Hey—hi there! Welcome! Come on it, have a seat. Would you like a warm beverage? Cold one? Just a handful of games? All right, that's fine too. Although the hot cocoa is stunning... Anyway! You asked for games, and so you get them. One game to make you scratch your head, one game where you can shoot Mecha Santa, and one game where you can learn to be a thief. Game enough for you? No? Maybe some hot cocoa would fill the void, then?
Egress - The Test of STS-417 (Windows, 57MB, free) - An imaginative point and click game that takes a cinematic approach to its design, coupled with some very fine hand-drawn artwork and multiple endings to discover. You are a member of a two man team of astronauts who find themselves stranded on a moon-like planet. Your communications barely work, and you have but a few tools that survived intact, but somehow you've got to rescue your partner and make your way back home. One playthrough will take less than 20 minutes, but you'll honestly want to go back to get the better ending once you complete it. The puzzles are excellent and really encourage you to think. And did we mention the art? Yeah, it's great. So is the music by Kevin MacLeod. This is exactly the kind of game we love to see existing in the world!
Hyper Princess Pitch (Windows, 20MB, free) - From Daniel Remar, the force behind the much-loved free metroidvania game Iji, comes a Christmas title that's all about shooting, revenge, and lots more shooting. Mecha Santa spreads cheer and presents all over the world, but Princess Pitch gets nothing. She's not about to let everyone else have stuff if she can't have any, so she sets out to put an end to all of that "giving". Blaze through the game with your three main weapons: brick, ice, and rainbow, destroying elves, toy trains, and everything else Mecha Santa throws your way. It's an intense and fast-moving shooting game with cheesy characters and so much action your face will bleed. The chip tune soundtrack by Niklas Ström (who has done music for some of Spelgrim's browser games) is available for download, and it's totally worth checking out. Also, Hyper Princess Pitch is a remake of the old DOS game Operation: Carnage, so old school gamers should perk their ears up now!
Dragon Fantasy (Windows, 17MB, pay what you want) - If you like your role playing games with fewer polygons and more four color sprites, this somewhat tongue-in-cheek game is a great place to start! Formerly only available for iOS devices, the retro-styled RPG Dragon Fantasy has worked its way to PC, carrying a "pay what you want" price tag for loads of bite-sized role playing deliciousness. Even though you're fat, bald, and retired, it's still your job to save the world. Guess you'd better take that pointy stick of yours and start stabbing enemies with it! A big and beefy RPG for mobile devices that plays like a slightly less meaty downloadable PC game, but it's still a huge hunk of retro RPG goodness.
Note: All games have been confirmed to run under Windows 7 and are virus-free. Mac users should try Boot Camp, Parallels, or CrossOver Games to play Windows titles, Linux users can use Wine. If you know of a great game we should feature, use the Submit link above to send it in!
I really tried to like Egress but the first puzzle put me off..
The holes. I get the tip "I can see three moons directly abive me". I tried using a ruler to narrow the possible holes to no good. I could try them all but it takes sooooo loooooong.. if I go to the browser while it moves from a scene to the other the game pauses. Oh, he doesn't want me to miss on all of the black screen with footstep sounds action
I don't mean to be harsh, I absolutely love the idea of some grown up puzzles with an actualy story to go with it. But puzzle design can be tough and a game should lead with the best example of what it has to offer.
I might give it another try later, though :)
I can't get egress to work. When I launch it I get a black screen but I can hear the sounds. If I alt+tab to another window to exit fullscreen and then alt+tab back to egress, I can see the game but the mouse doesn't work...
nvm, i got it to work by switching to direct3d 9 instead of directdraw 5
ok. Played again and completed it. My opinion remains more or less the same but now I encourage people to get bite the bullet and get to the end.
Diego: Heh, Egress definitely has some unusually-designed puzzles. But they're actually way more logical than you originally think. The lights puzzle had me stumped, but then I realized how obvious the solution was. Glad you gave it another go.
Also, and this is for everybody's enjoyment: you can skip most loading/walking/transition scenes by pressing ESC.
Egress: Gave up on the second puzzle.
Slow response time is unnecessary punishment.
I read on another blog that there's a hint in the animation, but I'm not about to wait through the opening to see it.
Tedious game, wish I had read reviews on it on other blogs first, would have saved me the time.
Anon: The light puzzle in Egress? It's laughably simple when you see the solution:
The horizontal bar refers to the number of horizontal lights around the door, the vertical bar the vertical lights. Count the lights and make the number of lit slashes the same. Easy!
I am playing Egress. I feel pretty foolish because I simply can't find Jacobs. I swear I've checked every hole, I guess it's time to do a systematic sweep.
ottoman: Think about the clue Jacobs gave you.
He said he can see three moons from where he's at.
Find the hole that's directly below three moons.
It's on the left side.
Well I finally found Jacobs. The game was very good, despite the fact that the
Groundhog's Day storyline
is not exactly original and it moved far too slow at times, though I thank JohnB for the tip about hitting Escape to skip dialogue.
Anyway it's definitely worth a look!
Egress seemed like a good game, but it was so excruciatingly slow (at least on my computer) to render gameplay almost impossible. If you have to wait 1-2 minutes, looking at a dark screen, each time you e.g. change locations you end up wanting to slay the designer.
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