TIGSource Forums

Freeware Corner

This is the thread for recommending and discussing freeware games.  TIGSource seems to have moved away  from the freeware side of indie games to a certain degree, put freeware is still going strong.  Just check out all the free/pay-what-you-want stuff over at itch.io (https://itch.io/).


So come and talk about the free games you've played recently.  Give a description and talk about what you thought about the game.  Think of it like the "What you're playing" thread, but specifically for freeware.

Thread Rules
1. No Self-Promotion.  This is not the place to post about your own freeware games.  There are plenty  (https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?board=6.0)of places  (https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?board=17.0)to do that (https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?board=27.0).
2. Please include a link to the game in your post.  Also, it's not required, but including a screenshot would also be nice.
3. Freeware games include free downloadable games, free browser games, and pay-what-you-want games (as long as the minimum is $0)

 :gentleman:

Hyper Time Disruptor

(http://i.imgur.com/IS5WkIW.jpg)

-Link- (https://laserbrick.itch.io/hyper-time-disruptor)

Hyper Time Disruptor is a game where you fly through a neon tube avoiding obstacles.  The tube loops, and eventually you run into your own trail, which will cause you to speed up if you fly along it.  The goal is to catch up with yourself, and if you do, you move on to the next level.  The game starts off pretty easily: the obstacles are stationary, and so following your own path is always safe.  The difficulty ramps up after that. Starting in level two, the obstacles move, which means you have to figure out if you need to leave your path briefly to avoid danger, or if you can keep following safely. 

Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist

http://store.steampowered.com/app/409160/
It's by the same dev that made The Stanley Parable . Need I say more ?
(http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/409160/ss_877ffce382ee4d8f0b17336718bae7666a68cd97.116x65.jpg?t=1454678278)

I made an imgur album specifically for this!

It's from 2013, so idk how link rot's affected these, but most of them should be working

Oikospiel: A Dog Opera in Five Acts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfUaMejNuhw

This game is a lot. It's from David Kanaga, who you might be familiar with as the composer for Proteus. I've played maybe a half hour of it so far, and I'm really digging it. You can pay what you want for it, just mess around with the slider on the site or get it directly from itch.

Open-source asymmetric FPS/RTS hybrid

http://tremulous.net/files/ (http://tremulous.net/files/)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqfRPkPcSKI&t=2m58s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqfRPkPcSKI&t=2m58s)

Your team has N Build Points to build their base. Tradeoff between spawn points that are usable only every 10 seconds (keep more players in the game), vs static defenses and upgrade buildings.

When an enemy dies, everyone who did damage gets proportional points to upgrade. Humans get stronger weapons, aliens evolve into tougher aliens. Upgrades are always more powerful but some disadvantage eg. slower rate of fire weapons or an alien body that's a bigger target.

You can build bases ANYWHERE on the 3D maps. If you deconstruct your Overmind / Reactor you can build move to anywhere else in the geometry. Your static defenses are temporarily disabled but the payoff can be a much stronger base.

in that game  ^ I escort our builder to the top of a map above the volcano, and then our team fails to deconstruct the old base promptly, which leads to an interesting series of fights ending up with me jetpacking in the sky, cheesing away with a lasergun. After several failed offensive pushes, we start to make progress and then I see reports that our base is being obliterated and I should hide in a vent.. so I crawl through a vent where the upgraded big aliens can't reach me, we vote for a draw, gg.

It's got the speed & maneuvering trickery of fighting games and old FPS, long-term strategy and positioning like Chess or RTS and an incredible amount of variety in the weapon & alien variations with different maps and different base possibilties. A real delight. If you want to play or learn how to play, reply/PM me and I'm happy to teach, I love this game!

Wave Run

(http://i.imgur.com/yefAh2O.png)

Fun, tough platformer.  You've got a jet-pack as well as a jet-dash, which both have to be utalized carefully to avoid running into spikes.  You get ranked on time between each checkpoint.

https://jamie-rollo.itch.io/wave-run

Can we have a link to the album?

Oh whoa
I totally thought I included it, sorry!

http://www.imgur.com/a/c7PQi

Just played through it. It's pretty great!


Good list!  Reminded me of a bunch of things to re-download.

This thread makes me wish GameHippo were still around.

it's always sobering when a gaming animal goes extinct

Cho Ren Sha 68k

From Wikipedia: "Ultra Fire 68K" is a vertically scrolling dōjin Shoot 'em up (STG) game developed by Famibe no Yosshin. It was released in 1995 for the Sharp X68000 personal computer system. In 2001 a port was released for Microsoft Windows and in 2015 a port was released for the Atari Falcon030.

(http://i.imgur.com/ihnCKnz.png)

http://www2.tky.3web.ne.jp/~yosshin/my_works/download.html (http://www2.tky.3web.ne.jp/~yosshin/my_works/download.html)

Probably not what you wanted in this thread, but there's tons of never-truly-finished open source clones and mutants of older games. For anyone that likes realistic space sims where nothing's really going on because space is too big, I cannot recommend Pioneer enough!

https://pioneerspacesim.net/#&panel1-1

(http://media.indiedb.com/images/downloads/1/53/52081/kanara4.png)

Yes, it's a Fronteer-like game. Huge planets, newtonian physics, time warp and amount of keys that no joystick can handle very well. Especially since you can't bind analog commands to everything yet.

The only real problem I have with it is that it glitches when I try to play it with cardboard VR over Trinus, but I'm sure I'll find a way once I spend some time tinkering with it :)

(https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvNjgzODAvMzExMDM2LnBuZw==/original/FFRK22.png)

I've been playing Void Pyramid.  It's been on my To-Do list for a while, and I'm finally putting some proper time into it (plus, now it's on Steam!)  It's a cool, weird, techno-egyptian sci-fi RPG that feels like the early days of RPGs where they were still trying to work out how to convert tabletop RPGs into computer games.  Throughout the gameworld, there are objects that you can only interact with if a certain skill is high enough.  So you collect money to raise your stats so that you can either become more proficient at combat, or gain access to more areas/items, all the while collecting treasure.  It makes for a really nice core loop of: I'm going to explore X area, try to get enough money to raise one of my stat levels, then decide which stat should get boosted in order to accomplish Y goal.  Through that, you slowly chip away at a given area until you've leveled up enough to beat the boss-enemy and make it to the next area.

Itch: https://willyelektrix.itch.io/void-pyramid (https://willyelektrix.itch.io/void-pyramid)
Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/563430/ (http://store.steampowered.com/app/563430/)

Heck yes Void Pyramid. Loved the soundtrack.

Knytt Stories and really anything by Nifflas.
http://nifflas.ni2.se/?page=Knytt+Stories
(http://nifflas.ni2.se/content/Knytt%20Stories/A%20Strange%20Dream%203.png)

It's a great game, but it's only free this week.

Oops

been playing hero core lately, one of my favorites. hard and easy mode are basically two separate games (entirely new map layout, enemy ai differences, boss pattern differences, etc)

http://www.remar.se/daniel/herocore.php

(http://www.remar.se/daniel/games/herocore.gif)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu_xdCHdSqg

Looks cool.. OSX says "can't open, you should move this to the trash". Proof that Apple hates indies!

Apple is right because indies are trash

it's an early game maker game, so yeah it doesn't play friendly with apple :outraged:

now that I think about it, most of my all-time favorite freeware games were made with game maker. Spelunky, An Untitled Story, Seiklus, etc.