On this edition of Weekend Download, we pose the questions that plague your gray matter the most. What would happen if you could rewind time with the touch of a spacebar? Who owns Majesty Manor? What would happen if the rolling rocks from Indiana Jones got a mind of their own? And just what does Linus Bruckman see when his eyes are closed? For answers, check out the games below, or combine the following words in any order and interpret the meaning yourself: pastry, Madagascar, treeline, Harukio, with, running, a, spleen.
G.H.O.S.T. Hunters: The Haunting of Majesty Manor (Windows, demo, 86MB) - Games named with A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.S. (Always Creating Really Obscure Names Yields Mind-numbing Sentences) bug me, but I managed to look beyond the title thanks to a very attractive number: $2,500. G.H.O.S.T. Hunters is your typical find-the-object casual game set in a haunted mansion, but the icing on this cake is a contest for anyone who completes the game and solves the mystery of who owns Majesty Manor. Find objects in each scene to uncover possible suspects, then piece together clues and send in your guess by October 16th for a chance to win. Full contest details are available on Aisle 5 Games' website, so be sure to read the fine print before getting too excited. But uh... don't expect to beat me, 'cause I'm so going to win.
What Linus Bruckman Sees When His Eyes Are Closed (Windows, freeware, 42MB) - The answer, surprisingly, isn't "blackness". Linus is an adventure game created by Vince Twelve that takes the dual screen idea to a different level and tasks you with playing two different games at the same time: a space comedy and a medieval Japanese story. Your cursor is split into two parts, one for each half of the screen, and they track each other. When you move on one half you move in the other, likewise with clicking objects. To solve puzzles you have to rely on information from each half of the screen, putting clues together to figure out what's going on. Linus is a genuinely great game that deserves a look from everyone, not just die-hard adventure gamers.
Timetravel Bloboid (Windows, freeware, 2.6MB) - If you're hungry for Jonathan Blow's hotly anticipated Braid, Timetravel Bloboid might quell the fires a tiny, tiny bit. The platformer drops you in the shoes of a little character who must collect every coin in a level to activate the exit door. Spikes and perilous perils stand in your way, and your only real weapon is a limited rewind feature that lets you backtrace a few seconds of movement. Surprisingly challenging, but a level editor lets you create easy-as-cake stages to give you that sense of achievement.
Quinn (Mac OS X, freeware, 2.8MB) - Believe it or not, it's a game exclusively for the Mac(!) This tetromino game, from Simon Härtel of Germany, looks gorgeous and plays as great as it looks. The level of polish present in this title is impeccable. Play solo or with a friend at the same keyboard, or start a server and invite others to connect over a LAN or the Internet. Quinn supports a wide variety of multiplayer rules, global and local high score tables, and it even allows you to customize the pieces and backgrounds for the game. And if all that wasn't enough to persuade you to download the game, this exceptional production can be yours for the very low price of... free. If you have a Mac, Quinn stacks up quite nicely on it.
A Tribute to the Rolling Boulder (Windows, freeware, 5MB) - Another short experimental gameplay project by Kloonigames (creator of Crayon Physics), Rolling Boulder puts you in the granite-encrusted shoes of a rolling rock protecting artifacts from Indiana Jones adventurer-types. Simply roll around and smash the little dudes to keep them away from the statues at the top.
Rolling Boulder is a really great, fun game. Also, here's a video of someone being very, very good at it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaP7KcR1cCM
for some reason I'm getting an error when I click on the Rolling Boulder link: "Error establishing a database connection"
Love the Rolling Boulder concept (like Asteroids Revenge 3) but ditto urudezu: WordPress error.
Any chance of a mirror?
I'm getting the error sign for Rolling Boulder too.
Also, Timetravel Bloboid doesn't know whic program to open with. Anyone help?
Mirror for the boulder-game..
http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/download/80886/
I used Google.
Is there any game similar to Quinn for the PC? I have been looking for this like for years and was excited when I first saw the picture, then heart crushed when i saw it was only for the mac :(
Google has a cache with a working download link.
why does it have to be weekends that are downloads? We should post them any day but post the most of them on the weekends.
all puzzle lovers should definitely download "what linus bruckman sees..."! i just found out it's an amazing, highly innovative game, which gets you hooked very easily. i'm now at the third stage and having problems, so i thought i'd quit for a while to clear my head. any hints with moving in the 3rd stage, apart from the obvious are very welcome :>
I solved Linus Bruckman (at least, I got the code for the website), but I'm not sure what do you mean by "third stage"?
I just finished too. By 3rd stage I meant that
I first solved the bottom part, then just the top part and then "the 3rd stage" was the combo of both parts together.
because i did it that way, i thought when both parts were correct I'd get a more optimistic ending, but no :(
well, it was brilliant either way :D
Ah.
I never solved just the top part - I solved first the bottom (since I can't read Japanese), then both. Based on your post, I assume that solving just the top doesn't give anything that's not in the full solution.
First, asteroids strike back, and now this. Are there any more gamesa about sentient rocks that I should know about?
My fellow Linux users will be happy to hear that "What Linus Bruckman Sees When His Eyes Are Closed" runs perfectly under Wine (0.9.43).
Eytan Zweig, you're absolutely right, there's only
one tiny part in the combo ending that's not in either of the two others. it's the split-face "noooo" followed by the asylum scene.
I'm so glad you finally posted a download for the mac.
Quinn is the best tetris implementation I have ever played. It also uses a very 'mac' interface, unlike other games that would just rather make up their own. The interface probably wouldn't blend very well with windows ;)
(although iTunes and Safari look okay on windows... hmm)
thanks Magic
G_Z, Im also having that problem. The file ends in .rar, and my computer doesn't know what to do with it. Also, some downloadable levels of the Crayon Physics game
https://jayisgames.com/archives/2007/08/crayon_physics.php
have this end. How can we play Travel Bloboid and Crayon Physics?
[Edit: You need to download a utility that will decompress .rar files. -Jay]
quinn is my favorite of these.
BTW, great site Jay!! 5/5
hi again :) i just realised quinn is way better than actuall tetris dont tell them that though. and thanks for having a download just for mac... please do that more often
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