So today I’m going to take a break from tabletop RPGs and talk about free games. Why? Because there’s no shit like free shit.
As much as I would like to be some sort of ear-to-the-ground font of indie game information, I’m not. I’m just a guy who’s heard of a few things. So here are two wildly different freeware games, downloadable over the internet, that stand out in my mind and in my life.
The first one is Katawa Shoujo. It’s a visual novel built on the Ren’Py engine. It’s not finished yet, but the first act is available for download, and well worth the time. The premise of the story is relatively simple: after discovering that he suffers from an incurable and disabling heart condition, the protagonist, Hisao Nakai, moves to attend a specialized school built to cater to the needs of students with life-affecting disabilities. The school is co-ed. You do the math. It’s a fun game; it’s pretty, relaxing, and melancholy. The girls are interesting characters. The art is good. It’s short. Check it out, you might like it.
The second one is Spelunky. It’s about as different from Katawa Shoujo as night is from day. It’s a side-scrolling platformer. You guide a nameless tomb raider through 16 randomly generated and increasingly deadly levels in an attempt to discover the lost City of Gold. The whole thing is set in one gigantic cave. It’s hella fun, and pretty tricky to boot. I have logged over two thousand deaths and never made it past Level 7. That said, I suck ass at this game; one of the guys from PC Gamer did it in 600 tries (if memory serves). I cannot recommend this game highly enough: I play it multiple times daily, and despite its difficulty it is endlessly rewarding and utterly addictive.
So yeah. These are two excellent and wildly different games and they are COMPLETELY FREE GO GO GO
Tom out.
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