Fantasy

In honor of Leap Day 2008, Anna Anthropy, editor of The Gamer's Quarter and hobbyist game developer, released Mighty Jill Off, a free, old-school, and delightfully subversive little PC game. Jill Off distills its gameplay down to a very simple and enjoyable level; press left and right to walk, press Z to jump, press Z mid-jump to stop your upward-momentum early, and mash Z repeatedly to hover. Jill Off also distills its theme and plot down to a very simple and enjoyable level; the titular chubby little dyke gimp (which I say in the nicest way possible) is climbing to the top of a tower simply because she's a submissive, and her greatest joy in life is when her dominatrix queen MAKES her climb to the top of the tower.

Knytt Stories is, as you can probably guess, a pseudo-sequel to the original Knytt. While the gameplay and atmosphere of the game are very similar to their predecessor, there are numerous refinements that put this a step above the original. Rather than starting out with all your abilities at once, you’re forced to acquire them as the game progresses. There are several entirely new abilities, too, including an umbrella, which will slow descent, and a double jump.

In the early 80s, hobby game publishers produced a whole series of small, relatively inexpensive tabletop science fiction and fantasy games--starting with the "Microgames" from Metagaming, and including the "Capsule" games from SPI, and games from Mayfair and many smaller manufacturers. Steve Jackson got his start in this medium (with Ogre), and much of my earlier work was in it as well (The Creature That Ate Sheboygan, DeathMaze, et al).

Heritage, mainly a miniatures publisher, produced a series of 8 titles--of varying quality, but some excellent--under the "Dwarfstar" name and the aegis of Howie Barasch and Arnold Hendrick (who later went on to a stellar career as a game designer for Microprose and IMagic). Some time ago, Reaper Miniatures, which currently owns the rights to these games, made them available as free downloads (you'll need a color printer to produce the maps and counter images).

In Kingdom of Loathing, players take the role of a loosely-defined “adventurer” to save King Ralph XI from the evil Naughty Sorceress. Along the way, you’ll fight such monsters as Sk8 Gnomes, Goth Giants, and Racecar Bob.

It sounds stupid, I know, but KoL is actually a very funny game. Originally designed by Zach “Jick” Johnson, the game uses his simplistic stick figure art. That, in addition to the extremely witty jokes, are some of the major draws to the game.

Lock & Key is a tower defense game. With only one attacker wave. And it's in text.

The premise is that you're a dungeon designer, the one who lays out the arrangement of traps to keep in the extra-specially-dangerous prisoners. You've got a grid of rooms in which you can place these traps, and a limited budget to spend. When you're done, you're taken aside to a guard room with the King to watch as Boldo -- a kind of Tarzan figure gleaming with oiled muscles -- does his best to break out. If he fails, you win. If not, you get to watch Boldo defeating all the traps you so carefully laid out -- and the consequences for you are disastrous. Time to play again.

The Last Sorceror combines frenetic Robotron-esque combat with frequent pauses after battles, and a series of RPG quests--making for a nice change of pace from both Diablo-esque click-fests and the turn-based combat of Final Fantasy-style RPGs. (By Robotron-esque, we mean that one set of keys controls movement in cardinal directions, while another controls the direction in which you shoot--so that movement and fire can occur at the same time in different directions.)

If you yearn for the days of Ultima (round about VII or VIII) or the King's Quest games--or if you've plowed all the way through Oblivion and aren't willing to wait for years until the next great, big-budget fantasy RPG gets released--you've just stumbled on a game you will like a great deal. In fact, stop reading now and go play the demo. Maybe I need to insert a rotating spiral GIF here and a deep hypnotic voice intoning "You Will Like It," but it hardly seems necessary. No mental coercion needed--the game speaks for itself.

Looking for a multimillion dollar 3D big-budget extravaganza from a major publisher? Boy, have you come to the wrong place. A lot of the graphics in Cute Knight are scans of line sketches, and most of the rest are anime-inspired Illustrator drawings. The gameplay itself is pretty simple, too--you choose a place for your character to go and some actions for her to perform, and your stats are updated as a result.

And yet somehow you find yourself drawn into her story--and want to drive it to something like a happy ending. In other words, Cute Knight quickly creates a sense of emotional engagement that's lacking in far more expensively-developed and commercial titles.