano line. They're…
Feature: Persistence, persistence, persistence
My dad isn't like most dads. There are many things about him which make him unique, but perhaps none so idiosyncratic as this: the man really, really, really loves Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States. I'm not sure how many children have been taken on car trips to Coolidge's homestead in rural Vermont (where, fun fact, Coolidge was sworn in as president following…
Feature: Games of magic and mundanity
I was talking to a friend of mine recently, who told me that quarantine is full of "bad days and medium days." I think that's a pretty glass-half-full way of looking at it: aim any higher, and you'll be disappointed. Shoot for medium, and you might be pleasantly surprised. I hope your quarantine is averaging out to medium, and you're pullin' through.Here, for your medium…
Feature: Game jams for indoor-types
When you're cooped up inside all day long (for forty-five days and counting), making a game can make for a good distraction. There have been more than a few quarantine-related game jams, each with their own themes and concepts. Isolation, social-solidarity, and "stay home" are common, and when the historians look back at the prolific game dev output of 2020 it won't be too hard…
Feature: You only have five more days to play one of these
Hey there, Priceless Gang. How are you doing? Are you getting enough sunlight? Going for your government-sanctioned walks? The weather has been getting warmer here in California, but the beaches are still closed. Sometimes I will walk all the way to the beachfront balustrades, give the ocean a little nod, and then turn around and walk back home. It's nice to see that it's still…
Feature: Games about the outdoors for staying indoors
Hey, how are you holding up out there? It's difficult to convey the right amount of weirdness we're facing at the moment. "Bizarre," doesn't even begin to cover it, and anything more begins to feel overwritten, grandiose, or nihilistic. Anything less, and it's unrealistic, naïve, or heartless. I find myself walking a similar tightrope-rollercoaster in my day-to-day: I woke up early this morning to bake…
Feature: Now Play THESE
Now Play This, a festival for experimental game design, is one of the many games events either postponed or cancelled to stop the spread of COVID-19. The festival has been running for six years or so, celebrating the strange and unexpected in game design, and each year it brings together some truly spectacular art pieces and games. This year, the festival team has had to…
Feature: Games for troubled times
Right. Well. It's a bizarre situation we find ourselves in (and I do hope you are in), and I am here to provide you with your weekly dose of free games. I can't deny that it's rather surreal to turn on my video game machine (that's my computer) and behave as though everything is some semblance of normal. While this routine remains the same, so…
Feature: Games to keep the wolf from the door.
If we have survived this month's Friday the 13th, we get this brief day of reprieve before the Ides of March. The general tenor of the hour is unease, and I'm afraid that the games I offer here don't have much by way of respite. I can't help but shake the sensation that everything is going slowly wrong, somehow. This is not to say that…
Feature: More like Grim Developers Conference
It's been just over a week since GDC announced that it would postpone its annual conference until "summer" of this year as a response to the Coronavirus. I live in Los Angeles, where city officials have just declared a "health emergency," and work at a university full of grubby-handed students. I understand the global reach of the pandemic panic. Many developers were caught off guard…
Feature: Fashion fades, but style is eternal.
I love a stylish game. Style, as so many fashion icons like to remind us, is an enduring sense of individuality and seemingly effortless flair. Of course, it is not so easy to discover one's own style. It requires a clear conviction in one direction or another, and the consistent dedication to maintain it. Honing a specific style across a video game's entire development cycle…
Feature: COLA for all!
If you've been reading Priceless Play for a while, you know that I'm a PhD student. Here in the United States, a significant part of being a PhD student is being employed as a Teaching Assistant, or TA. TAs do a lot of important work to keep a university running smoothly: we grade assignments and papers, facilitate classes, give lectures, and act as a liaison…
Feature: Cats for Valentine's Day and a Valentine's Day for Cats!
Well, gang, it's the day after Valentine's Day. The cynic's Half-Price Chocolate Day, the romantic's Intimacy Hangover day, and a day I will spend with my cat. Rather self-indulgently, I'd like to stake a claim in both the cynic's camp and the romantic's, though I don't think my cat cares for either chocolate or long talks about the future of our relationship. She'll never speak.…
Feature: Breaking down and building up
To say that there's a lot going on in the world right now would be an understatement. I recently played Studio Oleomingus's The Indifferent Wonder Of An Edible Place, which destroyed me (in the best possible way). I wrote about it here, but it didn't come easy. For a couple of hours, I walked around my apartment in a daze, wondering how I could possibly…
Feature: Games to stave away existential dread
Well, we've made it to February of 2020. Has the sheen of the new decade worn off yet? It sure does seem like, even with the new numbers and everything, we're pretty much right where we left off. My laundry doesn't suddenly do itself now that I live in the future, and politics still suck. It seems that coming to live in the brave new…
Feature: Roguelites, clickers, and city sims for troubled times
I know a game is good when I write down a to-do list with pen and paper. Games are great for goal-setting, but they're also great for goofing around and goalless, meaningful mindlessness. This is why I'm a big fan of roguelite games, which feel like endless loops of manageable tasks. Weirdly, the endlessness of them never really feels onerous. Instead of feeling frustrated with…
Feature: Games to grow with
My ten-year high school reunion was last year. I didn't go, obviously, because I am too cool and also I live something like 3,000 miles away from my old high school. I don't know about you, but I don't super love remembering who I was in high school. It's a truly terrifying time: the searing tension between becoming an independent being and desperately needing reassurance…
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