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It's probably a combination of my nostalgic longing for certain gaming trends/genres that are, or have died out, plus my lack of funds that keeps me from enjoying the head exploding bliss that other gamers are getting from their shiny PS3s and 360s, but lately I've been acquiring a taste for the oft overlooked freeware and flash games sprinkled throughout the net. Of course, I've been aware of `free games for download` concept because of the several free MMOs I play. And pretty much everyone and their mother have played something like Bejeweled or Bookworm at one point, but I wondered what was available in the other game genres. I was mostly missing the old PC point and click adventure games, and there's no shortage of freeware and flash games of that type, albeit of varying quality. But I'd been largely avoiding the free RPGs up until this point, because I hadn't seen any that suggested I'd be in for a good time. Then I figured, "Well, I write for an RPG gaming site, why not try a few free RPGs and make an editorial out of it?" So I searched out three varying RPGs and gave them each a run through.
I started first with Monsters' Den: Book of Dread. It's a browser based game, so there's no need to download anything. The game is purely a Dungeons and Dragons/Diablo/Hack type of RPG with three different campaigns to play; two standard dungeon crawlers and a survival mode where you just fight battles. Before the game starts, you're given four characters for your team. You have to choose names, faces, sexes, and one out of seven job classes for each of them. Then you choose your difficulty level and you're off. A really nice function of Monsters' Den is that despite being browser based, your game is saved when you leave, so you can quit playing whenever you feel like and come back later. Don't expect much of a story here. It's pretty much "Monsters in dungeon, go kill." The game looks similar to the old text game Hack in which your view of each level is the map. Your location is shown by the fact that the path you currently occupy is brighter than the other dungeon areas around you. As you travel down a hallway or into rooms, new paths connected to your location are revealed. Monsters are indicated by two crossed swords on the map. There's no random encounters and you'll always see monsters before you come upon them, so you can choose to avoid a number of battles. Of course, sometimes you'll need to kill monsters that are blocking the path that leads to the next stage of the dungeon. When you do choose to fight, a battle screen appears and you choose your characters battle formation before starting. It's pretty much turn based fighting and the battle order is shown on the left side of the screen. Anyway, this all goes on nine levels; on the ninth level you kill the big boss, and that's that. Game done. Once you beat the game, unlimited mode is unlocked in which you can basically grind and travel through an unending dungeon as long as you please. Not a terribly deep game, but fun and fairly easy to pick up and play if you just want to dungeon crawl for a bit.
Next I tried up a game I actually was required to download. Dink Smallwood, after it's installed, takes up about 85.9mb in my computer, but I find the size about proportional to the quality I'm getting. Don't get me wrong, you're not going to be agape with astonishment at the game, but it looks and plays pretty good for a free 3D game. Dink Smallwood plays more in the vein of a Zelda adventure RPG rather than a standard turn based RPG. You're actually given the option of controlling the game with your keyboard or with a game controller. I have a game controller, so I opted for that method. Your controls are not too complicated; one button for attacking, one for magic casting, one for bringing up the game menu, and one for talking/interacting. The other two buttons are for the main menu and bringing up the map screen. You play as a pig farmer named Dink Smallwood, the standard normal guy slightly unsatisfied with his lot in life. The game doesn't tend to take itself seriously, as punching walls and inanimate objects will result in Dink cursing at them in different ways ("Die chair!"). Also, most people you talk to seem to be fully aware that the game is comedic in nature and often respond to inquiries with more than a little cynisism/sarcasm. You start off normally as you're made by your mother to go feed the pigs, and your rival, some jerk who also lives in your village, comes along to whittle at your self esteem and brag how he's going to be a big time knight and you'll never be anything but a pig farmer (yeah, yeah, we know how this works).
The humor in the game tends to hit or miss in my view, but leads to some quirky moments. For instance, your elderly neighbor employs you to find her lost pet duck. Whatever, that's easy enough. The duck is quickly located, and this is where I first ran into difficulties. I assumed that I should pick up the duck and take it back to the old lady. But simply walking over to the duck didn't trigger anything. Well, maybe I should try the punch button, as I'd seen games in which you punch items and the action would dually function as picking the objects up. If not, well, I'd already accidentally punched my mother but she was alright besides getting annoyed at my character. I wasn't expecting the impact of my swing to SEVER the duck's head from his body while blood erupted from his neck cavity, resulting in the duck flapping frantically about the screen like...well, like another domesticated bird that's known to run around blindly when it's head is cut off. My own reaction was probably pretty funny to see. "OH GOD, I KILLED IT!" I figured I'd just ruined the fetch mission, but the duck continued to move around the screen without it's head. Finally, I walked over to it and tried the one option I haven't used yet; talking to it. I told the duck to go home and it walked off the screen towards the old lady's house, sans head. Anyway, as most RPGs go, I later stepped outside the village to get some berries for mother, only to come back and discover that my house had been burned down and my mother killed in the fire. Figures. So my journey began as I ventured out into the rest of the game world. It's all a bit stale at first as all you can do is punch things, but like most good RPGs, as you go along you'll get more and more variety introduced into the gameplay. I gained my first magic spell, the fire ball, and immediately made myself the enemy of Smoky the Bear by burning down every single tree that I could. If I nitpick, I'd say that the character models are ugly (the women all look hunchbacked), and leveling up takes a bit too long. Also, locations of where certain tasks are to be completed are not terribly clear. It's like the first Zelda on NES; you're not really always told what to do, so go exploring and check out everything. But it's a good fun game so far for what it is.
Finally, I checked out another browser based game; Grow RPG. It doesn't really fit neatly into the RPG genre, but this is my favorite of the three, and can be completed in five minutes if you know what you're doing. It's a simple setup. There's a big planet on the screen with the word Grow in the center. Left and right of the planet are boxes with different items inside them, such as trees, water, different buildings like a castle and a shop, and a treasure chest. On one side of the planet is the hero, on the other side is a red flying demon. Your job is to help the hero defeat the demon. You accomplish by dragging the items in the boxes to the Grow in the center of the planet. Doing this will effectively `grow` the items on the globe. The number of items available is also the number of turns you have to place everything on the planet. The trick to the game is this; as you complete each turn, items that are already on the board level up, or `grow` as it were. It's sort of hard to explain, so think of it this way; I place item one on the planet, that's one turn. Next I place item two on the planet. Item one, which was already on the planet, levels up by one. The second turn is now over. Then I place item three on the planet. It appears, items two and one both level up. Item one is now level 2, while item two is level 1 since it's only been there for one turn. Placement order is important as some items need more time to level up than others. Also, some items won't level up past a certain point until another item is placed on the planet and affects the first item in some way. As items level up, they get bigger or gain more useful functions. For example, level 5 shop is obviously more use to the hero than a level 3 shop. To defeat the demon and beat the game, you have to place all the items in an order that will allow them to all grow to their max levels. It can all seem kind of random at first, but after trying a few different combinations, it gets easier to see how each item can affect the others. Besides, half the fun is just seeing what happens when you place things on the globe. There's actually a whole series of different Grow games, but this one isn't a bad place to start.
As I said, there's not too much of a download to playing or downloading these games. If you don't like them, you can quit playing or delete them quite easily. You'll end up shuffling through a good amount of drek in order to find some of the better games, but sometimes you'll manage to find a little gem in the rocks. And it's made all the more sweeter by the fact that you're getting it for free. There's still many free RPGs I've seen that I've been skipping over, but I'm definitely intrigued enough by some of the available pickings to try a few more freebies in the near future.
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