Free For All #005 — Super Crate Box

Super Crate Box is an action-platformer taking place on small stages where your objective is to collect crates which contain random weapon pickups while avoiding being killed by enemies spawning in from the top of the map and working their way down to the bottom. Once they reach the bottom they fall into a fire pit and will respawn back at the top, colored red and in a faster moving “angry” state. You collect the crates and avoid/kill the enemies for as long as you can and along the way you’ll unlock new characters and weapons once you hit various crate total goals.

There isn’t a lot of content contained in the small download, but what’s there is a fun distraction for as long as you can retain interest in the pursuit of a high score. The game uploads your scores to an online leaderboard for those of you who are competitive enough to care. Worth checking out at the very least and maybe worth keeping around for those times when you need something to do for a few minutes.

Official Website: http://www.supercratebox.com/

Free For All #005 — Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe

Transport Tycoon Deluxe was originally released for DOS in 1995 and for Windows in 1996. In the game you play the role of a, well, transport tycoon. You build and manage networks which use various types of vehicles to transport goods and people across maps that vary in size, environment and land layout. OpenTTD takes the original game and updates it to run perfectly on modern systems among other improvements.

Originally only playable if you owned the retail product, now anybody can play OpenTTD through use of free user-made graphics and sound packs. The currently available graphics pack closely matches the original graphics and as a result isn’t the most eye-catching thing in the world. However, there is higher quality graphics pack in the works so you’ve got something to look forward to in the future.

If you like Tycoon games and can deal with some dated graphics until a better tileset is available then I’d highly recommend giving it a go. There’s a lot of content in this small package for fans of the genre.

Links:

• OpenTTD Website
• OpenSFX (Free Sound Pack)
• OpenGFX (Free Graphics Tileset)

If you own the original game you don’t need the free graphics or sound packs, naturally.

Free for All #004 — The Lazy, Half-assed Edition

Due to general laziness and time constraints there are only two games this time: one for SHMUP fans and one for Puzzle fans.

Warning Forever

Skipping all of the top-down scrolling fluff that leads to a boss battle in the typical SHMUP, Warning Forever simply presents you with a series of nothing but boss encounters. By default you start off with 180 seconds and after you defeat a boss time is added to the counter. Rather than giving you a set number of lives the game simply subtracts from your timer each time, meaning multiple deaths will either make you unable to finish the boss in time or simply end your game if it hits zero. The bosses aren’t procedurally generated but there are nine “growing patterns” and four final shapes which adds some variety to the combat. Ultimately, not a game you’d spend hours on but it’s good for killing some time on occasion.

Kiki the Nanobot

In this game you take control of a two-wheeled robot and progress through a series of puzzles. The gameplay mostly involves you pushing or shooting blocks and other objects into the correct position to enable you to grab a sphere. The official website calls it a mix between the games Soko-Ban and Kula World.

This will probably be the last multi-game “Free for All.” In the future I will only write about one indie title at a time so I can avoid indie game fatigue and exhausting my supply of filler article material…¬_¬

Free For All #003 — Adventure Gaming Edition

In this Free For All the focus is on Adventure Gaming. Once a major PC genre with beloved games like Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, the Monkey Island series and the Space Quest series in its ranks, it’s now mostly limited to budgetware Nancy Drew and C.S.I. Titles aimed at the every-day Wal-Mart shopper. With the exception of Tell Tale’s very well done episodic approach to the genre it has otherwise been stagnant. Because of this I’ve decided to point you toward four classics that have been gussied up with redrawn graphics and updated user interfaces and released online as freeware.

The two studios bringing you these revamps are AGD Interactive and Infamous Adventures, both of which obviously have a genuine interest in the genre. All four games have completely redrawn artwork and new user interfaces that no longer require you to type in actions and control more like LucasArts adventure titles that many people are familiar with. In addition, voice and music packs are also included which further enhance the experience compared to the originals.

Useful Software: TagScanner

Do you have a large collection of music and need a way to organize it without having to spend hours upon hours manually changing file names and tag information? Look no further than TagScanner, an extremely useful tool from developer Sergey Serkov. TagScanner can rename files, edit tag information, generate tag information from an on-line database such as FreeDB or Discogs, generate tag information from the file name and generate HTML playlists.

Free For All #002

Here’s my second list some of the better free games floating around the interwebs. This might be the last installment as well, as I’m considering just featuring a single game in each post from now on rather than a small collection of them. That way I’ll be able to space it out more, and possibly give a longer write up on each game.

Well, enough of that. On to the list!