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.

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.

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.

I have addresses the storage issue in the past here on Ghacks. It all started with the guide How To Move Large Apps Or Games To Another Drive, followed by a review of Steam Mover which has been specifically designed for Steam.

Especially the rise of Solid State Drives has fueled the development of tools such as Steam Mover, or Steam Tool Library Manager which I review today.

The program, just like all the others, is using NTFS Junctions to move Steam games to another hard drive. For that, it requires that Steam is installed on an NTFS partition. Here is how it works.

You need to install the software before it can be used. Steam and your games collection are identified automatically by Steam Tool Library Manager. It is not possible to switch directories or to select directories that already contain data, Steam Mover is more flexible in this regard.

All you need to do is to pick a destination directory on the right side of the interface. Just browser to a folder on another hard drive where you want to store some of your Steam games to make room on the Steam partition. Once done select a Steam game and click on the Move to Storage button.

The program will do its magic and move the game to the new folder on the selected hard drive. This changes nothing game wise. You can still start the game via Steam. All data will be saved to the new directory though. The best way to describe it is that the tool redirects all requests from the original game directory to the new directory.

Steam Tool Library Manager has not been updated for a year which is the biggest issue that I have with the program. The program itself works fine though. Windows users can download the latest version of Steam Tool Library Manager from the developer website.

Update: The website is not responding right now. I have uploaded the latest version of the program to the Ghacks server. You can download it from here: Steam Tool Library Manager (453)

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.

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.

Game Booster 3.0′s installation should not pose troubles. Users should take note however that it will install a toolbar unless declined during installation. The developers have once again changed the interface which now displays a single button dominantly on the start screen.

A click on the button performs the optimizations automatically. Users who want more control need to click on the Configure button.

Here they can select the processes, unnecessary services, non-windows services and other items that they want disabled when a game is started on the system.

Processes include web browsers and other third party programs that are running on the Windows PC. Services are divided into unnecessary core services and third party services. Others finally offers options like clearing the computer’s RAM, killing explorer.exe, lowering the process priority of other processes or changing the power settings to high performance.

The edit button can be used to add services to the list of available services, and to edit the services and process whitelist. All edit options link to a plain text document that needs to be edited for that.

Gamebox mode offers a list of games that will automatically trigger the game boosting mode when executed. You can add new games either by dragging and dropping their shortcut into the program interface or with the help of the Add button in the program interface.

One great feature of Game Booster’s game mode is that it will restart the closed processes and services after the end of the gaming session. This is done automatically without user interaction.

The program offers additional features and services. This includes a Diagnose option which you can use to create a very detailed report about the PC, and a Tools section that offers system tweaks, defragmentation and a drivers updater.

If there is one thing to criticize it is the text-based editing of services and processes that you want to add or whitelist. The ability to optimize system resources with one click, and the automatic option to restart processes and services after the game ends should attract lots of gamers who never bothered with programs of this kind before.

While Game Booster 3.0 has been primarily designed to improve gaming performance on Windows, it can in theory be used for other resource intensive tasks as well. Just add shortcuts of resource intensive programs to the Gamebox to benefit from the same optimizations when running applications.

Game Booster is a software for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. Interested users can download it from the official program site over at IObit.

Kingdom Rush comes with everything that one would expect from a Tower Defense game. It features a campaign with lots of different maps, different towers, enemies, a great presentation and a skill tree.

The player has to beat a map to advance in the campaign. The game begins with instructions on how the game mechanics work. Each new game element, be it a new tower or enemy, is introduced during the map.

Towers can only be placed on designated locations on the map. The player can select between four basic towers which can be upgraded several times. Each tower can be branched out into one specialization. The Archer tower for instance can be upgraded into a powerful but slow firing Musketeer Garrison or a faster firing Ranger Hidout.

Each specialized tower can be further upgraded with two or three skills or spells which are cast automatically by the towers. Upgrades are paid with gold that is earned by defeating enemies and by starting rounds early.

The player has two spells at disposal that can turn the tide. It is first possible to place three reinforcements on the map that block monsters from advancing. The second spell is the good old meteor shower that rains death and destruction on enemies.

One, two or three skill points are awarded after each successful map depending on the performance of the player. This is determined by the number of leaks in the level.

Skill points can be invested in upgrades that make the player’s spells or the tower’s stronger. They can be reset after each map so that skill points can be redistributed.

The introductions of new enemy types and towers helps a great deal. Some monsters are for instance more or less immune to a certain damage type; Armored monsters take less damage from arrows while spiders take reduced damage from magic attacks. Placement of towers and tower upgrades are therefor essential to beat a map without leaks. Observant players will notice that enemy waves always start from the same locations, which makes it easier on consecutive plays to place the towers in the right locations to thwart them of.

You can replay maps at any time, for instance to improve your score to get all of the skill points for completing the map.

Kingdom Rush is an excellent Tower Defense game that comes with all the bells and whistles that one would expect. You can play it over at Armor Games.

This meant that you had to keep Origin, the distribution platform running in the background, the web browser to select a game and the game itself. Changing servers meant to close down the game, select a new match and server in the web browser to start the game anew.

While I have not tried the system yet, I’d say that it is less practicable than a built-in functional server browser (to be honest, not a single server browser of a Battlefield game was that, but that’s another story).

Back in the good old games of gaming, I would have probably bought the game anyway. Today, I want to make a stand against all the “features” that hurt legit customers. That’s one of the reasons why I did not buy From Dust, even though I would really like to play the game. I also skipped the Modern Warfare series ever since its developers started to drop dedicated server support.

It now came to light that Origin, EA’s new online distribution system (not to mix up with the classic game developer that EA bought and killed), adds another issue that could convince some gamers not to use that system. Users who sign up need to accept the EULA which gives EA massive rights to collect, use, save and transfer user data. It reads under (2):

You agree that EA may collect, use, store and transmit technical and related information that identifies your computer (including the Internet Protocol Address), operating system, Application usage (including but not limited to successful installation and/or removal), software, software usage and peripheral hardware, that may be gathered periodically to facilitate the provision of software updates, dynamically served content, product support and other services to you, including online services. EA may also use this information combined with personal information for marketing purposes and to improve our products and services. We may also share that data with our third party service providers in a form that does not personally identify you. IF YOU DO NOT WANT EA TO COLLECT, USE, STORE, TRANSMIT OR DISPLAY THE DATA DESCRIBED IN THIS SECTION, PLEASE DO NOT INSTALL OR USE THE APPLICATION.

Gamers either have to accept that EA may collect, use, store and transmit data like their computer’s IP address, software, application usage and hardware, or they may not install or use the application.

EA may furthermore transfer the data in anonymized form to third party companies. Rock Paper Shotgun puts it this way:

And then even more creepily, they say they intend to take such information, combine it with personal information about you, and use it to advertise directly to you. However, when selling on this free-for-all on your computer’s contents, they’ll at least remove personally identifying information. Gosh, thanks.

The site furthermore compares EA’s clause with a comparable Steam clause and comes to the conclusion that Valve’s “policy is self-restricted to anything on your PC directly relating to its own products” while EA’s is “so broad that it gives the publisher permission to scan your entire hard drive, and report back absolutely anything you may have installed, and indeed when you may use it, and then pass that information on the third parties”.

If I would not already have canceled Battlefield 3, I would now.

While it is certainly possible to download them from an Abandonware site, it is not always clear if the right holders have made the game available for free. It is a grey area legally and I prefer to buy old games instead.

One of the sites that I discovered some time ago that caters to the old games niche is Good Old Games, or GOG. All games on the old games websites are DRM-free and working on newer versions of Windows.

Even better, prices usually range between $5.99 to $9.99 which I personally find very acceptable for classic PC games. When you look at the games catalogue, you will find many classic PC games listed. From the Alone in the Dark and Baldur’s Gate series over classic Sierra adventures like Gabriel Knight or Phantasmagoria to all time favorites like Dungeon Keeper, Panzer General 3D Assault and Unreal Tournament GOTY.

The majority of games retails for $5.99 or $9.99 with only a few exceptions that break the $10 mark which means that you can get between 5 to 10 different games for the price of one PC game that has just been released.

Here is a list of games that I can recommend on Good Old Games:

• Baldur’s Gate: The Original Saga (RPG)
• Baldur’s Gate 2 Complete (RPG)
• Broken Sword: Director’s Cut + The Original Game (Adventure)
• Broken Sword 2: Remastered + The Original Game (Adventure)
• Broken Sword 3: The Sleeping Dragon (Adventure)
• Dungeon Keeper (Strategy)
• Fallout (RPG)
• Fallout 2 (RPG)
• Fallout Tactics (Strategy)
• Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (Adventure)
• Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within (Adventure)
• Heroes of Might and Magic® 3: Complete Edition (Strategy)
• Heroes of Might and Magic® 4 Complete (Strategy)
• Icewind Dale Complete (RPG)
• Icewind Dale 2 Complete (RPG)
• Master of Magic (Strategy)
• Master of Orion 1+2 (Strategy)
• Panzer General 2 (Strategy)
• Panzer General 3D Assault (Strategy)
• Phantasmagoria (Adventure)
• Phantasmagoria 2 (Adventure)
• Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri™ (Strategy)
• Unreal Tournament GOTY (Action)

All 24 games and extensions would cost $171.78 Dollars. This may look like a lot of money, but it turns out that it boils down to $7.1 per game if you buy all the games listed above.

You find lots of good old games in the list, classic games that every PC gamer should have played. Yes, graphics are definitely not top notch anymore but if you can ignore that, you end up with lots of value for your money.

The game pages on the Good Old Games website list game compatibilities, with most PC games being compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. Users do need to know that some old games limit the screen resolution. It can happen that the maximum resolution of a game is 640×480. Some games can be played in window mode to make them more playable.

The community part of the website has forums for each game much like the Steam community forum. Here you find tips, tricks and help if you run into problems.

In short: Good Old Games offers affordable PC gaming classics that are compatible with recent operating systems. The only downside for non-English speaking users is that games are only offered in English on the website.

The free software Gameplay Time Tracker tops Steam’s time tracking capabilities by supporting pretty much any game that is playable on the PC. The program runs semi-automatically in the background. It monitors fullscreen applications on the system automatically assuming that all of them are games. A blacklist is provided to block certain fullscreen applications which are not games, or games that you do not want tracked, from being tracked by the application.

It is furthermore possible to add games to the whitelist, which can be handy to monitor games that are not automatically recognized as such by the Gameplay Time Tracker application. The third monitoring option supports browser-based applications. This works by adding websites to the browser-based applications list. Supported are the four major web browsers Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Google Chrome.

Detected games are added to the database automatically. It is still up to the user to add information that are not filled out by the process. This may include a product description, notes, the game save folder or the release date of the game.

Game statistics are displayed for all games in the My Games tab in the program interface. The tracker lists the program name, total and last run time as well as the total number of times the game has been started on the system.

The daily statistics tab confusingly displays statistics for the last 365 days of gaming. Here it is possible to display the full game run time per day, the daily game run count or controller specific statistics.

A right-click on the program icon in the taskbar displays a context menu with options to launch the main program window or to stop or restart the game monitoring.

Users who do not want their input devices monitored can disable this feature in the program options. There they can also disable the autostart entry.

Gameplay Time Tracker can be helpful for users who would like to monitor the time they play games. This can be useful to control the gaming to avoid spending to much time gaming.

Windows users can download the latest version of the game tracker from the developer website. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. It was tested on a 64-bit edition of Windows 7.

How similar, or fundamentally different, are games on Google+ to games on Facebook? Google promises better controls, both in the playing experience and in the sharing experience.

Vic Gundotra at the official Google Blog highlights that it will be easy to ignore games which could be one of the core differences to gaming on Facebook where it is difficulty to block all the gaming messages and notifications.

When you’re ready to play, the Games page is waiting—click the games button at the top of your stream. You can see the latest game updates from your circles, browse the invites you’ve received and check out games that people you know have played recently. The Games page is also where your game accomplishments will appear. So you can comfortably share your latest high score—your circles will only see the updates when they’re interested in playing games too.

It remains to be seen how Google+ users can control the gaming news flow in their stream. I for one would welcome an option to block all gaming related messages and notifications from appearing in my Google+ stream.

The initial set of games include all time favorites like Angry Birds, Bejeweled Blitz, City of wonder or Zynga Poker as well as a few lesser known games.

Here it the video that Google has posted to announce the Games in Google+ feature.

Google has to take into account two different types of users on Google+. First the traditional social networking users who like the full experience that includes games, and then the “serious” crowd that uses Google+ for communication, news and contacts.

The sentence “your circles will only see the updates when they’re interested in playing games too” seems to indicate that users need to opt-in into gaming to see game notifications. We will monitor the development and post updates once we get more information about games in Google+.

For now, what are your expectations and demands when it comes to gaming on Google+? (via)

Occasionally I get left things that I can give away and I have a little stack of things at the moment up for grabs including a Router and a powerline networking kit.  I’m going to kick off the first of my giveaways though with some promotional Xbox Kinect games I was sent to try.  I’ve got six in total to give away and here’s how I’m going to do it.

The giveaway will start live tomorrow (Thursday 11th August) at these times…

10AM PT, San Francisco | 6pm – London | 1pm – New York | Fri, Sep  2nd at 3am – Sydney | Fri, Sep  2nd at 2am – Tokyo | Fri, Sep  2nd at 1am – Beijing | 10:30pm – Mumbai

At that time I’ll announce the titles of the six games live on my Facebook page along with an email address (you can access the Facebook page to read the post without needing a Facebook account).  The first person to email me the name of the title they want will get it sent to them in the post.

Suffice to say I’m not going to announce the titles just yet but I will say that they include titles for kids, adults, men and women and are some of the best (I think anyway) games available for the Kinect.

You’ll need to include your name and full postal address in your email for your entry to be valid.  I’ll contact the winners by email when the giveaway is over and announce when the prizes are gone on Facebook.  An Xbox and Kinect are not included in the giveaway, you’ll need your own and, sadly, in the very unlikely event that a game goes missing in the post I won’t be able to replace it.

Several factors played an important role in the game’s success. First it was the technology, mainly graphics and animations, which were smooth and incredibly advanced on the C-64. The music and non-linear gameplay were two other factors to ensure the great success of the game.

Hurrican is a freeware remake of Turrican for Windows based PCs. It stays true to the original game in many aspects. the game is freely downloadable from the developer website. Be warned though: It plays much better with a gamepad or joystick, and it stays true to its origins which means that it is a tough game.

The game can be played alone or with a friend in two player mode. Users on the keyboard will have to use more keys than usual to control the game. You control the character with the arrow keys, shoot with ctrl, jump with alt and use the secondary 360 degrees weapon beam with Shift. It is kinda unusual that the up key makes the character look up in the direction he is facing to shoot bullets in that direction. This takes some getting used to time on the keyboard.

New users should start with the tutorial that explains the game’s basics and offers some tips and tricks which will help you in the game. It is for instance possible to shoot faster by tapping on the fire key repeatedly, or to enter ball mode by pressing down and the space key simultaneously.

The game stays true to its heritage. This begins by the fake crack intro and continues with the music, animations, open level architecture and enemies that you come across.

Here is a video of the first Hurrican level.

Hurrican has been released in 2007. The last released version is 1.04 which ships with an level editor to create custom levels for the game. The game tested fine ona 64-bit edition of Windows 7. It should run on other Windows systems as well.

Great game for old school gamers who enjoyed playing the game on the C-64 or Amiga, and new gamers who may have never heard about the game but like these kind of action games (Contra, Metroid anyone).

G-Type, today’s Game Saturday game, is a R-Type clone. The game has been developed a long time ago, which you will notice for the first time when you try to change the resolution of the game. It launches in a 320×240 window. The highest resolution, only available in full screen mode is 640×480. Some might say that this makes the game unplayable on today’s high resolution monitor systems. I say, it plays just fine.

The game is divided into five stages which all scroll vertically, just like the original R-Type. You move your ship with the cursor keys, shoot with Ctrl and select one of the available extras with Shift. About the extras. Some enemies drop extra points on the screen. Collecting extras on the screen moves the extras bar forward by one. Extras range from speed upgrades to satellites and multi-way lasers.

Those extras are important, as you will have a very hard time beating the game if you do not pick them up to make your ship stronger. You will have to make some strategic decisions in the beginning. Will you go for speed upgrades and the satellites to protect your ship or the extra fire power that you get after collecting several extras?

If you are good, you will end up with all the extras that you can get. It needs to be noted that only one of the last three extras can be active at a time.

The game does not seem to be as difficulty as the original R-Type. That, or I have really improved my shoot em up skills in the past years. The game is fun to play, despite the mediocre graphic settings. Windows users who would like to play a fun shoot em up game can download the game right from our servers. The game ran fine on a 64-bit Windows 7 Professional installation. It should run fine on other Windows systems as well. G-Type (648)

Rocks and Diamonds is a Boulder Dash clone for Windows, Linux and Macintosh computer systems. The game is not a 1:1 copy of the original Boulder Dash game, as it introduces new elements to the game. But first the basics.

You control the miner with the cursor keys. Left Control is used to clear an adjacent field without moving into it, while Right Control to drop an element in inventory, like dynamite.

The game is highly configurable, all controls can be changed in the setup input menu. Here it is furthermore possible to change other settings, like in game music, resolution and quality.

The game ships with level sets. It comes with a custom level set created by the designers of the game, and level sets of original Boulder Dash games, including Boulder Dash 1, Emerald Mine, Sokoban or SupaPlex. That’s a lot of digging and mining. The original Boulder Dash set alone offers 99 levels of fun, enough to keep you entertained for days, if not weeks. Even better; Unlike the original Boulder Dash where you had to start from the beginning, Rocks’n'Diamonds comes with a level selector to start at a later level directly.

The game itself plays just like the original Boulder Dash. I have not tried the Sokoban and Emerald Mine levels and cannot really say how they play. The music has been taken directly from classic Amiga demoscene tunes, which is an incredible idea. If you have been part of the demoscene then you will surely love that idea.

Rocks And Diamonds comes with a level editor to create new levels. The editor is easy to use. You see the current level on the left side and can use controls on the right to add, edit or remove items from that level. You can place enemies, rocks or diamonds there for instance among other things.

The game is well done and lots of fun. Especially the original Boulder Dash levels bring back memories. One thing that is not optimal is that there levels are not automatically switched. You always go back to the main menu where you have to click the start game button to play the next level.

Users who would like a dose of one of the most popular C-64 games of all time can download Rocks And Diamonds from the developer website.