Lyle in Cube Sector
This is a nice little gem that I probably wouldn't have found were it not for Kojjiro. Lyle in Cube Sector is a 2D exploration game where you control a green-haired kid named Lyle whose power is the ability to lift and throw blocks, apparently. The gameplay is fun and old school, and is a bit like some crazy hybrid of Super Mario Brothers 2 and Metroid. It also has great presentation. The graphics and music and both crisp and will make you feel like you're playing a game on an NES that abuses steroids.
If you like side-scrollers, I don't see what there is to hate about this game.
http://www.sitesled.com/members/bogo/lyle.htmlAcidbomb
Acidbomb has the coolest theme that I've ever seen in a puzzle game, no doubt about it. You're a bomb defusal specialist and you have to find the pistons on each bomb and disarm them. It's kind of like mine sweeper but... not. You have a tools called SDUs and you use them to see how many pistons there are in a line.
All in all, this game is awesome. The game has a fun, yet intense feel to it. When the timer starts to count down from ten, you're thinking, "Damn, I really hope I got all of those right..."
http://www.vertigogaming.net/Walaber's Trampoline
Walaber's Trampoline is probably the first of it's kind. In my opinion, it's kind of like a Tony Hawk Pro Skater game, but instead of skateboarding, you're on a trampoline. The gameplay is physics driven, so expect your character to injure himself even though when in real-life it could easily be avoided. Aside from that, though, it's pretty awesome. Very fast paced and challenging, and if it's TOO fast paced for you, you can slow things down in the options menu.
If you're up for something slightly different, you should check this one out.
http://walaber.com/index.php?action=showitem&id=12Gate 88
Gate 88 is a very, very strange RTS game. Instead of clicking on units and buildings, then telling them what to do, you control a space ship which is more or less a mouse cursor that can fire lasers. I mean, you don't ACTUALLY use the mouse to control it, but it's what you use to contruct buildings and order units.
The game seems to have influences from many game. The second I start playing, I was reminded of Herzog Zwei. While I've never played Herzog Zwei, I've read up on it and the concept seems similar.
But yeah, if you're into RTS/Action/RPG hybrids, Gate 88 does a damn good job.
http://www.queasygames.com/gate88/downloads.htmlZombie City Tactics
Who doesn't love killig zombies? Zombies, that's who! Zombie City Tactics is a very simple game, both in the gameplay and the graphics. Simple is not a bad thing at all, because in Zombie City Tactic's case, it makes planning ahead positively vital. The fastest move range is two squares, most units will die in one hit, and a lot of the time you're going to need to sacrifice units for the good of whole. You're also vastly outnumbered, but thankfully you can spread your influence to build more of 3 different units. Yes, there's only 3 units but all of them have their distinct jobs.
If you're looking for a game that will really make you think, Zombie City Tactics delivers in spades!
http://secretblender.blogspot.com/2006/08/...ns-have-it.html1213
1213 is an excellent science-fiction platformer, split into 3 episodes, that plays out a bit like the original Prince of Persia. The gameplay itself is rather simple and the only real challenge are the boss fights. You platform around the facility, shoot up some baddies, and solve puzzles. Fortunately, the gameplay isn't what's going to keep you playing. The game's story is about an amnesiac lab rat, refered to by the mysterious facility's staff as 1213, who wakes up in his cell remembering nothing. Harassed daily by a mysterious member of the facility, one day his door opens with no one there. The story may not seem much at first, but there's plenty of twists and turns.
If you're a fan of classic games like Prince of Persia, Flashback, or Out of This World/Another World, then 1213 will not disappoint. It's a well-made game with solid gameplay and excellent writing.
Oh, and if blood phases you, stay the hell away from this game!
5 Days a Stranger/7 Days a Skeptic/Trilby's Notes5 Days a Stranger Screenshot:
7 Days a Skeptic Screenshot:
Trilby's Notes Screenshot:
Ah, more point-and-click adventure games! I'm sure a good number of you just went "Ugh...", so you can just move on. 5 Days a Stranger, 7 Days a Skeptic, and Trilby's Notes are a triligy of horror point-and-click adventure games with excellent writing and characters. In 5 days, you play as a famous cat burgler known only as Trilby who finds himself trapped in a mansion along with 4 other people. In 7 days, you play as Doctor Jonathan Somerset, a psychiatrist aboard a spaceship mapping a solar system that finds what appears to be a coffin in space before all hell breaks loose. And Trilby's Notes? I haven't actually gotten around to playing it yet, but I'll edit this when I do. All I know is that you play as Trilby again, which is good, because he's a cool character.
If you like point-and-click adventure and horror games then these games should please you. I liked 5 Days a Stranger quite a bit more than 7 Days a Skeptic, but that's not to say 7 Days is bad.
http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/5days/http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/7days/http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/notes/NetHack
As I'm sure you can tell by the screenshot that NetHack is certainly NOT about the graphics. No. No, it's not. Luckily, NetHack makes up for this minor downfall with incredibly deep, and addictive gameplay. You control an adventurer who has gone into a randomly-generated dungeon to claim the Amulet of Yendor. When you first load up the game, I wouldn't blame you if you thought the game was overly simple. After you check the manual, however, you will probably drop your jaw at the list of commands at your disposal. Seriously, there's a command for just about everything! Name another game that has a command for writing something in the dust on the floor. That's right. You can't.
It may take you a while to figure out how to use all the commands, and the lack of mouse support doesn't help. If you take the time to do so, however, you have one hell of a game. Every time you play the game will be different!
http://www.nethack.org/Tremulous
Like shooting aliens? Check! Like cutting through human flesh like a hot chainsaw through butter? Check! Tremulous is a hybrid FPS/RTS (Sorta) where you can either play as the technological humans, or the constantly evolving aliens. Having your team attack stuff isn't going to win you the game. You also need to build structures in order to get upgrades for your team and whatnot. You may be thinking this sounds a lot like Natural Selection... and that's because it IS quite a bit like Natural Selection. However, I hate Natural Selection, but I find this game entertaining. It's more simple and fast-paced.
Tremulous is a great team-based FPS game. I highly recommend it to all FPS fans, especially those that are sick of the standard 'human vs. human' FPS games that are so common.
http://tremulous.net/Scorched Earth 3D
While most 2D games that make a conversion to 3D don't turn out too great at first, Scorched Earth 3D isn't too bad! At all! It's actually pretty entertaining. Since the 2D Worms games and Scorched Earth share a lot in common, it's to be expected that Scorched Earth 3D has a lot of similarities to Worms 3D. For those who have never played an artillary game, you take turns blowing the crap out of eachother with powerful weaponry. The game even has destructable landscapes, and that really isn't something I've seen in any other 3D freeware games. There's tons of weapons you can purchase, which you buy using money you get for killing opponents.
There's one thing I'd like to let you know before you play. IT IS POSSIBLE TO MOVE YOUR TANK! You just need to buy fuel to do it. It took me a little bit of time to realize that, don't want you to make the same mistake. Also, yes, the website is pretty crappy looking. The game itself looks fairly decent, though.
http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/index.phpLine Rider
Line Rider is like the Excitebike of creative people! You draw black lines on a white backround and you watch helplessly as a little man/woman (I honestly can't tell which) on a sled takes on your challenge. The game is good fun, but it is far from flawless as of the writing of this review. I heard there was going to be an update soon, so there problems might be gone by the time you read this. You can't erase lines, and there's no undo button, so the only way you can fix mistakes is to save often and load when you mess up. There also isn't a tool to make a straight line, so chances are the ride is going to bumpy for our little hermaphroditic friend. Aside from these little gripes, though, Line Rider is a surprisingly entertaining distraction if you have a little bit of patience.
I'll link you to both the online version and the downloadable version.
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/40255643/http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/26674594/ (On the left of the Line Rider image, there should be a tiny picture of a monitor with an orange screen. That's the download.)
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
Yes, this game is LONG overdue to be put on this list. This game was supposed to be an expansion pack to Return to Castle Wolfenstein, but the multiplayer portion was released for free because the single-player part of the expansion was coming together fairly poorly. As unreassuring as that may sound, the game isn't that bad. It play out like most other team-based online FPSes, except that the game is heavily objective driven. There's a few different classes to choose from, ranging from your standard soldier, to your covert ops who has the ability to steal the uniforms of slain enemies. Your character also levels up as you play, which I personally think is kind of stupid since it gives players who have been on the server longer an unneccesary advantage, but no game is perfect and chances are a fair ammount of people like this mechanic.
http://games.activision.com/games/wolfenstein/Cortex Command
Cortex Command is a very strange game. It's an action/strategy game where you play as a brain in a jar who has the ability to control robots, clones, and rocketships. As far as I can tell, there isn't any goal in single-player mode besides keeping your brain alive as long as possible against AI robots that fall out of the sky. The goal of multi-player is to kill your opponent's brain before they destroy yours. The game is fun but is sort of clunky. The robots/clones you can control are extremely clumsy, just about anything that lives only needs to be shot once before it begins to bleed to death including your brain, things can seem a little overwhelming at first, since there's no tutorial or anything like that, and there's only one map per mode, but I'll let that one slide because this game is obviously nowhere near it's final stage. Overall, however, the game is pretty entertaining. The music is good, the graphics are crisp, and the action is quite satisfying.
http://datarealms.com/WWI Medic
Oh boy! It's another war game! Looks like I'm going to be shooting random soldier #38219... again! Wait, you don't shoot guys in WWI Medic? Say what! That's right! In WWI Medic, instead of shooting people, you save them, all while you try to avoid gunfire, grenades, and various other things that you really don't want to get hit with. The game is done in a style that reminds me of old arcade games, such as Robotron: 2084. It's actually fairly obvious that this is what they were going for. To make the game even MORE like an arcade game, they made the game hard as hell! I would consider you either lucky or incredibly skilled if you lived for more than five minutes on average. Unfortunately, this game only gives you one quarter. In other words, if you die, you need to start from the beginning.
This game, while fun, is not without its flaws. First off, the graphics almost make the NES seem like a powerful machine. Usually graphics don't bug me, but the people who made this game made a poor graphics design choice: the bullets are nearly impossible to see! Second of all, whenever you die the game shows you your overall score, including bonuses. When it does this, it causes your computer to beep, which I find really annoying and stupid. My final gripe with this game is the controls. If you press a direction, your character will keep walking. In order to stop him, you need to hit that direction again or hit a different direction. I have always hated this style of control, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Those things aside, this game is generally entertaining. This game won't be for everyone, but if it
is] your thing, then have fun saving lives then getting yourself killed in process!
http://www.bay12games.com/ww1medic/Sonic Robo Blast 2
You know what's pretty pathetic? When some guys makes a better game for free than a company filled with people who make games for a living. This is definitely the case with Sonic Robo Blast 2. While it may be 3D, it has much more in common with the Sonic games on Sega Genesis than the recent 3D Sonic games that Sega has been pumping out lately. The production quality of this game is awesome. The graphics, while primitive by today's standards, do the job very well. The music has a very professional feel to it, kind of sounding like something you might hear from a Nintendo DS game. Best of all, the gameplay feels pretty right. It's you're standard Sonic fare. Run really fast, destroy some robots, play bonus levels to get chaos emeralds, and get into boss fights against Robotnik. For added replay value, the game has 3 different characters and five different difficulties. Sonic is the fastest, Tails is the slowest but can fly, and Knuckles is faster than Tails and can glide and climb on walls. The game even includes network play! There's a bunch of different modes, including race and capture the flag.
The strangest thing about the game, however, is that it runs on an improved Doom engine. Because of this, you won't be finding any loops, or even hills for that matter. Of course there never really was too much of a point in loops, but that doesn't change the fact that they were cool. The hill thing isn't really a problem, since stairs are pretty much the same thing. The game is also lacking enemy variation, and the most common enemies are pretty easy to deal with, so for the most part environmental hazards are going to be what you're going to need to watch out for. Aside from the game's well hidden secrets, the game is pretty easy unless you play on the hardest difficulty.
The game isn't very long, either. There's only 3 acts in the game, each of which have 3 stages. Luckily, there's a good number of unlockables and custom levels. I recommend you check out the Mystic Temples level pack, which comes with a new soundtrack, and 8 different acts.
I
highly recommend this game if you like Sonic. There really is a lot to do here.
Also, the Mystic Temples level pack is in the Add-ons section of the site. In order to get it to work, check the FAQ in the Add-ons section.
http://www.srb2.org/Knytt
Remember those villagers from the first area of Within a Deep Forest? Well, in this game you play as one of them! After being abducted by an alien, the ship crashes on a nearby planet. Well, for some reason the alien is pretty useless and it's up to you to run, jump, climb, and locate replacement parts for the ship! I'm sure that you're thinking that if this has anything to do with Within a Deep Forest, that it has to be an extremely challenging game. Well, you'd be wrong on that one. This game is a breeze! That's not to say you can't die, but if you do, you're not really thrown back that far. The game's graphics, sounds, and music meld together to create a very ambient experience. So much to the point that this is really less of a game than it is an interactive art project. Since it's so well made, that really isn't a problem at all! If you're looking for a challenging game like Within a Deep Forest, you won't find it here, but if you're just look to take a break, I couldn't name a better game.
http://knytt.ni2.se/Super Mario XP
What happen when you smack a Super Mario Brothers cart and a Castlevania cart together? I don't know, you'd probably break them. What happens if you mix their gameplay together? Well, you get Super Mario XP! You can kill enemies by jumping on them, or you can use a variety of different weapons to do it instead. You've got fireballs, hammers, boomerangs, and uhh... the ol' Jesusarang. You also get item crashes like Richter gets in Dracula X and Symphony of the Night, but they really aren't as cool.
Overall, I'd say it's a pretty neat mix of two things that I like, but it's far from perfect. The game can be a little glitchy at times. One time I started floating in the air for no good reason. It's also very hard, which can be seen as either good or bad. Most of the time, it's fair, but there'll be quite a few cheap deaths to be found here. To make matters worse, Mario dies a horribly bloody death when your health bar's gone, and let's be honest, no one wants to see Mario die a horribly bloody death.
If you're a fan of Mario or Castlevania (or both, like me), I think you'll like this game. It has it's fair share of problems, but it's fun of enough for you to not really care.
http://www.acid-play.com/download/super-mario-xp/Fraxy
This game is just so different and awesome that it's awesome! How many games let you make your own bosses without knowing how to code? Well, Fraxy is the only game that I can think of. Fraxy is Japanese developed arena space shooter that's highly customizable. You can make enemies, scenarios, and all kinds of awesome stuff! And even without all of that, it's still a really great game.
I do have a few complaints, but they're nothing major. For one, you can't make the resolution higher than 640x480, making the game look really pixelated if you full screen it. Also, you can't make any of the bosses you create any other color than, well... gray.
I really recommend you check this one out!
http://mokeron.hp.infoseek.co.jp/zg/fraxy_main.htmlLa-Mulana
Holy crap, this game is freakin' HAAARD! So hard, in fact, that you'll probably need a guide of some sort just to beat it. Or at least I do, and I HATE to use guides! Nonetheless, though, this game is pretty great if you can get past its hard difficulty. The game is very retro, since it's basically a throwback to the MSX computer that was popular in Japan. Like, have you ever played an old-school game where you pretty much have to look at the manual to know what certain items do? Yeah, it's like that. I pretty much think of this game as Cave Story Advanced. Where Cave Story was rather simple, this game is complex.
Putting all the difficulty and complexity aside, La-Mulana is a pretty good game. It controls well, it looks nice (in an old-school kind of way), and the music's good. If you're looking for something fun and challenging, La-Mulana is what you're looking for.
Be sure to download the game and the translation patch!!
http://agtp.romhack.net/project.php?id=lamulanaSurvival Crisis Z
This is easily one of the best zombie games I've ever played. I can't say that I've played Dead Rising, but I'm willing to bet that this game is better. I'd say the game pretty much plays like a mix of Diablo 2, Grand Theft Auto, and Resident Evil. First, you make your character, then you run around the randomly generated city doing work for various factions (rebels, SWAT, and neutral), and killing zombies in the process. The game is very open-ended, allowing for many different play styles. It might all seem a little confusing at first, but pretty soon it'll all be second nature. I recommend reading the read-me file just a little, there's some things that would be a little hard to figure out for yourself. There's no real tutorial in the game.
Another plus is if for some odd reason you're not in the mood for open-ended RPG fun, the game has an arcade mode where the goal is to rack up as many points as possible. This is very intense and fun, zombies are closing in on you at all times, there's rarely any time to take a breath and relax. To make the deal even better, the higher the score you get, the more stuff you unlock. Seriously, who doesn't love unlockables?
Also, you
can play this game with the keyboard and mouse, but the manual says that it's discouraged. I took that as a personal challenge and now I understand why. I personally think it's more challenging and fun to play the game this way.
However you look at it, I really recommend this game. Especially if you're a zombie fan.
http://skasoftware.com/PART THREE OF THE LIST:http://forums.facepunchstudios.com/showthread.php?p=6981119#post6981119
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