Free Game Friday: New year, new games

This week the free game scene is really coming back from the holiday lull with a vengeance.Today we've got great free games released in the new year along with the first few entries from another 48-hour game jam.

Spotlight

Spotlight has some problems. Like most 3D Unity games it isn’t for the feint of processor and at times it seems more like a 3D monologue than an interactive game. All of that can be forgiven, because the game is absolutely gorgeous. Spotlight’s cell-shaded visuals are some of the best I’ve ever seen in a browser and the game’s story, once you get into it, is surprisingly touching. The game was made for the 48-hour Indie Speed Run competition which just concluded this week. Expect to see more Speed Run games in next week’s Free Game Friday in addition to one more this week.

A Team for the Job

A Team for the Job is a card game about assembling the perfect adventuring party. The king has an important quest he needs completed and he’ll only send you out if you have the perfect five member adventuring party. Your opponent is also trying to assemble the same team, and you have to play your party so you get five members before they do.

Congratulations, You are Now a Kotaku Commenter

Congratulations, You are Now a Kotaku Commenter is extremely short even for a free online game. In fact, it might be better not to think of it as a game, but as an interactive argument. Even though Congratulations calls out one gaming site in particular, it’s really about misogyny in gamer culture and why gamers seem so intent on explaining away women’s complaints about the industry. Even if none of that sounds appealing, there’s a pretty awesome recipe in it for you if you play it. Seriously.

Alphanauts

Alphanauts has a simple control scheme: just hold down a letter on your keyboard to select an astronaut and press the arrow keys to move them out of the way of black holes that will suck them up and kill them. The difficulty comes when you’re controlling 26 Alphanauts simultaneously and contorting your hand into weird positions to move the right five guys at once. It's great.

A Fistful of Gun

Finally we’ve got a downloadable game for Windows users that’s worth your time to download and start up. A Fistful of Gun is an offline multiplayer shoot-em-up. Using a mouse, a USB controller and a keyboard, up to three players can do battle in the old west using one computer. Each player gets their own separate controller and control scheme. Creator Paul Greasley will have more updates to the game soon, including online multiplayer, but those updates will only come by signing up for his newsletter so head over to his site and enter an e-mail address if you like the game.

Tech tunes?