Breaking the Tower

I told my brother that I’d post an entry with some of the freely available video games I am playing. I listen to the Bytejacker netcast for the latest in free indie games. The host does a good job of covering everything from downloadable games for consoles to Flash games.

The adventure game genre has totally been snubbed by all of the mainstream game studios. Thankfully, several indie developers have stepped up to produce some great games. I enjoyed Spooks produced by Erin Robinson. While I did get stuck once or twice, I felt compelled to figure out the puzzles and finish the game.

Here are other adventure games on my list of titles I plan to check out: Cave Story, Dirty Split, Duty and Beyond, Kaptain Brawe, Life of D. Duke II, Loftus and the Sky Cap, Reactor 9, The Chef, The Guardian of Paradise and The Winter Rose.

A few weeks ago I went to over to my buddy Tom E.’s place to play some Duke Nukem 3D. The game was released by 3D Realms way back in 1996. Thanks to the efforts of the guys over at EDuke32 it is possible to play it on Windows Vista PCs. It was painful getting a networked game going. But we had fun once we worked it out.

Then we tried a game of the one of my favorite pointless games called Red Pixel. It is a multiplayer deathmatch in which you can destroy parts of the world. It was fun to blast away for a while. But soon it became tedious. With more players the game becomes mass chaos! Basically it has all of the fun of a modern first-person shooter without all of the eye candy.

I found this Java-based game I like called Breaking the Tower. It is the closest I have come to enjoying a strategy game since Dune II. No, I am not going to crab about the things that modern RTS games do wrong. Also, I have no schadenfreude when the folks who make those games fail. Hey guys, maybe you could make some nice adventure games instead!

There are scores of Flash-based games available. At best most of them are forgettable. I like 41st Reality for its catchy soundtrack and decent design.

Lastly, another genre that has been snubbed these days is the space simulation shooter. I recently installed Freespace 2 (FS2) thanks to the FreeSpace Open Installer. Now I am playing through the game again. It is amazing that its creator, Volition, managed to produce the game in under a year. It helped that they were able to leverage the work that they had done for the first Freespace game. FS2 features a deep story and awe inspiring effects such as beautiful nebula clouds that wreak havoc on your sensors and battles with massive capital ships that shoot impressive beam weapons. If there is a genre that is crying out for a revival, it is this one! Can you imagine a big battlefield filled with a great number of space ships each lovingly rendered with shader magic and high polygon count love? Be still my heart.