Double Freeware Pick – ‘Walker’ & ‘Neoteria’
It might be the peak of summer – slow season for gaming – but it’s a good time for being a gamer on a budget. Over the past couple of days, a couple of bright n’ breezy freeware games landed. In the blue corner, we’ve got surprisingly lengthy and intricate one-button platformer Walker (pictured above), and in the red corner, we’ve got formerly Smartphone-bound Gradius/Hydorah inspired shmup Neoteria. Let’s take a quick look at why they’re worth your time and bandwidth.
First up is Walker, by Invincible Time. Not to be confused with the darkly comical time-travelling mech shooter on the Amiga of the same name, this one is about as innocent and happy as you can get. An impressively large platformer with beautiful sprite art, a whimsical sense of humour and a single-button control system. Playing as the titular Walker, you embark on a grand quest to… walk somewhere, in a mostly forwards/rightwards direction! And jump on stuff! It feels kinda like a hybrid of The Impossible Game and Super Mario World – not a bad blend, all things considered.
While the controls are simple – Z to jump, and Z when against a wall to change direction with a wall-kick – the level design is intricate stuff. There’s a huge variety of different enemy and terrain types, obstacles and springs, and they all affect how you move. One colour of spring might automatically launch you into the air, while another only works when you jump from it. It’s a pretty tough game as well – a few mistakes will knock Walker out, although there’s a boxing-esque recovery system that lets you button mash your way to a second wind, although each time you go down it gets a little harder to stand up again. Good thing there’s fairly regular checkpoints.
The other freeware release of note is horizontally scrolling shmup Neoteria, available on the Chrome store. Formerly an iOS and Android commercial release, now 100% gratis and on your PC, albeit via Chrome only. This updated version offers full keyboard or mouse movement – mouse recommended – and, ideally, some kind of autofire tweak or script because sweet monkey jeebus you’ll be mashing that fire button all the time.
Looming threat of RSI aside, it’s hard not to like this one. The music is catchy, the sprite-work is clear, clean and characterful, and the general style reminds me a lot of Locomalito’s freeware classic Hydorah, which in turn was heavily inspired by Gradius. My only solid gripe here is that there could be a slightly wider horizontal play-field, or an official auto-fire feature. The rather frantic pace of gameplay means that the enemies come at you so quickly that there’s not much time to react, so extra (and even more wrist-destroying) button mashing is required if you don’t want to see your health-bar dissolve.
Like Hydorah, there’s multiple routes through the various worlds, with secret bonus areas branching off via following certain paths or completing hidden objectives. It adds replay value, and so does the rising difficulty levels. The upper grades are downright punishing, so there’s something here for both casual and hardcore gamers – a statement that applies equally well to both games here.
Between these two, I can easily see an otherwise-productive afternoon or two devoured. Probably not great if you’re planning to get some serious work done, but great if you’re in the mood for a distraction.
