Following Freeware – March 2016 releases
The Mother of the Bird Men
Miss Libellule has stolen an expensive gem from a museum. She escapes using a hang glider and eventually arrives by truck at the door to a big cave, which is protected by two big statues of birds. Upon entering the cave to discover wondrous caverns filled with many birds, trees and flowers, she must find the places made specifically for the three stones in her possession. However, leaving the stones in their designated spots is not enough. She also has to find three symbols, one for each stone, and enter them into their respective screens to make orbs glow in the appropriate color. These symbols are protected by many puzzles, and to finish her quest Miss Libellule will have to solve them first.
The Mother of the Bird Men, by joninetynine, is the third game in the Miss Libellule series, after The Queen of Snakes and The Earl Octopusor. Like its predecessors, the new game is presented in a thick-lined, colorful style that makes each screen look a bit like a stained glass window. Usually the action is shown in first-person mode but on occasion the protagonist appears on screen. Miss Libellule can roam around in a multitude of highly distinctive caves, most of them opening only after solving one or more puzzles. The gameplay is accompanied by simple but mysterious sounding music that gets louder as you progress, and the ambient sounds of the current environment, like the wind, a stream, and the rustling of leaves. Every action performed is accompanied by well-made sound effects. Nothing is said during the game, so there is neither voice acting nor any text appearing on screen.
The Mother of the Bird Men is played using only the left mouse button. The inventory is shown at the bottom of the screen, and on the right edge are four circles with various menu options. Clickable arrows at the sides of the view screen indicate where Miss Libellule can go from her current location. The game can be played in ‘easy’ and ‘normal’ mode. I played the ‘normal’ mode and even then the puzzles, which are all inventory-based, are not very hard. But because there is so much to see in each scene and the cursor doesn’t change when hovered over hotspots, it will take a while before you find and collect all the objects you need. Although The Mother of the Bird Men lacks any real story, the beautiful surroundings and puzzles make up for any lack of narrative depth.
The Mother of the Bird Men can be played online at Newgrounds.
Rabbit Hill
A couple is driving home from a boring birthday party. To lighten the mood the husband has taken the scenic route home through the woods, where he almost hits a deer and smashes into a tree instead. Unharmed but with a car that’s wrecked beyond repair, the couple heads out in search of anyone who can help them. Eventually they come across a petrol station with a motel attached, but it’s strangely been abandoned. The man starts to panic when his wife suddenly goes missing too, and when he discovers a body lying in the toilet it becomes clear that something sinister is going on at Rabbit Hill.
Rabbit Hill is Two Tales’ third game, and as with the earlier two games (Faye King: Jungle Jeopardy and Case Noir), its roots lie in an existing commercial adventure. This time Barrow Hill has been used as inspiration, so the locations and story in Rabbit Hill contain many similarities to Matt Clark’s 2006 horror game. The abandoned petrol station and surrounding woods, three motel rooms, a restaurant and more are presented in a photorealistic but slightly pixelated third-person style. The people in the game are also realistically animated, as are ambient effects like leaves falling and birds flying in the woods. You’ll also hear different animals in the background, the sounds of a radio blaring, and the clang of a bell when the restaurant door opens and closes, amongst others. Sometimes short, ominous music sounds to help set the tense mood. There is no voice acting; all text appears on screen above the heads of the characters speaking.
Both mouse buttons are used to progress: left-clicking interacts with objects while right-clicking inspects them. Hotspots are described tersely in text that appears just above the inventory, which is shown at the bottom of the screen. Saving and loading the game is accomplished by pressing S and L, respectively, and there is a button in the lower right corner of the screen for quitting the game. Completing Rabbit Hill requires quite a bit of sleuthing. You must find clues to what happened by reading notes and listening to voice mail messages, locate codes to open doors, and get rid of the evil that surrounds the area. Unfortunately, there is also an unskippable action sequence where you have to shoot crows before they hurt you. The crows fly at you quite fast and you don’t have much time to aim, making it very difficult to complete. If you are hit by too many crows, you die. But apart from this one frustrating sequence, Rabbit Hill is a thoroughly enjoyable game that will give you a few hours of good sleuthing fun.
Rabbit Hill can be downloaded from the developer’s website.
Other new releases
Not all games are created equal, and freeware games especially come in all shapes and sizes. Not to be overlooked, the following list might also be of interest, though these games may be significantly shorter or less polished, more experimental titles than those detailed above, some perhaps only borderline adventures to begin with.
Latest Gaming Articles
All Articles
