I'd like to order some perspective.

It's been a good six weeks since the Echochrome demo hit the Japanese PSN marketplace and, after tweaking it six ways from Sunday, it's finally good enough for the US.  The full game is going to take just a bit longer to hit, but the demo offers the smallest taste of the puzzle-y goodness in store.

Echochrome is a game about perspective.  It tells you that what you see is what actually is, playing with the idea of 3D space as represented on a 2D screen.  A mannequin walks along a path suspended in air, but it's a broken path filled with holes, dead ends, and even a few trampolines.  Navigating Echochrome's twists and turns looks impossible at first, as the mannequin mindlessly walks forward in a straight line and only turns when coming to an edge or corner, and your only tool is the camera.  Who knew that perspective is one of the most powerful tools ever created, aside from maybe Anton Ego?

As the camera moves, parts of the path align get covered up or even seem to connect, and what you see is what's really there.  You know there's a gap but it's blocked by a column, so the mannequin cheerfully strolls past it without breaking stride.  One path is 20 feet up and 30 feet across from another, but the angle of view connects their ends so it's an easy step from one to the other without a second thought.  The paths only look like a 3D structure, and Echochrome is more than happy to use that misconception to mess with your head.

The demo is five tiny tutorials and three levels, and both the PSP and PS3 versions are available for download right this very moment.  It weighs in at a tiny 34MB, small enough that it shouldn't be too difficult to find the time to snag it.  Check it out, the demo is well worth the look.

And for those curious, check out the PC original freeware here.

The best Asteroids clone ever is free.

Asteroids hasn't aged well over the years, despite repeated re-releases.  The idea is sound and the original will always be a classic, but each new execution feels a little too unadventurous to be all that interesting.  Fortunately, Asteroids has clones, and that's where Spheres of Chaos comes in.

Spheres of Chaos is basically the best version of Asteroids ever made.  It came out several years ago as shareware, but just recently went through a price-drop to free.  More than just a trippy psychedelic clone, it's got a huge variety of enemies and hazards to fear, not to mention power-ups to exploit, all of which combine to turn each level into a free-form challenge that requires both fast reflexes and careful planning to defeat.  Each enemy also has its own musical sound effect when destroyed, and the combination of insane amounts of color and slightly chaotic but still ambient sound combines with the hectic action to become both soothing and tense at the same time.

For those not into visual overload, it's worth nothing that the trippy graphic effects can be turned off completely, or enhanced beyond all possible reason for those wanting to know just how many colors at once can squeeze into a pair of eyeballs.  Oddly enough, my high score was gotten while experimenting with the Liquid graphics setting.  I honestly have no idea how.

If free excellence isn't good enough news, the game's creator, Iain McLeod, has announced a sequel.  Spheres of Chaos 2008 is on the way, although there's no target month yet, and hopefully won't be renamed Spheres of Chaos 2009.  There's also a little note hiding all the way at the bottom of the front page of the web site asking if anyone is interested in helping with an Live Arcade port.  I'd love to play this on my tv, so if anyone's listening, drop Iain a line.  

Spheres of Chaos is available on PC, Linux, PS2 Linux, and even Risc OS.  Check it out, it will make your life better.

If you’ve been meaning to download Opera’s Wii Web Browser but kept getting distracted by other activities (like surfing the web on your PC), next week is your last chance to get it while it’s free because after June 30th, Nintendo will begin charging 500 Wii Points for it. It’s an odd move by Nintendo, since other consoles offer a browser for free, but the Wii is also outselling “other consoles” by several orders of magnitude so I doubt they’re too concerned.

This price only applies to new downloads, so as long as you’ve downloaded it before the end of the free period, you’ll never have to pay for it.

It’s worth having, if only for messing around on WiiCade, a collection of flash games perfect for playing with the Wii remote. It’s also not bad for watching YouTube videos on your TV.

[via Kotaku]

The Toronto Game Jam was held from May 4-6, and its purpose was to gather games creators together to make something in 48 hours. Every participant tries to have something complete at the end, starting from nothing. A little help was provided by floating helpers, but for the most part it was a game from scratch in a ridiculously short period of time.

XIQ is one of the successes, an abstract combination of Qix, shooters, and puzzle games. Move the cursor with the arrow keys, shoot out lines with W/A/S/D, and try to trap the invading triangles in a square of lines. The lines fade out after a few seconds, and the triangles are swarming the screen, so moving fast with a plan and strategy is the only way to survive. XIQ is a nifty little abstract bit of freeware fun, and even more amazing when the speed with which it was created is taken into account.

Check it out over here.

The best things in life are free. Sure you need your 40 hour epics, too, but those home grown morsels of gaming can be almost as entertaining. Here’s some of what I’ve been playing this week.

Pixel, the one-man team behind the amazing platform adventure Cave Story released his followup project this week. This one isn’t nearly so ambitious. It’s a low-res grayscale shooter in the Gameboy tradition called Guxt. It’s pretty old school, with no bombs, cheesy shooterpop soundtrack, and gameplay that will make you miss your NES. It’s not the masterpiece that Cave Story was, but it’s good to see Pixel at it again.

You can check out Guxt at Pixel’s site.

Clones and remakes have long been a staple of homebrew gaming, but it’s rare when a remake genuinely adds something to the original formula. There have been a lot of clones of Tempest and Tempest 2000 over the years, but Typhoon 2001 is by far the most faithful and the most fun. It doesn’t really innovate, but it does add a new look that’s clean, polished, and really captures the spirit of Jeff Minter’s Jaguar classic. It could still use some balancing, but the author is still refinining the game. If you’ve never had a chance to play T2K, or just don’t have the Jag around anymore, it’s really not a bad approximation at all. Check it out at the official site.

But my favorite freeware find of the week is a simple little arcade-style game called rhacp. I have no idea what that name means, but it’s an original take on the old “snake game” theme. The goal is to ram the little tadpole creatures with the front of your snake, which will cause it to get longer and longer. You’ll have to avoid your tail as per convention, and you’ll also have to avoid stars that you drop behind. Collecting all the dots on screen will cause the start to convert to dots. From there it becomes a game of survival. The perspective is a bit dizzying, but it couldn’t be more addictive. I’ve played this stupid game for hours this week. Check it out here.

If anyone enjoyed these and wants to see more freeware selections, leave me a comment, and I’ll try to make it a weekly thing.