There’s a cubic inch of grey mush in our brains which insists that things you don’t pay for, like air, your neighbor’s WiFi and your housemate’s toothpaste, are worthless. Perhaps it’s a healthy bit of self-delusion to believe that something you’ve shelled out money for is better than it actually is, as the alternative is to live every day crushed under an elephant of regret. But throw away the shackles of monetary convention and you open the doors to what we like to call Freeware Country. From one-off indie ventures to professionally made platformers, developers of free games are so unshackled by commercialism that their creativity runs rampant. If it’s free, and it’s ace, it’s most definitely here. Put your wallet away dear, this one’s on us.
50) 5 Days a Stranger
Click here to play it now
A free point-and-click by Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw. Built using the Adventure Game Studio, 5 Days also comes in a premium version costing $5 that has a developer’s commentary. If you’re anything like us, it’ll make you want to make your own adventure. Before realizing it’d probably be rubbish.
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1) Cave Story
Click here to play it now
Moore’s Law said two things. Firstly, that computers will get smaller and cleverer until we’re inhaling whole clouds of super-intelligent nanobots. Secondly, that 2D platformers will fall out of fashion in such a dramatic way as to almost wipe them from the face of commercial gaming forever. Who’d have thought that the final resting place of the platformer would be on our least powerful platforms (handhelds) and our most powerful platforms (our beloved PCs)? Not only that, but who’d have foreseen that one of the best 2D platform adventures ever made would be a PC exclusive? And that it’d be stark raving free?
