News: Freeware/indie releases' roundup

April 24, 2005, 02:05 AM

by chazumaru, via Various -
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hallu.gif A bunch of interesting freeware and indie games have been released in the last few days. Credits go to the IndieGamer forums, TIGS and Vector for reporting them.

Wild West Wendy is a saloon owner simulation, complete with its western ambiance, bar fights, numerous beer servings, cattle catastrophes and risky ranch alliances. There's a demo avaiable, and the full game costs about 20 bucks. For Mac and Windows.

Glow Worm is a well produced color-matching puzzler that takes the concept of Puyo Puyo to a new level by adding a secondary color for "blocks" that triggers their evolution as butterflies. Same deal as Wild West Wendy: a demo is avaiable and the full game costs about 20 bucks.

Namonaki Shima (v1.03) is a RPG which doesn't focus as much on a story as on having numerous dungeons to explore. Finishing a dungeon allows you to meet new people, visit other places on the (quite big) map and trade treasures for some better equipment. So the unique demon stone system notwithstanding, the game is quite classic. Namonaki Shima ("The Nameless Island") is free, in japanese and avaiable here for download.

Mission Missyo from G.R.C. is a visually unimpressive yet catchy puzzle game mixing Adventures of Lolo with Blizzard's Lost Vikings, and it got a new version released early this month. The game's goal is to lead three ninjas with different and complementary skills through numerous puzzle stages. Mission Missyo (actually pronounced "mishomisho") is free and avaiable here (v1.02).

Finally two good RPGMaker games surfaced lately (meaning you'll need according versions of RPGMaker/RPGツクール to play them). Hallucination Ringdom ( which runs on RPGMaker2000) is your everyday japanese amateur RPG in various aspects, but is cleverly based in an alternate modern world in which fantasy has not disappeared. Quite funny and reportedly well written by those who went through the whole game.
On the other hand, Trico & Lore (which runs on RPGMaker2003) is a cute and thoughtful puzzle crawler not unlike Mission Missyo (characters with different abilities, time limit, you know the drill...). Both games are obviously free and in japanese.