Recent content by DocHarley

I've lost track of how many F2P games I've played and they all suffer from at least two problems: 1. They nickel and dime you for anything they can think of. Things like more inventory space, fast travel, and character slots jump right to the top of my head. If there's a way to put a feature...

I'm noticing some of these games are available for Linux and Windows, with Mac versions oddly absent. That seems...strange to me.

Nice. I was only aware of about half of the games mentioned thus far, so thanks for adding to my list!

I'm absolutely obsessed with Dwarf Fortress. Although, unless I'm missing something, I'm pretty sure it's not a FOSS game.

In an effort to find more free Fun-O-Tainment--and share it with the literally ones of people who follow my site and YouTube channel--I'm spending the next couple of weeks downloading and playing every FOSS game I can get my grubby little paws on. So, if you have a favorite FOSS game, please...

I think Wikipedia has at least a fair start. Look at the article for "Video game" and there's a list of "Genres" in the side bar. Click on a "Genre" you go to that page and there's invariably a laundry list of "Sub-genres" in the sidebar there. It's in no way complete, but it could easily...

NetHack. You can never go wrong with ASCII.

10. Quake 9. Tetris 8. Minecraft 7. Leather Goddesses of Phobos 6. Fallout: New Vegas 5. Sim Earth 4. Europa Universalis III 3. A Mind Forever Voyaging 2. Dwarf Fortress 1. Silent Hill 2

Every time I play 1985's "A Mind Forever Voyaging" I pick up on something new and become even more convinced that Steve Meretzky is a time traveler trying to warn us all.

No. Level scaling is immersion shattering--at least for me--and while it might not exactly penalize players for exploring the world, doing side quests, and generally faffing about, it certainly diminishes one's returns when you go back to the main quest line and all the bad guys somehow advanced...

Yeah, the old Cantrip spell pretty much did this. If you can find a copy of the Second Edition "Unearthed Arcana" you'll find a huge list of example effects Cantrip let you pull off. The spell was so flexible that they chucked it in Third and basically retooled the list from UA into the 0-level...

I'm pretty sure "survival horror" as a named, defined genre surfaced as a result of RE. I could be wrong, but either way there were definitely horror games which preceded and influenced it.

Quake - The first game to bring full, billboard-free 3D into everyone's house. It was also the game that made "deathmatch" a Thing. Myst - Straight-up puzzle solvers have definitely seen their winter at this point, but this game's influence is still everywhere. Grand Theft Auto III - This...

I never buy the NFL football games and instead go right for the NCAA. More teams, more players, trick plays...the NCAA games are just so much more fun than the NFL ones that there's really been no contest at least for me. If my only choice is Madden and the like now, I'll just stick with baseball.

Pretty much this. Every time I see beautifully-rendered, FOM-shaded water in a game, I wonder how many man years of programmer effort that took and which gameplay elements were scratched off the list to free up that time. But then I still play text adventures and roguelikes so maybe I'm just...