Showing posts sorted by date for query download day. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query download day. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Sunday, August 25, 2013

PC Gaming for Free - PC Gamer

PC GAMING FOR FREE

Free games! Free softwarel! More playing and less paying!
 
Tight budget? No problem. No other gaming platform on Earth offers you the virtually inexhaustible cornucopia of free stuff that PC gaming does. So if you’re feeling light in the wallet or just girding up for the holidays, give yourself some time to check out what you can get without dropping a cent. We’ll start with 50 amazing, totally free games where you’ll find everything from 20-minute diversions to weekend-consuming, endlessly-expanded strategy epics—and no shareware or microtrans-action-supported free-to-play funny business. Then we’ll show you where to find free software to make your own games or throttle up your gaming rig, and we’ll even let you in on a few secrets to keeping your gaming budget under control. Because fun doesn’t need to cost a ton.
MOONBASE ALPHA Download
Staying alive on the moon is a logistical nightmare, as Moonbase Alpha’s publisher, NASA, knows only too well. As an astronaut founding the first lunar structure, you and up to five friends must deal with the aftermath of a meteor strike that’s knocked out millions of dollars worth of sensitive space equipment. A perfectly good reason to ride around in a fancy lunar bus, build your own repair robots and utilize the low gravity to perform huge, slow-motion chest bumps when things go right. You’re timed, and awarded points based on the efficiency of your repairs, so good teamwork is essential if you’re after good leaderboard standing.
• Developer NASA • Link www.bit.ly/mbaseg
ENDING Netbook Browser Download Difficult
You move a single icon in on an grid, solving tile-based combat challenges to progress to the next stage. What makes Ending stand out from innumerable other puzzle games is its randomly-generated roguelike mode, where you explore a dungeon that works on the same principle.
• Dev RobotAcid • Link www.bit.ly/14NfIAz
THE REPUBLIA TIMES Netbook Browser
You’re the editor of a newspaper in a totalitarian state. Each day you must choose which stories to run and how much space to give them, impacting your paper’s popularity and the government’s approval with the general populace. Smart, cynical, and there’s a great twist near the end.
• Dev Dukope • Link www.dukope.com
UNREAL WORLD Netbook Download
Roguelikes are traditionally about delving into mysterious dungeons in search of treasure. You can play UnReal World that way, or you can play it as a realistic hermit-simulator. It’s set in ancient Finland, so you’re as likely to die of cold and starvation as from attacking enemies. So fish, hunt, and practice your hide-working, and hope you can survive the long winter.
• Dev Enormous Elk • Link www.unrealworld.fi
SPACE FUNERAL Netbook Download Mature
You can learn a lot about this game from its opening menu, which takes the obvious RPG Maker buttons—New, Load and Quit—and replaces them with the less comfortingly familiar “BLOOD,” “BLOOD,” and “BLOOD.” You play Phillip, a depressed boy, who, with the help of his trusty Leg Horse (a pile of severed limbs), cries his way through a thoroughly caustic and deliberately unpleasant JRPG pastiche.
• Dev The Catamites • Link www.bit.ly/spacefuneral
SPACE STATION 13 Netbook Download Mature
Everyone has a role to play in this anarchic multiplayer space-disaster sim. As the ship’s AI, or the captain, police officer or engineer, you’ll have to complete your duties to stop the station from falling into chaos, but you might just be given a traitor role and told to assassinate the captain, or spawn as an alien monster. Even before these antagonists are introduced, the requirement for mass cooperation between internet strangers creates an entertaining state of utter shambles. Expect to explode. A lot.
• Dev Exadv1/Something Awful • Link www.bit.ly/station13
REALISTIC SUMMER SPORTS SIM Netbook Download
Each of RSSS’s 15 minigames is a self-contained challenge of QWOP-like flailing (see pg. 35). You must click and drag on your athlete to score in the crude 2D representations of each sport. What do you click? Where do you drag? RSSS never tells you, leaving your experimentation to collide with its basic physics. People, horses, and scenery go flying, and every failure is ridiculous enough produce a giggle. Yet you’ll find that each event is a satisfyingly tricky test of precision and ultimately of patience.
• Dev Crackerblocks • Link www.bit.ly/rssports
MEAT BOY Netbook Browser
It lacks its paid-for older brother’s flashier features, but the original Meat Boy is a chunk of PC platforming history. The series’ fantastic controls—at once crisp and squishy, ping-ponging Meat Boy bloodily off the environment with each leap and slide—got their start here, and the first set of vertically-scrolling levels offer a stiff challenge. Very much worth upgrading to Super Meat Boy once you’re done.
• Dev Team Mic • Link www.bit.ly/pcgmeatboy
FLOW Netbook Browser Download
flOw’s minimalist appeal and dynamically adjusting difficulty curve has hooked hundreds of thousands. Use the mouse to guide a creature through an evolutionary mire, gobbling up smaller animals to grow, and hitting red blobs to swim deeper. When you eat, you evolve, but you can see large predators moving through the gloom on the levels below, waiting to swallow you whole. Serene yet addictive.
• Dev Jenova Chen • Link www.bit.ly/flowgame
KINGDOM OF LOATHING Netbook Browser
Scratch all the layers of polish and visual fluff away from your favorite RPG, and you’ll find Kingdom of Loathing underneath. You create a stick-man hero and spend daily adventuring points to raid sketched-out dungeons, kill strange monsters and level up. Your actions resolve instantly, so this is a game about making decisions rather than honing twitch skills. An irreverent sense of humor keeps the grind from getting boring. Be a Disco Bandit! Fight Sinister Fudge Wizards with your Disco Ball! It’s a winning formula.
• Dev Asymmetric Publications • Link www.bit.ly/11IycEl
QWOP Netbook Browser Difficult
QWOP is named after the keys you use to control it: QW to pump your sprinter’s thighs, OP to arc his calves. The experience is what I imagine it’s like to be an alien placed inside a robotic humansuit, pulling levers to maneuver the appendages. The result on screen is simultaneously tense and hilarious. One leg stretches out, the other hops pathetically, the runner’s balance starts to slowly topple, keys are hammered in an attempt to try to return upright, and then it’s over. Your score: 1.4 meters.
• Dev Bennett Foddy • Link www.foddy.net/Athletics.html
SLAVE OF GOD Download Mature
Increpare is better known for his puzzle games, but this neon, fuzzy, abstract club night hits you in different places by capturing the highs and lows of a night out. The dancefloor is full of spinning, elbowy forms; join them, and you might get drawn into the pull of another reveler, but you’ll only ever end up alone. Head to the club’s toilets, and you’ll start peeing on the floor before you even reach them.
• Dev Increpare • Link www.bit.ly/slaveofgod
COMPANION Netbook Browser
You’re a square floating in a black void, and there are three types of objects in the environment: stars, which stick to you; cuboid objects which do nothing, and jellyfish-like creatures which move toward you and electrocute you on contact. Then, very quickly, you meet another square like you, only smaller. It’s sleeping. You poke at it, and it wakes up—and hoots at you. Hello! He then follows you around, tooting curiously at the objects you find, and experimentally butting at them. Companion is a five-minute experiment—and a successful demonstration—of how to build a relationship between a player and an NPC.
• Dev Roburky • Link www.bit.ly/135b7Ke
ROBOT UNICORN ATTACK Netbook Browser
A stylishly camp auto-running game about a robot unicorn leaping across gaps and listening to the Erasure song “Always” on repeat. If that doesn’t make you want to play it, I definitely don’t wanna be with you/or make believe with you/or live in harmony, harmony, oh love.
• Dev Adult Swim Games • Link www.bit.ly/ruattack
FACADE Download Mature
This one-scene interactive play casts you as sole guest at the most awkward party imaginable. Your hosts, Grace and Trip, are on the verge of marital breakup and can’t help but use you to snipe at each other’s flaws. A wobbly but fascinating study of social awkwardness.
• Dev Procedural Arts • Link www.bit.ly/12IXnRT
DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY, BABE, IT JUST AIN’T YOUR STORY Download Mature Download Mature
A visual novel in which you play a high-school teacher in the year 2027. Given access to the private messages of your class’s social network, you become increasingly involved with their lives and relationships. It’s a thoughtful exploration of privacy, with a surprising conclusion.
• Dev Christine Love • Link www.bit.ly/aintyourstory
WARSOW Multiplayer Download
This cartoony FPS takes its cues from the old school. That means twitch combat and the opportunity to boast skill, speed and precision. It’s movement system steals from the best—Quake and Unreal Tournament—to create an online shooter that offers both deathmatch and race servers. Master the simple but versatile control scheme and you’ll be circle, strafe, wall and rocket-jumping your way past lasers, bullets and explosives. But don’t let the high skill ceiling put you off—Warsow is purely transitory arcade action. There’s no progression or tracking, and the bots and varied modes mean that you can just jump in, jump around and get fragging.
• Dev Chasseur De Bots • Link www.warsow.net
SLENDER: THE EIGHT PAGES Download Scary
Collect eight pages attached to stuff in some woods while something unpleasant in a suit stands around and looks at you. It doesn’t sound scary, but the internet’s own Slenderman is a powerfully creepy kind of eight-foot horror. Your biggest roadblock to collecting all the pages is your own fear.
• Dev Parsec Productions • Link www.bit.ly/11IF7NE
DESKTOP TOWER DEFENSE Netbook Browser
A maze-building game that turns a tiny patch of desk into a warzone. Increasingly powerful creeps swarm in from the left. Slow them with ice rays, blast them with missiles, and craft a long intestinal catacomb of death out of gun turrets to ensnare and destroy them.
• Dev Paul Preece • Link www.bit.ly/desktoptower
HIDE Netbook Download Scary
This indie horror game runs at a tiny resolution and is upscaled to provide a disorientating, monochrome experience. You hunt through a winter wilderness while being chased by mysterious, distant flashlights. Similar to Slender, Hide stands out througah its presentation and restraint. There’s no silly-looking monster to bump into—it’s all atmosphere and perseverance.
• Dev Andrew Shouldice • Link www.bit.ly/pcg-hide
HEXAGON Netbook Browser
Hexagon is essentially Super Hexagon’s Hexagon mode, in its entirety, for free. The premise is incredibly simple: you rotate an arrow around a circle and try to thread a path through a pulsing neon hexagonal maze. As an exercise in focus, reflexes and pattern recognition, it’s every other arcade game triple-distilled: a quick, high-yield dose of flashing lights, pounding music, and inevitable crushing failure.
• Dev Terry Cavanagh • Link www.bit.ly/pcg239-6
RED ROGUE Browser Download Mature
This side-scrolling action rogue-like posits that anyone who delves into a dungeon full of monsters is more than a little unhinged. Red Rogue’s heroine feels like the most monstrous thing in the game’s randomly generated levels. It’s the way she and her minion calmly despatch imps: blood spurting across the otherwise monochrome rooms. That feeling can easily slip into overconfidence. Whether it’s forgetting to scan for traps or making a poor deal with a chaos god, careless decisions are quickly punished.
• Dev Aaron Steed & Nathan Gallardo • Link www.redrogue.net
SAMOROST Browser
Samorost and its sequel are adventure games as Moomin creator Tove Jansson might have made them. Its patchwork art is made out of photographs of logs, plants, old cans; its white, hand-animated main character speaks in whoops and illustrations; and it all takes place on asteroids in space. With no inventory, it’s your job to solve puzzles by poking and prodding this world to reveal charming animations. Its creator went on to make the paid-for point-and-click Machinarium.
• Dev Amanita Design • Link www.bit.ly/1dqU4Uy
IMSCARED
An inventive horror game that takes over a folder in your hard drive. Every time you boot it up it will place you somewhere new, and somewhere scarier. It only takes half an hour to complete, and the standout moment is a puzzle sequence that remixes the basic item-collecting of Slender and accelerates it over a couple of frantic minutes spent being chased around in circles in an underground carpark.
• Dev Ivan Zanotti • Link www.bit.ly/imscared
GIRP Netbook Browser
It’s just as easy to fail at as QWOP, but GIRP is gentler somehow. You climb a rockface (and avoid falling into the sea) by holding down various keys on your keyboard to indicate where to place your climber’s flailing hands. Let go, and he lets go, turning the game into a kind of small-scale Twister—or full-scale Twister, if you’re lucky enough to get to play it on a set of modded dance mats.
• Dev Bennett Foddy • Link www.bit.ly/GiRP
DIASPORA: SHATTERED ARMISTICE Download
A standalone FreeSpace 2 mod set in the Battlestar Galactica universe, Diaspora dispenses with heavy-handed real-world allegory in favor of recreating the show’s most iconic and exciting space dogfights. Good choice, modders! As a hotheaded Viper pilot, you battle toasters, pull 180 spins, and “come in hot.” The presentation is fantastic, and the voice acting solid, but it’s the scale of battles that sells the experience. Your first encounter with a Cylon Baseship feels as overwhelming and dangerous as the show suggests it should.
• Dev Diaspora Dev Team • Link www.diaspora.hard-light.net
ONE CHANCE Netbook Browser Mature
This browser game uses cookies to prevent you from ever replaying it: you have literally one chance to see this brief point-and-click adventure through to the end. It’s set in a future where all life on Earth will be extinguished in six days: what you choose to do, who you choose to spend time with, and whether you accept your fate or try to fight it are the questions you’re asked to answer. What could be a cheap gimmick is actually very effective: it’s rare that a game asks you to really live with your decisions.
• Dev Awkward Silence Games • Link www.bit.ly/1chancegame
TORIBASH Multiplayer Download Mature
This turn-based, physics-driven fighting game arrived at the PC Gamer compound in 2006. We would crowd around a single PC to watch each other flail, directing limbs individually in a hopeless attempt to connect a punch. Search YouTube today and you’ll find slickly edited montages of players performing the most absurd tricks, but it’s no less fun to fumble and feel your way towards some gory end.
• Dev Toribash Team • Link www.toribash.com
SCP CONTAINMENT BREACH Download Scary
Seen in the cold light of day, your main antagonist—a bulbous white Tellytubby of a thing—couldn’t frighten even an unusually high-strung child. But put it in an endless succession of gloomy, crepuscular rooms and its Tinky-Winky arms suddenly look like they could snap your neck in a second. Containment Breach’s power is doubled by drawing on the SCP mythos: a set of invented internet stories (or are they?) about horrors and monsters locked up by a shadowy organization. The terror-Tellytubby is SCP-173, and later versions of the game have added even more monsters.
• Dev SCP CB Team • Link www.scpcbgame.com
SUPER CRATE BOX Netbook Download
A single screen of platforms, with a steady stream of monsters pouring in at the top. A crate appears. Grab the weapon inside. Collect as many crates as possible to reach high scores, but each crate gives you a new weapon, and each weapon forces you to adapt your tactics.
• Dev Vlambeer • Link www.supercratebox.com
BROGUE Netbook Download Difficult
It simplifies roguelike controls by using the mouse, but it’s the monkeys that make us love it. Free them from their goblin captors, and the little thieves become your friends, following you on your adventure until you drink the wrong potion and teleport yourself over a cliff.
• Dev Brian Walker • Link www.bit.ly/brogue-game
OPENTTD Netbook Download
Transport Tycoon Deluxe is a classic of the management genre, created by Chris Sawyer before he discovered roller-coasters. This open-source recreation was built by and for those who would rather vomit over an improperly balanced spreadsheet than a stick of cotton candy. One of the best, and most frequently updated, indie strategy games ever made.
• Dev OpenTTD • Link www.openttd.org
NITRONIC RUSH Download
Initially a university project by students at the DigiPen Institute of Technology game development school in Seattle, Nitronic Rush is an arcade racing game inspired by Tron, WipeOut, and F-Zero. You drive a transforming virtual future-car in a twisting neon city, and a series of jet engines mounted around the chassis enable you to twist, airbreak, spin and even fly, limited only by your vehicle’s heat level. The game’s fantastic presentation enables it to compete with the best arcade racers on the PC, and Team Nitronic is clearly having more fun with the format than most of its peers. A Kick-started successor, Distance, is due later in the year.
• Dev Team Nitronic • Link www.nitronic-rush.com
ALIEN SWARM Scary Download
Valve’s four-player arena game has a deep understanding of the kind of cooperative interaction that makes you love, hate, love, and then really hate your friends in the space of a 20-minute mission. It’s chest-burstingly full of opportunities for both heroism and public failure.
• Developer Valve • Link www.bit.ly/swarmgame
DIGITAL: A LOVE STORY Netbook Download Mature
Part visual novel, part investigative adventure, Digital returns you to the world of the late ’80s internet. You dial up BBSes, message their users and hunt through their forums. All to understand the mysterious disappearance of a girl who sent you poetry.
• Dev Christine Love • Link www.bit.ly/15nobck
ZANGBANDTK Netbook Download Difficult
Released in 1990, Angband was a traditional roguelike—ASCII graphics, perma-death, fantasy setting. It begat Zangband, based on Roger Zelazny’s The Chronicles of Amber series, and which in turn begat ZangbandTK, which added a graphical interface, sound effects, and other things to make the game playable by human minds. A great starting point.
• Dev Tim Baker • Link www.zangband.org
TRACKMANIA NATIONS FOREVER Multiplayer Download
Your first time around any of the user-created tracks is a minutes-long exercise in failure: you’ll round the first corner and fall down a pit you had no way of seeing. Instant restarts are a salve for frustration, and it’s not long before you know when to hit the accelerator hard, when to prepare for a jump, and when to bank hard left when sailing through the air. After that, it’s all about becoming the fastest in the world.
• Dev Nadeo • Link www.trackmaniaforever.com
ZINETH Download
A high-speed skating game that’s somehow more stylistic and exaggerated than Jet Set Radio. There are missions to complete, secrets to uncover and a bizarre Twitter obsession to ponder. But all are distractions next to the effortlessly cool feeling of building momentum through the weird cel-shaded city. You can grind, slide and wall-ride your way to improbable speeds, using the ever increasing velocity to launch yourself towards the game’s ultimate goal—skating to the moon.
• Dev ArcaneKids • Link www.bit.ly/zinethgame
BATTLE FOR WESNOTH Netbook Download
This is a massive fantasy turn-based strategy game developed, run, and continually expanded by a dedicated community. Battle for Wesnoth is a particularly fine game for your netbook, because there are so many campaigns that you’ll basically never run out of things to do, and the turn-based pace is perfect for short sessions or gaming in places where you can’t use a mouse. Extensive guides for creating your own races, campaigns and maps make it easy to shift from player to developer, too.
• Dev Battle for Wesnoth • Link www.wesnoth.org
FREECIV Netbook Browser Download
It’s Civ alright, but it’s free. Oh, if only the developers had thought of a way to express that in a name. We’ll just have to make do with a version of the classic turn-based strategy game that we can play in our browsers thanks to the sorcery of HTML 5. There’s an installable version, too, and although FreeCiv doesn’t have the glitz or polish of Civ III and onwards, it’s still tapped into that voodoo current of compulsion.
• Dev FreeCiv Community • Link www.bit.ly/16DE1zd
BARKLEY SHUT UP AND JAM: GAIDEN Netbook Download
The best freeware JRPG about ex-NBA basketballer Charles Barkley and his flight from an evil Michael Jordan in Neo New York after he performed an illegal chaos dunk that caused the post-Cyberpocalypse. The combat is acceptable, but it’s the freewheeling funnies that’ll keep you playing. The creators had a shared love of making fun of indie games ultra-reverential to SNES-era JRPGs, and made their own game—but instead of filling it with earnest heroes and bad bishonen, they used sewer-dwelling poet furries, the giant floating head of ghost Bill Cosby, and a monster made entirely of sugar.
• Dev Tales of Games • Link www.talesofgames.com
CANABALT Netbook Browser
The game that invented the endless runner, and also the game that proved that it is impossible to jump through a window if you are actually trying to do it. Canabalt’s still a blast today for its atmospheric, low-key sci-fi visuals and Danny Baranowsky’s amazing soundtrack. Those freaking windows, man.
• Dev Adam Atomic • Link www.bit.ly/16Dolf6
STEALTH BASTARD Download
It’s a stealth game: there are traps to avoid, patrols to evade, shadows to cling to and terminals to hack. But Stealth Bastard: Tactical Espionage (we’ve clipped out the last word of the title which is a bit, uh, colorful) repurposes these genre staples to neatly fit into a 2D puzzle platformer. Time spent waiting is kept to a minimum. Instead, you’re encouraged to sneak, leap and clamber through the darkness, activating switches and buttons to progress through the intricately moving levels. The expanded, money-costing Deluxe version has overtaken the majority of the game’s website, but you can still access the original through a tiny link on the page.
• Dev Curve Studios • Link www.stealthbastard.com
CAVE STORY Netbook Download
The sheer size still impresses. It’s a vast, shooty platformer in the Metroid vein, and stands out for having been developed in one Japanese man’s spare time over five years. Paid-for versions have had their graphics retooled, but the original, free version is just as tight and rewarding.
• Dev Doukutsu Monogatari • Link www.bit.ly/12CJrYX
NEPTUNE’S PRIDE Netbook Multiplayer Browser
Or, How To End A Friendship In One Easy Strategy Game. The action is simple: move ships to conquer planets, then build an economy on those planets. The glacial pace ensures that as you set nefarious plans in motion against your best friend, they have hours to marvel at your cruelty.
• Dev Iron Helmet • Link www.bit.ly/neptunep
MARATHON Netbook Download
The Aleph One engine is an open source version of Bungie’s Marathon 2 engine. Not only can you download and play natively-supported classics Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon Infinity, the original Marathon has been ported to the engine in a fan-made conversion. If you missed Bungie’s watershed series, it’s never too late.
• Dev Metanet Software • Link www.bit.ly/17fdpXq
DWARF FORTRESS Netbook Download Difficult
Climbing DF’s mountain of menu madness means a weekend of reading guides and scratching your head, but once you’ve scaled its ASCII peaks, the world’s most complex simulation game stretches out in front of you towards the horizon of PC gaming. After 10 years of development, the game generates religions, political histories, entire societies, and then challenges you to build and manage a thriving underground city, starting with seven depressed, alcoholic dwarves and a few supplies. You’re as likely to starve to death as you are to be trampled by wild elephants, but you’ll have fun dying.
• Dev Bay 12 Games • Link www.bit.ly/10VSmYQ
MASQ Netbook Download
When you complete a playthrough, you get half a dozen images showing other scenes you might have missed. In the 15 minutes it took you to reach an ending, you attempted to keep your fashion design company solvent, solve your best friend’s murder, and resolve some tension with your wife. You probably failed at all of those. But then, in among those frames at the end, is a shot of you tossing a frisbee for a young kid on a beach. A kid? You didn’t even meet a kid. Why are you playing with him, and how do you get to that beach? You go back and try again and again, each time stumbling down new branches of Masq’s seedy, soap opera world.
• Dev Alteraction • Link www.alteraction.com
GRAVITY BONE Download
We’ve condemned excessively linear games before, but our love for Gravity Bone suggests that what we really crave are more interesting worlds and stories to be pulled through. Gravity Bone communicates your instructions through posters and notes, it populates its colorful world with blockheaded spies and bossa nova-style, and its use of ultra-short flash-back vignettes is structurally more interesting than anything most mainstream games even attempt. Using the Quake 2 engine was an inspired move, removing the loading zones that could sabotage the sporadic smash-cuts that make Gravity Bone so pacey and exciting. The use of filmic rhythms and references show that “cinematic” doesn’t need to be a dirty word in games.
• Dev Blendo Games • Link www.blendogames.com
SPELUNKY Netbook Download
Appear in a cave, hop around a bit, and plummet into a pit of spikes, gobs of your high-viscosity blood splashing all over the rock walls. Game over.
That’s pretty much everyone’s first move in Spelunky, which does not forgive mistakes, whether you make them one second or one hour into the game. But it’s the combination of difficult platforming, random level generation, and a reliable ruleset that makes Spelunky one of the few roguelikes where death isn’t just an educational experience—it’s an inventive and funny one too. It’s not just that an angry yeti can throw you off a cliff; it’s that afterwards, you can land next to even an angrier shopkeeper, who’s still pissed off about an incident earlier in the game when a stolen statue triggered a boulder that crushed his friend’s shop.
He’ll either shotgun you to death or erratically plunge into the abyss himself. If, by sheer luck of interweaving game systems, you do survive, seconds later you’ll mistime a jump and land in a pit of spikes, again.
Spelunky’s flair for the unpredictable refuses to fade after hundreds and deaths. The level generation formula will always throw up tricky new formations, and its denizens will spawn in new configurations. That bat you’ve dodged hundreds of times before can kill you on the 101st attempt. Spelunky is here to mess you up, and it will continue to mess you up for as long as you let it.
Experience helps, of course. You might start to recognize dangerous set-ups that you’d once try and blunder through, but when total mastery isn’t an option, you can only fall back on your wits. That’s the key to Spelunky’s brilliance. It never stops being interesting. You’re always improvising, making plans, and getting killed trying to outwit a damn bat.
The way Spelunky uses slapstick to salve the frustration of an accidental death is its best trick. Failure is an integral part of roguelike design, and finding a way to turn it into a source of fun feels like the final piece of the puzzle.
And by crossbreeding roguelikes and platformers, Spelunky solves other longstanding problems with both genres. The clear graphics and controls of its platforming forebears make the traditionally awkward, ASCII-graphics roguelike genre easy to understand, while the randomization and permadeath ditch the level memorization method of beating platformers in favor of surprise, strategy, and genuine fear of everything pointy, toothed, or armed.
The result is a game that looks superficially like an updated version of Dig Dug, but where playing it is a long series of meaningful choices, and where a wasted bomb can be the difference between finding the fabled city of gold and finding the cold embrace of death.
• Dev Mossmouth • Link www.spelunkyworld.com/original.html

 
an article from PC Gamer (US Edition) | Oct-1

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Probando el Final release de Firefox 3.5

Que lejano se ve ya el download day, y ni hablar de aquellas épocas en las que Firefox era más que una beta, todavía me acuerdo los webcomics que surgieron en torno a las fiestas por la llegada de la versión 1.0, si, esa que nada más por la memorabiliia fue lanzada en un CD.

 Firefox 3.5Ya hace mucho que migrar de versión de firefox a la siguiente no es una experiencia traumatica, en mi primera instalación, en Windows XPSP3, fue sólo una extensión la que dejo de funcionar y fue la del diccionario en español, que se supone es un "triunfo" para ésta nueva versión, no lo sé, he usado Firefox en español sólo unos minutos, simplemente no me acomodo.

 Firefox 3.5Por cierto, el nuevo ícono no me enloquece.
 Firefox 3.5

Sunday, September 7, 2008

The day that never comes video

No sé ustedes, ésta Metallica suena a que se hace covers a si misma.

éste es el vídeo para "The day that never comes"
Si, también recuerda a ONE, ya veremos, estamos a unos días de oir lo nuevo de Metallica.



Saturday, August 23, 2008

The day that never comes

Metallica poniendo su música a disposición de todos en la Internet, la verdad es que se veía muy difícil que éste día llegara, así como el título de una de las dos canciones que están dejando escuchar en su página "The day that never comes" (da click sobre el logo de Metallica para escucharla 7:55)

death magnetic

Cierto, no es la Metallica que casi hacia coreografías junto a Michael Kamen, ni la Metallica del año 2000 con su "I dissapear" (que a mi me gusta mucho), pero no se siente autentico, se siente como Metallica haciendo covers de si misma, de cualquier modo es muy bienvenida, como ya lo había dicho, hay rolas del St. Anger que si me dijeran que es Metallica, ni cuenta me daba.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

FIrefox 3.01

Un aguafiestas el download day nos dejo saber a todos que Firefox traía una vulnerabilidad y que los 80 millones de personas que lo bajamos teníamos problemas, a lo cual Mozilla dijo que la 3.01 llegaría muy pronto, pero apenas a mediados de la semana aparecieron las notificaciones.

Si usas Firefox 3 y todavía no actualizas ¿Qué esperas?

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

8,002,530

8,002,530 downloads.

Pues ya sabemos cuantas descargas tuvo Firefox 3 en su download day (antes de vulneraabilidades y demás)
Es un poco más bajo que los estimados, pero era de esperarse por el hecho de la revisión, de cualquier mod, así fueran 20 descargas era un nuevo record.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Firefox y el download day

Pues Firefox Está (¿o estuvo de moda?) por su download Day.
Paso de todo
Desde los que se registraron en el sitio y se comprometieron a descargar el software
A los que se molestaron por ser demasiado clavados con su lugar de residencia y olvidarse del resto del globo, cierto era el día 17 de Junio, pero por ejemplo en Asia ya era Miércoles 18 cuando fue posible descargar el software, además de que entre la miríada de correos de notificación y los impacientes que querían instalarlo antes de comenzar la descarga, los primeros 26 minutos del download Day fueron de frustración, unas cuantas horas después ya funcionaba todo a la perfección.

En mi caso, uso muchas extensiones, de las que ya les he platicado en su momento en éste lugar, fui afortunado y en cuanto instale Firefox 3 (depués de 7 meses de betas y RCs) casi todos habían actualizado y no perdí funcionalidad, sólo 3 están pendientes.

uncompatible extensions firefox 3La que de verdad me duele es Adblock, pues con las reglas y sus comodines yo ya había encontrado un muy buen equilibrio, aunque me dí cuenta de que FF3 incluso incorpora algo de su funcionalidad (adblock plus no me sirve, ya lo intenté un par de veces, ese nombre le queda grande).

Con respecto al Zoom ¿qué nadie se dio tiempo de probar IE7? Hace más de dos años que hace lo mismo, si, que bueno que por fin llega a Firefox y que además cuando vuelves a visitar la página se acuerda de los parámetros en que la dejaste (luego se quejan de que es muy pesado) pero eso no es algo nuevo, pero si muy bienvenido.

Del aspecto visual, ya lo vivimos, en la trancisión del 1.5 al 2.0, muchos temas no recibieron actualizaciones y hubo que buscar nuevos, por lo menos el que yo uso cuando mi Windows es oscuro ya estaba actualizado y así no batalle con los asimetricos botones de Atras y adelante (a los que recomiendo poner atención)

Si la comparo con la transición de 1.5 a 2.0 ésta fue mucho menos traumaitca y además multitudinaria, según los últimos reportes, Mozilla (que de cualquier manera lo iba a hacer) estableció el record que querían con más de 8 millones de descargas (ni las versiones de iTunes) y pone el listón muy alto si es que alguien algún día lo quiere romper (FF4 ¿tal vez?)

Para los números oficiales no estemos adivinando, pero puede revisar dos sitios
http://downloadcounter.sj.mozilla.com/ y el sitio del record, que sólo está esperando a que los de Guinness se pongan de acuerdo en el número final

Awesome work - we’re almost there!

Thanks to the support of the always amazing Mozilla community, we got more than 8 million Firefox 3 downloads in 24 hours. That’s more Firefox downloads than we’ve ever had in a single day -- an impressive feat indeed!

Please be patient while the good people of Guinness review our World Record attempt. This might take a few days so please check back here. And, a huge thanks for all of your support!


Después de esto cuando llegue IE8 va a parecer que lo hace por la puerta de atras?

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Download Day

Un aspecto que no causo expectativas falsas y molestias a lo largo del día fue que no se hablo mucho de las condiciones del record que la fundación Mozilla desea imponer, a mi me hubiera parecido lógico que empezara a las 00:00 del GMT, pero no, escogieron otra hora y eso provoco algunas confusiones y errores o hasta discusiones como paso en el blog de mi buen amigo Andrés B, que quiso revisar Firefox desde muy temprano y sus muchos lectores españoles se le fueron a la yugular.

Éste mapa de labnol.org era lo que necesitabas para no perder la paciencia


firefox 3 download day map


Ahora, si eres un usuario que utiliza muchas extensiones ya viviste el trauma de pasar a la versión 2.0 y saber que muchas ya no funiconaran o por lo menos no de momento, pero también hay que recordar que algunas pasan a formar parte del navegador base, tienes opciones

La primera, la más cómoda, la que eligen los que siguen usando Internet Explorer 6, quedate así y espera a que las adapten, porten o renueven.

La temeraria, al toro por los cuernos, respalda tus favoritos, tus contraseñas y desinstala la versión anterior y personaliza la 3.0 hasta que estés a gusto (tampoco es necesario que desinstales todo, pero tus extensiones van estar ahí esperando nueva versión)

La "Lo mejor de los dos mundos" , aprovechate de las versiones de portableapps y usa las dos, puedes bajar la 2.0.0.14 en versión portable y copiar todos tus settings, ya sea a un folder de tu disco duro o a una llave USB y mantener tu funcionalidad actual, mientras instalas, corres y pruebas Firefox 3.0 o si no quieres que algo falle, estrena la 3.0 que ya llegó a portableapps y corre esa desde una llave.

A probar Firefox
Un análisis a conciencia en cuanto me desocupe tantito, lo prometo.

firefox 3 download day


GRAN PARADISO

Monday, June 16, 2008

FIREFOX 3 Download Day

No hay record previo, pero ¿por qué no ayudar a Mozilla a establecerlo?
Firefox ha sido mi navegador de preferencia desde 2004, no le cambio ni por intentos operísticos ni exóticos safarismos

Firefox 3

Download Day - French
Download Day - Portuguese
Download Day - Japanese

Download Day - Spanish


Thursday, May 29, 2008

Firefox 3 Download day

Download Day 2008

We want to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. With the backing of our community and your help we know we can make it. What else can you do?

Download Day 2008

Yo ya me anote, aún no hay fecha...¿y tú?

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Stage6 to Shut Down on February 28

Por aca en Mexicali son las 0 horas, ayer por la tarde me entere de la terrible noticia, cuando Marzo inicie no solo se llevara con el a Netscape, el servicio de video de ata calidad de la gente de DIVX no encontró una manera de hacerse rentable y desde el 28 de febrero deja de funcionar (si estabas pensando si bajar algo o no, bajalo y luego decides).

Hay muchas, pero de verdad muchas cosas que pensar y muchas lecturas a esa dolorosa perdida, desde que tan falso eran las declaraciones de la era de la HD, de como de verdad las conexiones en muchos países están todavía muy atrasadas para que las descargas sean un rival decisivo para el blu-ray, de como los consumidores puede que no necesiten ni siquiera la definición standar y el youtube de los celulares les es suficiente.

A mi me pega porque era ahí donde encontraba comerciales japoneses en alta calidad y ahora va ser muy difícl, también le pega a comunidades remora, que se habían formado alrededor de stage 6 y hasta les resultaba más rentable que a la propia divx, ¿qué haran? ¿se desbandara? ¿buscaran algún otr servico de alta calidad?
¿regresara algún día Stage 6? ¿Youtube, dailymotion y los demás ofreceran una calidad semejante? por lo menos el doble de la de hoy en día estaría bien.

En las palabras de uno de los empleados de stage y miembro de la (muerta en vida) comunidad Stage 6.

I’m Tom (aka Spinner), a Stage6 user and an employee of DivX, Inc., the company behind the service. I’m writing this message today to inform you that we plan to shut down Stage6 on February 28, 2008. Upload functionality has already been turned off, and you’ll be able to view and download videos until Thursday.

I know this news will come as a shock and disappointment to many Stage6 users, and I’d like to take a few moments to explain the reasons behind our decision.

We created Stage6 with the mission of empowering content creators and viewers to discover a new kind of video experience. Stage6 began as an experiment, and we always knew there was a chance that it might not succeed.

In many ways, though, the service did succeed, beyond even our own initial expectations. Stage6 became very popular very quickly. We helped gain exposure for some talented filmmakers who brought great videos to the attention of an engaged community. We helped prove that it’s possible to distribute true high definition video on the Internet. And we helped broaden the Internet video experience by offering content that is compatible with DVD players, mobile devices and other products beyond the PC.

So why are we shutting the service down? Well, the short answer is that the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide. There are a lot of other details involved, but at the end of the day it’s really as simple as that.

Now, why didn’t we think of that before we decided to create Stage6 in the first place, you may ask? That’s a good question. When we first created Stage6, there was a clear need for a service that would offer a true high quality video experience online because other video destinations on the Internet simply weren’t providing that to users. A gap existed, and Stage6 arrived to fill it.

As Stage6 grew quickly and dramatically (accompanied by an explosion of other sites delivering high quality video), it became clear that operating the service as a part of the larger DivX business no longer made sense. We couldn’t continue to run Stage6 and focus on our broader strategy to make it possible for anyone to enjoy high quality video on any device. So, in July of last year we announced that we were kicking off an effort to explore strategic alternatives for Stage6, which is a fancy way of saying we decided we would either have to sell it, spin it out into a private company or shut it down.

I won’t (and can’t, really) go into too much detail on those first two options other than to say that we tried really hard to find a way to keep Stage6 alive, either as its own private entity or by selling it to another company. Ultimately neither of those two scenarios was possible, and we made the hard decision to turn the lights off and cease operation of the service.

So that’s where we are today. After February 28, Stage6 will cease to exist as an online destination. But the larger DivX universe will continue to thrive. Every day new DivX Certified devices arrive on the market making it easy to move video beyond the PC. Products powered by DivX Connected, our new initiative that lets users stream video, photos, music and Internet services from the PC to the TV, are hitting retail outlets. We remain committed to empowering content creators to deliver high quality video to a wide audience, and we’ll continue to offer services that will make it easy to find videos online in the DivX format.

It’s been a wild ride, and none of it would have been possible without the support of our users. Thank you for making Stage6 everything that it was.

--Tom

Thursday, November 29, 2007

You were my everything



[Talking] This goes out to someone that was
Once the most important person in my life
I didn’t realize it at the time
I can’t forgive myself for the way I treated you so
I don’t really expect you to either
It’s just... I don’t even know
Just listen…

You’re the one that I want, the one that I need
The one that I gotta have just to succeed
When I first saw you, I knew it was real
I’m sorry about the pain I made you feel

That wasn’t me; let me show you the way
I looked for the sun, but it’s raining today
I remember when I first looked into your eyes
It was like God was there, heaven in the skies

I wore a disguise 'cause I didn’t want to get hurt
But I didn’t know I made everything worse
You told me we were crazy in love
But you didn’t care when push came to shove

If you loved me as much as you said you did
Then you wouldn’t have hurt me like I ain’t shit
Now you pushed me away like you never even knew me
I loved you with my heart, really and truly

I guess you forgot about the times that we shared
When I would run my fingers through your hair
Late nights, just holding you in my arms
I don’t know how I could do you so wrong

I really wanna show you I really need to hold you
I really wanna know you like no one could else know you
You’re number one, always in my heart
And now I can’t believe that our love is torn apart

Chorus
I need you and
I miss you and
I want you and
I love you ‘cause
I wanna hold you,
I wanna kiss you
You were my everything
And I really miss you [2x]

I knew you gonna sit and play this with your new man
And then sit and laugh as you’re holding his hand
The thought of that just shatters my heart
It breaks in my soul and it tears me apart

At times we was off I was scared to show you
Now I wanna hold you until I can’t hold you
Without you, everything seems strange
Your name is forever planted in my brain

Damn it, I’m insane,
Take away the pain
Take away the hurt
Baby, we can make it work

What about when you
Looked into my eyes
Told me you loved me
As you would hugged me

I guess everything you said was a lie
I think about it, it brings tears to my eyes
Now I’m not even a thought in your mind
I can see clearly, my love is not blind

Chorus
I need you and
I miss you and
I want you and
I love you ‘cause
I wanna hold you,
I wanna kiss you
You were my everything
And I really miss you [2x]

[Talking] I just wish everything could have turned out differently
I had a special feeling about you
I thought maybe you did too
You would understand, but…
No matter what, you’ll always be in my heart
You’ll always be my baby

Our first day, it seemed so magical
I remember all the time that I had with you
Remember when you first came to my house?
You looked like an angel wearing that blouse

We hit it off, I knew it was real
But now I can’t take all the pain that I feel
Reach in your heart, I know I’m still there
I don’t wanna hear that you no longer care

Remember the times? Remember when we kissed?
I didn’t think you would ever do me like this
I didn’t think you’d wanna see me depressed
I thought you’d be there for me, this I confess

You said you were my best friend, was that a lie?
Now I’m nothing to you, you’re with another guy
I tried, I tried, I tried, and I’m trying
Now on the inside it feels like I’m dying

Chorus
I need you and
I miss you and
I want you and
I love you ‘cause
I wanna hold you,
I wanna kiss you
You were my everything
And I really miss you [2x]

[Talking] And I do miss you
I just thought we were meant to be
I guess now, we’ll never know
The only thing I want is for you to be happy
Whether it be with me, or without me
I just want you to be happy


Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Ingenious.

Estos tíos de "Giveaway of the Day" tienden a enfocarse mucho en software muy de nicho o de utilidad muy limitada, como son conversores de videos flv o de formatos para y de iPod, pero a veces lanzan algunos programas en verdad muy bueno, es el caso del juego que regalaron el domingo, Ingenious que se llama.


Me recuerda mucho a juegos de fichas que jugaba con mi madre, mi hermana y mis tías cuando muy niño, de hecho el domingo mi hermana y mi madre tenían sus laptops en la casa y también lo instale ahí. (y al parecer no es vano, pues existe una versión de juego de mesa)


¿Qué les puedo decir, tiene opción para jugarse en Lan y tuve que barrer el piso con mi hermana, je je ?


Si fuera más barato no dudaría en comprarlo, es un muy buen juego, aunque los 20 dolares que dicen que piden por el se me hacen un poco excesivos.

Pueden bajarse una versión demo dando click en la imagen de la caja, no se arrepentiran.

Lo que si me ha llamado la atención es que el camino a una victoria es el no dejar hacer a los rivales/contrincantes, es el típico juego fácil de aprender difícil de dominar.


Sunday, August 12, 2007

Rat DVD primera parte

Me hubiera Gustado poner aquí unas pruebas con el procesador de la laptop del trabajo, pero le pasó algo terrible y me hubiera gustado hacer el comparativo con mi PC de escritorio, usando el DVD de 300, pero ese DVD en Región 4 lo tendré hasta el día 17 de este mes.

Asi que el día de hoy solo pondré el Setup

Podemos ver que esto no es una versión completa, es la 0.78.1444, así que esperaremos la 1.0.
Te ponen los requisitos para que el software no tarde años o encuentres problemas.
Los discos duros cada vez son más grandes y la tendencia es a tener nuestros archivos en la red, pero por aca, nuestra velocidad de subida no lo permitirá
Escoge la carpeta en que lo instalaras, nunca es un problema, los archivos temporales con otra cosa.

Aquí se ve el proceso del setup.
El muy escueto y minimalista cuadro de "acerca de"

El proceso termina y te da la opción de lanzar la aplicación de una buena vez.Esta es la pantalla principal del programa, es lo que todos veremos en la primera ejecución.

ahora ¿Porque se llama RAT DVD?
Del F.A.Q.

According to Chinese legend, the twelve animals of the zodiac quarreled one day as to who was to head the cycle of years. The gods were asked to decide and they held a contest: whoever was to reach the opposite bank of the river would be first, and the rest of the animals would receive their years according to their finish. All the twelve animals gathered at the river bank and jumped in. Unknown to the ox, the rat had jumped upon his back. As the ox was about to jump ashore, the rat jumped off the ox's back, and won the race. The pig, who was very lazy, ended up last. That is why the rat is the first year of the animal cycle, the ox second, and the pig last.

In old Japan, rats had it good because a white rat was a messenger of one of the seven gods of luck, Daikoku. Because of this connection, they were not killed. The story goes that a rat couple wanted the strongest husband in the world for their daughter. They asked the sun who declined saying that clouds had more power because they could cover him up. When they asked a cloud, he responded, "The wind is stronger than I because it can blow me away." The wind could not make the grade either. "The wall stops me cold," he said. And the wall, though honored by the offer wailed, "The rat is stronger. He can bore a hole right through me." So the couple wisely gave their daughter in marriage to another rat who was indeed the strongest creature of them all.