Five for free

Posted by Ward Rubrecht at 6:27 AM Apr 01, 2008

I've always liked free shit. When I leave restaurants it's invariably with a double-fist of mints and toothpicks; at Target I'll grab a whole stack of AOL CDs to use as frisbees later. But the one bad thing about free shit is that it's usually true to both parts of its name.

In the PC gaming world, however, that ain't necessarily so. Sure, Defend Your Castle gets old after five minutes, and 99% of Flash games are rip-offs of superior arcade games. But there's quality to be found as well. So for my first post, I'm gonna run down five of my favorites from the freeware world, games that you might, in another universe, actually be inclined to pay money for. Hardly any unknowns here, I'll grant you; but if you've never played even one of these, it'll be worth your while to get acquainted.

Kingdom of Loathing

Way back in aught-three, a fellow named Jick and another fellow named Mr. Skullhead double-handedly created this web-based, sorta-massively-multiplayer roleplaying game. The idea's simple: make a character, go fight monsters, get loot, progress through the game world, all without leaving the comfort of your Firefox tab. But the delivery is what makes the game really special. With character classes like the Sauceror and the Seal Clubber, NPCs such as the L33t Tr4pz0r, and fearsome enemies like the Knob Goblin, KOL delights in punnery and pop-culture allusion. KOL is really just a work-place timewaster, but done at such a high level of game design that it merits genuine accolades. And with a system for trading and guilding with other characters (as well as a rudimentary PvP system), it provides enough depth to have life after the leveling-up process is complete.

Crayon Physics

This tiny, beautiful puzzle game was birthed by a single developer in but a week. And admittedly, it is very short, but the core gameplay is brilliant. The player draws squares and rectangles of any size and dimensions. Those drawings form objects that fall according to gravity and interact realistically with any other objects on the screen as they do. The point of each level is to roll a red ball to a yellow star--but the task can be tricky, involving multiple objects drawn in quick succession to create the necessary infrastructure. This kinda sideways gameplay development is exactly what the big studios need to harness in order to overcome their development budget problems. A good core gameplay element like that of Crayon Physics is worth millions of dollars of shiny, painstakingly designed graphics. And as I type this, I'm wetting myself with excitement over the upcoming release of Crayon Physics Deluxe, the "final" version of the game. To see why, watch this video.

Cave Story

Legend (and Wikipedia) have it that lone game developer Daisuke Amaya spent five long years toiling over side-scrolling platform shooter Cave Story. It shows all the loving hand-craftedness of a basement model-train set, perfectly balanced and tweaked in every way. You (bear with me) play a robot soldier stuck in a land of anthropomorphic rabbits who are being harvested by a nefarious Doctor and fed red flowers to induce violent madness in order to use the resulting bloodthirsty bunnies as an army against Earth. It makes sense, really. The gameplay is a hot lovechild of Super Mario Brothers and Megaman, a concise confluence of jumper and shooter. A large arsenal of strange weapons and an enormous bestiary combine beautifully; each monster has an appropriate choice of weapon, a decision that comes completely intuitively. And, unlike most freeware games, this one promises around 8-10 hours of bliss.

N

Free games are almost universally churned out by shitty casual-games companies looking to entice their customers to play for maybe five or ten minutes, just to sell ad click-throughs. N is a big, fat exception to the rule. Its physics engine and clean grey-and-black graphics put you in the shoes of a flipping, wall-scampering gold-hungry ninja trapped in a brilliantly-laid-out progression of labyrinthine levels, filled with deadly robots and turrets. It's equal parts puzzle and twitch game. You'll die repeatedly to missiles, bullets, and gravity before figuring out the proper way to progress through each level. Handily, the game keeps track of these deaths, so you can figure out exactly how many how many times you've bought the farm to each hazard during your nefarious career. And with sixty levels total (and the ability to download more fan-generated levels), N won't be over nearly as fast as most flash games.

Trackmania Nations

The Trackmania series blends arcade racing with puzzle gaming in a pretty unique way, forcing the player to ponder questions like "Just how fast to I have to travel in order to endo-flip my car over that barrier and into the finish zone?" And one of the titles in that series, Trackmania Nations, is available for the low low price of some hard-drive space. But the game adheres to the same quality standards as its pay-to-play brethren, with shiny 3D graphics and enough levels to keep you satisfied for hours--especially if you're the type who simply must shave off another tenth of a second to qualify for a gold medal on each track. It even has a multiplayer mode and global high-score tracking. As the cherry on top of this gaming sundae, Nations comes complete with in-engine track editor, so you can generate your own chassis-twisting levels.