Free indie games

FreeIndieGam.es is a website that posts many games from around the web. Particularly, they are games that the owners of the site find interesting. Many of them explore topics that haven't been covered by games before, others have interesting designs.

Out of the dozens I have played over the last fortnight, here are three that I particularly enjoyed.

Rhythm Doctor

"A tough ONE-BUTTON rhythm game heavily inspired by Rhythm Heaven!...the defining feature of the series is the extremely strict margin of error...This means many people don’t even realise their rhythm is a little off until they play Rhythm Heaven. My game seeks to emulate that feeling"

The game is short - apparently they are seeking more funding so they can make more levels. However, the game-play is tight and satisfying, the graphics and music are solid, and it has a great sense of humour. I'd love to see more!

Protobotic

 "Protobotic is a puzzle-shooter with unique geometric level designs. Advance your weaponized robot through a series of challenges to escape from a science facility. Each of the 18 levels offer new and exciting obstacles to overcome using your cognitive processor (and lots of explosions!)."

This puzzle game has good production values and it contains in its short length a lot of interesting puzzle ideas. I would have liked to see each idea explored more - a la Jonathan Blow's talk on fully exploring design spaces - but for a free game it is a good length. It too has a fun sense of humour.

Proke

"Build a tower to the sky, using nothing but your own quick wits and linguistic fortitude."

Lots of fun! This is the only one of the three that I haven't finished yet, which tells you something of the difference to game length that procedural content makes. However, this game is strong because it combines the procedural content (randomized word seeds) with hand-crafted goals. I am not very motivated by high scores; simply building a higher and higher tower would not have kept my attention long. The game has objectives that require you to complete specific tasks. These distort the game-play (in a good way) and change the game that you are playing, keeping it fresh.

Screenshots are from the games in question, and taken from freeindiegam.es. Quotes are from the games' descriptions on Kongregate.
Want more free games? See the next post in this series.