When you start the game you are asked to pick one of the available songs, and a difficulty level to get started. Many of the available songs are locked at the beginning, and you need to perform well to unlock them.

Once you have selected the song the game screen loads. You see the four guitar strings at the top, an animated stick figure at the bottom, and some stats that tell you how well – or bad – you perform the song.

The aim of the game is to hit the keys on the keyboard when they arrive in the black bar area on the left of the screen. The game uses the cursor keys (up, down, left, right), plus the 1-4 keys. Keys appear on the right side and you have about a second or two before they reach the area where you need to press them.

This works well on the amateur levels. The pro levels on the other hand add more keys to each song which increases the difficulty significantly.

Music tracks are great, especially if you like rock and related genres. Bands are all unknown – to me at least – but that does not make the songs less enjoyable. Most are in fact quite pleasing to the ear. Each song links to the artists website which allows you to check on the albums or songs they have released, tours and other news related to the band or artist.

The game has a few aces up its sleeve, including a boss mode where you need to defeat the boss by not only tapping on the right keys at the same time, but also on other keys to hit the boss in that time as well.

Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 4 is a nice game if you are into rock music and games like Guitar Hero. I suggest you check it out over at Armorgames.

Imagine my excitement when I heard that Aditya Ravi Shankar has started to port the classic Command & Conquer game to HTML5 and JavaScript.

The developer has released an impressive looking preview version that is allowing you to play the beginning of the campaign.

You start with two light tanks and a base unit that can build your base on the map. From there you start building up your base, adding power plants, a refinery to harvest and weapons factories to produce troops to fight the enemy.

The developer has made the decision to use the game’s original control mechanism. This means that you control and move units with the left mouse button. You can draw a rectangle across multiple units to control them together. The Ctrl-[0-9] keys allow you to create control groups which you can then activate with another tap on the selected key.

The current game version 0.3d runs best in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, according to the developer. My personal experience was different though. The Firefox version lagged significantly, the Chrome version a little bit less. It did however refresh the border of the game window several times per second which made the game unplayable in the browser. The Opera version was the one that ran smoothly and without issues. I also tried running the game in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 but never came past the loading screen on that machine.

The developer, who is currently looking for volunteers to push the project forward, aims to take the project as far as possible. According to information posted on the site, he plans to integrate multiplayer later on.

There is one issue though that could torpedo the project. If the current rights holder, that would be EA if my information are correct, would put an end to the project. Nevertheless, the game shows great promise, and I personally would not mind playing through the campaign again in a web browser, provided that it works smoothly in there.

What’s your take? Let me know in the comments.

Each game consists of a set number of rows and columns, and color hints that indicate the position and length of each color in the row or column. Two black and one brown for instance indicates that you need to fill two black squares first and then afterwards a brown square. It is now up to you to find the starting position of the first and second color.

The game mechanics sound simple but it may take a test game or two before you get a feel for the game play.

A list of 30 different puzzles are provided by the game, sorted into three difficulty levels. The first ten puzzles are played on a 5×5 grid which makes them easily solvable. It becomes slightly more complex and difficulty once you hit level 2 with its 10×10 grid and level 3 with 15×15.

You need to click on the colors at the top, or use the shortcuts 1-4 on the keyboard, to switch colors. A left-click paints the selected color into the field on the grid. A second left-click removes the color and replaces it with an empty field marker which you can use to keep track of fields that you believe do not contain a color.

The top bar offers back and forward options, a restart button, a check button that checks if the current colors are correctly placed on the grid, and a solution button which displays the resulting picture (and ends the game).

Players should take a closer look at the color information when they start a new map. Some are large enough to fill the whole row or column which makes them a good starting point. It becomes more difficulty in later levels though, which makes rare colors and empty fields the best starting option.

Color Pic-a-Pix is a great little puzzle game, ideal for a short break and for users who like to to try something different for the change.

When you first start the game you are asked to pick your class from one of the three classes available. Each class has distinct advantages and disadvantages. The warrior class for instance does a lot of damage but has not nearly the reach of the ranger class or the firing frequency of the mage class.

Once you have selected your class you are thrown right into battle. The game does not start until you hit the next wave button, so no need to haste here. You always place your character first on the battlefield, and then other towers that you can buy with gold.

Once you have placed your towers you can start wave after wave. You can either start each wave individually or let the computer send in wave after wave automatically.

Your main task is to complete each level with at least one life left. You get better rewards and more experience if you do not lose a single life though.

Your regular towers get experience over time which you can then use to upgrade them. Upgrading makes them more powerful. Once towers reach level 4 you have the option to add a special ability to a tower’s arsenal which costs a lot of gold but is usually worth the investment.

Your champion gets experience after the battle. Level ups can be invested in a talent tree and attributes. Both are divided into champion and commander talents and ability. Champion related skills always improve the champion, while commander abilities the troops. This reaches from adding poison damage to the champions attack to improving the base range, damage or attack speed of all units by 1% per point spend.

Each level up rewards you with new units or unit upgrades as well. You begin the game with only two selectable units and increase that initial stock to eight during the game.

Graphics are not really top notch but functional enough to enjoy the game. The leveling system, level selections and upgrades make this game enjoyable.

Head over to Armorgames to start playing Hands of War right away. If you have played the game, let me know what you think of it.

The game controls are displayed briefly on the screen (WASD or cursor keys to move, mouse to fire and aim, space to switch weapons ) before you are thrown right into tank warfare mayhem.

Awesome Tanks uses a fog of war system that hides the majority of the level from you at the beginning. The fog clears once you start exploring the level. The first level acts as a tutorial explaining some of the key game concepts. Depending on the difficulty level selected, you may have troubles completing the tutorial level. New gamers are advised to start with the beginner difficulty.

You earn Dollars for defeating enemies, finding money caches and completing a level. Even if you are defeated, you take the money that you have earned in a level back to the upgrade screen where you can invest it into upgrades.

Available for selection are performance and weapon upgrades. Performance upgrades increase the tank’s visibility, movement, turret speed or armor, and weapons more powerful weapons. The tank has a stationary minigun with unlimited ammunition, and five extra weapon slots that are more powerful but require ammo to fire.

Awesome Tanks is a fun game that will keep you entertained for about an hour. Just head over to the Kongregate website to start playing the game right away.

Epic Inventor puts you in the same role. You start with a simple stick and some bread to recover hitpoints. Your first task is to gather enough resources to build a workbench and other goodies that aid you in the exploring.

Unlike in Terraria, you cannot interact with all world elements. The background trees cannot be choped down for instance. You need to find the smaller resources lying on the way. You move your character with WASD, collect resources and interact with the environment with E and jump with Space. A left-click uses the item in the active slot. This can be a weapon like the mighty stick you start with, or bread that regenerates health points when eaten.

New players will find the game to be rather difficulty in the beginning, as they have to start gathering resources, fight monsters that spaawn in endless waves and understand basic item creation mechanics to build better items. A good getting started video has been posted on YouTube.

A good tip for single player gamers is that you can configure your robot friend to automatically attack monsters. Please note though that your robot needs to be charged eventually which effectively removes the robot from the screen for a while.

The game, on the positive side of things ships with a functional multiplayer mode that you can play with your friends. Fans of Terraria or Minecraft will definitely like Epic Inventor for things that it has in common with the other games. The game is fully portable and only available for Windows at the time of writing.

Interested players can download Epic Inventor from the developer website.

He developed the game Minicraft for the Ludum Dare 48 hour competition. Minicraft is more or less a browser based 2D version of Minecraft (or the comparable game Terraria).

In short; the game is all about resource collecting, building and fighting in a 2D environment. Your first task is to collect resources to build the workbench. Better tools can be built when you have the workbench at your disposal. The first resource that you come upon is wood, but you will later on discover other resources like stone to create different kinds of items.

You move the player with the arrow keys, use c or space to attack or collect resources, and x to open the inventory and to interact with objects in the world.

According to the developer, the end goal is to “kill the only other sentient being in the world, making sure you’ll be alone forever”.

Minicraft is an excellent game considering that it has been developed in 48 hours of time. Grinding, that is repetitive resource collecting and killing of zombies, makes a huge part of the game. This may not be to everyone’s liking.

Regardless of that; Minicraft and Terraria players will feel at home right away. They are also the likeliest candidates to spend lots of time in the game.

Here is a video of the game

Minicraft is a Java based game. It is available as a web browser version or download version. The latest Java Runtime Environment is required in both cases. The source code and a small development journal are also available on the Ludum Dare website.

It is conclusive proof of the existence of Santa Claus too, after all why wouldn’t we believe the government of a country that told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq!?  Don’t believe anyone who tells you that he’s not real as it’s all a smokescreen invented by parents to get their children to go to sleep on Christmas eve.  In the morning you can be certain the glass of milk will have been drunk by Prancer or Blitzen, and Santa himself would have eaten the mince pie you’ve left out for him.

But in a way to prove to boys and girls everywhere how real Santa is they make the live tracking information available each year on the NORAD website, so that you can see for yourself how fast he is at delivering presents around the globe.

In a statement on their website the US State Department detail the complicated technology used to track Santa Claus…

NORAD uses four high-tech systems to track Santa – radar, satellites, Santa cams and fighter jets.  Tracking Santa starts with the NORAD radar system called the North Warning System. This powerful radar system consists of 47 installations strung across the northern border of North America. On December 24th, NORAD monitors the radar systems continuously for indications that Santa Claus has left the North Pole.

The moment that radar indicates Santa has lifted off, we use our second detection system. Satellites positioned in geo-synchronous orbit at 22,300 miles from the Earth’s surface are equipped with infrared sensors, which enable them to detect heat. Amazingly, Rudolph’s bright red nose gives off an infrared signature, which allows our satellites to detect Rudolph and Santa.

The third tracking system is the Santa cam network. We began using it in 1998, which is the year we put our Santa Tracking program on the Internet. Santa cams are ultra-cool, high-tech, high-speed digital cameras that are pre-positioned at many locations around the world. NORAD only uses these cameras once a year. The cameras capture images and videos of Santa and his reindeer as they make their journey around the world.

The fourth system is made up of fighter jets. Canadian NORAD fighter pilots flying the CF-18 intercept and welcome Santa to North America. In the United States, American NORAD fighter pilots in either the F-15, F-16 or the F-22 get the thrill of flying alongside Santa and his famous reindeer: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and, of course, Rudolph.

With the Santa Tracker running live in your home you’ll be able to see when he’s getting close so that you’ll know you need to tucked up safely in bed, all asleep because he won’t visit if you’re wide awake and waiting because like all midnight visitors to your home that doesn’t have a legitimate key to the front door, he doesn’t want to be seen or caught.

So try the Santa Tracker for yourself and you’ll believe in the magic of Christmas  :)  Have a very happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year from everyone here at gHacks.

Settlers of Catan – original Die Siedler von Catan – is one of the most successful board games of all time. Players who are interested in playing Catan online can do so at Play Catan, the official Catan game portal on the Internet.

Registered users can play the core Catan game against the computer or human opponents. Core game in this regard means the original board game without any expansions. Paid account are available that enable access to expansions like Cities & Knights, Seafarers or Catan the card game, as well as tournaments and other games by the Catan designer Wolfgang Teuber.

The Catan board game can be played online on the Play Catan website, or offline in one of the game clients. Catan game clients are available for Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems.

The online client requires Oracle’s Java Runtime Environment. It is suggested to make sure that the latest version of Java is installed on the system to avoid issues with the game.

Free account players can only create and join basic online games. This is done in the channel browser. Only basic games are listed for free players here. You can join games with a click on an open game in the list and the selection of join from the controls at the bottom. Please note that you need to click on Start when you are ready.

Games can be password protected which can be helpful if you want to play a friends only game. The game interface looks nice and clean.

The game begins with the settlement placement phase. Each player places two settlements and two roads on the screen. Players who have played the board game before know what to do as it plays exactly the same. Let me quickly walk you through the rules of the game.

The goal of the basic game is to accumulate 10 victory points before anyone else does. You get victory points for settlements (1), towns (2), the longest road (2), the strongest force (2) and victory point cards that you can draw (1).

Each turn begins with the role of the dice. The number corresponds to numbers on the board. You get resources if you have settlements or towns adjacent to board regions with that number. Players who roll a seven can move the robber and draw a resource card from a player who has a settlement or town adjacent to it.

You get one resource type for each settlement and two for each town (unless the robber is placed on it). You can then use the resources to build or buy. You can build roads and settlements, upgrade settlements to towns or purchase cards. Cards benefit the player drawing them. They can give the player a hidden victory point right away, allow the player to build two roads when the card is played or move the robber around by playing a knight card.

The active player can trade resources with other players. This is one of the key elements of the game, especially during the early stages of the game when players do not get lots of resources due to a lack of settlements and towns.

Players can also trade resources with the bank. Four resources of a single type can be traded against any other resource. Towns at harbor locations reduce the trade ration to 3:1 or 2:1 for a particular resource.

And that’s the game. It is easy to learn and play once you get the hang of it.

Game strategy depends largely on the initial map setup and placement of first settlements. It is obviously beneficial to place the settlements next to three adjacent regions that yield resources. Probability plays a role as well, as certain numbers will statistically be rolled more often than others (lowest are 2 and 12 at both ends, highest resource wise are 6 and 8 which are indicated with a red color on the map).

Placement of settlements and roads can also prevent expansion of another player, as it is essentially possible to block a player this way.

Play Catan is a true to the original board game version of Settlers of Catan. Have you played Settlers before? If so, what’s your opinion?

You start with a poorly equipped soldier with options to purchase additional soldiers once you have completed your first missions. Soldiers are moved around with WAD, the mouse is used to aim and fire.

Mission objectives are displayed on the screen before a map starts. You’ll encounter bad guys, civilians and stars in most maps. Bad guys need to be eliminated, civilians and VIPs rescued and stars collected. Rescuing civilians results in additional money for successfully completing the mission, and stars are used to upgrade your troops.

Each soldier has a distinct weapon, some of additional abilities. This ranges from commandos who shoot a lot faster than your average soldier over spies that can avoid detection to jeeps or rocket launchers. Some soldiers may be more effective than others in certain levels. The Jeep for instance can pack a pound, but cannot nearly jump as high as the commando.

Each unit has a health, power and speed rating associated with it.

Soldiers that die in combat cannot be revived. This is exactly the Cannon Fodder mechanic that leaves you with inexperienced troops once your elite units die. The experience point system is basic at best. You can award points to soldiers who get higher ranks and more hitpoints in return.

Only one soldier can be controlled at a time. You can switch between soldiers of your squad with the 1-5 keys or a click on the individual unit. There is no option to control multiple soldiers at once.

City Siege 3 Jungle Siege is a nice game. It is not overly complex though and may bore experienced players after a while. You basically need to move your units from left to right all the time, kill every enemy you see and collect civilians and stars when you encounter them.

The upgrade system itself is mediocre at best. It would have been more plausible if units would get experience for combat missions or actions.

Playing around with the different unit types may keep you entertained for a while though. Collecting enough money to do just that on the other hand is again pretty boring, especially in the beginning.

Gamers who are looking for a side-scrolling action game that is not overly complex can play a round over at Armor Games.

Warlight is available as a limited Flash based version of the game that you can play alone against the computer, and as a web service that offers multiplayer matches, as well as custom maps and rules.

Interested users can play the Flash version of Warlight here to get a feel for the game, or visit the multiplayer start page to play against human opponents and / or computer players on custom maps.

An account is required to play multiplayer, but the values that you enter are not verified by the service (including the email address). The free account lets you play with up to six players (including you) on games that you create. Members, those that pay $29.99 for a lifetime membership, can create maps with up to 24 players and have additional options that free players do not have. This includes the ability to create tournaments, play in ladders, use the statistics window or use custom scenarios in games. For most, the free membership option should be more than sufficient.

First thing that you want to do after signing up is to click on Multi Player and then on Create Game. You have the option to play a template based game (with options to change the configuration), or create a custom game which basically creates a new template that you can save.

Warlight Multiplayer

Custom game allows you to pick the map that you want to play on against the AI or friends. The game offers hundreds of maps divided into groups such as real world maps, fictional maps or local maps. This ranges from the standard earth setting in various sizes to fantasy worlds such as Warhammer, Middle Earth or Skyrim to plain out crazy novelty maps that come in all shapes and sizes.

You can preview maps which is helpful as it displays the number of different regions of that map. The more regions the longer the game, basically.

The settings options allow you to customize the game. Here you can select if you want to play a team game or free-for-all game, the level of fog of war, how the initial distribution of regions takes place, how many bonus points players get for occupying a set of region and the game’s bonus card system.

All regions of the world, or only select regions can be made available to players during start. Some game modes allow players to pick preferred starting locations. It is then still a game of chance if they get that location, considering that other players may also want to start in the selected region.

Many different bonus cards are available. From the common reinforcement card to spy cards (which only make sense if fog of war is active) and diplomacy cards that enforce peace for a specific amount of turns. Players get card fragments when they conquer countries.

Friends, AI or open seats can be added to the game in the final step. You can invite friends to make sure that they can play the game with you. If you would add open seats instead, chance is that a stranger could join the game instead of your friend. On the multi-player tab, you need to invite at least one human opponent.

The game itself can be played as a realtime game or multi-day game. Realtime games have a time limit of 5 minutes per turn with all players taking turns at the same time to reduce the waiting period.

In each turn, players begin by adding new troops to the regions they control. Each player receives a set amount of troops that does not change, plus bonus troops based on the regions occupied and cards that have been played.

Players then move into the attack / transfer phase where
they can order their armies to attack regions or to move into adjacent territories.

The results are calculated once every player has ended their turn or the time has run out. It is then possible to watch the events unfold or skip to the end to see the end results.

Warlight is a great Risk-like game that offers a lot of variety thanks to hundreds of maps and customizations. If you like Risk, you will love this game.

Regardless of the select game type, only play money games are supported by PokerTH. When it comes to local poker games against the computer, users can select the total number of players for the poker table, the starting cash, blind progression settings and a game speed.

There is no difficulty setting available, at least none that is configurable on the front end. Network games use the same configuration settings with the difference that timeouts for player actions and delays between hands can be configured as well.

There is no option to create a tournament online or change the game mode from Texas Holdem to another poker variant. A click on Internet game opens a log in screen where users can log in with their account or as guests.

The lobby displays all players and games. A click on Join any game joins one of the available games. It is possible to create games, even as a guest. Games can be protected with a password which is nice if you only want to play with your friends. The remaining settings are exactly the same as the local area network poker game settings. Game Type is listed but not selectable, at least not as a guest.

One of the issues in play money games are users who go all in all the time. This makes some games unplayable. It is usually a better idea to play against the computer or friends who take poker seriously.

Registered users are automatically added to an online leaderboard where scores, win and loss, percentages, trends and other stats are displayed.

A couple hundred players are usually online at any time of the day. That’s a small number compared to the big poker rooms with tens of thousands of players.

Still, poker players who prefer to play offline or in a lan may find that PokerTH is a very suitable program for that purpose. The latest version of the program and its source code can be downloaded at the developer website.

The site is http://wall.alphacoders.com/. It is free to create an account and all you have to do is select your screen resolution to get a perfect image fit.

Simply select from the list to find a collection. For example, this is one of the Abstract selections:

You then set the resolution size for your monitor(s). This is important because the image will not fit your screen correctly otherwise. If you do not know what your screen resolution is, open the Control Panel and in the Hardware and Sound category select Devices and Printers. Find your monitor and right-click then choose Properties. This should indicate the resolution. Sometimes the resolution of a monitor is not displayed in Properties. If you do not have the user manual for the monitor or you just can’t find it, Google the monitor type (like Acer B223W) and you will find the resolution on one of the top listings. Actually, there are several different ways to find the resolution. There is no need to go into all of that here, as it is not the subject matter for this article.

Once you have determined the monitor resolution (unless you already know), click on the appropriate resolution options offered by Wallpaper Abyss. You may also enter a specific resolution not featured on the list of available options.

The monitor used in this demonstration is 1680 x 1050, so that would be the selection on the list. Click the desired resolution on the list and the image will upload. Right-click the image and choose “Save as”. Name the PNG file and save it in a folder in your Pictures library. Have some fun perusing the multitude of different images and create a collection as large as you desire.

This is pure and simple desktop fun. We all need to take a break from the technical and give ourselves a bit of leisure. There are different images on this site than there are on Desktop Nexus, which is another site worth checking out. Not only are abstract, anime and comic book images, there are more conservative images for the less geeky users.

You will find this process engrossing and fun. Blow you co-workers and friends away with a personalized background assortment that displays your character and artistic savvy.

You begin the game with cash but nothing else. Your first task is to build Office space and hire some workers to start making money. But workers can only work if you got additional personal standing by, IT for instance to fix computer problems or janitors to clean up the mess when the workers go home.

The tutorial walks you through the first steps with the help of objectives that are displayed at the bottom of the screen. Completing objectives gives you cash and a new objective (e.g. build four office parts, then hire 20 workers).

You can hire supervisors to beat workers on the head to make them work faster, and researchers that research new game elements or improve existing ones.

New worker and building types become available later in the game. You will be able to hire accountants or HR to improve earnings and happiness, decor to improve happiness and transport to get your workers from a to b (to another floor).

You also need to make sure that you have enough restrooms and other types of room that your workers request. If you do not happiness may drop and workers may need to go outside to fill their needs (bathroom, eating, gym).

It is important to have the right ratio of all worker types available. This means that for every x workers you need a janitor, IT worker and supervisor. It is also possible to promote workers to make them more efficient.

The game plays in realtime. Your workers come in the morning and leave in the evening. You can speed up the flow of time using the slider at the bottom of the screen. Here you also find information about your organization’s happiness level, the time of the day and the total number of employees. Research is handled automatically by the game, but you can manually select the area that you want to concentrate research on.

Offices can be upgraded to speed things up, make workers happier and make them earn more money. Workers can be promoted or fired as well.

There is a lot to the game that you will discover while playing it. The game plays like a mix of popular games such as Little Computer People and Sim Tower. It is a lot of fun, especially in the beginning. The game plays like an open end game which means that you will eventually run out of things to do and fun. But that takes a while since you have got a lot to discover before you have seen it all in the game.

You can play Corporation Inc at Armorgames.

Lets take a closer look at Stealth Bastard. The game is a portable game for Windows. You need to create an account on first start which you can do by entering a username and password. That’s it. No email verification or other nonsense. When you select to play the original levels of the game, you will notice that the first are designed as a tutorial to explain the basic game concepts.

It is always the player’s task to reach the level exit. You can move the player with the cursor keys and z jumps. You can crouch by holding down, and interact with objects by holding up (for instance to hack computer systems). It is also possible to jump and hold on to a ledge (and jump again from that position).

Since it is a stealth game, stealth plays a big role in it. You can hide in shadows which helps to avoid detectors and enemies searching for you. The game puts an indicator on the screen so that you see on a glance whether you are hidden or not. And if you are not, you usually die pretty soon thereafter.

The challenge of the game is to reach the exit in one piece. For that you have to avoid traps and robots in each map. When you look at the traps you see some variety there, from laser beams over crushing blocks and moving platforms. You will also encounter stationary detectors and robots patrolling the area. Considering that you do not have a weapon, your best bet is to stay low and try to sneak through a maps defenses to reach the level exit.

The developers of Stealth Bastard have added puzzle elements to the game. This may include something profane as moving an object over a switch to open a door in the level.

The game has more to offer than just a single campaign. First of all, you compete with your score against all other players of the game. The score is always the time it takes you to reach the level exit. You can replay levels at any time to score better.

The second thing that sets the game apart is the level editor that comes with it. The standard maps are not difficulty enough? Create your own or play maps created by other Stealth Bastard players.

Stealth Bastard Video

Verdict

What I really like about Stealth Bastard, apart from it being free and bloody awesome, is that it is easy to learn but hard to master. That, and the fact that it concentrating on stealth and not weapons and fighting. That’s very refreshing The visuals are very nice, as are the music and animations.

This game could have easily sold for $5 to $10 on Steam or Xbox Live Arcade. My bet is that it would be highly popular on those channels.

I highly suggest you give Stealth Bastard a try. You can download the game from the developer website directly. The editor and everything else you need to play is included in that download.

Available for selection are elements that redirect a color stream to a specific direction (e.g. right or down), that split color streams or teleport them to another exit. Most elements can be placed with the mouse at another location on the screen. Some elements on the other hand are fixed at their position which adds to the difficulty of the level.

The game comes with a level selector to select unlocked maps directly. In the beginning though you are stuck with level 1 and need to work your way towards level 25, the last level of the game.

The puzzle game is not overly difficulty, but that was not probably the intention of the game developer. It is a relaxing and entertaining puzzle game for players of all ages. I’d estimate that experienced players may need about 20 minutes to play through all the 25 levels of the game. Those that cannot get enough can load the predecessors of the game to continue playing. The first two parts of the game are linked from Waterfall 3 directly. Players who are stuck can lock at the walkthrough videos that demonstrate how elements need to be placed in each level to beat it.

Music and visuals are excellent. The game itself could use maps that are more difficulty to master. Interested gamers can play Waterfalls 3 directly at the Kongregate website. The game requires Adobe Flash Player to be installed as a plugin in the browser.

Sometimes though you may require offline access. Maybe you have decided to play some older games on your laptop on holiday and know that you won’t have Internet access there. The Cheatbook Database is a free constantly updated cheat codes collection for the Windows operating system. The developers release a new version of the software once a year to keep up with recent game releases.

When you first start the software you see a large listing of available game titles in the left sidebar. A search at the top can be used to find cheats for specific games.

Each cheat is listed with a date, last update and other information. The game cheats are listed on the right in text format. The program does not seem to make use of screenshots or other media.

Game cheats vary a lot. From walkthroughs over individual cheat codes for unlimited lives, hexcodes or individual smaller game tips.

If you look at the games listing you will notice that it largely consists of older games. The developers are releasing updates regularly which come in the form of monthly updates in separate programs. The Cheatbook database itself seems to be updated once a year only with all the new games. It would have been better if the program came with an auto-update option.

The program itself supports a wide variety of gaming systems. From PC games to all kinds of consoles, including the Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Dreamcast, Sony Playstation, Nintendo DS and this generation’s console systems.

New cheat codes and game tips can be added manually to the database as well. That’s handy for games that are not listed yet in the program, or for adding new cheats to a specific game.

The biggest issue by far is the lack of updates throughout the year. This is somewhat mitigated by the release of the smaller monthly updates. Surprisingly though, only the latest update is available for download at the developer website.

The game cheats database is also searchable directly on the developer site. This database contains all cheat codes, both those that are available in the applications and new ones that have not made their way yet into the programs.

Windows users can download CheatBook from the developer website. The 51 Megabyte download needs to be installed before it can be used. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Windows users who want to keep up to date with recent developments need to find ways to do so. They can follow specialized sites like Indiegames, YouTube video channels like that of The Cynical Brit or the Game Saturday series here on Ghacks.

But even if you follow several channels you will probably still miss out on some of the better games. Game Downloader is a free software for Windows that is more a less a constantly updated game download manager for free Windows PC games.

The portable application displays a listing of popular free games in various categories that can be downloaded directly from within the program’s interface.

You pick a game category first. Available in the pulldown menu are game types such as turn-based strategy, puzzles, board games, first person shooters and sports games.

The list of available free games is the populated after the category has been selected. Each game is displayed with its version, a screenshot and game information. There are also links to YouTube, the game developer website, options to get the file size and to download the game.

Many great free Windows games are listed here, from Battle of Wesnoth and Freeciv in the turn-based strategy game section over Warsow and OpenArena in the first person shooter category to popular card and board games like Risk, Solitaire and Poker.

It is obviously possible to find and download the games manually on the Internet. The biggest achievement of the program is that it makes the whole process more comfortable. Plus, it offers all the information necessary to decide whether playing a particular game could be fun (including online and multiplayer)

Game Downloader on the other hand has a few shortcomings. A search is missing, as are detailed information like compatibility or sub-genres. It would have also been nice if the program would offer to download all games from a selected category automatically. The Pc game downloader furthermore does not highlight games that have already been downloaded or installed previously.

Windows users who want to dive deeper into the freeware games scene can use Game Downloader with its 100+ free games as a starting point. The program can be downloaded from the Sourceforge project website. (via)

Players usually start with a small village where they can build civilian units (all female by the way) that can gather resources, hunt and build additional structures. The game uses food, wood, stone and metal as resources, and one of the first task is to secure those resources. Most male units are warriors. They can however be used to gather resources as well which is a very interesting idea as it allows the players to build protection and use the units for civilian tasks in the beginning.

They can in additions build military structures like harbors, walls and towers to protect and expand the civilization.

Buildings include farms to produce additional food, houses to raise the population limit or mills that workers can unload resources into. Some buildings will be unique to specific civilizations which adds to the re-playability of the game.

The game itself is about balancing economics and warfare. Players can build race specific units, e.g. Hoplites, to defend and conquer

Audio-visuals are surprisingly good in this Open Source game. The music plays along nicely and the graphics engine, while not comparable to today’s commercial games, has definitely something going for it.

The developers have released an alpha version of 0 A.D. which means that the game is far from being complete. This in fact is the biggest issue that I have with it considering that development began in 2003. New releases seem to be more frequent in recent times though which is a good sign that we will eventually see a beta and then final release of the 0 A.D. game.

The developers plan to integrate a campaign into the game. For now, it is only possible to play single maps against the computer or other human opponents. The selection of maps is quite large.

0 A.D. shows a lot of prospect, especially for gamers who loved the first two Age of Empires games. The current version of the open source game can be downloaded from the official project website. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.

The player has only a few towers to select from in the first levels of the game. This changes later when updates become available. Zombies enter in at least one but often multiple entrances and leave the map through one or multiple exits which are usually indicated with arrows. There is also some debris in the levels which act as natural borders that zombies cannot pass.

It pays off to look at the layout of the map before placing towers. It is often possible to block parts of the map with cheap towers to direct all zombies through a narrow opening for maximum effectiveness.

Towers range from cheap basic towers to lightning, fire, minigun and laser beam towers. Each tower has a distinctive attack pattern, range, firing speed and damage.

Towers can be upgraded if the necessary upgrade has been selected by the player. Available for selection are new towers, additional money or global tower upgrades. All towers benefit from the latter.

It is up to the player and play style to decide which upgrades to select. It is not possible to go back to select different upgrades at a later time though which makes it important to make the right selections.

Defeating zombies earns money which can be invested in new tower placements or tower upgrades. The game has a total of 15 different maps that unlock gradually and become increasingly difficulty to master. Enemies become stronger, map layouts more difficulty and wrong tower placement often result in a loss. Players loose one life if a zombie reaches the exit, if 20 zombies reach it is game over. Game over only means that the map was not won and needs to be restarted to progress to the next map.

The game becomes repetitive halfway through, which can be mainly attributed to the lack of “interesting” new zombies and the lack of a story. Another element that is missing is a fast forward button to speed up the gameplay.

Still, the game is fun to play especially for users who like the tower defense genre. You can play it over at Free Web Arcade. (via)