Cheap Games

This is a roundup of all the cheap games we’ve featured in the blog. Every game so far is under $15 and many are even free! Here they are in order of price (low to high):

TITLE	GENRE	PRICE	SOURCES
De Blob	Platformer	FREE	Publisher|DoSu
(Released: 2006) Play as an amorphous pile of goo by absorbing the color of living things and transferring them to inanimate objects. That’s fortunate for this world, because the whole damn thing is gray! However, the big bad government wants to keep it that way.
Synaesthete	Action/Rhythm	FREE	Publisher|DoSu
(Released: 2007) Synaesthete is something of an “action-rhythm” game set to electronic music. Navigate “Zaikman” through a series of rooms, eliminating enemies along the way by hitting “notes” successfully. IGF’s 2007 winner of the Best Student Game award.
Trackmania Nations Forever	Racing	FREE	Steam|Publisher
(Released: 2008) Pure hardcore arcade action time-trial racing including online multiplayer.
Tripline	Puzzle	FREE	Publisher|DoSu
(Released: 2008) A puzzle game where you draw an uncrossable line and at the same time try to cover every geometrical icon within the black frame. You have to pick three of the same icon before being able to go to a different one.
Dungeon Runners	Action RPG	FREE*	Publisher|GoGamer
(Released: 2007) A fun and satirical fantasy online action RPG filled with plenty of dungeons and hawt loot. *Free to play with reasonable ads; optional low monthly fee for benefits.
Geometry Wars	Shmup	$3.99	Steam
(Released: 2007) The premise is simple: shoot the shapes. Collide with a shape and you die. As time goes on, the game becomes increasingly hectic. It’s good, cheap, and worth a look.
AudioSurf	Rhythm/Puzzle	$9.99	Steam
(Released: 2008) Re-experience your music with this puzzle driving game. It dynamically generates a track based on whatever song you play.
Beyond Good & Evil	Action Adventure	$9.99	Steam|GameTap
(Released: 2003) An adventure full of diverse gameplay, a wonderful story, and charming characters. A reporter discovers a dangerous secret about a war with a menacing alien race. Jade must work to protect her adopted family.
Eets: Hunger	Puzzle	$9.99	Steam|Publisher
(Released: 2006) Been described as “Lemmings meets The Incredible Machine”. Get Eets safely to his destination by changing his mood (with marshmellows) and his environment.
Everyday Shooter	Shmup	$9.99	Steam
(Released: 2008) The object of this twin stick shooter is to create chains of explosions over top of some pretty interesting music. Winner of three IGF 2007 awards including Design Innovation, Excellence in Audio and the GameTap Indie Award.
Gish	Platformer	$9.99	Steam
(Released: 2004) Rolling, jumping, sticking, swinging, squeezing and stomping around as an amorphous pile of goo. I think that it can fittingly be described as a physics-based puzzle game. (Win|Linux|OSX)
Painkiller	FPS	$9.99	Steam
(Released: 2004) Classic Doom and Quake style singleplayer FPS action. Hoards of enemies and really big guns - hell yeah. Online multiplayer.
Trials 2: Second Edition	Stunt/Puzzle	$9.99	Steam
(Released: 2008) You control a masochistic individual on a motorcycle with the goal of traversing from one end of a track to another all while trying to maintain balance on your bike and pull off flips or wheelies from, ideally, a side view.
Prey	FPS	$12.99	Amazon|GoGamer
(Released: 2006) An under-appreciated solid sci-fi FPS including online multiplayer. The game offers plenty of twists and mind-bending navigation. Retail copies can be added to Steam. (Win|OSX)
Defcon: Everybody Dies	RTS	$14.99	Steam
(Released: 2006) An unconventional RTS set during a what-if nuclear warfare scenario using nostalgic vector graphics. Win by dying the least. (Win|Linux|OSX)

I felt it appropriate to share this here. If you remember back to yestermonth, I recommended that you guys check out Gish in one of my cheap gaming features. There is a sequel on the way, and today we have been blessed with some wireframe mesh physics footage of Gish 2. Enjoy, and check out Gish if you haven’t yet.

[Their audio is a bit loud, you may want to adjust your volume accordingly]

You may be expecting me to be talking about a new cheap game right now. Normally, that’s what I’d be doing. This week, I’m going to talk about some games that I’m looking forward to, and most of them won’t be cheap. These aren’t all of the games that I am looking forward to this year, but these are my most-wanted ones that aren’t the obvious picks. You won’t see Grand Theft Auto IV, Metal Gear Solid 4, Starcraft 2, Spore or Gears of War 2 in this post. Those are obvious; everybody cares about those. You have probably heard about these at some point, but there isn’t much new information floating around about them. In short, this is an awareness post.
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See what I did there? No? Well, you might once you start reading about the game I’m going to be talking about today. It is from a developer called Cryptic Sea and it won awards for Innovation in Game Design as well as the grand prize at IGF in 2005.

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As you probably know, Nine Inch Nails recently released a 36-track instrumental album under a very flexible business model. I won’t keep you occupied with the details; rather, I’ll throw up a video of me playing through Ghosts, track 9, off of volume I of IV (which has been released for free under Creative Commons), in Audiosurf. I even managed to set the world record for Pro in this run!

Here I am again with another cheap PC game recommendation. This game is so cheap, they’re practically giving it away. It will cost you precisely $0.00, plus whatever it costs you to keep your internet connection on for about 5 minutes. I hope you can handle that, cheapskate.

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We’re all big fans of the Sam & Max games here, so we were excited to see that a TPB (that’s Trade Paper Back) collection of all Sam & Max comics and prints from 1987 to the present was released last Wednesday. I just got mine in the mail today (I get my comics shipped from across the country). It’s very pretty, as you can see; nice cover. I have never read the original comics and I have been looking to expand my TPB collection, so the timing on this is perfect. Just a heads up on the coming-out of this collection, to whom it may concern. You can pick it up from your local comic shop, or the usual places online like Amazon should be carrying it.

In an effort to increase cheap and independent game awareness, I’m going to showcase Audiosurf today. It has been getting tons of good press all across the internet in the past weeks so you’ve probably already heard of it, and there is an almost equally good chance that you’ve played it yourself by now, but it’s so good that I simply have to make it the first game that I talk about here.

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Okay, okay. I will try to stop being so publically enamored with DS apps. Until then, have some!

I messed around with Pocket Physics for the DS some more today. Decided to record another video to post here for your enjoyment. I’ll warn you, though: it’s pretty brutal.

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