Posts with tag: freeware-friday

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

It takes a certain kind of person to play business simulations well. They must be devoted to detail, able to spot trends in markets, and instinctively know what works and what doesn't. For those that can't play business simulations well, the act of playing helps them excel in all these skills later on in life. It's both fun and useful, even though the skills are applied to a fantasy environment. For the freeware enthusiast that falls under these categories as a devotee of business simulations, look no further than Simutrans, a freeware remake of Chris Sawyer's seminal Transport Tycoon.

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

It's been about half a year since TIGSource's Procedural Generation Competition, and most of the entries have long since faded into obscurity. There are a few, though, that transcended their roots as a quickly written game into something new, innovative, and complete. The most intriguing of these games is the procedural real-time strategy game Dyson. With its simplicity, ease of play, soothing atmosphere, and high degree of polish, it's no wonder the original developers decided to refine it into a full-fledged title. This title will be making a showing at the Independent Games Festival, and the team has released their IGF build for free to all who wish to play. So let's revisit an old classic.

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

There's nothing quite like just going insane and murdering everyone. In a game. Not in real life. You know I meant in a game, right? The Suffering, one of Midway's best releases (and easily their best release from 2004) was recently re-released as an ad-supported free game. It's bloody, more than a little scary, and manages to merge third-person action and scares in an oddly compelling way. It was good enough to warrant a great sequel as well as a movie in production. But what makes it so good that Midway would decide to release it for free?

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

The team at Flashbang Studios seem to have a fascination with times long past. First there was Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, which is an action-puzzler with jeeps, a large spiked ball, and plenty of awesome cartoony violence visited upon feathery raptors. Now there's Jetpack Brontosaurus, or, as Flashbang puts it, "splendid jetpack dreams of a the apatosaurus named 'Brontosaurus'." There is no better description of the game than that. Thankfully, the game goes beyond the simplicity of its description in providing an incredibly fun browser experience utilizing physics gameplay and the Unity platform to their fullest potential.

The web platform that Jetpack Bronto is hosted on is Flashbang's new Blurst platform. Unlike Flashbang's personal site, Blurst is designed to showcase their own games such as Jetpack Bronto, Raptor Safari, or Splume. It's a good platform, supporting user registrations, achievements, and leaderboards. It is currently in soft launch mode, meaning some of the features (such as leaderboards) are not fully implemented. However, as this is the main place that their games will be posted, it is bound to be a great site as the content is fleshed out.

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

There's a lack of really great free online multiplayer games for the PC. There's plenty of average ones, like Maple Story or Combat Arms, but the amount of amazing free online games is rather low. This week's game is one of that rare breed of truly excellent online multiplayer games. Also known as SubSpace, Continuum is a community-developed online multiplayer game that is easily one of the best games of its kind. The fact that it is free makes it all the more better!

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

Once every few years there comes a game that knocks you right off your feet. In 1997, Total Annihilation did just that. Featuring massive battles, realistic physics, and a wide variety of tactics and units to utilize, it became an instant classic in the real-time strategy genre. Scoring well with critics and consumers alike, it managed to spawn both a fan remake of the engine, Spring, and a spiritual sequel, Supreme Commander. Utilizing the Spring engine, Wolfe Games has decided to follow this route with the excellent freeware RTS P.U.R.E.

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

There are some games made to just be weird, hilarious, and satirical all at the same time. They are few and far between, but it's great when they show up on the gaming radar. It means that there's a new hilarious game to play, and that's always a good thing. The game this week is one of these kinds of games. It's a satire of Japanese role-playing games, internet culture, and the absurdity of sequels. For a good laugh at the expense of these different things, Barkley, Shut Up And Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the HoopZ Barkley SaGa is the best.

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

Much like food, there are games that we always go back to after performing an excursion into the vast wilderness of the frontier. These are our comfort games, the ones that we can always depend on to be full of replayability and excellent game mechanics. The kind of game that we sit down and play between rounds of Team Fortress 2 or after a long marathon session of Oblivion. Kenta Cho's shmup games, like Torus Trooper and rRootage, are comfort games thanks to their endless replayability and arcade-style addictiveness. Gaming comfort food. And Gunroar is among their ranks as well.

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

Before Cave Story, there was a Metroidvania that really caught the eye of the indie community. It was a superbly polished gem of a game, and also incredibly hard. During development it was highly anticipated among a fair bit of gamers. Most fans of indie games, after playing it, realized that they had never played an indie game with that much polish. No game really approached its level until Cave Story a few years later. The game in question is Eternal Daughter, made by Jon Perry and Derek Yu (who is perhaps even more well known for the award-winning game Aquaria).

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

The rhythm genre is one that seems to be exploding, especially with the advent of Guitar Hero. Everbody loves to wail on plastic guitars and pretend to be a rock god! Just look at the bevy of knock-offs, as well as the war between the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises. For the PC, though, there's a great Guitar Hero freeware clone for those who want custom music in their game. That clone is the excellent freeware game Frets on Fire, which also happens to have the most ridiculous logo known to man.