newgrounds posts

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!

Auntie Pixelante is known for her incredibly hard games, and When Pigs Fly is no exception. Her first Flash game, When Pigs Fly is the story of when a pig sprouted wings to try and escape from a hole he fell down while frolicking through some fields. It's relentlessly hard in that platformer sort of way, but keep trying and you'll eventually reach the end.

When Pigs Fly is controlled with the spacebar and arrow keys. If your wings touch anything, you die. If any part of you touches spikes or lava, you die. Whenever you die, you respawn in the same room you were just in. The game records your total number of accidents and time taken, and awards you with medals depending on your time and number of accidents. Once you finish the game, you have access to three other modes: backwards through the game, one life, and timed. Play it over on Newgrounds.

It's always interesting to see games that abstract the physical concepts of force so eloquently. Disk Field does exactly that. Representing force as little arrows, Disk Field tasks you with manipulating these vector lines to move a disk from one end of the field to the other. It's more difficult than it appears at first glance, but extremely satisfying with its mix of puzzles and reflexes.

To play Disk Field, you simply use the arrow keys to rotate the red arrows. Blue arrows can only be slightly moved, so they act as a barrier most of the time. As you progress, the levels get harder and harder by making the path more arduous or introducing things like teleporters that pull you into their gravitational well. It's loads of fun, and a quick coffee break play. You can play it at Newgrounds.

[Via IndieGames]

Some of the best games that one can play are the most peaceful. This is especially true of William and Sly, a gentle exploration game with very simple gameplay and endearing characters. Interestingly enough, it is made by the same person of the hectic Ether War. In his own words, he made it because "most of my flash games have been too complicated for my family to play."

William and Sly is extremely easy to learn. You control with the cursor keys and shift: cursors move you and jump, and shift brings up help and the map. The game world is quite expansive, and the goal is to activate all of the runestones located across the forest. A daunting task, but the game is not difficult by any means. The vaguely painted graphics and peaceful music lend to the serenity of your surroundings, and help to craft a truly fantastic browser game.

We are not sure how long it will be before id Software decides to push out a "cease and desist" order on this but while its there it's certainly cool to play. The Newgrounds web site has got a triple play of the original Doom, along with Doom engine games Heretic and Hexen, available to play for free via their Flash-based browser site.

The programmer who ported these games is simply called 'mike' online and he's done a terrific job of getting all three games to run well (although it does require the new Flash 10; sorry, other web browsers). He's been working on this for a while now under the radar but we suspect that since id still sells these games they won't take too kindly to having them available to play for free; that's what Quake Live is for.

[Via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]