James Ernest is the designer of, among other games, Falling, Lord of the Fries, Diceland and Button Men. Cheapass Games is his vehicle for self-publishing quick-playing and generally very cheap games (as Lone Shark Games is his vehicle for corporate event games).
Three earlier Cheapass titles are available for free download (print and play) from the company's website -- and while these aren't Ernest's best titles, free is a nice price, and they're fun enough.
Of course, as with most of Ernest's work, you won't find strategic depth here; his games often have a strong element of randomness, but also have amusing premises and are good fun in a beer-and-pretzels mode.
Of the three, Huzzah!, in which you play competing entertainers at a Ren Faire, is my favorite. Renfield is an attempt to marry bidding strategy to Poker. And Bleeding Sherwood is an auction game in which all bids are spent, even for non-winners; the theme is that you are merchants competing to sell worthless goods to the poor folk of Sherwood Forest.
According to Ernest, these are "orderware," meaning that if you like one, you should order a different game from the site. Something worth getting shouldn't be hard to find.
Bleeding Sherwood
Of those three, I think Bleeding Sherwood was unfairly overlooked when it came out, and it's nice to see it resurface, however briefly. Beyond having quality humor, the tight-as-a-drum auction is brutally unforgiving in a way that something like, say, For Sale is not. It's a game where it's very, very easy to make a single mistake and put yourself out of the running, a game with a de facto player elimination. That's not a bad thing in such a quick game, and it's a dynamic that most auction games try and soften up.