Dream Chronicles (4):The Book of Air Collector's Edition

*Dive into the magic world with Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air game. Step into the shoes of Lyra, a child born to a fairy and a mortal. The adventure begins when Lyra gets in another dimension similar to her own. And only the Clockmaker can help the little fairy find her way home. Travel through the magic kingdom of dreams with the help of Lyra father’s flying device in search for the Clockmaker’s traces and help Lyra come back home!

*Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air is the first chapter in a new trilogy about the fairy’s adventures. The game mixes hidden object and puzzle genres and features a catching story with cute characters, 30 unique scenes and 14 eye-catching locations to explore.

*Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air game offers dozens of tricky puzzles to solve, loads of cleverly hidden objects to find and Casual and Challenging game modes to choose from. Download the game and enjoy polished graphics, nice audios and the charming atmosphere of the Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air!

~14 stunning locations to explore
~30 different scenes to enjoy
~Casual and Challenging game modes to play
~Thrilling story to follow
~Immersive atmosphere

Dream Chronicles (4):The Book of Air Collector's Edition | 148 Mb
DOWNLOAD HERE

PlayEnglish

Play English Travel, holidays, airport, cultural exchanges summer ... You can not afford to skate with English!

At last summer, will you go on vacation and of course, arrive at the airport in a country more or less exotic, you will find the first little problem: no idea what he says the man in the office. Now is when you remember the coal that gave you the English teacher and I regret not having paid more attention in class, besides not having made an effort to understand Gerard Angelina Jolie or Butler in the original version and other dispersal aspects of their performances.

Lia rte desire to open a boring grammar book "zero ranker" safe. And come to grips with one of those manuals quick phrases out of trouble ... Puff, will be why not! Fortunately, your lovely PSP has resources for everything and for a couple of days and you can test your English with virtually PlayEnglish.

Ever wanted to be James Bond? Well, because in PlayEnglish not going to be nowhere near! Yes, get ready for an adventure game fun, entertaining and going "to itch" to which you know all what you say in English if you want to catch Sinclair, an elusive thief who has been hit this summer in British Gallery. A masterstroke designed by the Spanish study Tonika Games Development and endorsed by the prestigious learning system Vaughan Systems.

Go! Are you going to miss the adventure of the summer? If I were you and was acquiring PlayEnglish. By the way, if you do it before the end of July, you get the gift of a ticket *, return to London for free. No draws! To repeat, completely "free" would say James Blond, our brand new PlayEnglish protagonist.

To learn more about PlayEnglish, I invite you in on the intricate mysteries of our website. By the way: any resemblance with Blond Bond is pure aural:)!

Name: PlayEnglish.iso
Size: 472 Mb

Download

Coldest, LinWarrior, Metallblech - Mech Combat Action Games

I stumbled upon an older release of Coldest while making space on my HDD for game video recording, Metallblech popped out of nowhere recently on our forums with awesome art and I still haven't tried Linwarrior's latest release. Time for a mech games post!

Mechs are big robots and they make sounds like this and you can have great fun assembling them and then blowing stuff up!

Metallblech

Mashup of Metallblech's art

Planned as a game for Syntensity, there are many models ready for usage in Metallblech, but (IIRC) not one line of code has been written yet and the project is desperate for programmers. ;)

Coldest

Coldest: mech stomping, super weather, lasers overheating

Coldest actually allows you to assemble the weapon systems of your mech. That's quite an important part for this genre: first, carefully assemble your mech, then brutally disassemble enemy mechs! A readme would be quite a good addition.

The command `svn co https://www.nemebean.com/svn/coldest/` will allow you to pull the latest code [EDIT: and for more instructions check out this wiki page.]

Coldest code is under GPL, art is under who knows what. (Actually I do know that both textures and sounds wouldn't qualify as free-as-in-freedom free. :) )

Coldest's mech configuration menu

Coldest solo test [tinyogg]

LinWarrior 3D

Unfair 4 vs 1 at level start? Check!

Since the last time Free Gamer reported about LinWarrior, the 2010_03_20 "Hadron Collider" version was released (download here). Besides the fact that textures and models have been licensed under "good" CC licenses, code tweaks and visual fixes, the MD5Mesh format is now supported.

Mouse control is definitely the one thing I would like to see implemented ASAP.

Say hi to these rockets!

LinWarrior gameplay [tinyogg]

For some reason any video I recorded of LW3D would not show the dirty and brown ground texture, I'm sorry for the distorted view on the game caused by this!

Conclusion

I like mech games alot!

alot!

What do you people think of this genre? Do you prefer tactical, turn-based over action 3D mech games? What's the one thing you want to be able to do in following versions of the games I introduced here? (I want to be able to shoot off legs!)

HE'S ALIVE

*Qubodup's eyes shift left and right*

Qubodup mutters, "I smell death."

*Charlie jumps out from behind a tree*

"No! It's me!"

Or maybe Q meant death by a thousand of Charlie's bad jokes? I got jokes, man.

Ok, ok... games stuff. Enough inane joke stuff. Games...

FreeOrion 0.3.14 came out with a fairly mega changelog. A preview of the 3d space combat is in there, as well as lots of fixing and balancing and content enhancing. It's becoming a very deep game and once the 3d combat is done it'll be one of the stand out open source games you can play, and only getting better. Hats off to the developers for their dedication to realising their dreams, it's been a long haul. Here be a video:

FreeCol 0.9.3 just came out. Fixes ahoy! Good game, that, although I still don't understand how to play it. One day I'll swallow my pride and ask how the hell you assign hammers and build things.

Danger from the Deep 0.4 preview release for those who are a bit brave. It might torpedo your computer, yuk yuk yuk =). It's got great graphics, although is more of a simulation than a game - but that's a good thing in my book. Part of the fun in a submarine game is in the challenges that befell those unfortunate enough to end up in a watery grave. Ah, video ahoy:

XreaL. It's not dead. Actually there's a video in that link that will blow your mind, it looks so good. You won't be able to see the forest for the trees (that'll make sense if you see it). No youtube though here's a [rather dark] video showing off a few XreaL levels:

Looks like YAOSCSC (Yet Another Open Source Counter Strike Clone) is underway although this one is probably more likely to succeed than some of the other rather limp efforts. This one is called Code 43: Urban Warfare and it uses XreaL. It is formed by the people associated with the ET Mod True Combat: Elite which could never really be open source.

And now for something completely different. And I'm not talking about breaking English grammar rules by starting sentences with 'and'...

Runesword II is a 2D RPG made in 2001 and now open source. They released version 2.6 recently, which can be downloaded from Sourceforge. Bizarrely the 2.6 release announcement never seems to have been made outside of the forums. Sadly it is made in VB *ew* and can be run on Linux via Wine. Still, it looks like a fairly involved RPG game.

I eagerly anticpate Egoboo 2.8.0, which has been a year in the making. They got a new website.

Which reminds me. Nothing to do with it, but I haven't yet tried UFO:AI 2.3...

Gwen the Magic Nanny

You help Gwen as she takes care of seven families in their fantasy homes, looking after babies, teens, seniors and pets, each with their own wants and needs.
Luckily, Gwen has some tricks up her sleeve - literally! You can use the 10 magical spells at her command to make things a little bit easier, such as entertaining the babies with magic bubbles, making the dishes wash themselves, or stopping time for a quick breather. You'll also unlock special items to help Gwen with her workload.

Gwen the Magic Nanny | 146 Mb
DOWNLOAD HERE

The Clumsys 2: Butterfly Effect

Grandpa Clumsy is in trouble again. This time after bringing a butterfly back to the present, he has inadvertently changed history in a drastic way.
One change a million years ago can do a lot of damage to everything that follows. Help Helen correct dozens of mankind's greatest inventions that would never have been if it wasn't for a butterfly flapping its wings.

*Build 30 of the world's greatest inventions
*Broken hidden object gameplay
*5 invention minigames



The Clumsys 2: Butterfly Effect | 160 Mb
DOWNLOAD HERE

DigitalMan Open Source Game Competition

Squamulus in the forums has pointed us to the DigitalMan Open Source Game Competition, a competition for complete-ish open source games, wherein the winners get ported to their new all-encompassing content delivery/creation system WorldKi



Nominations started a week or so ago and so far they have 41 open source games nominated, which is quite a decent list in my opinion, you can view the full list here. Unfortunately, nominations close today (12pm CST) so this post might be a bit late if you want to nominate your own games..



Voting begins as soon as nominations close, so check back at their page if you want to be heard.



My thoughts on the competition:



It's definitely interesting to see another entry into the sparsely populated Open Source( Gluon[alpha], OpenCDS[dead], and to a lesser degree DJL[also dead]) /densely populated Proprietary (Steam, Desura, Impulse etc etc) game content delivery arena.



There's not a whole lot of info on WorldKi, it seems a very ambitious project that combines game distribution with game development, with monetization all along the way (eg. Middleware devs can sell their libraries, Artists their art, and finally devs their games). If FOSS game devs can pay the bills from foss games alone, we might see some real growth..



As for handing out porting as a prize? I'm not totally sure if that's the way to go about doing things, especially if no one has heard of the platform before. Mentioning the possible monetization through the platform might have made it a bit more appealing, but then again, such things also cause dispute.



OpenGameArt Weekly Competition




On another note, the OpenGameArt Friday Challenge got renamed to "Weekly Challenge" and still starts on Fridays but ends after ten days (Mondays) so on during the weekend there are two topics to contribute to. :) The challenge art submission count is now at 77 (17 new + 60 old).



The current theme is Public Treasure Hunt and involves scouting the web for public domain game resources and is due June 28th.

Virtual Villagers 4 - The Tree of Life (Developer's Edition)

Continue the story of the mysterious island of Isola, and the tribe of lost refugees in Virtual Villagers 4 - The Tree of Life. The island's chief is worried that life is slowly diminishing on the island and has selected a tribe of explorers to find the source of Isola's troubles. They discover, and inevitably populate, the hidden eastern shore of the island. Watch over a new group of villagers as they explore the eastern shore of the island, uncover fantastic mysteries, unravel the story of Isola, and save the Tree of Life!

Features:
The latest chapter in the Virtual Villagers saga!
Visit the oldest and most hidden part of the mysterious Island of Isola.
A new select-screen lets you start with a custom tribe. Try starting with only children, or instead with a tribe full of nursing mothers!
New updated user-interface, and our most detailed, vivid map yet full of exciting new puzzles.
Dozens of achievements for players to accomplish.
New puzzles, new collectibles, new Island Events!
Real- Time Weather! Clouds, fog and sudden down pours
Real-Time Gameplay: new surprises every time you turn the game on!
*includes strategy guide!

Virtual Villagers 4 - The Tree of Life (Developer's Edition)| 67 Mb
DOWNLOAD HERE
STRATEGY GUIDE DOWNLOAD HERE

Cake Mania 5 Lights, Camera, Action

Return to Jill Evans'™ hometown of Bakersfield in Sandlot Games’ Cake Mania: Lights, Camera, Action!™, the highly anticipated fifth chapter in one of the most popular time management series of all-time! Download Game and Play for Free!
Now an attractive and quaint tourist destination bustling with new stores, Bakersfield has caught the eye of Hollywood producers scouting locations to film their next big action blockbuster. As production gets underway, Bakersfield is overrun with all-new eccentric personalities determined to mix and mingle with the locals.

Cake Mania 5 Lights, Camera, Action | 63 Mb
DOWNLOAD HERE

Cryptex of Time

Cryptex of Time is a new innovative Match 3 game that takes the player to a beautiful 3D environment. Rotate the wheels of the Cryptex to create matches and solve mind-bending puzzles. There are plenty of special symbols and gems to create variety and help you out of tricky situations. Travel through the world maps to find new challenges and treasures.

Several play modes to try.
Unlock new challenges.
Unique game play.

Cryptex of Time | 22 Mb
DOWNLOAD HERE

Mystic Diary: Lost Brother

In Mystic Diary: In Search of Brother, you take on the role of a Victorian-era magician on a noble quest to find his lost brother. Travel throughout the world using the magical pages of the Mystic Diary to unlock the mystery behind his sudden disappearance. Find hidden objects and solve fun mini puzzles in this one-of-a-kind Adventure game. Save your brother and become a master of the Mystic Diary!

Mystic Diary: Lost Brother | 104 Mb
DOWNLOAD HERE

Ancient Wonderland

In the Ancient time of China, there are many ways for humans to become gods. But the main way is to study alchemy. People believe that after constant effort they could make ELIXIR OF LIFE (a powerful pearl that
helps human to become gods). Many people worked hard to study this mysterious subject. Ancient Wonderland is an easy to play block elimination game with wonderful graphics and sound, through the game you would have a journey from the world to Hall of Miraculous Mist. If you want to learn more about alchemist of China and be considered a god, this game is for you.

Key Game Features
Story of Myth eastern.
2 hidden modes, different gameplay.
Various kinds of special block.
5 amazing scenes.
100+ levels of 3 modes.
linkage of items, wonderful graphics.
Great mini-game puzzles.

Ancient Wonderland | 21 Mb
DOWNLOAD HERE

BOFH: Servers Under Siege

BOFH title screen: NINJAS AND PIr.. SERVERS! (and whips and guns)

BOFH is a top-down shooter that takes place in a school. You're a mean administrator and have to shoot bad guys, take their weapons and disarm bombs attached to server stacks by finding notes that tell you in what order to cut the wires!

Now this might sound overly simple, but the enemy AI make the mindless shooting interesting enough by reacting to gunshots sounds and having non-naive movement patterns. I haven't progressed too far in the game so far, so I can only say that there is a new enemy type on a higher building floor, maybe there's even more, probably at least a boss battle.

Music and sounds are just excellent, although I sometimes wish there was more than one in-game track.

The game was originally (.exe here) made for c64 and then ported to PC. I tested neuromancer's version which contains fixes and compiles with no problems on my Linux flavor of choice.

Forks (and suggestions) are welcome by the way, besides new maps and objects it might be nice to have alternative resolutions (via scaling) implemented and also having the flickering gray shadows fixed.

Sign of a good game: the plot is no more than one screen long!

Oh, and bazookas!!!

Besides the 'save the servers' scenario, there is a mini level in which you just have to clear a room of computers. Along with workstation computers, glass is also destructible (and their shards hurt the player and enemies).

BOFH gameplay [much better quality: .ogg | .mp4]

A level editor allows easy to learn level creation. If you come up with a cool new level, let us know via comment or forum thread! I'll do the same. Here is the complete editor documentation in one screen.

Basic BOFH level editing (track #1: Crystal Space [BY-SA] by maxstack)

If you like BOFH, Shotgun Debugger most likely will suit your taste as well! And remember... It's always the blue wire first!

Well, maybe not

Smash Frenzy 4 Delux

First, aliens entered our dimension and kidnapped thousands of men and women. Then, in a whirlwind of ingenuity, the brightest minds on Earth came together and created a secret weapon that could return any object it touches to its home planet. Finally, they chose you to rescue the abducted. So strap into your starship, transport the weapon across space and launch it at the objects placed before you! If your aim is good, then you ll return a hero. Powerups will emerge from smashed items, interactive objects will keep you on your toes and explosive 3D visuals will amaze you right up to the end. Don t miss Smash Frenzy 4, the greatest Arkanoid adventure ever created!

Game Features

* Four fantastical worlds
* Destructible 3D scenery.
* Realistic physics
* Each level has its own storyline

Smash Frenzy 4 Delux | 49 Mb
DOWNLOAD HERE

King's Legacy

The fair king died of old age. His people, all over the kingdom, cried and grieved. But finally they wiped the tears from their faces knowing that king’s son; a young price would replace him on the throne. But, suddenly, from a shadow, raised king’s evil brother! He awaited his chance to claim the throne for a long time. A panic and fear spread among the people! But then, a young price stands up! No one will harm his people, no one will bring misery and pain to his people. He will’ protect them by any means necessary, even if this would mean to fight his own uncle!

Features:
* explore, gather items and learn magic
* build your cities and castles
* fight against evil knights, ghosts, storms and more
* win many different achievements and claim the throne
* enjoy the spectacular 3D graphics and effects in high resolutions
* detailed in-game interactive help



King's Legacy | 101 Mb
DOWNLOAD HERE

Ufo:AI and A3P updates

A long awaited update of one of the flagship FOSS games has just been released: UFO:AI! UFO:AI (for those not in the loop) is a turn based strategy game very similar to the classic X-COM.

The improvements of the new version are multi fold; Besides big improvements to the render engine, game-play was also overhauled, but head over to their full change log to get the full picture.

Speaking of pictures, here a nice one showing the new glow effects on the world map:

(Maybe qudobup will be so nice and make a video of it too *hint*)

A3P 1.0

A3P (we mentioned it before) was also updated to its first non beta release today. You can check it out directly in your browser (a feature of the Panda3D engine used) or download it as a normal version (currently Windows only).

A3P Gameplay

Rachel's Retreat

Rachel has had one failed spa experience after another...so when she spots the opportunity to start a dream retreat of her own, nothing can stop her! Help Rachel's
Retreat to flourish and grow by attending to your clients' every need. With an unimaginable array of beauty, energy and relaxation stations, it's up to you to creatively accommodate clients, and perhaps even change their minds. A host of employees and a mysterious guru named Sven Gali will be at your side to help, but will you know who to trust?

Set in a tropical paradise, this innovative mix of time management and building game will pamper you in a hypnotically soothing atmosphere. Luxuriate in the beautiful visuals and warm music while you help your clients reach Nirvana!

Rachel's Retreat | 97 Mb
DOWNLOAD HERE

Miss Management

Manage a team of zany coworkers as you step into the shoes of Denise, a first-time office manager. Play through 30 episodes of comedic hijinx,
with different goals to achieve each time! You'll encounter 11 different employees, each with their own personality quirks, skills, likes and dislikes. Watch relationships, rivalries and romance unfold across more than 40 animated sitcom-style scenes! It's time to get the job done without total burnout...office politics were never as hilarious as this!

System Requirements:
* OS: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Me
* Memory: 256 MB
* DirectX: 7.0 or later
* CPU: P3 800
* Video: 3D Video Card



Miss Management | 24 Mb
DOWNLOAD HERE

Audiosurf : Ride Your Music

A racer where you use your own music to determine what type of racer you have. Each song will give you a different shape, speed, and mood of each ride.
Audiosurf allows you to experience the intensity and emotion of your songs in real time, in full color, and in 3D. Songs that give you an adrenaline rush are converted into wild roller coaster rides full of color and motion. Songs that calm you down appear as cool colors against a relaxing sky. Audiosurf enhances the experience of your music collection by synchronizing its environment to the events in your songs--the beats, the intense sections, the long pauses followed by a burst of sound, all take on a more vivid meaning.

In Audiosurf, you race down a futuristic and colorful highway. The highway, the traffic patterns, and the scenery are all synchronized to the music you have chosen from your own collection. You earn points for clustering together cars of the same color on the highway, and can compete with others on the internet for the high score on your favorite songs. Audiosurf builds a highway for any music CD, MP3, iTunes M4A, WMA, or OGG song you choose, so the experience that you have is totally up to you.

Inside every song you own there's an immersive experience waiting to come to life through Audiosurf---ride your music

System Requirements:

Intel Pentium 4 1.6 GHz processor
512 MB RAM
DirectX 9.0 or higher
Windows XP/Vista
DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card
32 MB DirectX 9.0 compatible Graphics card (support for Pixel Shader 3.0 recommended)

Audiosurf : Ride Your Music | 64 Mb
DOWNLOAD HERE

Date Warp

Five days ago, Janet left her dorm to go on a date. She never returned. Was she kidnapped? Murdered? Did she run away? Will she ever be seen again? The choices you make can change her fate and help her find romance or destruction in one of eleven surprising endings!

Date Warp | 63 Mb
DOWNLOAD HERE

Superior Save

You work for Richman Corporation, your boss kidnapped after celebrating a contract.
Help Amanda to find out what happened her boss!

It's just another day at the office until you get a voice mail from your boss saying he's been kidnapped and needs your help! The only problem is, the police won't start looking for him until you produce evidence that shows he's actually missing. This leaves you with one option: roll up your sleeves and save your superior! In the tradition of Natalie Brooks, you'll comb graphically rich scenes for hidden clues, follow the trail to your boss by talking with witnesses to the crime and win mini-games that will get you one step closer to success. Saving your boss' life wasn't in your job description, but what's a working girl to do?

Find hidden objects and solve puzzles in this new hidden object game from Elefun and Alawar games!

Superior Save | 71 Mb
DOWNLOAD HERE

Nightfall Mysteries: Curse of the Opera

Take on the role of a lowly stagehand in an opera company tasked with solving a deadly mystery! The Opera troupe is invited by the reclusive Count Vladd Vansig III to his small hamlet to perform a special Opera for him.
Strangely, there are no villagers to speak of except for the Count and his caretaker. Over the course of the night, people go missing and are killed! Use your Hidden Object skills to find out the identity of the killer and escape the village alive in Nightfall Mysteries – Curse of the Opera!

Spooky atmosphere
Dangerous mystery
Solve the case!

Nightfall Mysteries: Curse of the Opera | 183 Mb
DOWNLOAD HERE
Strategy Guide:DOWNLOAD HERE

Summering Wars and Mac OSX

Recently modeled & textured SumWars character by Evil_E

While the sun warms my body, Summoning Wars' development activity warms my fossy heart: icons are being created by hal9000, sounds are being mixed by artisticdude, music is being composed by West. And of course the 3D model, see the image on top of this post.

A new release (0.5.1) has been recently uploaded and the next release is being discussed.

One quite important planned feature is an OSX port, as there are at least two (if I recall correctly) who use that operating system to produce art for the game. CMake is used for compiling on Linux, so I suspect that porting might be in fact trivial. If you can help with the task, please report to their forums/irc! :)