Horror meets skateboarding in the spookily rad, free Orange County

Yes it's another retro-looking, first-person horror game, this time made for the Haunted PS1 Summer Spooks game jam. But, hang on a moment, as rather than walking around a creepy, boxy environment, you're skateboarding around one instead.

Orange County gives you a procedurally generated, decidedly dark city to explore, home to a few roaming cars you'd better avoid, if you want to stay alive. One of these is a funny-looking police or security buggy, seemingly out to bust your boarding self, specifically. It's not terribly hard to avoid these few vehicles, but it's more difficult to dodge the many walls of houses and shops, which for some reason cause the screen to turn horribly pixellated when you, inevitably, crash into them.

It's a bit annoying when that happens, but when you're out in the open, skating around the creepily empty streets of what seems to be a futuristic dystopia, Orange County feels pretty great. The controls are a bit finicky, but there's something wonderful to the feeling of skateboarding in first-person. I was reminded, more than a bit, of EA's Skate. (Thanks, Alpha Beta Gamer.)

For more great free experiences, check out our roundup of the best free PC games.

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.