Captain Binary

A cartoon platformer

Free platformers are easy to be found on the internet. There are many remakes, some of which even playable and interesting. But when it comes to really entertaining, smooth-running and good-looking freeware platformers the choice is rather meagre.

That's why, today I'd like to focus your attention on an interesting game, product of a Polish-Japanese teamwork.

Captain Binary is a superhero platformer. What does this stand for? No deep story? Positive. Aliens are taking over the Earth; there's nobody who can stop them except Captain Binary. Yes, that's where we jump into the action. It's Captain Binary's task to wipe out any sign of extraterrestrial presence on Earth.

A familiar scenario, yet a decent excuse to start shooting. Personally, I'd forgive the developers for using such a cliche story, since all their efforts were pointed to both gameplay and graphics. And they've come up with an excellent result. The graphics are comics-like - vivid, highly detailed and with bright colours. Captain Binary, as well as the enemies and the surrounding world have been drawn simply perfect. The gameplay is very intense. This is the place to warn you - don't underestimate the game, judging from its cartoonish outlook. It IS hard and getting killed is just a matter of time, especially in the beginning. Yes, it is strange for a superhero to be beaten down with a single strike, but that's the developer's decision.

Nevertheless, Captain Binary is a very entertaining game, with a great sense of humour, challenging gameplay and beautiful graphics. Of course, it comes for free. This is the website you need to visit and uncover your hidden superhero abilities ;)

8bit killer

An old-school FPS

One thing is certain - game industry evolves rapidly. Games nowadays offer photorealistic graphics, high quality sound and a much more complex gameplay, require better computers and consoles and all this goes with an enormous budget, enough to direct and produce a decent movie. Some 15-20 years ago games were designed to entertain. They were pieces of intellectual challenge, some of which - pure diamonds. Various quests, RPGs and FPshooters - today forgotten, offered people a way to enhance their logical thinking but never stopped entertaining them.

I won't discuss here the benefits and disadvantages of having a consumerist game industry. Instead, today I'd like to draw your attention to a game, coded primarily in 90s traditions.

8bit killer is a reminiscence. A product of today, bearing the feeling of long gone times. Built in the style of DOOM or Wolfenstein 3D, it is actually a game, developed in 2008.

8bit killer is a first person shooter. The story, inspired by various futuristic games and films, is a good excuse to jump into the action. The gameplay will leave you with a specific nostalgic feeling - a weapon located in the middle of the screen, no pointer, labyrinth-like level design, using keys to unlock doors in order to finish the level and so on.

Graphically, the game has a distinctive early 90s style. Yet, using modern coding techniques, it offers a really good atmosphere. Once you get used to its specific outlook (in case you haven't played some 90s shooters) I can promise you an hour of endless fun. An hour? Yes, it took me a little over an hour to finish the game.

This, together with the complete lack of a save option are the two and only flaws of the game. There is no way you can save your progress throughout the game, but you actually don't need it.

The game isn't hard to beat, the difficulty is balanced , which I consider a plus, compared to the sometimes impossible to play difficulty levels of the old shooters.

Final conclusion? Download and play. Just be sure to have about an hour of free time ;)

kkrieger

A minimalistic First-Person Shooter

No, there's no mistake in the name of this post.

kkrieger is actually a project of a few German developers who aimed to show that modern first-person shooters don't need to be run by big and expensive engines. Using very advanced coding techniques, they managed to create a game with the size of only 97 kilobytes!

Again, no mistake in numbers.

kkrieger offers a very minimalistic HUD. Your life and ammo is the only written information you'll get. You'll have to fight your way through one level. Yes, the game is that short - about 15 minutes of gameplay if you're curious enough to have a look or two around. Luckily, there are many enemies and a rich variety of weapons - spanning from a simple laser pistol to a very imposing hand-cannon. The graphics, as of 2011, could be addressed as "decent". Yet, the game was released in 2004 and back in those days I was pretty impressed with it. Those 97 kb, by the way, include also some musical background and sounds - walking, jumping, shooting and so on. Impressive!

Of course, the game has its flaws. You'll notice that it is actually a beta version. There was a one and only version released, with no further modifications. kkrieger needs improvement in every aspect.

I really hope that one day kkrieger will have its official release. No matter if it will be freeware or not. At present, you could download the beta from here and give it a try.