Freeware games

[pershainovitsh]

I couldn't find a thread for freeware games so I made one. Just to clarify, freeware means it's freely available and it's fully legal to download. So no links for sites where you can download BF3 for free for example.

I have found quite a many while browsing the internet. Here's some.

Octodad
Loving father. Caring husband. Secret octopus.

This is a hilarious game where you play as an octpopus who has infiltrated a human family and is pretending to be a father. You have to do your chores, which may sound simple but it isn't when even walking is a challenge!

Unfortunately I've had the game crash about 75% of the times I've tried to enter the kid's room. I'm downloading the latest version right now to see if things have changed, will report later. Download links (even for a Mac version!)can be found from the official site: www.octodadgame.com/octodad/download/

There's a sequel in works. Earlier it was callied Octodad: Dadliest catch, but now it seems to be called Octodad: Armed and dadgerous.

Here's a theme song: ianmckinney.bandcamp.com/album/octodad-nobody-suspects-a-thing


If you search "octodad" on Youtube, the second link is to a funny gameplay & commentary video made by "penguinz0" (uses name Cr1tikal in games) but some may get offended by it. Search it if you want to possibly have a good laugh.

UFO: Alien Invasion

Summary:
www.indiedb.com/games/ufo-alien-invasion
Download page:www.indiedb.com/games/ufo-alien-invasion/downloads/ufo-alien-invasion-24
There's also a Mac version although it hasn't been updated to 2.4 like the Windows version.

I have played this once years ago but I didn't feel like playing it. I just downloaded the new version, released yesterday, so I don't really know much about it.

FallOver

Made by a Finnish developer, FallOver is a funny little platformer where you play as a British gentleman who has troubles keeping his balance. You can only stand up three times per level. Whenever he falls over, he'll curse using words like "heavens!" or "jolly". A very funny game.
hempuli.com/FO/

Wreckage

A game that originally was a Crysis (or Crysis Wars, can't remember) mod, is now a standalone download created with CryEngine. I'm downloading it right now so I can't say much about it. The download is 1,8 GB.
www.indiedb.com/downloads/wreckage-standalone-version

I'll report later once I've had the chance to play it.

15 minutes

A parody of the series 24, made with the free Adventure Game Studio. It's short and funny.
www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Games.aspx/Detail/1432

5 Days a stranger

Also made with AGS. 5 Days a stranger starts a series of very well made horror adventure games. You play as Trilby, a professional thief who ends up in a haunted manor. Note that these games contain various amounts of violence, this one probably having the least.
www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Games.aspx/Detail/269

7 Days a skeptic

The sequel to 5 days a stranger. This time you're in space, 400 years have passed since the last game. But soon horrors start to take place on the space ship... This one has very graphic scenes decipting violence, but the graphics aren't very realistic, something like Monkey Island. A good game anyway.
www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Games.aspx/Detail/430

There are two more sequels , the first one being Trilby's Notes, but I couldn't play it when it was just blood everywhere. Then there's 6 Days a Sacrifice, which I have played for a bit but for some reason never finished. I guess I got stuck and didn't get motivation to look for a way forwards.

I know many more games, but these should do for now. I've got a game where you play as a bear driving a car before hibernation eating berries and fish. I've got a game where you play as a bodyguard. I've got a game where you play as a secret agent. I've got a first-person hockey game. I've got the game from which the idea for the game Portal was gotten from. I'll add more games and more information later. But here are links for those games:
forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=4964.0
www.wolfire.com/black-shades
crypticsea.blogspot.com/2011/06/hockey.html
www.digipen.edu/fileadmin/website_data/gallery/game_websites/NarbacularDrop/

[pershainovitsh]

Small (yeah, even I don't believe in that) report of UFO: Alien Invasion.

I've read it's very similiar to games like UFO: Enemy unknown, (there is a sequel in works: X-COM: Enemy Unknown), UFO: Aftermath and such. You are the commander of a counter-alien attack force. You start by placing a HQ anywhere on the globe. You can add various buildings to the base, like hospitals and AA batteries. In the HQ you can also put reseachers to research the things you want: laser technology, the origin of the aliens, certain alien weapons or make them do an alien autopsy. You can either buy or produce the stuff you need. Producing takes time according to the size/complexity of the items you want to produce.

When a radar spots an alien, you can send an interceptor to destroy it. With good luck the the UFO crash lands somewhere (with bad luck your interceptor possibly gets destroyed, hasn't happened to me yet) and you can send your team in a dropship to the location. The combat is turn-based. Every soldier has a certain amount of action points they can use on moving or attacking or changing stance etc. You can also put a soldier into a ready stance if you save some action points before you end the turn. In a ready stance the soldier will attack if he/she sees any hostiles nearby, which is of course very handy.

My first mission was actually an alien attack on a laboratory, no shooting down UFO's was involved. It went perfectly. I could have kept the UFO but I didn't have space for it so I sold it to the Europeans. The next mission was a downed UFO one. It didn't go as well. One of my soldiers died immediately when an alien shot him halfway acroos the map with a plasma weapon. My sniper failed getting to a better vantage point as he got shot and injured while climbing up the stairs outside of a warehouse. Luckily I had a shotgun-wielding solider as a backup for him, but even three bursts didn't kill the alien. By using the little AP (action points) I had I made the sniper descend the stairs and make quick shot at the alien. The alien was killed. There were a couple of more aliens, but I killed them with assault rifles, flamethrowers and careful moving. At the moment the two injured soldiers (the sniper and one other guy) are in a hospital recovering. I think I could send them on a mission if I wanted to, but they would have less hitpoints. And the soldier who died will be dead forever. Except if I load a previous save and finish the mission with him alive. But I won't. You can save at any point when on the world map, but not when in a mission. This is hardcore.

Overall it's a great game. Some downsides are that you can't very easily see how much AP you have and what can you do with it, and the tutorials don't help much. But I think there's a UFO: Alien Invasion wiki somewhere. The worst thing is that it's so good you're going to waste a lot of time playing it. But why should I complain? It's free. A thing I'd like in the game would be destructible environments like in X-Com and UFO: Aftermath. (haven't played them) It would add a lot of tactical value. If you know there's an alien hiding in a corner of a building, you could destroy the wall and hopefully the alien along with it.

I strongly recommend to try it. Even if you don't like the alien theme or turn-based strategy. There is a multiplayer but I don't know what is it about.

Manual:
ufoai.org/wiki/index.php/Manual/FAQ

[tazimafied]

I know of two.

First is Flight Gear.
It's a free download for the full version and additional scenery can be downloaded as well. You can also purchase DVD's and are encouraged to make copies for friends and family. It comes with 15 aircraft preloaded and more than 400 to download from their site. I just found this one and havn't looked into third party designers but I am sure there are plenty more being this is truly open source. The graphics arent the greatest and without the added scenery looks a bit odd. I havn't had the chance to play it much so at this point I would rate it at "okay" for a sim and "excellent" for value.

Next up is Live For Speed.
This one has two versions, a demo and licensed. Don't let the "demo" part fool you though because you get unlimited single player and multiplayer action. The demo version gives you three cars and they are the top cars used in online play. You also get only one track in three different configurations, but again, they are the most used in online play. Yes, you can race online with friends with the demo version! The graphics arent top of the line but are really good for the price. Physics are on point and the developers definatly put a lot of thought and programming into it. I have been playing the licensed version for years now and havn't really thought of finding anything else. The licensed version doesn't cost much and unlocks 17 more cars and 6 more tracks in several different configurations giving you the option to race anything from a go-kart to F1 and the ability to paint your cars and upload the skins so everyone can see your handywork.

[pershainovitsh]

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Wolfenstein 3D, it can be now played on your browser for free! For how long, I don't know. Maybe just for today, maybe for a week, maybe until the site stops working after some years.

www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05/09/mein-leben-wolfenstein-3d-in-your-browser-free/

I didn't post a direct link since it would give you the European version, possibly making it impossible to play for you.

[Spartan0536]

Best "freeware" game I played was Minecraft, of course there are the Online Free to Play games like Battlefield Play 4 Free, Need For Speed World, Ghost Recon Online, Alliance of Valiant Arms, and "everyones favorite" Microsoft Flight.

[pershainovitsh]

I actually played Minecraft before it became mainstream, in 2008. I saw ana article on Rock Paper Shotgun (RPS, one of the best PC gaming sites there is, plus they have a sense of humour) or somewhere and started playing. I thought it could actually become something: it was so simple and it was like building with legos, only your imagination and tolerance to blocks are limiting what you can build.

Anyway, I was playing UFO: Alien Invasion a minute ago. I had been playing it for hours, and in game time months. (you can fast forward time) I had been doing all the missions I saw, selling all but two UFO's two various nations and destroyed many UFO's while they were still in the air. I was fast-forwarding because there were no missions available and my research for laser weapons was looking good (at about 70%). Then, all out of the sudden, the game says "You've lost the game". Apparently I hadn't kept the nations happy enough. There are five happiness levels the nations (or more like continents) can have, and most of them were above level 2 and two on level 1. If I understood correctly, you stop receiving funding from nations if they are unhappy and if you lose your trust fom all nations it's game over.

But seriously, without a warning I just lose the game. I guess I should have built radars to cover the entire globe, destroyed every single UFO (I didn't on my playthrough, they were too fast), done every mission, sold every UFO to a nation and minimized the civilian casualities to zero. But with what money? And with what weapons? It costs a lot to build radars, SAM sites and aircrafts. And there is a shortage of men.

Either losing like that was a bug or I was supposed to have radars and SAM sites (with so tiny effective range they don't usually even destroy UFO's) everywhere. And interceptors, lots of them. I was playing on normal difficulty level.

Aside from that I really enjoyed it. I was really close to getting my hand on laser weapons, and after that I would have put all my researchers on UFO technology so I could possibly get myself some UFO's to fly. I don't think I could continue from an earlier save without losing again soon. So I guess I'll have to try a different strategy next time.


Tips for UFO: Alien Invasion

- Build a base somewhere on the equator so you can easily fly almost anywhere.
- Build radars to cover the entire globe.
- Build SAM sites all over the place to weaken UFO's on the flight.
- Buy interceptors to destory UFO's on the flight.
- Make a team of eight people: one should be a medic (preferably a fast guy) with a medic pack ready on one hand and a one-handed weapon on the other, at least on sniper, one shotgunner, and the rest should have assault rifles and maybe flamethrowers. When you research better equipment like the electromagnetic rifle, give them to some of your troops.
- Have some spare troops in case someone gets injured or killed.
- Always have a spare magazine or two for your weapons.
- The dedicated medic doesn't have to be the only one with a medic pack.
- Try to destroy every UFO and alien you see.
- Sell UFO's to nations to keep them happy. Other ways of keeping them happy is destroying flying UFO's and killing aliens in the missions. Keeping civiclians alive should help too.
- Knives are useless. I didn't encounter one situation where I wished I had a knife in the ten missions I completed. I don't think they do much damage.
- Secondary weapons are mostly useless, at least on my experience. I've always equipped my soldiers with pistols, submachine guns and small shotguns, but never used them with the exception of my medic, whose main weapon is a pistol.
- Bazookas are useless. Becaus of the next reason...
- The soldiers are mostly terrible shots. Unless you have a guy with a high accuracy stat and a sniper rifle, the chances are you aren't going to hit anything past 50 metres. At 50 metres and closer they will hit pretty well though. But the enemies can wear alien body armour and can shoot back with their advanced weaponry.
- Keep the nations happy. You don't want a game over screen pop out all out of the sudden.
- Remember to refuel your aircraft. (happens automatically when the aircraft is in a base) I don't know what happens if an aircraft is out of fuel while flying, probably falls down. But you can actually go on a rescue mission if an UFO downs your troop carrier, or at least that's what I've read.
- Remember to keep injured soldiers in the hospital until they are healed.

[pershainovitsh]

First thoughts about Wreckage

It's a standalone mod that doesn't require any of the Crysis games to play.

The plot involves US military and Korean military engaging in an island because of a spaceship or a person with codes for something. I didn't really catch it. What I immediately noticed was that the voice acting is in German, even if we're playing as Americans. There are subtitles though. It's still bothering me and I can't read everything in the middle of the action and my German is so bad I didn't understand anything else than "Alles klar!" (all clear).

The basic things from Crysis are present: you can use the nanosuit to provide you maximum armor, speed, strenght or invisibility. You can also customize your weapon at any time.

Wreckage is a single player mod and I think this is the third part of a trilogy. The gameplay isn't very interesting, although you can have fun running at enemy soldiers at high speeds or throwing barrels at them. Sometimes I didn't even know what I was supposed to do. For instance there was a tank I was supposed to destroy. There was no anti tank equipment available anywhere, so I decided to jump on top of the tank (with the strenght increasing my jump height) and punch it. Surprisingly my tactic didn't work in any way. So I ran to a friendly vehicle, and suddenly the tank just blew up. I have no idea what had happened.

I don't really like the mod/standalone game. I quit at a moment when I'm supposed to kill dozens of enemies, and it seems there's just more to come. I don't know if I'm supposed to just kill them or cross a specfic point to make them stop spawning. I don't really care, it's so dull. I'm under the impression that in vanilla Crysis 1 the map is very open and you can execute your orders in many different ways. I tried using the invisibility, but the AI companion ruins my stealthy apporach by just being so close to me all the time.

I wouldn't recommend downloading. You might still like it, but I didn't. I'll try to finish it later and see if it get s better.

[pershainovitsh]

Worlds of Ultima 1&2 (classic RPG's from 1990 and 1991) (Worlds of Ultima 1: Savage Empire and Ultima: Worlds of adventure) are now free if downloaded from GOG.com (formerly known as Good Old Games, hence the acronym, but now they have new games as well so it's just GOG now). No DRM. If I understood it correctly, they will be free now and in the future, with no time limits. They do support modern operating systems like XP, Vista and 7. Ironically they don't work on old OS's at all.

One thing to note here is the enormous file size: the first one is 50 MB and the second one is thankfully a bit smaller, 45 MB. Still, you'd need a very expensive hard drive with lots of storage space to fit them in. And since you have to download them, I hope your modem is fast enough so it won't take days to download. Those "Internet" connections cost a fortune.

If you think your computer can run the game and you are so rich you don't have to worry about spending precious money just to download the game, here's the GOG page: www.gog.com/news/free_releases_worlds_of_ultima_1_2

[pershainovitsh]

I've been playing Trilby: The Art of Theft, which was made by Yahtzee, the same guy who made the "x Days a z" games.

It's a 2d sidescrolling stealth game where you are tasked to steal items from various places. You are Trilby, a master thief who is masked and dressed in very formal clothes and a feodra. Your only weapons against guards are your wits and the tazer attached to your umbrella. It only has a very short range. Guards are not your only problem, there are also security cameras, lasers and locks to make stealing harder. If a guard or a camera sees you for two seconds, an alarm is raised. It doesn't change anything, but there is a limited amount of alarms you can have before you have to restart the level. There is a limited amount of people you can taze. You can upgrade the amount of both you are allowed to have with the upgrade points.

After you complete a level, you gain some points you can spend on new skills. Some are almost essential, like the ability to move while falttening against the wall and doing a somersault to move with a low profile and to reach hard-to-reach places. Some upgrade your abilities and allow you to try picking more complex locks. There is a lock-picking mini game (both for door locks and safe locks) as well as a wire-cutting one with utility boxes. There is no way to know which wire to cut, and if you fail, you get an alarm. There is no time limit on these mini games.
After the completion of a level you are also ranked in time, number of alarms, number of tazes and value of stuff you stole. C is the lowest rank, B and A in the middle and a picture of a fedora as the best one.

I have to warn you; the game can be very, very difficult. Sometimes you have a three second window to step away from below a security camera and to move to a higher level using the umbrella to hoist you up, but you are one pixel too left and you get an alarm. I rarely hit my keyboard, but have done it multiple times with this game. For some weird reason Teamspeak sounds (and probably something else as well) stop working when playing the game. Only restarting TS when you are not playing the game helps.

But it's not all bad if my review starts to sound like that. The pixel art is well done, the small animations are good (like when you crouch, Trilby bounces a bit back up when he's low enough) and one of the best things is that the objectives are randomized to some degree. The keycodes to keypads change every time, and if you have to find them from somewhere, that place changes as well. So you can't just run through the levels like a maniac an bypass the keycode retrieving part because you wrote it down last time. The guards sometimes have random patrol patterns, which creates tension.

Overall, I like it, despite it being very difficult. If someone can go throught the game, or even one level, with a fedora rating, I'll raise my hat for them. Even going through a level is hard enough, let alone doing it fast, without alarms, without tazes and taking most of the valuables with you. Try it if you think you have what it takes.

www.escapistmagazine.com/content/games/yahtzee/artoftheft


Edit: all right, I think I'm done with this game for a while. I did a level almost perfectly and all I had to do was get back to the entrance. On the second-to-last screen I had to options: either go straight up with unavoidable lasers on it (one laser was going on and off every two seconds, making it impossible to avoid) or go on another route with two security cameras that switch directions on different times (one every 4 seconds, the other every five seconds, both on different floors) AND there's a guard walking back and forth on the upper floor. I waited for minutes trying to find a good spot but I didn't think it was possible. Once I had a nearly perfect spot but I forgot that I was wall-hugging so that cost me a precious second, ruining my opportunity at once. So I decided I'll just go with the route full of lasers that will surely cost me an alarm. I could only afford one alarm, and the next alarm after that would end the mission. I miscalculated everything and got two alarms. That was my sixth attempt on it today.

I'm going to need a cooldown. But as a true Finn, I will not give up. Someday I will beat that level. It may actually be the last level, but I fear that it isn't and there will be something even more difficult coming up. And I have a feeling that there in a very unfair ambush or something like that waiting for me at the entrance. So I'll be all sweaty and ready to kill anyone who tries to stop me from completing the level, some new guards appear there or a grid of lasers that can't be avoided. I hope not.

[pershainovitsh]

A developer named Cryptic Sea has made some cool free games. One of them is Sub Rosa (http://spartanwf.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=games&action=display&thread=1749) www.crypticsea.com/subrosa/

and another really good one is "Hockey?". It's a first person ice hockey game. You can play both of these games online. At best you can have full teams of five in Hockey? !

Bear in mind that these games are in an early development stage so the graphics aren't very good, but the concept itself rocks.

www.hockeyquestionmark.com/

[pershainovitsh]

Viper and Iwazzio seemed to enjoy Hockey when I played with them separately. Unfortunately we didn't get to all play at the same time. But we did have a lot of fun. It's a very small download, free, doesn't require a supercomputer to play and it's fun to play, so why don't you download it already?!
www.hockeyquestionmark.com/

A random tip for games developed by Cryptic Sea: it seems that all of his game are made with the same engine, and there's a bug that makes the screen mostly white after alt-tabbing out and back in.

[pershainovitsh]

Here's Perspective, a puzzle game where you move in a 2d and a 3d world. Difficult to explain. Watch the trailer to understand it better. It's a very neat gameplay idea and it works well.



www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/12/13/look-around-you-perspective-out-now-and-free/

www.seewithperspective.com/

[pershainovitsh]

This one's actually a browser game. It's an RPG set in the Wild West. And it's called Westerado.

games.adultswim.com/westerado-action-online-game.html

You are trying to find a killer, and to do so you must find clues on his appearance and possible location. You must help people before they give you information. You can play a card game in a saloon. Also you can do missions for some important people. If you get shot, you lose one hat. You've got three hats, and the fourth shot will kill you.

Use J to holster/unholster, K to cock/shoot your revolver. Simple, cool, effective.

It's a really fun little game to play, and won't take more than an hour to beat. The soundtrack reminded me of something, and soon I realized that the combat music is a simpler version of the main track of Pulp Fiction, Misirlou! That was cool.

[pershainovitsh]

Prometheus used to be a mod for Unreal Tournament 3, but since the Unreal Development kit is free now (you still have to pay if you are going to use it commercially), they released a standalone version.

Prometheus is a game about solving puzzles by time travelling. You have five versions of you going through the level, with the last one completing the level when the others set the route for her. You move them one at a time. When you control the first one, you can't see the others. When you control the second, you'll only see the first one. This isn't a problem because you move them one at a time and once you think you've done what you can or that individual character's time runs out, you start with the next one.

So basically it's a single-player co-op game where you work with the past and future versions of yourself. Needless to say, that's cool.

So far I've completed the first two levels. At first they seemed difficult, but after experimenting a bit I understood the way to do it.

It's a small download, and if you get stuck, I can give hints or even a solution. You should really try this.


The name Prometheus comes from the Greek Titan who created man from clay and stole fire from the gods for humans to use. He was punished for this by being bound to a rock, where an eagle would every day come and eat his liver, while in the night it would grow back. I have no idea if it has anything to do with the game though.

[pershainovitsh]

Cryptic Sea, the developer of Hockey? and Sub Rosa entered NASA's Dark Side Game Jam where developers make games that have something to do with NASA in a limited amount of time. This time he made a rocket building game. There's not much to do actually, other than try to make the rocket go really fast or to make it orbit the Earth, but it's a fun little game. You have to reinforce the shuttle so it can stand the pressure caused by the fuel for example. It's pretty simple, yet complicated in the same time.

crypticsea.blogspot.fi/2013/03/dark-side-jam-rocket-builder.html