World’s Biggest Pac-Man is now free to play in your browser
A free-to-play, browser based version of Pac-Man has been released by Namco-Bandai. The blob-gobbling mechanics are as familiar and addictive as ever, but as Gamasutra report, there’s an interesting twist. Logging in on Facebook will let you create your own mazes. Once complete, they’ get added to the gigantic meta level. Every maze has gaps that will let you escape into other people’s levels, creating one vast mega-maze.
At the time of writing, World’s Biggest Pac-Man consists of more than 1300 maps. More than 180,000 ghosts have been killed, and more than 17 million Pac-dots have been eaten. You don’t have to login to Facebook to play, simply head over to The World’s Biggest Pac-Man site and say goodbye to all that working and eating you were planning to do today.
Closed beta access code for Gunshine.net with 1,000 uses – get it while it works!
We love free games, and according to our 100 games giveaway currently underway, you love free games too! That’s why we’re sharing our 1,000-use beta code for Gunshine.net, a browser-based online isometric RPG dungeon crawler set in a dystopian future, with you all. There’s no restrictions on the code: use it, give it to your best friend and make him use it, write it on public bathroom walls or tattoo it to your forehead–whatever you want to do with it, we approve.
The only hitch is that you have to go to a very specific URL to redeem the code (both are listed below). So if you share the code with your friends (or tattoo it on your body), be sure to include the URL as well.
15 multiplayer browser games to play right now
The internet is a scary place. It’s a place full of information, far too much for any one person to absorb even a fraction. It’s a place that caters to every desire, however depraved and esoteric. It’s a place full of other people. Isn’t that terrifying?
And, more than that, you’re expected to interact with these people. Have discussions, comment on articles you’ve all read, and troll one another. It’s enough to make that hermetic ideal of cave living, where you only have to worry about which end of the skunk to eat first, look most appealing. But it’s ok, I’m here to help.
Games are perhaps the best way to survive contact with other humans. They let you vent your frustrations, or work together without having to, y’know, have a proper conversation about it. You’re hidden and safe behind the anonymity of the internet, and the rules of the game. It’s a controlled environment, and so you’re probably going to be ok.
And so, allow me to aid you to submerge yourself in the unwashed masses, a toe at first, before the rest of your leg, and then all to follow. Below is a list of games aimed at interaction over the internet, all from within the safety of your browser. Some are short-fire bursts of multiplayer gaming, others aiming for something much more long form and arduous, but oh-so more rewarding because of it.
Google demo PC gaming in a browser
During a talk at GDC 2011, Vincent Scheib, a software engineer at Google, has shown off the future of web-based gaming with impressive browser-based demos which don’t require plugins or web players to work.
Speaking to PC Gamer live at the show he says: “A lot of the tech is available today but in a beta or test form. You don’t have to use flash. As we move forward, the browsers are dedicated to supplying new technology to support higher quality applications.”
Hit more for a video, and to try out the demos.
The top five RPG Maker games
On the great map of PC gaming, the RPG Maker Network lies somewhere south of indie and west of modding. An often-overlooked community with strong ties to the fractious independent nations of fandom, the network is known for its abundant remakes and demakes of classic console JRPGs. More recently, though, a series of avant-garde releases – the harrowing (and very adult) Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer, the legitimate surrealism of Space Funeral – have drawn attention to RPG Maker as something more, perhaps, than just a repository for pet projects and Deep Internet stickiness. Here are games that make a strong case for RPG Maker as a vibrant – if not commercially viable – platform for indie development, that treat the oft-lamented JRPG formula as a springboard for some pretty exciting and involved thinking about games.
Notch takes Edge award for best indie of 2010. Provides amusing video evidence
Minecraft creator Notch has taken an Edge award for the best indie game of 2010. And he loves looking at it from different angles. Click more for video evidence set to a familiar youTube anthem, and an interview with the hatted genius.
Play Ultima 4 in your browser
One man has ported RPG classic Ultima IV into flash in its entirety, which means anybody can play the game all the way through, straight from any web browser.
Ludum Dare 19 results announced
Ludum Dare is a challenge in which competition entrants must create a game in two days. The games are all based on a theme voted for by the competition’s participants from a selection of ideas. Once the games have been completed, they’re released into the wild so the general public can play them and rate them. The results are now in, read on for a look at some of the best entries.
Bowling with soldiers in Warlords 2
If you took Plants vs. Zombies, replaced all the zombies with armed peasants, replaced back gardens with the fantasy world of Beneril and orbs of sunlight with sweet gold, then you’d have something similar to the horribly addictive, free to play browser game Warlords 2.
How to edit your skin in Minecraft
Are you jealous of all those players running around Minecraft in their spiffy duds? Are you tired of your boring, default skin? Do you long to be unique and appreciated for your good looks? Well, for absolutely no cost to you–other than a bit of your time–you can change your appearance and finally be confident that wherever you go, people will gasp in awe at your grandeur (in Minecraft).
Vikings of Thule adds quests, giant wyrms
People either love ‘em or hate ‘em, but Facebook games provide 10-second increments of gaming fun in between work for a lot of gamers trapped in an office every day. There are a mind-boggling number of options out there, so even if you hate farming and think the Mafia can fight its own wars for all you care, you can probably find a Facebook game that you’d enjoy. One of the games that I’ve been playing on and off for the past few months is a Vikings-themed RPG called Vikings of Thule (main site, facebook page, which just launched its first expansion. I sat down with the game’s Senior Producer, Íris Kristín Andrésdóttir, to discuss the update and where she wants to take the game in the future.
Giveaway: Leave a comment telling us where you would pillage if you were a Viking in today’s world and guaranteed to succeed to be entered to win one of 20 Vikings of Thule Posters (picture at the end of the article). This contest is open to everyone, everywhere (yes, even Canadians).
Minecraft’s world-stretching water slide
Minecraft’s world is made entirely of cubes, which it lets you very quickly place and delete. But while a single block takes a second, building something as sprawling and enormous as jonnyabc’s waterslide would have taken hours, even with the help of four other people. Video below.
Symon: the procedural adventure game
Adventure game logic can be terrible, because the worst puzzles in adventure games aren’t logic. They can be traced back to whatever unchallenged assumptions were sloshing around in the designer’s head. The Gambit game lab knows this, and that’s why they’ve written a game that generates puzzles based on their study of bullshit dream logic and unchallenged assumptions. Each time you play Symon, you’re playing a new set of puzzles with a new cast of characters.
Free games for the long weekend [Giveaway]
Those of us in the United States have a three-day weekend coming up, and this isn’t one of those “family” holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving. This is boring ol’ Labor Day, which, for gamers, means that we’re looking at a solid 72 hours of prime gaming time. But what about the gamer whose gaming collection has run low? How will they possibly fill the long weekend without new games to play? Don’t worry, as always, PC Gamer’s got your back. Here’s our roundup of games with free-to-play weekends, open betas, or recently launched free-to-play games to keep you interested. And if that’s not enough, we’re giving away five retail games to keep you gaming all weekend long and beyond!
Cultivate surreal stories in the Grow series
Grow games are browser puzzle games with a unique set up: you’re looking at a cartoon scene, and there are some buttons along the edges. Each button can only be pressed once. Press one, and it’ll add that element to the world, and possibly cause it to react with whats already there, developing the scene based on what you picked. When all that is finished happening, you press another one. The trick is to work out the best order so that the world gets fully developed.
