Monkey Ball meets Metal Gear in this free stealth game

Beep reminds me of a few things, notably those two games in the headline, but the main thing that came to me was that episode of Futurama where Fry and Leela pretend to be robots on a robot planet. You know, to fit in. And to not be killed. Small, slightly rough-around-the-edges stealth game Beep is a lot like that episode. But rather than a human pretending to be mechanical, you're a ball pretending to be cuboid, on a planet filled with evil cuboid grunts.

The game begins with a well-made cutscene of your spaceship crashing on, let's say Cubetopia, which is a fine name for a planet where round things are entirely alien, I'm sure you'll agree. Some cubey jerks promptly pilfer your ship, leaving you, its ball pilot, to explore the land in an effort to get it back.

You roll around the place a bit like one of the characters in Super Monkey Ball, but with no edges to worry about, and frankly a lot more slowly than would be ideal. When you come across a cuboid enemy, a big '!' will appear over their heads as they chase you down and try to kill you—but you can counter this by holding the left mouse button to transform from a sphere into a cuboid shape yourself.

Even if they see you change, enemies will be entirely fooled by your new appearance, giving the chance to sneak up on them for a sneak attack, after they've turned around. Stealth's a bit simple, and a little too forgiving, but have you played another stealth game where you can push enemy corpses onto pressure plates, to solve puzzles and open nearby doors?

As I said, it's a little rough and ready, but Beep combines stealth, puzzles, and, well, rolling about in an interesting, innovative way.

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.