browser posts

EA2D has currently done two browser game tie-ins to major releases, and both have been absolutely fantastic. The first was the Mirror's Edge tie-in, while the second was the Dragon Age: Origins tie-in. Now it's time for the third game, and it's naturally an extension of Dragon Age 2. Titled Dragon Age Legends, it is apparently on Facebook now rather than simply existing as a Flash game. Unfortunately, this trailer doesn't give us any further information than the name and location. It's is simply a bunch of smooth, beautiful animation that has no relevant information on the game.

Download Dragon Age Legends Teaser Trailer
Check out all Dragon Age 2 downloads

There are a lot of rough games that, despite fiddly graphics or controls, end up being classics due to their excellent concepts. Chess With Blood is one of those games, and despite being quite rough around the edges, it has an interesting mechanic that is played with to excellent effect. It was created for the A Game By Its Cover competition, and while it's hardly the best game of the lot, it's worth trying out.

Chess With Blood has a very simple concept at its core: what if chess was more of a tactical RPG than chess? The result is A strange mixture of things such as attack and defense values, positioning, and using different actions at the right time. All chess pieces behave as the would in a normal game of chess, only they have hit points, deal damage, and protect themselves. The game includes tweaks to classic rules and strategies as well, such as promotion and forking. Overall, it's rough, but excellent. You can give it a try on the developer's website.

increpare is known for his strange, boundary-pushing games, and his entry into TIGsource's A Game By Its Cover competition is no exception. He's a prolific developer and popular developer as well, even though we've only talked about two of his games (Kristallnacht and Mirror Stage). Whale of Noise is nothing new from him, but displays the characteristic strangeness that permeates all of his work.

Whale of Noise follows a whale tenuously made of vibrating pixels. The whale can sing a song to separate itself into two distinct halves to get past obstacles, with each song corresponding to a number key. The game is extremely short, but oddly affecting. As you near the surface, the game begins to get more colorful. The music and sounds are ambient and moody, which fit perfectly with the game itself. It's only about 5 minutes long, but it's definitely an interesting game.

This news is a little late, but we hope you can forgive us. Why is it late, you ask? Well, because we've been addicted to Minecraft's new survival multiplayer. It's been a long-time coming, but Notch's popular survival simulation has finally become multiplayer. Granted, it's only available to people who have pre-ordered the game.

For those that don't know about Minecraft's survival mode, it plays something like a first-person Dwarf Fortress. You gather wood, turn it into planks, smelt iron, make tools, and do all sorts of activities to guarantee your continued survival against hoards of zombies, skeletons, and creepers. Multiplayer is mildly buggy and missing some elements (such as enemies), but if you are looking for something a little deeper than just fooling around in creative mode or playing all by your lonesome, you'll definitely get addicted.

There's something to be said for complete ridiculousness an unbelievability. After all, many of the most popular games in history, such as Mario, make absolutely no sense except within themselves. Fishbane is one of these kind of games, and it styles itself as a classic platformer-puzzler. It succeeds at this in a spectacular fashion, which makes it one of the better browser games we've played in quite a while.

Fishbane follows the adventures of the titular hero as he seeks out the magical golden harpoons. He does this by riding on harpoons, avoiding instant death zones, collecting goldfish, and popping evil underwater balloons. It doesn't really make a lot of sense, but it doesn't have to. It is both awesome (riding on harpoons, after all) and amazingly polished. After all, you have to both figure out the solution to a puzzle, then put together your route and time it to perfection. It's hard, but a satisfying kind of hard. We expected as much, however, as the developer is the same one behind Probability 0.

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

We do not normally cover flash games on Freeware Friday, and for good reason. Most are finishable within half an hour of play at the most, incredibly simple, and slightly-tweaked clones of other games. However, sometimes we get blown away by the artistry present in a Flash game, and it impresses us enough to be worth mentioning. Anna Anthropy's latest game and collaborative effort, Redder, is easily one of the most unique, engaging flash games we've ever played. It also helps that the other member of the team is Amon26, whose games have been featured twice before on Freeware Friday. Time to delve into the insanity of Mars!

One of the oldest game genres is the rogue-like, with games such as Nethack and Angband having an incredible longevity. Nethack itself is almost 26 years old, for example. However, rogue-likes are typically impenetrable to those that haven't spent a considerable amount of time playing them. Tiny Crawl is the answer to this common frustration, and it's a great way for new players to become engrossed in the rogue-like genre. Created for the TIGsource Assemblee competition, it boils rogue-likes down to their absolute core, providing a simple, streamlined, and engaging experience. It's no surprise how finely crafted and tuned Tiny Crawl is, given developer Sparky's work on IGF finalist Star Guard.

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

Most of the browser games that have been talked about on Freeware Friday have been by the esteemed Flashbang Studios. However, it's time to break that trend with a game that is just as good as anything Flashbang can or has come up with. Farbs' Captain Forever was released a while ago to those who have donated, with the promise of it being released for free at a later date. That later date has arrived, and Captain Forever is now available to the general public. It's an excellent game, and one that you can easily lose a lot of time to, which makes it both a great freeware game and an amazing browser game.

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

Dragon Age: Origins is out there amidst consumers, garnering both critical and commercial recognition for its dark atmosphere, excellent story, and entertaining combat. However, there's more to the Dragon Age series besides Origins. EA2D, makers of the excellent Mirror's Edge 2D, decided to take the 2D browser approach to the Dragon Age franchise. The end result is Dragon Age: Journeys, a spin-off game that manages to be good on its own while still providing you with bonuses in the main game itself. Those that love strategy and role-playing games should definitely try it out.

Each week we find more and more free games that do not quite fit into the freeware mold. Games that do not require a subscription fee to play, but encourage player usage of money through microtransactions or special subscription services. This is Playing For Free, a column that showcases these games.

The week's column is a new thing for Playing for Free. Granted, the column is only a month old, so it's perfectly acceptable to introduce new things! In this case, it's not a stand-alone game, but one of those free browser MMOs that lots of bored office workers play on their idle time. It's called Ikariam, and it surprisingly good given the rather crowded and poorly-realized genre that is the browser MMO. So for those interested in a little game that keeps on chugging while you work or play, here's one of the better browser MMOs to peruse.