[Sometimes you don't have $60 to drop on the latest big-budget AAA game.  Luckily, Gamer Limit is here to show you the best of the wide world of freeware.  Remember: you don't always get what you pay for.  Sometimes you get much, much more.]

The Experimental Gameplay Project brings together all the indie dudes in the house, gives them a topic, and says, “Go.  Make a game.”  March’s topic: “10 seconds.”  So what did Paolo Pedericini do?  He condensed the holy gospel into ten seconds with Run, Jesus Run! a.k.a. The 10 Second Gospel.

Blasphemy?  Pssh.  When the instructions are “Move with arrow keys.  Space: Do Jesus Things,” you know you’re about to witness… something.  And something it is.

Ten seconds isn’t a lot of time.  You rush through a 2D, 8-bit representation of the life of Jesus Christ (starting in the manger and ending with His death) and perform miracles on the way to the last supper and – eventually – His crucifixion.  Only when you play as Jesus could dying also mean winning.  For humanity!

You avoid Satan, feed the hungry, walk on water, cure the blind, raise the dead, and… hit a block in the sky to rain down love on His disciples.  It even makes the Mario noise when you hit the block.  Nifty!  Jesus = Mario?

At the end of the game, you get apostles based on how effectively you emulated the Messiah.  It kind of makes me wish that I was rated in every game on a scale of x/12 apostles.  “You saved the princess and only took one warp pipe!  10/12 apostles.”  “You shot the food!  0/12 apostles.”

The game is so simple (what do you expect – it was made in twelve hours).  You just run and jump and do Jesus things.  Like any biblical game, however, there is a message.  At the top right-hand corner of every miracle-making screen, you’ll see the bible passage that your particular Jesus task was taken from: Luke 4: 1-13, John 6: 1-14, etc., but it’s up to you to do the further research if you want to read about Jesus helping Lazarus or feeding the hungry.

Mollieindustria, the game’s developer, claims that RJR is “a kind of prequel of Everyday the Same Dream,” but they have an entirely different feeling and aesthetic.  (EtSD is highly recommended as well, although for entirely different reasons.)  Maybe they just meant prequel as “a game set in an earlier time period and using the same controls,” because then technically that’d be true.  Ah well.

One special aspect worth noting: the soundtrack is a chiptunes version of the Sonseed song “Jesus is My Friend,” a Christian ska pop song that became a three-million-view YouTube internet meme in 2008.  Check out how great this song is, and then imagine it in glorious mono chiptunes!

There are also a handful of remixes (this is the best one, by far), but you might not have known the song’s basis otherwise.  Being made aware of this adds an extra two layers of awesome sauce to Run, Jesus Run!

What else is there to say about a ten-second game?  It looks like it’d be right at home on the Atari 5200, but in a cool Arkedo retro kind of way.  Including Jesus as the only character makes you unsure if playing this miniature game is actually blasphemy (even just a little bit), but you get over it when you remember that there are gospel passage references in the upper corner.  If you are blaspheming, at least it’s for only ten seconds, right?  It’s like the ten-second rule if you drop your unleavened bread.

Run, Jesus Run! might be a joke.  Or, it might be an incentive to pick up that bible you’ve never read, sitting on your dusty bookshelf next to the Xbox 360 that you fire up daily.  Or it might just be ten seconds that you’re glad you spent on something that doesn’t involve ripping zombies’ spinal cords out and drinking the fluid.  Wholesome games can be fun too!  If they’re creative.

Play it here.

Gamer Limit gives Run, Jesus Run! a 9/10.

RunMan: Race Around the World is the kind of game that just makes you feel good. As opposed to most popular games of our age being centered around having a realistic look and serious aesthetic, RunMan: RAtW puts a lot of effort into being the opposite. Its innocence reminds me of a cross between an old children’s book and children’s cartoon. The brainchild of the game, Tom Sennett, has made quite a few small games based around RunMan, but here comes RunMan’s swan song, so to speak.

Our tale starts with someone holding a race. The track? The entire world. Naturally, when the impossibly famous RunMan shows up to compete in the race, everyone forfeits. RunMan, hardly being one to accept the title of victor by default, agrees to run around the world as fast as he can, regardless of the issue of competition.

RunMan: Race Around the World is the kind of game that seems determined to put a smile on your face. Beyond the simple story with a very cute ending, the graphics are made to look as if a kid (who could stay between the lines) was given some markers and told to go wild, much to the game’s benefit. The music consists of old jazz, ragtime, and fiddle-driven folk music from the era when jazz was at its peak; just the kind of stuff you would expect to hear in a cartoon of the time.

Even the gameplay is designed for the player to enjoy it in any way they like. RunMan: RAtW‘s controls are incredibly simple: press left and right to run, hold a button to zoom, press a different button to jump, and press down during your jump to fall incredibly fast.

The zoom button is key in RunMan: RAtW; RunMan will bounce off any wall he hits and change direction if he’s zooming, whether he’s on the ground or in the air. Zooming can also be used to break certain walls or run through enemies that can’t be accomplished with normal running. On the other hand, zooming can cause other enemies to ‘attack’ RunMan that won’t if he’s running normally.

I put the word ‘attack’ in quotations because of one of the most important facts of the game: you can’t die. Enemy ‘attacks’ simply slow you down, stop you for a few seconds, or possibly send you running in the wrong direction. Even falling off a cliff doesn’t stop RunMan from moving; he simply pops up from the cliff a moment after the fall, still moving at an incredible speed. With no way of dying, you’re free to enjoy the game any way you like – either by going through all the levels or getting high scores and record times on levels.

The challenge in RunMan: RAtW is getting through the levels as fast as possible, while avoiding stopping and collecting as many points as you can. Points can be collected by popping balloons that are scattered across the level, zooming through certain enemies, and by taking advantage of the momentum meter, which fills up as long as you keep RunMan moving.

Having the momentum meter high means that you’ll get more points at specific checkpoints in the level, making it crucial in getting the most possible points. At the end of the level, you’re awarded a bronze, silver, or gold medal based on your score. If you had an excellent run on a level, you can even save a ‘ghost’ racer to compete against.

Personally, though, I was one of those people who enjoyed the game by simply going through the levels. The only trouble with RunMan: RAtW‘s gameplay is that trying to play the game to earn medals will make you realize just how bad you are at the game. RAtW can be a light-hearted romp if you just go through the levels normally, but earning the medals can be pretty damn hard.

Your main incentive for getting medals is to unlock new characters with different properties (some may jump higher, some can’t zoom, etc.). However, the ones that I managed to unlock before going insane were just not as fun to race with as RunMan, which makes me question whether or not it’s worth it.

Also, there are a few select levels where you can die, forcing you to start the race over. In RAtW, there are six worlds, with six levels each. The final level in each world is a ‘boss’ level, which sees RunMan running for his life against some sort of monster, animal, tractor, or force of nature. If the boss manages to catch up with RunMan and touches him, you’ll have to start the race over. Boss levels start out easily enough, but if you haven’t been practicing, get ready to die a lot.

Still, this isn’t enough to outweigh the charm of RunMan: Race Around the World – not even close. RAtW is very childish, and I truly mean that in the best way possible. Even if the boss levels or the pursuit of medals can be frustrating and bring forth feelings of inadequacy (or maybe that’s just me), the aesthetic of this game alone was enough to put a huge smile on my face. I’m still waiting for any popular title of our time to do that.

(Does RunMan: Race Around the World sound like your kind of game? Download it here!)

[Free-Game Friday is a weekly feature in which a writer from the Gamer Limit staff looks at a completely free game and discusses his/her experience with it, allowing you to download it at the end. Feel free to check out our full schedule right here!]

From time to time, a game will come along and leave us bewildered and confused.  While that may not sound too appealing, DePaul Game Elites have taken those characteristics and have created an experience that mixes a dash of uncertainty with a whole lot of mind games.

In this week’s addition of Free-Game Friday, we’ll be examining Devil’s Tuning Fork. To get an idea of how incredibly unique this game is, go watch Nightmare on Elm Street and play Portal right before.  It falls somewhere in between those two.

While the initial set up of Devil’s Tuning Fork may be relatively weak, that’s not the reason why we play free games.  We play these style of games because it delivers an alternative experience that we just don’t find in main stream gaming any longer.

It’s a unique blend of testing what a person’s capabilities are with the tools one has.  In this case, it’s a group of DePaul university students using the equipment at their respective college.  To be honest, the end result is just as unique as it is well thought out.

But for the story teller in all of us, the game opens up with a sinister presence trapping many children of young ages into a permanent slumber.  Of those children, their is one who awakes in the dream world.  He takes it upon himself to free the other children and escape the alternate reality before it’s too late.   Armed with a tuning fork, the player has to guide him through multiple levels using only sonar perception.

What really stands out are the immersion techniques the game uses to keep the player involved for the 30 – 45 minute game span.  Instead of relying on the power of its graphical engine, the game turns to its sounds leaving players slightly uneasy throughout.  The faint cries of children, the devilish tone of an evil presence, and the soft music playing in the background create an atmosphere that is not only bleak, but also a bit terrifying.

While you’re not afraid anything is going to pop out at you unexpectedly, the game will leave the player off balance throughout, which is what adds to the discomfort.  Visually, there isn’t anything to write home about, but its presentation is what is so captivating.  Because sound is the focal point of the game, the player has to use the tings of the tuning fork to flesh out the environment.

There are two different pitches: high and low.  The high pitch travels further providing a wide range of “vision” and can be shot across the room to ring bells and bounce off mirrors.  Whereas the low pitch is used to map faults in the floor that will cause you to plummet to your death.

The idea of it is intriguing, and part of the fun is finding your way in the darkness, but there are a few instances where the player will get frustrated.  For example, there’s one point in the game where I spent about 10 minutes trying to angle and position correctly to reflect a pitch off a mirror.  I only moved a couple of inches and changed my angle a couple of degrees at a time to only search for other ways around the puzzle.

In a game that’s relatively straight forward, it’ll sometimes make you question your approach to certain obstacles, as you try to adjust ever so slightly.  While it can be a bit frustrating finding the ideal spot, it’s also a technique that adds to the discomfort.

Nonetheless, Devil’s Tuning Fork is a thoughtful experience that adds a strong twist to the way we play games.  For those who are interested, you can play the full game for free at DevilsTuningFork.com.

[Free-Game Friday is a weekly feature in which a writer from the Gamer Limit staff looks at a completely free game, and discusses his/her experience with it, allowing you to download it at the end. Feel free to check out our full schedule right here!]

I ask you, the readers of our glorious Free Game Friday Feature, what is better than a free game? I know it’s a tough question, as a free game is pretty awesome. But to give you an answer: two free games are better than one free game.

Which means that this week, Free Game Friday is not only better than usual, it is better than better than usual as I dangle the carrot of three free games. Not only that, but it’s themed, as they are all “running games”.

So join me after the jump as I venture into the fiscally responsible world of gaming.

When I say “running games”, perhaps that wasn’t the best way of phrasing it; none of the games I am talking about are International Track and Field, and there will be no hammering of left and right buttons to make your character sprint. What I am talking about probably falls closer into the category of “chase games” – as in each title I am offering you, the player avatar finds himself escaping an unknown, or just plain weird, enemy.

Canabalt

When explaining a new game to someone, sometimes it can be too complex for its own good. “This button is fire, unless you are crouched, in which case it does something else, or if you are in a vehicle it has another function, or if you are viewing the map it does something entirely different, also if you are in the pause menu…” Other times, a game hits the nail of simplicity right on the head. Canabalt is an example of the perfection of simplicity.

Your character has one goal: run forwards, and one button to aid in this endeavour: jump. That is all you need to know to play this game, and, as such, it is hard to find a game easier to get into. There are various obstacles in your way, ranging from gaps between buildings to crates in your way to the infuriating window to jump through. Failing to overcome any will result in your demise, prompting you with the total distance you have accumulated in your mad dash for escape. What drags you in as a simple premise becomes an exercise in addiction as you constantly seek to improve upon the distance you managed to run for.

Despite the mechanics being enough to make this game amazing, the aesthetics are also top notch (if you have the time to notice them). Also, the background displays a brief glimpse into the nightmare your player is escaping from.

rComplex

I know what you’re thinking, “Sure, Canabalt was great, but what it lacked was a narration of the avatar’s thoughts as he journeyed onwards.” Well, look no further; I have you covered.

rComplex is an extension of the gameplay seen in other running games, giving you a more detailed location to run through, extra commands to utilise, as you can jump, slide, and shoot your unnerving pursuer. Some may say this detracts from the game, and, for those paying attention, you may notice that I called Canabalt perfection, so you can probably guess that I agree. These extra mechanics aren’t needed, and merely hinder the enjoyment of the game, with the most noticeable annoyance being the narration. After the fiftieth time you have heard “I only have twelve bullets left” you start to side with the giant tentacle thing, and realise that the guy probably does need to die.

MadnessMADNESSmadness

The final part of my threesome of games, Madness, takes on a different stance, as, instead of being a linear game, it manages to encompass the same dynamics in a circular manner. Your character remains in the center of the screen as the level rotates, presenting you with new and increasingly challenging obstacles. If you happen to fall foul of any of these obstacles, you are presented with a poem akin to a morbid Dr. Seuss:

You were crushed by the wall but don’t be upset

A human survivor the wall’s never met.

It’s only objective – to murder and maim

But it doesn’t matter, it’s only a game.

Along with stylish and simple graphics, coupled with a disturbing blend of retro and techno for a soundtrack, Madness is one of the most addictive games I have played in a long while, even if I do happen to be absolutely rubbish at the game. 43 seconds has been my greatest feat so far. I feel like less of a man admitting this to you.

So there you have it, a round up of some fantastic free games to play, which you really have no excuse not to play because… well, they’re free. If you have any suggestions of future games we should have for a Friday Feature, feel free to let us know. Or, if you just want to inform the world how you fared on these games, drop us a comment below.

[Free-Game Friday is a weekly feature in which a writer from the Gamer Limit staff looks at a completely free game and discusses his/her experience with it, allowing you to download it at the end. Feel free to check out our full schedule right here!]

Every once in a while, a game will come along that tells a story in the most obscure way possible.  There will be Charlie Brown’s teacher-style dialogue; the characters will look like they were assembled with building blocks; you will be a spy… I think.  It’s hard to tell what’s going on, honestly.

This time, that game is Gravity Bone.  It’s free, and it’s a sublime gaming experience.

GB is an indie game utilizing the Quake II engine.  Dated, yes, but the style of the levels and characters are such that you won’t even notice.

You should probably play it before I have the opportunity to ruin it for you.  It’s only fifteen minutes long, and you can download it here.  I’ll wait…

Wasn’t that AWESOME?!

The entire game relies upon the gaming conventions that have been forced into you since the first day you picked up a controller: do what the game tells you to do, because there are no other options.

Blindly, you obey your invisible masters.  To what end, though?

You start the game in a descending elevator.  You arrive at a party with nothing but a card in your hand.  “Go to the furnace room,” it says.  Why not?

You sneak past a waiter into the Employees Only area, then make your way to the furnace room.  Here, you find a briefcase with further instructions.  You blindly obey.  You put on the disguise and deliver the drink because the briefcase tells you to.

You sneak to the exit, and you beat the level.  You still have no idea what’s going on, but you seem to be progressing, so you keep going.  What’s next?

Level two, you break locks and photograph exploding birds.  Success!  Then you make your way to the exit… and your world is turned upside down.

There is so much more to this game than it lets on.  You explore parties full of well-to-do people while smooth lounge music plays in the background.  The game seems so innocuous, but there’s layer after layer under the surface.

Without spoiling the ending, I can’t figure out whether it’s a critique on the casual evil we perpetrate on others, like the ending of Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog, or if they just wanted to pull the rug out from under their players, or if they merely wanted their game to be different from the sprawling epics that are usually too much exactly what we expect.

Whatever the developer was attempting, it made me think.  It also made me ponder the time we spend on games, and if it’s really all worth it.  In the fifteen minutes you spend experiencing Gravity Bone, you could have played one (just one) match of Call of Duty, or had one (just one) full conversation in Dragon Age: Origins.

If I could find a multitude of games that are similar to Gravity Bone‘s length and quality, I don’t know if I’d need any of the 80-hour big boys.  If small games could be this great, incredible bite-sized gaming might be plenty for me.

Unfortunately, they usually aren’t.  Peruse the Xbox Live Indie Games section and pick a few titles at random.  Odds are, the games you’ll pick will be both short AND not very fun.  The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.  Short can still be fun.  Short can still be paradigm-shifting.

Spreading my argument to other art forms, a lot of people enjoyed Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey.  Yet, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” had a much more profound impact on me as a young reader.  I’m not sure if it was the brevity or the clear, simple images, but Frost’s work has always stuck out in my mind.  Perhaps the short length encourages an immediate re-read, enabling it to latch its literary barbs deeper into my subconscious.  It’s the same way with Gravity Bone.

An immediate replay to see if you could do something different proves fruitless.  This isn’t Edmund.  There’s no secret ending.  There’s no happy ending.  There’s just a straightforward narrative that couldn’t have happened any other way.  By eliminating the player’s freedom, by giving him only one choice that he would have made anyway, Blendo Games was able to craft a mini-story with a sharp twist and profound philosophical implications.

At the ending, it’s over.  There’s no Oblivion-style tying up of loose ends.  Game over.  The end.

This game will stick out in my mind as one of the fiercest gaming experiences of my life, because it is like life.

You think you’re finally getting a grip on what’s going on, and then it’s over.  SNAP.  Just like that.

Download.

[Free-Game Friday is a new weekly feature in which a writer from the GamerLimit staff looks at a completely free game and discusses their experience with it, allowing you to download it at the end. Feel free to check out our full schedule right here!]

Once again it’s Friday, and that means that we’ll be taking a look at an indie title that’s free to download.

This week’s game is Firequark: a first-time indie project from a U.K-based developer, better known by his nickname, Pilch.

Firequark is a breakout-style game with a twist. The aim is to destroy every brick on the screen without dropping the ball. You get three lives to progress as far as you can through ten levels. Rather than controlling just the one paddle, however, you use the mouse to control four – one on each side of the screen. What this creates is an enjoyable and addictive game that’s very easy to pick up, yet intensely challenging as you progress.

Having four paddles comes at a cost, though; the ball can leave the game by any side of the screen. This means that you have to pay attention at all times and be doubly cautious when it comes to aiming your shots. As you progress through the stages, the ball moves faster, and the blocks take more hits before they break.

In addition to this, sometimes breaking the bricks will release power-ups. These power-ups float slowly around the level until the ball makes contact with them. At this point, they shoot off in a random direction. Catching an orb with a paddle will also grant you a power-up.

The effects of the power-ups are varied: some have positive effects, and some will hinder you, so you’ll need to watch to see what colour the orbs are. Green and red are good and bad, respectively. However, you can also come across the super versions of these orbs, with blue providing you with massive benefits, and purple signifying certain doom, if caught. Benefits include slowing the speed of the ball down, multi-ball and a laser beam that instantly vaporises one brick, whereas collecting a bad orb can shrink your paddles, or even reverse the controls for a short time.

In the later levels, when the ball is traveling at a faster speed and you’ve gathered power-ups that have increased the size of your paddles, it can be difficult to avoid picking up a stray purple orb. This means that there is a very low chance of completing the game. Despite this, the developer has promised that both he, and his girlfriend, have completed the game. So hopefully this knowledge will spur you on.

Although it’s obviously simplistic in design, the game is presented with a lot of polish. The color scheme works well, and it’s a nice touch. The audio for the game is also oddly catchy, reminding me of some of the tracks from Pixel Junk Eden. Best of all, it’s an innovative, new take on a formula that worked well, and in an indie game like this, that is what really matters.

The only real negative I can see is that after you’ve completed the ten levels, there is no added incentive, such as a score, to get you to replay the game. However, Pilch is running a leaderboard of sorts on the game’s forums and has promised a reward to anyone who can beat the game.

If you enjoyed titles like Peggle and Super Breakout, and are looking for a quick, challenging distraction, then Firequark is worth investigating. It’s nice to see someone building something up from scratch, and hopefully, if he gets enough exposure, we’ll see more levels or perhaps a new game from Pilch in the future.

You can pick up Firequark here.

One of my least favorite things about gaming is that when a new smash hit game comes out, other games try really hard to emulate it for years to come. This cycle repeats itself over and over again, and thus, the most popular games in certain genres are the ones that best reflect the current trends. This is true for all genres, but I notice it most in RPGs; until a few years ago, the trend was to make the most ‘epic’ storylines possible, a la Final Fantasy 7. These days, the trend seems to be more about making really complicated, allegedly original combat systems.

Thankfully, we have people interested in game development who love their genres enough to poke fun at them, and that’s what Tales of Game’s Studios (bad grammar intentional) did with their RPG, Barkley: Shut Up and Jam! Gaiden: Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa. This is an RPG that looks at the recently receded trend of epic RPGs and roasts it mercilessly.

In 2041, b-ball player Charles Barkley performed the Chaos Dunk, a jam so powerful could level an entire city. And it did – As a result of the Chaos Dunk, New York was completely destroyed. The nationwide response was a genocide of almost every b-ball player, and a national outlawing of b-ball. The event went down in history as ‘The Great B-Ball Purge of 2041.”

Fast forward to twelve years later, Charles Barkley lives in the post-cyberpocalyptic ruins of Neo New York City with his son, Hoopz. A Chaos Dunk destroys the city of Manhattan, and the B-Ball Removal Department (think like a B-Ball Gestapo) immediately comes after Barkley, the only human being capable of performing a Chaos Dunk. While on the run from the B-Ball Removal Department, he meets the Ultimate Hellbane, a mysterious ‘criminal’ who hunts down members of the terrorist organization, B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S. Hellbane believes that B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S was behind the Chaos Dunk, and urges Barkley to take help from him. He then goes on an adventure to find out the truth about the Chaos Dunk – one that forces him to confront his past.

Unless English isn’t your first language (not that that’s a bad thing!), you’ve probably realized that the story is a huge satire on epic-style RPGs. The game’s save points even take it further by spouting hilariously ironic rhetoric about how much greater Japanese games are than American games. The game uses corny b-ball slang very liberally, and even treats words like ‘slam’ and ‘jam’ like they have real, tangible meaning.

The game also boasts a heavy use of long dialogue sequences and dramatic pauses to drive home the satire. The way in which the characters say completely ridiculous things like “We may need to slam and jam at a moment’s notice”, and “The test subject’s internal Gatorade levels have risen dramatically” never gets old; in fact, it gets funnier as you go.

The game also cleverly uses a cast of fictional and non-fictional characters, both of which have a variety of characters that have nothing to do with basketball and everything to do with basketball. From Micheal Jordan to the grandson of Lebron James to Wilford Brimley… this game uses them all, in ways that are both clever and absurd, but always funny. Ironically, this is appropriate and in line with the story, which treats certain fictional events – such as the events of the movie ‘Space Jam’ – as if they actually happened!

There’s a lot more to this game’s story and humor, but to tell anymore would be pushing it; after all, the game is unfortunately only about six hours long. I admit that being any longer might have made the game drag on, but it’s always bittersweet for me to finish a game that I really like.

It wasn’t perfect, naturally. The game had a few inside jokes that apparently spawned from the original message boards where they discussed the game. Most of them are funny whether or not you know the joke; but there are a few that just leave you scratching your head. I suppose it doesn’t detract from the experience much, though. Charles Barkley’s excessive swearing is a bit ridiculous and not really that funny. It’s definitely not that I’m offended by it – I cuss like a pirate in colloquial situations – but it was just kind of stupid and didn’t add anything to the game’s humour.

The battle system is pretty sweet, too, taking a number from the Paper Mario series of having ‘timed hits’ to power up attacks. Every character also has a variety of different attacks for different situations. My one big gripe about combat is that every character has one ‘obviously-best-in-every-situation’ attack. A lot of the higher-damaging attacks have too low of accuracy to really use, and a lot of attacks are useful in situations that are too uncommon to be very useful. As a result, you’ll probably find one attack with every character that is simply best to use every time.

The dungeons are really well-made, too. The game boasts a variety of different things to make dungeons interesting, from having puzzles, multiple paths, and even fun sidequests and diversions. This game has even more; but, as before, I shouldn’t ruin it.

Barkley, Shut Up Jam: Gaiden gets right in your face with its sharp sattire and makes no apologies for it. If you don’t get it, too bad. If it offends you, too bad. The game was definitely made for the kind of people who feel jaded about the oversaturation of RPGs who think they can pass off as Final Fantasy 7. It’s incredibly short, but still manages to be a thoroughly fun experience for those who appreciate what this game has to offer. And for those who can’t…well, as they say, “If you can’t slam with the best, then jam with the rest.”

(To download this game and get started on the most Epic RPG ever, go here!)

Knytt Stories was not what I expected. A minimalistic, short length platformer with your usual fixings, I was prepared for a lighthearted, pixelated adventure – not so much to ask from a freeware game.

As it turns out, Knytt Stories, a creation of indie game designer Nifflas, provides something entirely different. The game makes an excellent case for video games as a form of artistic expression. Yes, Knytt Stories presents the player with a goal and a variety of unlock-able tools for achieving it. Yet the real appeal of this game lies in the experience that it creates.

Knytt Stories centers around a “Knytt” named Juni who receives a missive from her friend, Henna, to rescue their world from a machine that appears to be drawing the life out of the planet. This is all the background gamers are presented with; the rest is left up to the players.

The gameplay is quite simple – in typical platforming style, gamers guide Juni through the environment, jumping across obstacles along the way. As one makes their way through the game, players may stumble upon tools to power up Juni with special abilities – double jumping, an umbrella for gliding – you may even gain the ability to create a hologram of yourself to distract enemies.

However, the ability to run up walls is perhaps the most enjoyable ability Juni receives. An unusual function in the platforming genre, this particular power up truly allows the gamer to think about the world in which Juni is placed  in different ways. Climbing adds different ways to explore and overcome obstacles if you know how to take advantage of this power.

Herein lies the major draw of the game – using and seeking new abilities to allow you to explore. Nifflas creates an aesthetically stunning environment; this is surprising considering the game’s simplicity. The world of Knytt Stories is comprised of various areas, all seamlessly connected but highly unique. Starting in a red-hued wasteland, sliding down a crevasse will lead players to a sprawling subterranean cave. Select alcoves and tunnels are eerily lit by lamp posts. If you manage to find the path back up, you may find yourself jumping among stark mountain tops as the wind blows leaves past your face.

The music adds to the beauty of the game. The all original soundtrack is possibly one of the most impressive I’ve heard. It’s an entrancing mix of new wave electronica and melancholic guitar and orchestral melodies. I soon found myself relaxing and simply enjoying each discovery I made.

The music shifts depending on where you travel, altering the mood with each turn. The soundtrack matches perfectly with each area, truly creating an all encompassing experience. Wandering through a series of underwater pipes, the player is subject to a sparse, otherworldly synthesized soundtrack. When you climb out onto a sparse cliff face, you’re shocked to discover the only sounds you hear are the wind blowing and the sound of your own footsteps. Yet, fall down another cliff side and you find a green field with trees and butterflies, accompanied by sweeping string and orchestral harmonies.

As Juni, the player adopts a passive role; if you’re seeking to kill things, this probably isn’t the game for you. Few enemies appear throughout the game. If you manage to come across an aggressive creature, you are required to find a way around without putting yourself in danger. However, a few minutes into the game and players will have no desire for a more action packed experience. The need to continue exploring takes precedence.

For all of its delicate intricacies, Knytt Stories is quite short. Luckily, Nifflas doesn’t leave his fans stranded. For those who need more, there are two official expansion levels. Quite a community has been established around Knytt Stories as well. The game is highly customizable, and fans have created a plethora of  levels of all shapes and sizes for players to try.

When it comes down to it, it’s difficult to put into words exactly what it’s like to play Knytt Stories. Luckily, you can find out for yourself by paying a visit to Nifflas’ Games. You’ll find, in addition to the game itself, Nifflas’ own expansion levels and links to the community where you’ll gain access to plenty of fan made levels to keep you busy.

There are a lot of things we take for granted in video games; unwritten rules of things that should – or shouldn’t – happen in a game. These can range from more obvious things, such as “if there are no weapons, jumping on an enemy should kill them” to more subtle things, “such as if you can jump from a running start, you can jump from a walking or standing start”. These are the sorts of gaming ‘laws’ that we’ve become accustomed to, as they’ve been prevalent in video games since pretty much the beginning of its history.

Tacit laws, rules, and agreements exist everywhere; not just in games, but in all arts and even reality. But, how do we deal with the pressure of having someone or something violate the rules we take for granted? Tower of Heaven‘s brilliance lies in the fact that it explores the affects of throwing even a slight few things we take for granted out the window.

In Tower of Heaven, you play as a nondescript protagonist (named Eid, according to the game’s designer) who attempts to climb the titular tower, which contains riches to be obtained at the risk of the challenger’s life. Inside is some sort of deity who watches over Eid as he makes his attempt to scale the tower.

The game is a 2D platformer in style, but it’s far from your average platformer.  There’s moving and jumping, but no enemies to be defeated; the game is completed by making your way from the beginning of a level to the end. It’s very simple and very plain in its presentation.

So, what’s the catch? What makes Tower of Heaven so special is an item you get in one of the early levels called “The Book of Laws”. The Book of Laws is an artifact given to Eid by the deity that watches over the tower. In it are a set of rules that must be strictly followed, or else Eid will be smitten immediately. The first rule is innocent enough: there are yellow platforms, and you can’t stop on yellow platforms. Okay, sure.

From there, the rules get pretty crazy. The next rule thrown at you is that you can’t touch the side of any platform. Then, you get a rule that states you can’t walk to the left. It only gets worse from there. Imagine if Mario or Sonic spontaneously combusted for walking left? How would they make it past the traps laid before them? More importantly, how are you going to take Eid to the top with these rules in effect?

Tower of Heaven seems to me like an anthropological study on video game mores. When a person violates a social more, it makes one or more persons in the situation feel awkward, annoyed, violated…any number of emotions. Can one evoke the same feelings of discomfort by violating game mores?

Have fun. By the way, don't touch the sides of anything, or walk left.

If the testimonials about the game on the internet are to be believed, the game – from an scientific viewpoint – is a huge success, and the answer to the above-stated question would be a resounding “YES”. Just about any news post you can find about this game has people saying things like ‘This game was waaay too hard and it pissed me off’, or ‘I liked this game, but it was too hard so I didn’t finish it’. For some people, the game is just so stifling that they don’t know what to do about it.

Tower of Heaven‘s genius is that, like any game you play, there are a set of rules that must be followed, and if you fail to do so, you lose. The rules of Tower of Heaven, though, conflict so heavily with what we’ve come to expect from a video game that it can be uncomfortable or even frustrating to play. If the Book of Laws causes you to feel this way when playing the game, then it has achieved its intended goal perfectly.

Appropriately, the game seems to be about questioning the mores we take for granted. Are we gamers satisfied with ‘the way things are’ because we’ve experimented with many things to come to such a conclusion? Or, are we satisfied with ‘the way things are’ simply because they’ve always been that way, and we’ve never considered that anything different could possibly be any good?

My only real issues with Tower of Heaven are purely technical ones. Controlling Eid can be very weird; as soon as you choose to move in a direction, he will reach full speed in an instant. Even after playing this game to death, I still haven’t completely come to grips with this.

There also seems to be no landing animation from a jump. If this seems like an overly specific complaint to you, consider this: when you’re playing Super Mario Bros, and you land on the very edge of a platform after a jump, the landing animation is what keeps you from running right off the cliff and dying just because you held the directional pad for a split second too long.

Other than that, the yellow platforms are sort of glitched; the platforms that change colors from brown to yellow will kill you mid-air if you jump off the platform just before it changes colors. They also still cause you to die instantly in levels where the Book of Laws doesn’t apply.

Still, if these are the best criticisms I can come up with, that’s really not such a big deal. Tower of Heaven is wonderful. It’s simple in its execution, it has a wonderful and meaningful premise, and if you’re a hardcore gamer, it also happens to be pretty hard, and there’s even a speed run mode (see if you can beat my record, 2:44 with zero deaths).

Proof!

It’s also very short, so even if you find it very frustrating, you can take solace in the fact that it won’t last too long. I can’t promise you’ll like it – you might even fling a lot of cuss words at your monitor – but it’s worth it to give it a shot, just for the experience.

“May heaven grant you fortune.”

Download Tower of Heaven for free right here!

[Free-Game Friday is a new weekly feature in which a writer from the GamerLimit staff looks at a completely free game and discusses their experience with it, allowing you to download it at the end. Feel free to check out our full schedule right here!]

Daniel Benmergui has made a handful of experimental videogames, all of which are free to play and contain a charming amount of pixelated melancholy. Or maybe a melancholy amount of pixelated charm? Either way, they are definitely worth checking out. The title Gamer Limit presents to you today is the final part of his trilogy of art games, or “The Moon Stories” trilogy, Today I Die.

The game is simple in its mechanics, as every action is performed by simply clicking and dragging, whether you are maneouvring the character, interchanging words or just moving a bubble. There are various “zones” in this game, which directly relate to the state of the poem that adorns the top of the screen and each requires a small amount of puzzle-solving to progress through the game’s narrative.

The game is by no stretch of the imagination something to class as challenging, as each puzzle can be solved relatively simply, but the focus of this game was never to make player’s feel like they were playing the next Ikaruga, as Today I Die is about the experience and the exploration of the game’s concept and aesthetic qualities.

The look of the game, as well as the music, changes throughout your progression and the way in which it does so is more emotionally affecting than that of the narrative, which is the main indication of your progress.

As mentioned in the introduction, this is the third of Daniel Benmergui’s “Moon Stories” trilogy, and whilst each of them contain their own elements to discuss, and I could mention things such as emotional journeys, characterisation or symbolism. Essentially the only way you will discover any of these things is by jumping in head first and trying it out. Hm, look at that, I honestly didn’t expect to use the words “jumping in head first” when talking about a game featuring a girl who’s drowning.

To play each of his games, you can find a link to I Wish I Were the Moon here, Storyteller here and the game in question Today I Die here.

As I mentioned in a blog not so long ago, if you found this game enjoyable, why not pay something for it? Despite it being free you have the opportunity to let the developer know you enjoyed it and pay something, because even if coders live in dark basements, they have to eat at some point. If you find yourself thinking, “Yes, this man deserves my money!” then there are some interesting things the creator has done in regards to donations.

You can sponsor my next game by donating! There are bonuses to special sponsors if you donate more than, or equal to:

any amount: Moon Stories Pack

$27 … and you become an silver sponsor of my next game and your name will appear in the credits, including a link of your choice [5 available]

$75 … and I’ll make a “pixelated”, moon-style version of yourself or whoever you want [Only 1 available!]

$99 … and make you a “poster” (digital) of I Wish I Were the Moon or Today I Die, creating both characters after whoever you want [3 available]

$995 … and make you a custom game based on I Wish I Were the Moon or Today I Die, creating both characters after whoever you want and a new ending of your liking! [No more available!]

Head over to http://www.ludomancy.com/blog/downloads/ if that sounds like your kind of thing.

Few games manage to achieve a level of depth that encourages players to weigh their actions on a moral scale or consider the life of the enemy before deigning to kill them. I’m sure you could name a few titles that manage to go beyond the basic twitch-shooter formula, but when it comes down to it, they’re a rare breed.

A game like Iji is even more unique. A freeware 2D platform-shooter by Daniel Remar, Iji succeeds in areas where so many retail releases fall flat.

Players experience the game through the eyes of Iji, a girl who wakes up to discover that – surprise! – the research facility in which her father works has been invaded by a seemingly hostile alien race, the Tasen. Iji is completely alone, save for her brother, Dan, who has conveniently locked himself away inside of the complex’s control center.

Dan explains to our heroine that before the rest of their family died, Iji was physically enhanced with shield armor and given the ability to wield Tasen nano-weaponry. Equipped with these tools, it was their hope that Iji could navigate the facility to convince their new alien co-inhabitants to kindly take their fancy space ships back to where they came from.

Iji takes this news fairly well – I know if I woke up from a coma to find out that I had become my family’s cyborg test subject I might react a bit differently. She accepts her mission and makes her way into the wider world of the test facility.

The game play in Iji is surprisingly complex for a free game. Donning the guise of a simple side scrolling platformer, the game successfully employs the use of RPG elements to truly allow the player to control what type of experience they get out of the game. The complex is divided into ten sectors that Iji must navigate. Progressing through the levels, players gain experience points by killing enemies or gaining access to certain areas within a sector.

Upon gaining enough experience to level up, Iji then receives a point which she can use to raise one of her traits at the stations scattered through the sector; cracking to break down security gates or neutralize an enemy’s weapon, strength, health, and aptitude in Tasen and Komato weaponry and ammo. Choosing which skills to specialize in creates a unique experience each time you play.

Certain skills are required to achieve certain objectives within the game, but Iji provides different ways to complete these goals. Iji can pass through sectors in a variety of ways, each path utilizing a different skill, allowing players to choose how they should beat a sector.

The game even includes the ability to customize your weapons. Throughout the levels Iji is given the option to splice together the weapons she finds in the facility to create brand new guns and rocket launchers, using the enemy’s technology against them.

Mechanics aside, the game’s controls and interface are conveniently laid out. The controls are responsive and laid out in a simple format that is explained right from the start. It’s impossible to shoot while crouching or jumping, but one may argue that this really just adds to the challenge of the game, encouraging players to come up with creative ways to defeat or ninja their way around opponents.

The only real gripe lies in the AI of the aliens.  Although the Tasen army manages to obliterate most of the human species, they aren’t very bright. Running up to an alien will most likely cause them to attack you, but once you jump to another platform or otherwise out of sight, the Tasen will continue to launch a barrage of missiles and bullets at the empty space you once occupied, or simply turn around and shoot whatever is behind them.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Iji, however, is the type of experience it creates for the gamer. A tale of Earth being conquered by aliens shouldn’t strike anyone as a particularly original plot for a video game, yet, as it does in other regards, Iji manages to surprise.

At first glance the storyline seems concrete when Dan first debriefs Iji – the aliens have landed, they’re not very nice and we have to get rid of them. However, as Iji wanders the corridors, it quickly becomes evident that Dan may have been wrong about the Tasen.

The sense that we have been misinformed grows as players uncover logbooks left by Tasen soldiers within the complex. Iji does something that many may be unaccustomed to in video games. Iji creates doubt in the player. As more is revealed about the Tasen through their logbooks and cutscenes,  we are forced to question whether the Tasen are truly evil, or if, for once, we are the ones who are in the wrong.

Coming to this realization, players are then able to make a choice – to destroy any aliens in their path, or dodge them, saving their lives. This choice is not an easy one to make. Some of the Tasen are merely bloodthirsty fighting machines, while others leave accounts of their apathy towards their life in the army and their race’s unending and seemingly meaningless fighting with the Komato (another brand of beastly alien).

One recurring soldier chronicles their attempt to find their girlfriend, also a soldier, throughout the game after they become separated. The fate of these two alien soldiers lies in the actions the players take throughout the course of the game.

Iji herself changes depending on the choices one makes throughout the game. Taking a more aggressive approach will cause Iji to grow more violent over time, made apparent in her speech or the way she yells in battle or upon being hit. Taking a more pacifistic approach will, naturally, lead to a calmer heroine and sometimes enemies will eve avoid attacking her or alerting others of her presence.

Sure, Iji is not a literary masterpiece, but it does raise interesting questions about war and peace, racism, and political corruption. However, if that’s not what you’re looking for in a game Iji is not going to beat you over the head with its underlying messages. Much of the story is told through the logbooks, and reading them is purely optional. Players are free to simply run around blow stuff up at their leisure.

What makes Iji so great is the huge amount of freedom it gives to the gamer, not to mention the hours of replay-ability and additional exploration for hidden rooms and items. This is not something any game can boast, and that fact is made even more remarkable considering this game is freeware.

Iji is available here for those of you who haven’t given it a shot yet, or if you’re just hankerin’ to shoot some more aliens. And if Iji isn’t your style, let us know what you’d like to see featured on Free-Game Friday on the GamerLimit forums or shoot us an e-mail!

(Free-Game Friday is a new weekly feature in which a writer from the GamerLimit staff looks at a completely free game and discusses their experience with it. Since there is no absolute structure or checklist for writing about one’s experience, these features are not necessarily reviews.)

The first time I had ever heard of Kingdom of Loathing was in a small Game Informer sidebar, many years ago.  Sounded interesting, but as a strictly console-only gamer throughout my youth, I forgot about it shortly thereafter.

About a week ago, I stumbled upon KoL while strolling through cyberspace.  Seriously, I have been missing out.  This game has the best writing I’ve EVER seen in a video game, and the gameplay is not too shabby either.

At its core, Kingdom of Loathing is just another role-playing game – there’s  HP, MP, quests, inventory items, battles, leveling up, familiars (animal allies), alchemical item creation, the works.  It even starts off like every other RPG; you fight bats and rats and gain experience to fight stronger enemies.  However, whereas a multi-million dollar Square-Enix epic is very heavy-handed, this game slays the player with its sharp (and sometimes childish) sense of humor and obscure pop culture references.

At the beginning of the game, you select a class.  Instead of thief, white mage, warrior, bard, etc., you get to choose from: Pastamancers, Saucerors, Seal Clubbers, Turtle Tamers, Accordion Thieves, and Disco Bandits.  I went with the Disco Bandit (he’s got a lot of Moxie, just like me), and was dropped into the Noob Cave.  You know… the cave where noobs start.

After a few minutes, I was already discovering some great armor (Knob Goblin Uberpants and a Meatloaf Helmet), meeting fun people (Shifty the Thief Chief and the Crackpot Mystic), and mixing my own drinks (nanite-infested eggnog, anyone?).

As soon as I left the Noob Cave, the world opened up, like the first time stepping into the world map in Final Fantasy VII.  But in Kingdom of Loathing, the world kept getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger.  At the start, you can click “town”, “plains”, “mountains” or “woods.”  (You fast-travel to each location; there is no tedious world traversing.)  In each of these areas, there are more sites to explore.  And in those sub-levels, there’s even more.

The exploring never feels like a chore, because the writing in the game is INCREDIBLE.  You never know what you’ll see next.  Some things I stumbled upon in my first week in the Kingdom:

• a Continuum Transfunctioner
• a reference to the band Cake
• a bar (da kind dat lives in dem dere woods, don’tcha know)
• a pompadour’d poodle
• a back alley drug dealer (“Hey, man. You, uh, you wanna try some goofballs? First bottle’s free, man.”)
• a pretentious artist that lives on the wrong side of the tracks and won’t paint my portrait because I’m too “bland”

It’s nice to experience a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously.  Even the sun and the moon in the game are named Ronald and Grimace.  There’s nothing like completing a quest to be rewarded with, “Grimace smiles down upon you.”  Hilarious.

Also, you can join a clan, and engage in some PvP combat, and let your familiar fight in the Cake-Shaped Arena, and engage in all other sorts of RPG conventions, but I am still too low-level to experience all that the game has to offer… so far.  But I will, eventually!

Sadly, after playing for awhile (about an hour, depending on how quickly you quest), you run out of adventures.  You don’t run out of things to do; there’s PLENTY of things to do.  You just run out of the ability to do them.

See, each night at 10:30 CST, the game servers shut down for about half an hour.  This is for site maintenance, to kick off cheaters, to tidy up, whatever.  During this time, every player in the game restores forty adventure points, up to a maximum of 200.

Each time you perform a quest-related action in the game, be it exploring a cave, traipsing around the Misspelled Cemetary, or even sleeping to restore the HP you lost when battling CRYS-ROCK (the first boss, see him below), you use an adventure point.  After you use up your allowance of adventure points for the day, you can’t do anything else to advance your character or story until the next day of real time.

That sucks.  It’d be like telling WoW players, “Oh, you completed two dungeons today, that’s enough!  Time to go to bed, kiddies!”  I don’t know if the adventure points are to keep players from simply milling around the Noob Cave for the rest of the game, leveling up against the easy baddies before eventually having enough Meat (the currency used in the game) to get some cool weapons, or if they’re to ward off the RPG addiction that can easily ensnare gamers when allowed to play limitless games unhindered.  Maybe it’s just to keep people playing the game a little bit everyday for the rest of their lives like Animal Crossing.  Who knows?

I could see myself getting sucked into the Kingdom, easily.  Luckily, restraining my playtime will eventually lead me to give up the game for something I can play all night.

But, I’m going to hang on to this one bright spot in an otherwise bleak, dark gaming landscape for as long as my attention span allows.  It’s just so funny,  I can’t help but go back.  I just wish I could Loathe a little longer!

Want to Loathe yourself?  Check out KoL at www.KingdomOfLoathing.com!

Got any special requests for Freeware Friday? Ask us in the GamerLimit forums or shoot our writers an e-mail!