It’s time for more… FREE GAMES! Who says you have to
pay to have fun with Steam games? Okay, they aren’t the longest games or the
ones with the most content, but if they’re enjoyable and keep you occupied for
an hour or longer, what’s the harm? Let’s get this started!
Pink Hour
This game and the next are playable advertisements for
“Kero Blaster”, a retro-style game on Steam. “Pink Hour” follows a ghost-like (Kirby-like? Let's go with that) female pink character as she is tasked with retrieving an important file. This
takes her through a level in which she has to jump across platforms and shoot
her way through enemies.
 |
Since when did retrieving a file required Indiana Jones'
level of heroism? |
Since this is meant to be a short ad, there isn't a full game's worth of content. The regular game has only one level, and it’s actually pretty
easy. There’s a boss at the end of the level. Also, after you pick up the file,
some types of damage will destroy the file in your hands, so you have to be
careful. Avoid those spikes!
When you get to the end, the pink character comes back
to work, bringing the file, and receives a list of office supplies to order, along
with a Thank You message from… the President?? Oh, and post-credits, she goes
out to buy a game for someone else, and hears about Kero Blaster. Which opens a
window for the game’s page on Steam.
 |
Take thatg, you blocker of the path between me and my
office that needs this paper! |
 |
Five seconds into the level and we can already see
just how much harder this one is. |
The best part is that, after beating this, you unlock
a Hard Mode. It’s a new level in the same setting. Hard?
That’s an understatement. It has it all: Enemies at bad places, precise
platforming (with very, very small platforms hanging above endless pits in many areas)…
The game’s window is quite small, but you can resize
it in the options. I played through this one and its sequel without ever doing
that – not that it makes the game any easier…
If you want a quick game, try this one. If you want a
challenge, try the HARD level afterwards. It lives up to its name. This title is short and
sweet, and if you do beat it (something that did, in fact, take me an hour),
you get a teaser for the sequel, which takes place… in Heaven!
Pink Heaven
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She doesn't have a weapon on her, yet she blasts the enemies!
Epic! |
Yup! Jumping into this one right away! The pink
protagonist woke up in Heaven (with gloomy, grey skies), and sees the
shopkeeper of a store she likes. However, he gets abducted by a spaceship.
Rescue mission! This one has actually two levels. At the end of the first one,
the pink protagonist meets the character who sent her up here, and he asks her
to choose between gentleness (an umbrella) or strength (an upgrade to her
weapon). The second level is a bit trickier, but she carries through and fights
the spaceship at the end. It can protect itself from her blasts, but since
you’re on a complete floor, it’s not very difficult.
 |
Yay, I'm going to turn into Umbrella Kirby!
Wait no, I am not Kirby. |
The protagonist finds the shopkeeper and rescues him.
Then they flee from the ship, falling down from Heaven. If you picked
Gentleness, the two glide down with the umbrella. If you picked Strength, they
both fall. Either way, she wakes up in bed, thinking this was a dream… until
she goes to the shop. If you picked Gentleness, he will be there, working, just fine,
and will say it wasn’t a dream. Picked Strength? He got hurt falling off
Heaven, and has to heal so someone replaces him. Oops.
 |
| And that's not the toughest part by far. |
Once again, there’s a HARD level available afterwards,
and OH BOY. The hard level ditches the story, and is even harder than the one
in Pink Hour. The reason is simple: Same tough platforming sections, same
number of lives, but two levels – and no matter where you get a Game Over, you have to
start back at the beginning of the first level. Let me also remind you that in
both Pink Hour and Pink Heaven, you have only two HP. Not that it matters since
you’ll probably spend more time in the HARD levels and the emptiness beneath is
your greatest foe.
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| Why must those clouds be so slippery?? |
The HARD mode has two bosses, a spiky monster and the
spaceship – and the spaceship fight is tough, as you must jump on clouds while
shooting upwards – and only when its shields go down, which only happens over a
pit – so to hurt it, you must jump between clouds.
There are no achievements for either game, but you
will be happy if you can beat the HARD levels. They’re short, fun little retro
ventures. And incredibly cute, too! You should enjoy them. And if so, you might
want to check out Kero Blaster!
Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt
Princess Remedy is a graduate of the Saturnian Healing
School, beamed down to the world in order to bring some goodness and rest to
the world – oh, and rescue the land’s Prince, too. Created by Ludosity for the
Games Against Ebola game jam and released on December 1st, 2014,
this is a nice little game with RPG-like features. It’s not an RPG though, more
of a… horizontal shoot’em-up maybe?
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| Everything's so dark 'round here... let's make it bright! |
Princess Remedy begins her journey in the minimalist,
pixelated Hurtland. Along her journey, she encounters many people in need of
help, for any reason: Their legs hurt, they’re choking on bread crumbs, or
they’re feeling dead, or someone made fun of them.
Either case, Remedy accepts to help them, which takes her into the fight
screen. There, her job is to shoot at the various enemies and defeat them, for
they represent the source of the person’s ill. The enemies are gone? The person
feels better! Every creature represents a sort of ailment, whether it’s
physical, emotional or mental. They all have different movement and attack
patterns, and it’s sometimes the combination of enemies that can make a fight
truly difficult. Not to mention the obstacles!
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Wait, how do I reach that chest?
Oh right, there's a secret passageway up there! |
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If you think that's a lot of enemies, you have seen nothing
yet. |
The writing in this game is quite funny, too, as each
person “healed” will have a little comment afterwards. Healing someone gives
Princess Remedy one more Hit Point to complete her quest. There are many
Treasure Chests scattered around as well, containing additional Hit Points but
also upgrades to her weapons (which are actually healing items like syringes), her
attack power, her own regeneration (she has very limited HP but recovers some
every second), or her number of flasks (Remedy shoots her normal weapon
automatically. Flasks, bomb-like weapons, can however be vital in clearing up some
rooms filled with enemies).
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Oh, by the way... this is only Part 1 of this boss.
It's FOUR SCREENS of mini-bosses.
Good thing they remain stationary. |
A long quest later, we find the Prince, who has been
afflicted with EVERYTHING. You fight a multi-part boss there. After the source
of his hurting has been killed, the Prince thanks Remedy and declares her the
Queen of this land ('cause somehow he can do that), giving her the option of marrying anyone she healed or
interacted with on her trip – male, female, darklord, skeleton, frog, treasure
chest, duck, doesn’t matter. There’s a screen for each of those. There’s also a
few secrets to discover, some of which are pretty hard to get. There’s that
jealous chest, which won’t give you its contents if you opened any other chest
before it. There’s also that box of chocolates, used to reach someone who has a
romantic history with Remedy, and who can have her broken heart healed. Can you
reach 100% completion?
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I... accidentally married an empty treasure chest.
At least it looks happy about it. |
Available in Normal, Hard and Master difficulties,
Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt is a very effective, funny and endearing
retro-looking game. A unique concept, lots of secrets, and a great replay
value. Can you believe this game was made in four days? Seriously, it’s
awesome. If I could have one point of criticism, it’s that the Hard and Master
difficulties get very heavy on the enemy bullets, maybe too hard on there. But
then again, that may just be me who sucks. There’s also no repercussions for
failing a healing task, though that may be for the best considering how tough things can get on the later difficulties. Its length is okay – one hour to get
through the base game, more if you play through the three difficulty settings and seek out all the secrets. Also,
you cannot pause during battles, you lose instantly instead to come back to the overworld map – not that it
matters since the fights are fairly short.
Try the free game, and if you liked it, perhaps you
would be interested in the sequel, which you have to pay for, though it’s
pretty inexpensive. It came out in September 2016!
Serena
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| Our Cabin in tne Woods: Now in sepia! |
In this point-and-click game developed and published
by Senscape, you are a protagonist (unnamed, and unseen, aside from a
photograph) waiting for his love, Serena (also unseen, aside from that photograph), in a log cabin deep the woods. The photo starts out with her face blurred. He seems to have forgotten even
what she looks like! However, he
decides to look around the cabin for anything that reminds him of her, and soon
the picture gets clearer. He remembers her now. In fact, every item in the
cabin reminds him of her.
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How much time has passed that I had to jog my memory in
order to remember what she looked like? |
Uncertain whether she’ll ever come back to the cabin,
he reminisces on the time spent with Serena. He has three important lines of
monologue for each item, followed by three less important lines that appear once
you’ve read everything an item had to reveal. Sometimes, you can hear Serena,
clear as day in the protagonist’s memory (and she’s voiced by PushingUpRoses,
an avid fan of point-and-click games, as her YouTube channel proves). The main
character is voiced by Josh Mandel, a former staffer from Sierra, a company
famous for its devilishly tough point-and-click games.
As he walks around the cabin and reminisces, his
joyful remembrance of his lover turns to sorrow and worry, at the thought that
maybe she won’t return. And from there, he gets considerably bitterer… But
that’s really where I should stop.
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| Yep, that sure is a lamp. A dusty old lamp. |
This title is technically closer to a walking
simulator, as the protagonist rarely interacts with the items around – aside
from opening drawers and armoires. Most of the interest is in the text and the
shift in mood as you progress. There are some pretty interesting visual
elements that change due to the tonal change, though. All the items offer three
new lines of dialogue when we get into a new dominant mood of the protagonist,
and it’s only by reading through all this that you get to the final punch, a
slow burn that can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to reach.
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Even the windows are dark. What's with this guy and his
apparent fear of cleaning? Unless... |
This is a good example of a point-and-click
environmental narrative game – what smaller titles like Fingerbones should have
been. Lots of items to interact with. If I may critique, I would say that there
are quite a few drawers you can open that contain nothing that could be
interacted with – so what’s the point of allowing us to open those if they contain nothing of mportance? One of them
even contains a wristwatch, but it has no text to it. The game is also, as far
as I know, impossible to set in windowed mode, and it will glitch out your
mouse if you try to Alt-Shift away from it to view other windows – especially
when you start playing the game. There’s no pause menu, no way to adjust settings such as screen resolution or sound.
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These books may be the funniest part of the game.
All the references, heck yeah. |
But all in all, this is an interesting experience. You
should give it a try, mostly because it’s a labor of love, constructed by
multiple people who worked on old-school adventure games in the past. Have I
mentioned this was officially classified as a horror game?
Voices From the Sea
Warning: Cuteness Overload. If your head tends to
explode from “too much cute”, carefully avoid this game (and most others
discussed in this article so far) and… go see a doctor, because that ain’t
normal.
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| Ack! A girl! So close! Personal bubble, learn what that is! |
“Voices From The Sea” was developed and published by
Zelva Inc. Cantus is 13yo boy who feels disconnected from the rest of
the world; he struggles to talk with anyone around him, lashes out at his mom,
keeps headphones on to look like he wants to be left alone, never smiles… but
he does like one thing: The beach, and collecting seashells. On his daily
excursion to the beach, someday he finds an unexpected visitor there: A girl
who presents herself as Maris. There’s something odd about her, but it’s hard
to say what. Maybe it’s because she behaves like a hyperactive pixie girl with a
constant smile on her face. After she and Cantus meet, she becomes determined
in making Cantus smile before the end of the week. And so begins a short tale
of friendship in which, every day, he comes to the beach, she tries to cheer
him up, they collect a seashell (with more than 18 different shells, each with
their own bit of dialogue) and say goodbye until the next day.
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| Huh. Some can actually do the .3. face. Or so I think. |
Perhaps this strange girl, with hair blue like the
sea, eyes orange like the sun, and a dress white like the clouds, will instill
in him a bit of the humanity he seems to have lost...
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How? How did Maris manage to make such a beautiful
castle? It's nearly impossible! It's like... some
impossible level of talent! She's... too perfect! |
Extremely sweet and cute (and fairly short – 30
minutes at best, if you’re a fast reader), this tale may prove more touching
than you thought at first glance. The concept is very basic, and there isn’t
much in the way of gameplay. Just lean back, read the text, enjoy the story. The story has some depth as you progress through it. Collecting all
seashells requires beating the story about three times. Your choices don’t
really matter in the long run, though, as each day goes back to collecting
seashells. The character development from Cantus is interesting, at least.
The game’s free version was funded by Kickstarter, but
there’s a Plus version that can be bought as DLC. It contains a fully-voiced
storyline, a gallery of images, and a greater story. I personally feel fine
playing the game just once, but if you play it and enjoy it, perhaps the Plus
version is something you’d like to look into purchasing.
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I wouldn't bank on that, Maris. Cantus is of the very
non-smiling disposition. |
There we go! 5 games, yet again. Meet me next week
for… um… another Steam game, I guess!
