i get most of my freeware from terry cavanagh and weird fucking games
it's just doors! who doesn't love opening doors. funny, a little scary, overall good-natured. portal if it was french.
(but...i'm bad with. completely alone first person horror? it's not Horror, but it plays with a portal-esque threatening digital overseer and Unsettling Noises in the ambience. and...something about the way it's based in a repetitive motion that occasionally suddenly changes for one repetition, without warning or any visible way to work out why... it hits me at a very specific angle that makes my skin crawl).
made a lot of progress and liked it enough that i would like to go back to beat it, but ended up in a maze genuinely too dark to finish
a 5-minute generative gallery tour where you can only see 2 pieces, the author invents a dead digital artist as proxy to explore the crushing futility of digital creation in an era of NFTs, and how the assignment of value relates to the physical art world.
i think the edgy they live-scribbles on the walls are boring aesthetically and make the author's frustrations feel childish, but the camera, the pacing, the dialogue, and the time limit all work to create something pretty interesting.
i'm really obsessed with the camera! you use wasd to control the dad but the camera is set behind the ghost of the artist who follows them! it's a perspective trick i don't think i've seen before
5-min b/w point and click about navigating hell via an OS. very striking, heavily dithered photograph look, lovely use of sfx. nothing too scary, unless you really hate skull jpgs, but a great surreal atmosphere. feels a little dangerous, even though the game explicitly gives you 0 hp. recommended software to all who will be dying soon! (ending quote)
haha oh my god this guy really made a game in Google Sheets. 10/10. or 5/5, really, since you can see my 5 star review in Purgatory.
oh...too fast... an rpgmaker fantasy game about a world that's too fast and a curse that makes you slow. it's a joke game that's about 20 minutes long and a really funny use of the engine and format. (please be sure to save as soon as you can, because you'll die VERY quickly in the town itself, and the intro is unskippable.)
bitsy 3d game with markov chain dialogue. cool vibes and i liked poking around the world, but a little too obtuse for me to actually beat it.
match 3 broughlike. masterfully done, but... well, it's a combination of genres i am Very Bad At,
vague, fourth-wall-breaking, self-deprecating yuri vn (5k words) about carefully, repeatedly giving up your body parts to gain the (literal and metaphorical) heart of the beautiful archfey.
really pretty art and a great concept, but i didn't gel with it and thought it was childish and annoying. i think when you get TOO self-deprecating and 4th-wall-y it feels like there's no confidence in the work; that you have to distance yourself and the audience from it so they don't get attached or take it seriously.
the author said they didn't want to work with editors, because 'i dunno, if something is wrong - I'd prefer to let it be so, if something can be misinterpreted -' and because they're a 'lazy developer' - i don't know, it's bad vibes, it feels like a let down to play a game with such pretty art and SUCH a concept only to feel that the creator doesn't care enough about it to commit, to metaphorically cross the finish line on it.
but maybe that's on me, bringing too high expectations to it? is it wrong of me to want a one-man, personal game to feel cared about?...
some of it is so carefully crafted, though, and it's not a jam game or a sketch or a beginner's work... i don't think mine is an unreasonable response...? the game even ironically asks for feedback at points, and pretends to offer a google form... i don't know if it's deliberately playing with these expectations or not. and if yes, for what reason it's doing so.
clicker about online privacy. i love a good clicker and i love being a lab rat
just imagine the character! really really loved this. it got me real bad when i 'got through' one room and then it immediately blocked that route off the next, i laughed a lot
a collection of 12 'games' intended to provoke thought by breaking down and playing with specific elements of what we think videogames need, like interactivity or feedback, and the role of imagination. Re: Imagine the character is an extension of one of the games in this collection. a great crash course in the games as art movement - there's a txt file with detailed commentary on the intent of each one, which i really appreciate!
i personally felt like ive played enough weird shit and read enough theory that it wasn't particularly worldshattering for me, though, but it was nice to see these high-level concepts so thoroughly explored.
i had detailed thoughts on how i related each game to existing, non-Artgame games, but i can't be bothered to link them anymore.