Free Game Friday: Project Zomboid and Zombie Typocalypse

Project Zomboid isn't entirely free, but there's a free version that lets you do pretty much everything that the full game does, or will when it's finished. I'm not explaining that terribly well. There's a basic free version of PZ but you can also pay a couple of quid for a slightly more updated version which will also get you the full version when it's done.

Okay, so it's a zombie survival game and there have been quite a lot of those recently. But Project Zomboid differs in that you're not going to win. The game starts by telling you that you've already died and now you're going to re-enact the moments leading up to your demise.

You begin in a house with a wife who's a bit hurty. You're going to have to do what you can to make her more comfortable and scavenge supplies to keep you alive. You'll have to combine items to create what you need. Get hold of a hammer and nails and you can barricade your home with wooden planks. Some bottles, rags and a lighter and you've got yourself an armful of Molotov cocktails (that are as much a danger to you as to the walking dead).

Lots of factors affect your survival and you'll need to be careful to make sure you get enough rest, keep yourself healthy and even treat yourself for depression.

http://projectzomboid.com/

Zombie Typocalypse is a stupid little browser game that I came across when looking for ways of getting Typing of the Dead (Sega's surprising House of the Dead typing tutor) to work under Windows 7. It's a very simple game where zombies shamble down a hallway towards you and you can stop them by bulleting them to death. Rather than point and click, your gun skills rely on your typing. Type the word over a zombie's head and you'll let fly with the lead. Quicker and more powerful weapons and ammunition can be bought with the money you earn for slotting zeds which does seem a little like a vicious circle, but it's a fun game for ten minutes on a Friday.

http://www.addictinggames.com/funny-games/zombietypocalypse.jsp

Free Game Friday: Stunt Rally and Tricky Truck

I don't deliberately theme these game articles, but it seems to happen anyway.

Stunt Rally might not have the most original name, concept, execution or gameplay, but that isn't a bad thing. You drive a car jolly fast through a landscape and try not to screw up too much. It comes with an impressive 79 tracks spread over 11 different regions and it's even possible to play multiplayer.

Although the tracks are very much made for rallying, there's quite a variety and some of the loops and bridges and things are simply excellent fun. There's even a track editor if you feel a bit creative and the game is updated quite often.

Go here to get it (it's about 200MB):
http://code.google.com/p/vdrift-ogre/




Our other game today isn't quite as free. Tricky Truck does have a free version, but you need to cough up approximately eight quid for the full thing. You're actually best off playing the free version initially to see if it's your kind of thing. It's a challenging physics-based truck driving simulation.

The game is satisfyingly hard. The first couple of levels will seem a bit finicky and unnecessary, but you'll soon be trying some very challenging mountain tracks. Completing a level is... well, tricky and you'll feel a real sense of accomplishment in doing so. Failing may be frustrating, but it's one of those games where messing up is definitely your fault; you haven't been cheated, the game has not tricked you, you just turned that corner way too fast.





There's also a lot of enjoyment in taking a stupid risk and pulling it off or smashing and caroming your way around a track in a manner that you know you're not supposed to be able to. The first time I managed a track in a top fifty time, I was ridiculously pleased with myself. Playing on hard mode restricts you to views from within the cab which just adds to the fun sometimes. The best time I've scored on the first shorcuts track (24th place) was on hard. Hah!

Hang on a minute, lads. I've got a great idea

The free version limits you to one truck and only about ten tracks, but surprisingly does include features like the level editor. The full version gives you a lot more vehicle choice, many new tracks and a heck of a lot of other little fun bits and pieces that you can see some of in the video.

Grab it here (about 20MB):
http://www.gravitysensation.com/trickytruck/

Free Game Friday: Unusual game control systems

This week is a little different in that I've not been playing free games, but I've been controlling them with unusual methods (which are all free). None of this keyboard and mouse stuff for me.


FaceTrackNoIR is a face detection uh... thing. It detects your face in order to follow your head movements and it transmits this data to the game. You can lay out £150 for a TrackIR device or you can use a webcam and FaceTrackNoIR.

Who is that handsome devil?

It actually works surprisingly well for something that's a bit cobbled-together. It uses the free non-commercial faceAPI from Seeing Machines to monitor the position of your face and it does a good job even if you have a beard and a busy background.

Although I initially used it for a flight sim, it worked equally well in driving games and, in the video above, you can see it being used for a first person shooter. Quite impressive.

There are obvious limitations like not being able to look directly behind you or too far off to the side, but seeing as you don't have a monitor over there, it's not going to be a problem. I haven't tried it with a game that supports multiple monitors yet, but I think that could be quite interesting.

Try it for yourself here:

http://facetracknoir.sourceforge.net/home/default.htm

There's a list of games that support it here:

http://facetracknoir.sourceforge.net/compatibility/games.htm

GlovePIE has been around for a while and basically allows you to control anything with anything. Originally designed to allow the use of those awful 'virtual reality' gloves, it's gone a bit further than that.

I decided to see if I could use my Nintendo Wii controllers with a flight sim and it was a breeze. The only other thing I needed was a Bluetooth adapter for my PC, but they can be picked up for pennies from ebay or Amazon (I had some spare Amazon credit). Here's a guy controlling Google Earth with a Wiimote:

In my case, it wasn't a total success. The Wiimote worked perfectly, but it wasn't actually any better than just using a joystick. I did try it with a driving game and that was a lot better although my arms did get a bit tired of holding it in the air all the time. But then I cam across this video and realised that I could do more with it.

Voice commands, eh? Well I've got several driving games where it's jolly difficult for me to perform certain functions because my hands are busy. He's playing rFactor 2 and I play the similar Race 07. I have difficulty arranging my pitstops because I've got two hands working the keyboard already, so when do I have time to navigate the menu to arrange my pitstop?

Voice command worked brilliantly. I play with headphones on, so there was no problem isolating the voice commands from the game noise. It uses the speech recognition engine built into Windows 7

I know there's a lot more that can be done with GlovePIE and writing scripts for it isn't terribly hard.

Get it here:

http://glovepie.org/glovepie.php

What worked especially well was combining the two. I played Race 07 using FaceTrackNoIR to track my head and GlovePIE to handle voice commands and that just let me get on with the driving. Entering a corner, I can look to the apex as I turn the car towards it, whilst telling my pit crew that I want different tyres on my next stop. Neither were particularly hard to set up (although I was using games with which I knew they already worked). Have a go yourselves and if there's any other unusual control method out there, let me know.

Game Friday: Botanicula

Yeah so it's normally about free games, but today it isn't. Because I'm chuffed silly that Botanicula has been released. It's the new game from Amanita Design, otherwise known as Jakub Dvorský, the author of Machinarium and the Samorost games. And not only has it just been released, but it's the core of a new Humble Bundle. So you can trot along and pick up the brand new Botanicula, the frigging excellent Machinarium and Samorost 2 by paying as much or as little as you like. And if you pay more than the average (currently $8.68), you'll get Kooky and Windosill thrown in too.

So what's Machinarium, Botanicula and uh, Jakub what? Well that just means we're not friends any more. Machinarium is a beautiful puzzle game in the style of a point and click adventure, but oh... the artwork is charming and unique and ooh, the puzzles are tricky, but not impossible. You'll never feel stupid trying to solve a puzzle in Machinarium. And yet, somewhat ironically, you will do by the time I've finished insulting you for not playing one of the best games ever. And if you've played the original Samorost games, then I'll give you special bonus points and induct you into my secret club for super-elite top humans. My mate Zane's played them and... well - you'd probably at least want to think of yourself as being as good as him in terms of homo sapiens - that's all I'm saying. He dresses like Adam Ant for goodness sakes.




Look! It's Machinarium. It's beautiful and maybe it's just a little too good for the likes of you, eh?

Isn't that nice? It's pretty, it's clever and it's age and language neutral. I played it with my wife. My wife! A computer game that wasn't Mario Bros with my wife! And we both had just as much fun. And she contributed almost as much as I did to the solution. Obviously she wasn't as good at it though. You can ask her if you don't believe me. But don't ask her because she tends to lie.

Just like Machinarium, Botanicula features lovely and unique graphics and features a range of point and click puzzles. There's no text in it at all, so you can play with foreigners or children. The developers are decent people and don't use any DRM and they even release versions for Mac and Linux too. And the music is bloody charming too. Gah, haven't I said enough to convince you yet?

Oh look, it's the moon. Hasn't that got a quirky hand-made sensibility to it as well a a hint of an Eastern European aesthetic? And check it out, there's a tiny dude in a space-ship. Go and buy this game. Pay whatever you like for it.

Wow, it's a... a... well, I'm not quite sure what it is actually. Looks like an ovum perhaps. Whatever it is, it's frigging charming. Buy this game now.

Hmm, they're brown and pendulous. Nope, no idea what they could be. Just enjoy it. It'll make you laugh, make you cry, it'll change your life. Buy it now.

Woo, some plants and a crab and everything. How delightful. Buy it!

There's a video below of actual gameplay. Don't watch it. The joy of discovery in Botanicula is just frigging awesome so don't go spoiling it by watching a video or reading a proper review. Buy!





Go here to visit the author's site and see his other cool stuff too.
http://amanita-design.net/

Go here to pay as little or as much as you'd like and get two other fab games too as well as the chance to pick up one other fab game and one that's well... all-right-ish. But some chairty or something gets some money, so that's probably a good thing.
http://www.humblebundle.com/

PS Zane is a very dear friend whom I respect greatly. It's only his chums who get to call him names.

Free Game Friday: TripleA and Physigons

Ooh, Friday came round quickly this week. Well that means it's time for games.

TripleA is a free turn based strategy game and it's rather good. Although not finished, it's already in quite a late beta stage, so it's good to go. It's quite ambitious and the battlefields cover many different landscapes.

You can play against AI or human opponents and, something more games should do, specify if the AI can cheat or not. There's really not much more I can say about this. If you're interested in this sort of thing, you're probably now curious enough to check it out for yourself. And if you're not, then you've stopped reading already. Go here if you're the former:

http://triplea.sourceforge.net/mywiki/TripleA

I call this work "Recumbent Clown"

I like to have at least one unusual game on here and today it's Physigons. It's not really a game per se, nut more of a physics simulator. Like in Minecraft, you can place blocks, except in Physigons they can be any size or shape (you can even design your own). In every other respect, it's more like Garry's Mod.

You painstakingly assemble shapes in order to create anything you like. And the best thing of all that it's it's all done in a PhysX environment so you can smash them to pieces in delightful ways. It would be astonishing if you could link several players environments together online, but that's unlikely to happen I suppose.







It'll make you laugh, make you cry, change your life:
http://inflictivestudios.ueuo.com/physigons.htm

Free game Friday: Age of Empires Online & Alter Ego

It's been a while since we last saw an Age of Empires game. The developer, Ensemble Studios, suffered from Microsoft disease: Microsoft spotted an independent company with a product that they wish they could have made, bought them, stuck the Microsoft brand all over everything and then inexplicably shut them down when they got over their initial excitement. And that very much looked like the end for the Age of Empires series.



But despite everything a new AoE (as all the cool kids are calling it) has popped out. And this time it's online and free.

AoE remains an RTS (Real Time Strategy) game. It's always had quite a strong single player story mode and AoE Online retains that approach. You've got a bunch of missions to complete and they will all involve you constructing buildings, gathering resources and training new personnel. Oh and you'll need to kill stuff too, obviously. So far, so familiar. At the start of the game you're invited to choose a race and straight away you hit the pay-wall; one of the races can't be played unless you pay up. You can play the entire game without paying a penny, but players who invest are able to gain access to advisor units and other advantages and you've got to wonder how that would work in a player versus player match, though I haven't tried PvP yet.

The graphics are jolly and cute and really add to the feel of the game. The missions are a bit samey and repetitive. You'll chug through the starter missions waiting for the main game to get going and it never really does. The game will constantly bug you to pay for stuff (one of the very first missions gives you a reward that you can't use unless you pay) and paying is ridiculously expensive: £3.25 for each thing (the price for races will be double that after a promotional period) even when they're useless shit like bushes to decorate your home screen. And you're forced to use that fucking awful Games for Windows crap too. It's a good game, but when it used to be a great one, you have to wonder what went wrong. Yep, this is what happens when you catch Microsoft disease.

Get it free on Steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/105430/

A lot of games like to use the 8-bit aesthetic at the moment, but Alter Ego isn't messing around. Available for the PC, NES, MSX and ZX Spectrum, this really is a proper 8-bit game and no mistake. Essentially the free forerunner to the recently released 8-Bit Night, Alter Ego is a simple platform game with an extra game mechanic.



You jump around on the platforms as usual, but you have a shadow self... an alter ego, if you will... whom you don't control directly but with whom you can swap places at any time, thus allowing you access to otherwise unreachable parts of the screen. It reminds me a fair bit of VVVVVV and is just as satisfying to play.

Go here to get it for PC, NES, MSX or indeed the ZX Spectrum:
http://www.retrosouls.net/?page_id=614

Free Game Friday: William and Sly 2 & Russian Subway Dogs

Gosh, is it Friday already? Well here's two more delightful free games to play.

William and Sly 2 is a lovely game you can play in your web browser. It's a platform game with lots of jumping round, but it's a very pleasant and soothing experience. The music is perfectly suited and there's no real danger. The game doesn't make it terribly clear what it expects of you, but the joy is in simply exploring at a relaxed pace.

I didn't play the first game and I've no idea of the back-story. You're a fox and there's some guy on a deckchair. Now you might imagine that you can guess who's who, but I decided to confound the vulpine stereotyping and let the fox be William. Seeing as the bloke just sits on his arse the whole time, I reckon he's the one being sly.

And don't you even start with the whole 'cunning' thing, you lazy shit

The animation is beautiful and fluid and the puzzles genuinely fun to try to solve. You play it in your browser and it's even smart enough to remember where you left off without you having to save or anything, which is a nice touch.

Play it here:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Kajenx/william-and-sly-2

It's not often you can show the entirety of a game in one image, but you can with Russian Subway Dogs. Part of the Piratekart project (I'll write more about them at a later date I think), it's a very simple game:

You're a dog. A Russian dog. You live in the subway. People get off trains. Some of them eat food, other drink vodka. Bark behind someone and they'll throw whatever they're carrying into the air. Food is yummy and keeps your health up and vodka explodes. There are rival dogs and you'll want to jump into the air to grab the food before they do. Exploding vodka kills other dogs. That's all there is to it.

Apparently in Russia there are indeed dogs living in the subways and it's getting to be quite a problem. But I don't care because they're delightful.

Download it from here (it's tiny):
http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/2965