Free Game Friday: Puzzles, and Roguelikes and Platformers

People, I’m going to level with you: rot much unites this week’s games besides the fact that they’re all fun, fast, and available right in your browser. There is at least a totally coincidental theme connecting them, however; they form a nice alphabetical arrangement. Join us as we tour through letters P-T in the alphabet of free games!

Predicament

Predicament is one of the shortest games I’ve featured on Free Game Friday but it’s such a well executed little puzzle of a game that I had to add it. Created for a Ludum Dare 48-hour game jam, Predicament sees you trapped at the bottoms of a hole with only a few items around for you to use to try and escape. The game only took me 3–4 minutes to play through, but the great graphics and the unexpected solutions to some parts of the puzzle made it as enjoyable as a game that takes much longer to complete.

Quietus II

Quietus II is, as the name might suggest, a sequel to Quietus, a game about a character who gets sent to hell and makes a deal with the devil to get a second chance at life. After your character returned to life in the first game, he’s once again passed on and been sentenced to hell. This time the Devil offers you a chance to go to heaven if you can guide a wayward soul to the proper part of the afterlife, a task which requires some pretty impressive platforming skills. Quietus is a fun, adventurous little platformer that’s dark visually (so much so that guessing what comes next in the level is part of the challenge) but rather lighthearted in tone. At least for a game about navigating hell.

Red Rogue

If I gave a “game of the week” award for Free Game Friday Red Rogue would probably win it this week. Red Rogue is a 2D roguelike sidescroller that’s so packed to the gills with options that it’s sort of insane. You can start it as an action adventure game where enemies are constantly coming after you or a traditional roguelike with “turns” for both you and enemies. There’s also tons of loot to customize your character and her skeletal cohort. There are also tons of behind-the-scenes features, including the ability to record short animated .gifs of your game (though that one’s still experimental, so you may want to use it only if you’re playing on a pretty powerful machine. It crashed my game every time I tried it on my laptop.)

7Soul Tower

7Sould Tower is a platformer where you’ve only got control over when your character jumps. He’ll run back and forth like a chicken with his head cut off and you decide when he’ll jump up to the next level. With just that mechanic (along with a special boost you can deploy in emergencies) the game manages to build a really compelling platformer out of what could have been a boring experiment in one-button gameplay.

Tank Fires Block

Tank Fires Block is about tanks. Tanks that fire blocks. Blocks prevent enemy attacks from hitting you, but also keep your shots from hitting enemy tanks. The game’s difficult controls force you to make tactical decisions between attack and defense that make this more than a simple “blow up your enemies” tank game. Maybe the most interesting thing about the game, though, is that its source code is included right next to it so you can fiddle with it and make it even better if you’d like. Have fun!

Tech tunes?