The Arcade: A Monthly Roundup of Freeware Games (August 2008)
So, here it is, the end of August, and I find myself sitting in the cool dark mornings wondering where my summer has gone. Not only did the past few months just fly by, but it has also been unusually cool here in August. At times, it has felt almost fall-like in the morning. So, with that in mind, I wanted to make sure we ended summer on a high note, eschewing the traditionally lazy, “dog days,” and found five absolutely fantastic free games. This month, we’ll be looking at:
I have to thank our good friend Breley for bringing this one to my attention. Mille Bornes is another classic game, which many of you probably have played and enjoyed.
The game is derived from the small cement markers found along the roads and highways in Europe. The French call these markers “bornes kilometriques,” or kilometer – stones. In America, we would call them milestones. These milestones show the number of the route and the distance to the next town. Their red or yellow color also shows whether the route is a national highway or a local road.
Mille Bornes, which literally means a thousand milestones, is a card game for two to six players. Your goal is to move your car 1000 miles along an imaginary road, earning points for overcoming roadway hazards and other challenges, which your opponents may throw in your path. Each hand continues until one player completes a trip of exactly 1000 miles. Tally the points, turn your car around, and keep going. First one to 5000 points, wins.
This is a fantastic game, and I thought they did an exceptional job of bringing it to the Pocket PC platform. Not only is it engaging and fun, but what a great way to teach your kids about the rules of the road and potential joys and perils involved in the college tradition of the “Road Trip”.
This is a very interesting take on the adventure game genre. Like many of my favorite games, you must battle your way through the deepest, darkest corners of a dungeon. As you proceed, you can pick up weapons, armor, and other items which will help you as you battle your way further into its depths.
Waitaminute. Did that say further in? Isn’t the goal of these games typically to get out of the dungeon? Well, that is what makes powder stand out. You see, buried deep inside this dungeon, there is a great evil, Baezl’bub, which has been awakened. You must make your way to Baezl’bub’s lair in level 25 of the dungeon, slay him, and return to the surface with his heart in your hand.
This is a fantastic reproduction of a game which was originally devised for the Gameboy Advance. This is the kind of adventure game I grew up with, and I really enjoyed the experience. It isn’t Diablo (which is one of the most requested Pocket PC games that has never been made) but it is probably about as close as we are likely to get.
For this one, we are going to have to imagine a whole new game. Picture a combination of billiards and air hockey. Essentially, the game consists of two teams, each defending opposite ends of the table. Each team has six discs arranged in a line in front of their end.
The goal is to knock all six of your opponent’s discs off of the table. To do this, just tap any of your discs and send it gliding across the table, knocking into your opponent’s discs. Knock all of your opponent’s discs off and you will win the round.
At the beginning of each round, the winner of the previous round will start one row forward. Whichever team advances all the way to the opposite side of the screen wins the match.
I found this to be a fantastically original game. Not only did it combine billiards and air hockey, but it also contained elements from shuffleboard and a little bit of curling (though, sadly, you will not have any sweepers.) The controls (you tap the edge of the disc you want to fire) took a little bit of time to get used to, but once you got the hang of it, this was really a great game.
This is a fantastic new freebie from PDAMill. Their maestro extraordinaire, Jaybot, has put together a fun little game based upon a number of his catchy songs …er…cadences.
PDAMill describes Catchy Cadence as a rhythm-music-action game. And if you are anything like me, then you have no clue what that means. 
This is a fantastic and unique game. What a great idea to incorporate the music into gameplay, rather than just leaving it to play in the background. Unfortunately, it simply did not work well on my device. In fairness, however, PDAMill did warn that it was unlikely to work. I use a Sprint Mogul by HTC. On their site, they warn:
If you have a QVGA non-phone device, and HTC didn’t make it, you should be good. We aimed to make the game for all decent PDA’s, but HTC (a whopping % of the new devices out there) just decided to go the slower, weaker route with every new device they made, Sorry.
So, yeah. That would be me. But if you are using this one of a non-HTC device, we would love to hear from you. Tell us what you think of Catchy Cadence.
I need to start being more careful with the Jean-Francois Mainguet games. I have been featuring them in this space for quite some time, and I am realizing that I have almost completely exhausted the JFM library. Well, I guess we will cross that bridge when we get there, though I do hope he adds some additional games soon. In the meantime, let’s take a look at the latest JFM game to make it into the annals of The Arcade.
Son’art is similar to Japanese crossword puzzles or pictograms…only different. In this one, you need to follow the clues to correctly place the various colors in the grid. To solve the puzzle, just follow the list scanned by the “sonart” on the edge. Be careful, the sonart clues will show you the order of the colors in each row or column, but the scanner does not show white. So, it cannot determine the placement or spacing of the colors.
This is a great logic puzzle game, which turns out to be much more difficult than it initially appeared.
Well, that should do it for another month of The Arcade. I was really impressed, once again, by how many of these free games offer a product which is very competitive with comparable commercial games.
As always, if you have any freeware games which you would like to see me highlight in this space (or if you are a developer of free games) just send me the link via the contact form on the front page, or send an email to dsgoldring [at] mytodayscreen.com (replace the “at” with a “@”. And if you are just joining us, be sure to check out our archives here at My Today Screen.
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Thanks for the kudos, Doug. Always a pleasure to share freebies with the mobile community.
I’m going to have to give this Powder a shot, very much like the Rogue games of ASCII days.