Aerial_Knight's Never Yield, Love, Doors: Paradox and Infinifactory

Catching up on Epic freebies!

Aerial_Knight's Never Yield

This auto runner has the same problems as Super Meat Boy Forever where your inputs are limited to high jump, little jump, slide and sprint and a single wrong move kills you. While the art and music are definitely better the game play itself gets old quick. Not recommended. I had toyed around with creating a similar game in the past (with worse art and music, those are decent here) and this just verifies it would have been a bad idea.

Love

When your character is made up of around 10 white pixels you know that this game really doesn't have good graphics. It's a platformer where you're trying to get to each level's exit and there's a clock if you really want to time yourself. Interesting design decisions in that you can put your respawn point wherever you want, as often as you want, and it looked like you could pick any level without going through some un-locking process. While I commend those ideas its just not enough for me to Love this one. Uninstalled.

Doors: Paradox

This is a very chill puzzle game about unlocking doors, and its not a first person experience. Instead the doors are like a well rendered miniature display, each level decorated by different locks. You can rotate the whole thing and zoom in on bits to pick up puzzle pieces or interact with stuff and it is surprisingly addictive. That's because the first few levels are also very easy (and regular readers know I'm bad at puzzle games). I might go back to this one, and can recommend it for puzzle enthusiasts - though you might blow through the first few really quickly!

Infinifactory

This first person game starts with you being abducted by aliens and then tasked to... create production lines of boxes? Yes. You'll be putting down mazes of conveyor belts and welders to put shapes together and will feel pretty satisfied after making it through a level. I was surprised with how easy the controls are too, as to let you focus on the puzzle element and this one doesn't hold back: level one is a pretty good indication of what craziness awaits. Wayyyy to much thinking for me (I only made it to the vertical weld session) but others might enjoy it.

Ghostwire: Tokyo, Lost Castle and Super Meat Boy Forever

Games that focus on DEATH!

Ghostwire: Tokyo

When supernatural entities take over Tokyo, its up to you to save everyone's souls! Despite an average story this one definitely got me hooked, as wandering around the deserted streets is super immersive and exploration and stealth game play is rewarded.

Despite dealing with ghosts and yokai there aren't many scary sections at all which might be a negative but I really enjoyed it. The expansion mode of the Spider's Thread is more roguelike where they do expect you to die a lot though, and becomes repetitive. Way better than the prelude though.

Lost Castle

Speaking of roguelike - this is the entire premise for Lost Castle. You get a randomly generated adventurer to see how far you get into the demon's castle, die, and unlock some mild boons for your next randomly generated adventurer. Got old quick with the below average graphics and the inability to spell "Altar" but at least there was no platforming.

Super Meat Boy Forever

This sequel to the punishing original is just as gory but turned me off right away as a lot of control has been taken away from the player to be an "auto runner" type where your controls are only along the lines of jump, jump twice to attack or duck. You need to hit a "change direction pillow" to go the other way. Clearly designed for a mobile device this button mashing iteration is just not for me.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free XVII

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Into the dangerous world I leapt: A first person adventure lacking any proper instructions which just makes it a chore to play.

The Picture in the House: A first person puzzler based on an HP Lovecraft novel. Guessing horror too, but I didn't get to that part since the "walk around in dark rooms looking for stuff to interact with" trope is annoying.

The Plane Effect Prologue: An awesome demo of a puzzle game that now has my interest. Recommended!

He's a happy chappy. Until he isn't.

Quiet Godo: A funny first person pixel horror where you need to find keys and unlock doors while being very quiet - otherwise Godo will appear! Luckily Godo is around the size of a mouse, and while it is still instadeath if he catches you all you need to do is jump on furniture and wait until he goes away.

Ruff Night at the Gallery: Another funny first person horror game, this time you are looking for keys inside an art gallery that has paintings of dogs. If the paintings see you and you don't see them, the doggy ghosts come to lick you - unless you manage to spot them first.

Secrets of the Lost Tomb: You are a soldier sent into a dangerous Egyptian tomb to recover treasure which is guarded by... ROCKS. Yep, in this endless runner, the walls and inanimate rocks are your worst enemies. Lol.

Ship Graveyard Simulator Prologue: A first person simulator where you play a sledgehammer wielding scrapper who manually breaks apart ships and sell the parts for money. Pretty cool, but still just "work" at the end of the day.

Ultreia Prologue: A point and click adventure where you are a robot out for revenge while looking for the meaning of life and death. General walk speed could be faster, and did not make me want to play full game.

Wild Dose First Session: First person walking simulator that starts off promising on a nice looking island but quickly loses quality once you get out of that VR session. Also loses my interest when the player protagonist, bored with life, decides to go buy and use illegal drugs. Not for me.

To Hell With It: Fatal Error Crash. Doesn't even start.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free XV

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo Demo: In this 2.5D adventure you are a bone snake and limbo is a bright, cheery and funny place. Does a good job as a demo as it makes me want to play the full game.

Leave the Red: First person horror that I didn't get very far in, because I couldn't work out how to leave the coffin room. Nothing I did seemed to work and that's no fun so, fail.

Mirlo Above the Sun: Made by students from the Digipen Insitute in Bilbao, this action game sees you control a simple spear wielder to fight the robot forces and free your dragon friends. All it's lacking is some sound effects but otherwise it's a really good game!

Very cool.

Orion: After a promising but retro intro, this devolves into a generic and bad first person shooter. Bleh.

Praesidium: Leap across neon rooftops in the best time you can as a cyborg who looks like Batman, while carrying a round shield you can use to block attacks from drones, or to destroy them by throwing the shield which can come back to you... Bleh.

Quiet Thoughts: Someone's first attempt at making a platformer - definitely succeeded in making it annoying.

Raging Ball: Control a ball to get it across some platforms with some of the worst controls ever. Garbage.

Saving Punyville: A really bad pixel adventure game as it immediately features things like backtracking and having lots of "places to traverse that have no purpose". Shit.

Trikaya: Student made first person puzzle game which is pretty decent. Wonder if there's a way to find more university made stuff as so far they are consistent in enjoyable quality.

Wild Dive: A colorful first person runner which is ok for what it is, but is ultimately pretty shallow just like most other runners.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free VI

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Coloring Game 4: Another paint by pixels, but this one comes with only ONE free image to color in before asking for cash. Bleh.

D3L3T3.exe: Walking simulator where you decide to investigate spooky happenings at a graveyard on a misty evening, bringing only a trusty rechargeable flashlight. Some puzzles and jump scares to be had. In the first section at least, the items are mostly in obvious spots. The second section is much more frustrating.

Need to be fast in those caves.

Dairy Dave: Endless pixel runner where you need to be on the right most to be able to milk cows as collecting bottles of milk and delivering them are the only way to get past levels. Bleh.

Escape the Underground: A challenging pixel platformer where you are a black slime trying to escape a death trap laden sewer. Simple story and good controls but will only appeal to those who enjoy difficulty like Super Meat Boy.

Fear Protocol Shadow Paradigm: The long, low quality unskippable intro is a bad start. Hand drawn kid level art is cool but also hilarious, just like the story and the "biomonsters". Usually best to dodge roll past all the low quality everything but you know what? I still quite enjoyed this one as it's clear whoever made it had heaps of fun doing it.

Fear Protocol Codename Omega: The first game before Shadow Paradigm, which is still all hand drawn and ridiculous. Not as fun as the second one though.

Low Light Combat: PvP shooter that enjoys playing with light using laser guns, fast day/night cycles and deep shadows. Didn't like my graphics card but no matter, all servers were empty of players anyway. Bleh.

Mi Scusi: An odd game where you play in a playdough type world, the "cool guy" helping the town and fighting mafia types. The controls and camera are terrible though, leading to a non-enjoyable experience.

OMFG One Million Fatal Guns: Generic shooter where you face little toy drone things in repetitive rooms, but the music is groovy and the controls are good. Are there actually a million guns? Maybe, because they just keep adding words like: pistol, glass pistol, flaming big-clip glass pistol, legendary epic flaming big-clip glass pistol of maiming etc. Cool but... why?

Orakyubu: A simple "push the box to the right spot" puzzle game, except played in cubes meaning you have to rotate the view to follow your action and/or join multiple cubes to find the correct path. Not one for me.

The Alto Collection

Look out for those chasms!

In this procedurally generated endless runner, you play as Alto who is either snowboarding down the slopes to catch some llamas or sand boarding across a vast desert. While hopping over rocks is easy, making massive leaps over huge gaps requires more speed, and speed is only gained through doing tricks: mainly back flipping. Don't land on your head!

The slope goes forever!

It's a very pretty game and super easy control wise. While you can buy upgrades if you collect enough coins, I'm more impressed with the achievement based leveling system which I think more games should do. For example, to reach level two requires traveling x distance, jumping over 3 rocks and catching 5 llamas or something and each subsequent level has more demanding requirements.

It's quite a fun game and is somewhat soothing but like all endless runners gets repetitive very quickly. I give it two llamas out of five.

Insight: Don't look at Alto. Look at the right edge of the screen to be able to react in time.