Leap between planets in cosmic free puzzle game Starstruck

Now this is clever. Starstruck is a physics-y puzzle game that you can play by yourself, or with a chum in local multiplayer, with each little astronaut being connected by a cord. The goal in each stage is to reach the exit point (sounds easy enough, right?), but, as the game is set in outer space, this is actually more complicated than it appears. You have to be wary of gravity, or rather the lack of it: one wrong jump and you may find yourself cartwheeling through space to your inevitable doom.

Success is all to do with timing, and with setting up your jumps correctly. Finally clearing a blasted obstacle, or a particularly difficult jump, feels pretty satisfying, but it can also be fun when you fail, as you watch the pair flail around in space for a moment before the stage restarts. The rope-swinging has a great sense of momentum to it, and I'm always on-board for games with proper curved planets, and with actual gravity.

If you feel like getting star-stuck in Starstruck, you can do so here.

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.