Escape your families! Lament the lamentable gifts! Avoid slipping into a terminal food coma!
Twelve free games to play over the festive period!
You Only Live Once
Play Here
Being a bread and butter platformer, You Only Live Once‘s gameplay is instantly forgettable. But it ends on such a sweet note, sustained for just long enough to squeeze out a few more laughs, that you’ll never forget it.
Bars of Black and White
Play Here
Bars of Black and White is a quiet, little adventure. There are no loud noises and yet you are screaming inside. There is no one to be seen and yet your life is in danger. There are barcodes everywhere- secret codes showing that They are monitoring you- and they can form a prison if you’re not perceptive.
Hand drawn by the maker of the equally brilliant The Majesty of Colour, the sparse and unassuming world marries the narrative wonderfully. The slow tale of discovery is marred only by puzzles that verge slowly into the nonsensical and an amateurish final screen which threatens to undermine the hushed experience.
Pro Tip: Move the cursor to the edge of the screen to move between rooms and click on things that are clickable to make them do things. If you are unsure on how to get started then try to find the PC and that’ll have you moving in the right direction.
ROM Check Fail
Download Here
Context is everything. Without context some things just make no sense. Then again sometimes a lack of context can make even more sense.
I mean, what is Mario without a Goomba to jump on? What is PacMan without dots to eat? What is a spaceship with no Space Invaders to shoot? What isssssss*56_a r3d ball wit_a $pace 1nvader??6<7??! What is a****79%****_ racing-car., against / G%mbA? ___/___Vhat is Link~vs~a sp3ctr3?>..> !.. What th<Mario> 2 an Ast3r01d??……………………………………………………………. ……………………………………………. ………………………………………………. …………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………….. …………ROMCHECKFAIL
EnviroBear 2000
Download Here
One night in Florissant, Colorado, a pair of lovers in sweet embrace where rudely interrupted by the incessant screeching of their car alarm.
Pissed-off and partially dressed, they go downstairs to investigate.
“Gosh darnit, not again!” Tom’s buzz was sufficiently killed now.
“Oh jeez, Tom, not another one,” his wife patted him on the back as she turns to head back inside, “I’ll go call Kevin”.
But Tom didn’t want Kevin. He didn’t want Mikel either. He didn’t need anyone to explain what was going on.
He knew why a bear was carjacking his Toyota Previa: Enviro-Bear 2000.
“These poor inner-city bears. Paw-deep in cocaine and lacking role models, they turn to Enviro-Bear 2000 and think: I can do that… “I can steer with one paw, I can work the pedals with one paw, I can change gears with one paw. But it’s not that easy.”
Tom’s next door neighbour, disturbed from his sleep by the alarm, was resting against his front door, waiting for a chance to interject: “Bears are smarter than that,” he yelled, “They know that it’s not real. Shit looks like it was drawn in Microsoft Paint, fer Christ sake.”
“A bear who is gathering food, trying to prepare for hibernation can’t tell the difference,” replied Tom. “They think it’s just a game”.
Both men turned and looked at the bear in the Toyota. It’d stalled the car a number of times by now and was currently flicking through the glove compartment in search for a manual or some Fruit Pastels to snack on.
Tom sighed.
“They think it’s just a game.”
Don’t Shit Your Pants
Play Here
Don’t Shit Your Pants is a true survival horror game. Simple, stupid and a decent waste of ten minutes. Discover all of the multiple endings to become the Shit KingTM.
Pro Tip: While I don’t question your ability to prevent yourself defacating in your own pantaloons, I imagine most of you haven’t played any text adventures before. In any old school interactive fiction game you type in your actions using the keyboard. So imagine you are constipated and standing outside of your bathroom door. Picture it clearly: The uncomfortable writhing, the shifty looks from flatmates, the boiling gut of magma in your belly threatening to bust from your breaches like a fecal geyser. Good. Now narrate your way to the natural conclusion.
Some verbs that might be useful are TAKE, LOOK, OPEN, SQUEEZE, SHIT, DON’T SHIT, FART.
Super Pro Tip: Muddy the concepts of taste and hygiene by playing this on your laptop while in the toilet. Extra points up for grabs!
9:05
Play Here
Time to come clean. Don’t Shit Your Pants was actually a mini-introduction to text adventures and nothing else. So play it and learn the syntax before you have a go at today’s gem.
You taken a shit yet? Yes? That’s good. Now we can begin.
It’s fair to say that the plot of most videogames can be boiled down to “use weapon X to kill enemies Y (because of generic reason Z)”. While big budget titles like BioShock and Portal have explored the role of narrative in videogames, both serving as allegories for the players interaction, it all smacks of the fantastical- BioShock with its doomed tale of a civil war fought in an underwater city, and Portal with its instruments that tear at the very fabric of space. I just can’t relate to them. I crave the familiar and not the fantastic.
Adam Cadre’s 9:05 begins perhaps the most familiar way of all: you wake up. And in a situation that is also way too familiar, you are late. It’s five past nine and you were supposed to be out of here ages ago. So you’d better hurry.
You have no idea what kind of day is in store for you.
9:05 is all about the second reading (think The Sixth Sense and Fight Club). So hurry up and play it the first time. Like I said: you’re late and you better get a move on!
ProTip: Useful phrases: look, inventory, take off watch, drop watch, go north/south/east/west, drive, look.
3D Logic II
Play Here
Like every normal person on the planet, the Rubik’s cube I got for Christmas so many years ago remains unsolved. It’s lying down the back of the bedroom cupboard and no amounts of unnecessary maths can motivate me to sit down and solve the infernal thing.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly dull enough to solve it but it just lacks something. Something you’d never think of adding to the humble cube. Something unnecessary… maybe if it had some lore.
Lore. Yeah, that might work.
A Rubik’s cube with gratuitous amounts of fantasy lore.
In 3D Logic II you connect coloured squares on a cube to the backdrop of forests, magic and mystic creatures.
Yes! I feel it! The powers of Geometric Alignment doth course through my veins- much like the fire wizard foresaw. Fear not, for I shall bend thine coloured squares and save the little elves and shit. Go make haste and playeth!
Spin The Black Circle
Play Here
Imagine, if you will, that deep down in the fiery pits of Hell, Satan has just arrived at his desk at 6:39 am ready for another day’s work. He checks his Gmail and being in a good mood, even responds to a few of them.
“Curses,” he curses as he glances at his iPhone, “it’s the last Friday of the month.”
There’s nothing worse than Casual Friday in Hell, and His Infernal One knows it. Everyone will be expecting something particularly devilish from him today.
To make a long story short, Spin The Black Circle was designed and coded in one of the black circles of Hell.
Thank the Lord for the nifty save system.
Small World
Play Here
It’s a Small World,
the snowflakes taste like pixels,
am I still alone?
Grid16
Play Here
In essence, Grid16 is a techno-infused kaleidoscope of every game you’ve ever played. In practice, it’s a frenetic race to decipher what exactly is going on before it all changes again.
ProTip: If you dig this mix-tape style of game then be sure to check out the absurd yet equally fun When The Bomb Goes Off.
Upgrade Complete
Play Here
In the spirit of Upgrade Complete, in which every single aspect of the game is fully upgradeable, I am going to break tradition and give you your Christmas present early.
I hope you enjoy it.
The Official 12 Games of ChristmasTM Super Blurb Construction Kit: 2010 Edition
At long last, after dwindling interest and virtually no demand, you too can write crap little blurbs about a random selection of games that have a tenuous link- if any- to Christmas!
Thanks to the new Official 12 Games of ChristmasTM Super Blurb Construction Kit: 2010 Edition, you have all the pieces required to produce hastily written and poorly constructed descriptions of games that misrepresent and distort the maker’s original intents.
Annoy your friends by cluttering up their Facebook and Twitter feeds!
Annoy your family by neglecting them during this special time to type nonsence and techno-babble!
*use following pieces to make blurbs:
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
. , ? ! : ; ( ) – ” £ $ & *
Free Rice
Play Here
The more you play this word game, the more money is pledged to the UN World Food fund that helps distribute aid to those in need. Play now and play often.