procedural posts

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

It's a common joke, especially to those that have read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that anything can happen. That car over there can turn into a whale, but the probability is so incredibly low that there's no point in even considering it. This is the theme of Probability 0, a procedurally generated game that has little to do with probability and a lot to do with experimentation and exploration. Despite this discrepancy, it's a highly entertaining and endearing game, despite its flaws.

We've followed the game Dyson all the way from its origins as an entry in the TIGsource procedural generation competition. It stole our hearts, and later went on to make itself into a freeware game with some added features. Finally, a year later, it has been released under the new title Eufloria. While the title has changed and the gameplay has been tweaked, this is still the Dyson we know and love from so long ago. It's just received a facelift and the trappings of commercial, retail release. While it may appear to be a strategy game on the surface, it's actually something much different, and sets itself apart through its liberal use of procedural generation and an incredibly unique atmosphere.

There are lots of games that parody war in a rather direct manner, but none quite as jarring or fun as the procedurally-generated We Want YOU. A game obviously inspired by the likes of Apogee's Secret Agent and the freeware game Spelunky, We Want YOU is incredibly random and fun, and adds a delicious twist to traditional war commentary through its gameplay.

The goal of We Want YOU is to kill as many soldiers as possible on your way through the game. Falling downward represents both a shift in physical location and in time, which means that every so often, the game changes seasons. As you get further and further, the war takes its toll on you and the people around you, and things begin to get a little crazy. It's an excellent game worthy of spending a few hours on, and it's still being updated!

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

It's not often that a beta will make it onto Freeware Friday as a game worth playing. Usually this is because they are buggy and incomplete. The polish is what makes a game great, and most of that is applied during the beta stage. So far the only exception to this has been the transcendent Dwarf Fortress, which manages to be more complete than most commercial titles while still in alpha. However, Spelunky, even though it is in beta, has captured the feel of old-school adventure platforming with the incredible difficulty of rogue-likes in just the right way.