Free Games & Demos

[MrFlibble]

Just found this really huge blog dedicated to liberated games:
http://juegosliberados.blogspot.com/

It's in either Spanish or Portuguese (can't tell because I'm not very familiar with both languages), but everything is pretty self-explanatory. The blog seems to feature quite a few really obscure games too.

[Collector]

Interesting find. It will take some time to explore. There is a globe marked with where visitors IPs originate. There are very few from Brazil, with many from the rest of Latin America, so I would guess Spanish.

[MacTeq]

juegosliberados@yahoo.es

I'd say that's a giveaway.

[MrFlibble]

Yeah, I figured the blog is in Spanish (since it has links to Spanish Wikipedia).

Here's some of the interesting games from the database that caught my attention:

• Tecno - The Base - a futuristic FPS made in the early 2000s style, although apparently it was released much later than that.
• PaybackTime 2 - an obvious X-COM clone, which was distributed as shareware in the nineties (here's their home page from back then), released for free in 2011.
• Cosmos Quest series, obviously inspired by Sierra's Space Quest games.
• StarFight series shmups.
• A huge number of games produced by the German developer Motelsoft, ranging from Amiga and DOS adventure and RPG games to Windows FPS titles.

[MrFlibble]

A while ago I found a shareware version of a DOS FPS called Alien Cabal. While being essentially a 2.5D first-person game typical of early-mid nineties, it tried to take a more realistic approach to level design, similar to Duke Nukem 3D and later games. However, Alien Cabal was released in late 1997, and this is probably the main reason why the game became obscure.

Back then I Googled a bit and found a website called Old School DOS which claimed that the game went freeware, and offered the full version for download:

The final part of the update is the change in the download for Alien Cabal. The creator of the game has emailed me to inform that he is generously offering the full version for download, so the download link on the game page is now the full version. Not only that, but the download includes the Windows version, which looks better and runs without any extra programs. Big thanks to the maker.

However, I was not able to verify this, and the download does not include any kind of free release statement, license or such.

Recently though, I have found an archived copy of the games official website (http://www.aliencabal.com/), nearly completely preserved by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. And it turns out that starting from late July 2000, the full version of the game was available from the main page of the site:

Download Full DOS Version 1.2 and DirectX Version (12.9MB)

(Requires Pentium 100MHz, 16MB Ram, 60MB Hard disk space )

The Wayback Machine has not preserved the file properly (only about one megabyte or so was stored), but its name and size match exactly the version available at Old School DOS.

This full version package includes both DOS and Windows versions of the game, updated to v1.2, and the game editor. What's more, from the archived copy of the official website it is possible to get the game update to v2.00 (Ver200.zip) for both the Windows version and the level editor.

[MrFlibble]

Here's a couple recent freeware releases:
In Pursuit of Greed (plus source code)
Tailchaser

[Collector]

Syberia II free. https://www.origin.com/usa/en-us/store/ ... -the-house

[Tawmis]

Someone posted this on one of the FB pages... looks pretty good. Not out yet, however.

http://cascadequestgame.com/

[Collector]

That is Phil's game. It is SCI0. You can follow his progress on the SCI Community.

[Tawmis]

You used to be able to play this just in your browser, but they keep expanding the game so now it does require a download client.

It's pretty much similar to Diablo, but quite fun.

https://www.drakensang.com/en?originalU ... ensang.com&