E3 lurks just around the corner, like an Assassin's Creed hero waiting to drag a dimwitted guard into a big pile of hay, and while I'm as excited as anyone about the yearly festival of pomp, hype, CEOs saying 'synergy', and ultimate vague disappointment, here's your weekly reminder that some of most innovative and unrestrained games lie on the fringes, in that nebulous and contradictory space known as indie gaming. Here are five such games released, for free, over the last week or so, exploring low-res time travel, duck-based dungeon exploration, one-click RPG mechanics and more. Enjoy!

Lands of Lorez by Photon Storm Play it online here



Game Jolt's month-long LowRezJam wrapped up at the end of May, and for my money (I do not have any money) the cute/annoyingly named Lands of Lorez is one of the better games to emerge from the friendly compo. It's a first-person dungeon crawler in the Lands of Lore mould (hence the name), developed by Photon Storm, who you might know from their free Phaser framework. There's an impressive amount packed in here for a game you manhandle with just the cursor keys, and this self-imposed limitation has resulted in some creative design decisions. Combat, for example, is essentially Gears of War's brilliant active reload system, expanded a wee bit; successful attacks require you to tap at just the right moment, and if you miss, the enemy will strike in your stead. Carnivorous ducks also make an appearance, because why not.

The Bound of Time by wowa Play it online here



Flowers are your friends in this neat puzzle platformer which, yet again, takes place within a teeny-tiny window. The knightly adventuring hero can't see too well in light, or jump up high ledges, so they have to rely on a magical flower they soon come into contact with, which can enable jump pads and see better than most humans for some reason. Switching to the flower transforms the sad colour palette into a veritable rainbow, suggesting (the title also adds to this) that it's showing us the world at a different point in time.

The hero/heroine turns into a statue while you're controlling the flower, and there's some clever overlap here when it comes to puzzles (the flower can jump on statue-you's head, for example). I think it would be half the game it is without the beautiful Secret of Mana-ish soundtrack, so be sure to play this one with the volume on.

Gonubie Hotel by Ian MacLarty Download it here



Last week I was trying to work out what 'makega.me' was, and it turns out it's a month-long 'slow jam' giving devs plenty of time (compared to the the weekends/weeks most jams last for) to make a game. Gonubie Hotel, like the other entries, is based on the word series , and developer Ian MacLarty has interpreted this as meaning a series of arcade games all played at once . You can't see me right now, but I'm nodding sagely at this decision.

There are four games overlayed here: an Asteroids type shooting thing, a Street Fighterish fighting game, and two others I can't recognise but which appear to be in the same sort of vein. You control these titles with just the cursor keys, and I'll leave it to you to figure out what you're manhandling in all four games, as I spent most of my time just trying to stay alive. Gonubie Hotel's best feature, however, is its reflective screen; I shan't spoil any more than that, but it's a fantastically eerie and creepy little addition, and I swore like a docker when I realised what was going on. (Via Indie Games)

One Tap Quest by shimage Play it online here



There are not enough superlatives to describe One Tap Quest, a deceptively simple but smartly designed RPG where your only input is a single click, right at the beginning of the game. The trick lies in when and where you apply this click. There are two stages: the first is a procedurally generated smorgasbord of enemies and power-ups; as in Desktop Dungeons or Half-Minute Hero, you have to direct the hero towards weaker enemies first in order to increase their prowess for the next. If all goes to plan and remember, this is a plan you initiate with a single tap your behatted warrior will level up on a few slimes, then snakes, then bandits and so on, while bagging a better weapon and other power-ups along the way. If they manage to make it past the fearsome dragons at the top of the screen, they'll engage in a seemingly stat-based boss battle, and eventually be eliminated if they haven't been sufficiently toughened up.

You'll spend most of One Tap Quest waiting and praying that the roving enemies will either cross your path or narrowly miss your hero. It's excellent design, and with the layout being procedurally generated, you won't mind instantly restarting in order to try for a better score.

The World the Children Made by James Earl Cox III Play it online here



I spent half my time with The World the Children Made wishing that James Earl Cox III had made the movement speed a little faster, and the other half smiling at the extraordinary pixel art and synthy '80s/Egyptology-esque soundtrack. It's based on Ray Bradbury's The Veldt; you play as a housewife in a futuristic abode where preparing dinner, cleaning up, and administering chores to your children is as simple as selecting options from a series of handy terminals. Play it for faintly astonishing scenes like this one:

The Divinity games have always been appealing in an adorable, slightly hokey and tongue-in-cheek way, but Original Sin is something else: a mixture of Diablo-style co-op adventuring and unprecedented, Ultima VII-esque environmental interaction. It's a game with terrific promise, and I can only hope that the final release lives up to it. Thankfully, we don't have too long to wait to find out - while Larian's Kickstarted RPG was due to launch on June 20th, it's been pushed back by ten days to allow the team to add voice-acting to the game. A video update, below, explains this decision.



Not every piece of dialogue will be accompanied by voice acting - in the interests of Larian ever finishing the game, it's been restricted to between-NPC banter and observations by your character as you poke around. It's still nice to be able to get a sense for these characters through their delivery, however, providing the voice acting is up to snuff of course. I'm not particularly worried about this happening - Larian are using the same studio that did the voices for Dragon Commander, as seen in the above video, and they appear to be doing a bang-up job.

Divinity: Original Sin will now launch June 30th, if you hadn't already done the math(s). Head here for Craig's thoughts on the Early Access version.

Sniper Elite 3's 'everybody's-a-sniper' approach to multiplayer neatly solves one of the biggest problems with online shooters: i.e. camping sniper jerks ruining everyone's killy fun. If everyone's a sniper, you can't very well complain about snipers, can you? Because you are one, and you just shot a man's skull in half from a distant rooftop. I remain...queasy at the gratuitous violence featured in Rebellion's historical snipe-'em-ups, but I'm rather taken with the idea of a series of multiplayer standoffs, which can be solved by either shooting or sneaking up on your enemies from behind. Sniper Elite 3's relatively unique approach to multiplayer is documented in the following trailer.



It's just like Enemy at the Gates! Enemy at the Gates if it was directed by Michael Bay.

Multiplayer aside, Sniper Elite 3 does sound rather promising, boasting as it does an open world for you to sneak your way around in. The game's out June 27th, and you just missed out on grabbing a free copy of its predecessor on Steam - unless you didn't, in which case, hooray!

Update: It's over! Video embedded below. Hammy acting! Primitive greenscreen! Hopefully some laughs! But can we save the future with the power of lazy journalism and also write a restaurant review in time for dinner? There's only one way to find out! Join Richard for a trip through this obscure techno-thriller, whose fiendishly subtle villain you will never, ever see coming...

The Electronic Three is nigh. Next week, the entire gaming industry will descend on E3 2014, eager for big announcements at flashy press conferences and as many video games as can fit in LA's massive convention center. There will be new PC games and new PC hardware. That's all expected. But what about the unexpected? What E3 announcements will blow our minds? Is this the year Gabe Newell finally walks onto a stage and says "Half-Life 3 is done, and you can play it right now," and we all leave E3 early?

Probably not. As we psyche ourselves up for E3, the PC Gamer staff have made some wild and not-so-wild predictions about Oculus and Steam Machines and the biggest surprises we'll see at this year's show.

Evan: Plenty of stuff has already been revealed in the past month or so (Far Cry 4, Battlefield Hardline, Mortal Kombat X, Crytek s co-op shooter and lane-pusher, Homefront 2, first hands-on with Shadow of Mordor, BattleCry, GOG s new DRM-free platform, The Witcher 3 details) in the industry s collective effort to not get lost in the noise of E3, but I m confident more surprises await us at the show proper. Blizzard will probably hold everything back for BlizzCon in November, when it knows it ll get the most attention, and Valve hasn t indicated to us that they re showing anything or speaking to any press this year. Boo.

This E3 would, though, be the perfect opportunity for larger studios to show off Oculus projects competition for attention in the VR space is still low and interest in the device is only going to increase. I ll be surprised if we don t see a prominent game announced as an official Oculus port, at the very least.

Otherwise I m hoping we ll see on some activity on the Steam Machines front, even with Valve s controller delayed to 2015. Random thought: is Raven Software working on anything other than Call of Duty Online, the China-exclusive version of the franchise?



Sam: Let s just go right out there and say there ll be something big from Bethesda Game Studios this year I think the public denials of the studio s next project announcement are a smokescreen. There were three years between Fallout 3 and Skyrim, and just under four between Morrowind and Oblivion. It s almost been three years since Skyrim. It s at least time for an announcement. I also think this is a show where we might see some more traditionally console-centric games cross over to PC.

I believe EA will show off more than one Star Wars game, and we ll see a first teaser of Mass Effect 4 (not called that), which ll get a lot of people talking in terms of story. We ll also see an all-new series from the Mass Effect trilogy team, which I boldly predict will be something a little more real-world (but still a bit out there) versus traditional BioWare fare. Oh, and Batman will fight Superman in Arkham Knight (alright, this is more a fanfiction scenario than something I think will actually happen, but hey. There s a movie soon).

Tim: E3 feels like it's in a strange place this year. Not Los Angeles, it always happens there and she's always strange, but the show itself feels almost on the verge of another existential crisis. I haven't been less convinced by its need to exist since the infamous year it was scattered across several Santa Monica hotels and some of the stands amounted to little more than trestle tables and some posters. It's facile to debate who 'wins' E3 the eye-watering cost means everyone loses a pretty penny but I suspect those that come out of it best will be the ones who see beyond physical show and manage to speak direct to the audience.

I'm doing myself out of a job here, but why just keep your exciting demo behind closed doors when you could stream it direct to a vast audience who, for three days, will all be desperate for the sweet kiss of brand new game?

Rumours? Go on then, just one: I expect a juicy unreleased console game to make the jump to PC. And I think The Witcher 3 will romp game of the show, but Hyper Light Drifter will be the indie darling. Oh, and finally, I think our coverage is going to be the best we've ever done. Don't miss it.



Wes: When was the last time Microsoft really paid attention to PC gaming? We got a port of Viva Pinata back in 2007. That was something. Since then, well, it's pretty much been the Xbox show. But after Rise of Nations unexpectedly hitting Steam and the Xbox One controller drivers being released, I think Microsoft is going to throw us a surprise. One of their big first-party tentpoles is going to come to PC, and they're going to tell us that during their press conference on Monday. Phil Spencer has committed to more PC gaming from Microsoft in the near future, though he says not to expect anything at E3.

Lies! It's all a smokescreen. I bet Phil's going to have at least one big game for PC at E3. It just won't be Halo.

Tyler: Electronic music, electronic lights, electronic imagery: it s the Electronic Arts E3 2014 Press Conference! It s a great year to be a gamer, someone will say, being sure to use the words next-gen and blockbuster liberally while explaining how games have evolved. A nod to Star Wars will get a few woos we ll see that later. First, we ll see a trailer montage cutely juxtaposing action games with The Sims 4, a new Dragon Age Inquisition cinematic trailer and gameplay footage walkthrough, tech demos for FIFA 15, Madden NFL 15 (expect to see an NFL player), NHL 15, and EA Sports UFC deep breath more about The Sims 4, something about Facebook, something about a mobile app, the audience clapping politely, someone saying not just a game, and then a Star Wars: Battlefront trailer. And then someone saying more social, more connected, someone saying a whole new way to play, a gag that doesn t quite work, a Mirror s Edge 2 trailer, a Battlefield Hardline gameplay demonstration, and a teaser for something from BioWare. At least, I hope that s what happens. I love routine. And I want to see Mirror s Edge 2.



Tom: What is the 'next generation' and why should anyone want it? A lot of money and energy will be spent answering that question as Sony and Microsoft step up their efforts to make their new systems seem essential. It's been a relatively slow year for big-budget releases and that'll continue as more big games flee for the distant shores of 2015, but what will left? Alien Isolation will be strong again, Dragon Age: Inquisition's open world will tantalise, The Sims 4 will continue to look like a game that I'll secretly pour hundreds of hours into when no-one's looking. Mirror's Edge 2 and Battlefront will get small teasers, but I think it'll be a quiet one this year, with few surprises. Prove me wrong, E3. Prove me wrong.

Cory: It s a really interesting time for Oculus VR. We know about the Facebook acquisition, and we know about the hiring spree that the company s been on, and we definitely know that developers at Oculus have big plans for VR. My gut tells me that it s still too early to see the long-awaited consumer version of the Rift, though. Instead, I think we ll find out a lot more information about Oculus plan to create first-party games for its headset. Back in May, the company hired former 343 Industries art director Kenneth Scott to work with a team of developers on games in-house.

While I don t think it ll be playable, I do think we re going to learn more details on the game, including that it s multiplayer-focused. It s the one thing that could set Oculus over the edge from technological curiosity to legitimate platform, especially in the eyes of the retailers that don t yet understand VR as anything but an expensive accessory.

When you're a respected detective like Sherlock Holmes, your opinion carries a certain degree of weight. If you're going to accuse someone of foul play, you'd better be right. Because if you're not, somebody is probably going to suffer for it. Crimes and Punishments, Focus Home Interactive's new Sherlock Holmes games, promises rather more serious consequences for getting it wrong, as its new E3 trailer shows.

One of my biggest complaints about an investigative adventure game I recently played (that shall go unnamed) is that my investigations were essentially a waste of time. If I came to the wrong conclusion in this matter or that, I was told to simply try again, over and over, until I got it right. Success is always desirable, but success without the risk of failure really isn't much fun at all.

The game will offer six cases, each with a number of potential suspects that will have to be winnowed down to the guilty party through analysis and deduction. But a misplaced accusation could bring with it "disastrous repercussions!"

This trailer is supposed to be a demonstration of those "disastrous repercussions" but it's hard to figure out what exactly is happening. Sherlock seems bummed about not solving the case, but is it because the woman got away with murder? Or did his failure to prove that the guy in the hat actually committed the murder force the woman to pursue the only course of justice she had left vengeance and thereby perpetuate the cycle of violence and retribution that continues to plague our society to this very day? Because as repercussions go, that would be pretty disastrous.

Hey, what am I, Sherlock Holmes? Play it for yourself if you're so curious. Crimes and Punishments comes out in September.

Update: Freespace 2 is now unlocked and available on Steam, and is marked down 50 percent to $5 until June 13.

Volition is most closely associated with the Saints Row franchise these days, but to a certain class of joystick-owning oldsters, the name brings something else to mind: Freespace. It was the first project for the developer, and one of the last bastions of the space combat simulation genre. Today. the entire series, including Freespace 2, is available on Steam.

Why now? I'd guess that the rather surprising interest in projects like Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous have something to do with it. After all, aside from a few niche exceptions, the space combat sim has been dead for years since Freespace 2 came out in 1999, really and I don't think anyone expected Chris Roberts' "PC or bust" appeal to old-school joystick jockeys to go over quite as well as it did. But there's obviously demand for this sort of thing, the kind of demand people are willing to open their wallets to indulge, and if there's any one "must play" space sim on the market, it's Freespace 2.

This isn't the first "modern" release of Freespace 2, for the record; it's been available on GOG for awhile now, alongside its predecessor, which is a mighty good game in its own right. But if you have a "Steam or nothing" tendency, this is a good way to get into a great, great game.

Freespace 2 on Steam isn't actually available at this second, but is expected to unlock on the service shortly.

A month ago, Smite introduced a new game mode to stand beside Conquest, its traditional 5v5 three-lane battleground. Siege cuts the three lanes down to two and adds lumbering siege tower minions, earned through kills and clearing jungle camps, that can quickly knock down towers by themselves. The smaller map and siege tower minions make for a shorter, faster-paced game, and I was still trying to decide how I liked it compared to Conquest when Hi-Rez added another wrinkle. In the latest patch, they cut Siege down to a 4v4 mode, and now Siege produces some of the most fun, fast-paced lane-pushing matches I've ever played.

Siege reminds me of Riot Games' attempt to differentiate League of Legends with Dominion. No one's playing Dominion now the shallowness of its node-control gameplay sent most players straight back to Summoner's Rift with a shrug of disinterest. With Siege, Hi-Rez Studios has wisely kept the lane-pushing gameplay intact but incorporated elements of the combat-focused Arena mode. Lanes are such a fundamental piece of the genre; I don't think Siege would have a chance of becoming a popular competitive mode without them.

In Arena, killing gods and minions causes the enemy's "ticket pool" to drop, and when it hits zero, you win. In Siege, killing enemy gods, minions, and jungle buffs earns tickets, and your team spawns a siege minion every time that pool hits 100. Arena's fun, but lightweight and throwaway. Siege is fun and incorporates the deeper strategy of lanes and towers and jungles. There's a pivotal neutral camp in the center of the map called the Silver Fury that rewards an extra siege minion. If your team doesn't ward and kill Silver Fury, you're probably going to lose.

With 10 players, Siege felt chaotic, even sloppy. Sloppy was fun, and 5v5 Siege did introduce some interesting asymmetrical elements between the two lanes. Sometimes you'd end up with a 3v2 lane, with one player roaming the map hunting for ganks. 4v4 is more restrictive, but those restrictions actually make the mode shine.


A smarter foursome
Team composition becomes hugely important before the game even begins. Who's going to lane with who? If we put two melee champions together, will they get pushed out of lane? Do we have an okay balance of magic damage and physical damage? If we need a carry, a tank, and a mage, what role gets the fourth slot? Assassin? Support? Warrior?

Siege mode is now more punishing of poor team compositions or mistakes in battles, because there's one less person involved to get a couple cleanup kills or pull of a clutch base defense. My favorite thing about 4v4 Siege is how quickly matches go by and how dramatically they can turn around with a couple smart plays.

In the best match I've played so far, my team was losing badly talking about surrendering 15 minutes in. When we had a hunch that the enemy team was taking Silver Fury, we rushed into the jungle and managed to steal it. We also killed a couple enemy Gods in the scuffle, then started pushing up a lane with a siege minion. They were overconfident, since they'd been crushing us the entire game, so we aggressively dove on a couple more under their tower as they tried to defend 2v4. Then they got rattled and kept coming at us one by one as they respawned. In less than five minutes, we went from talking about quitting to winning the game.

A dramatic turnaround like that can happen in a game of Conquest, but it's not going to happen until near the 40 minute mark when everyone is level 20 and respawn times are 60+ seconds. In Siege, we ended a dramatic match in 20 minutes.



There's one other thing that I really like about Siege mode as a 4v4 game: it lets me play premade matches with a smaller group of friends. It's hard for me to put together a team of five players, and Smite doesn't allow you to queue in Conquest mode with a team of four. It's an understandable matchmaking restriction I wouldn't want to solo queue and fight a four-man premade team, so it's nice to have 4v4 Siege as an option.

I don't think Siege will ever have the same competitive pull as Conquest, because its matches are too short to develop the same tense narrative arc as a great 45 minute lane-pushing slugfest. But it's a fun middle ground between the throwaway nature of Arena and the serious investment of Conquest. With 4v4 Siege, Hi-Rez is onto something that Riot Games and Valve should pay attention to.

It's hard to tell if the Smite community agrees. Posters on the Smite subreddit largely seem to agree that 4v4 is more competitive and 5v5 is more casual, but are split on whether that's good or bad. The community's divided on how how restrictive the 4v4 metagame is and how it affects God picks and lane compositions.

I say 4v4 improves the meta. The lane-pushing genre thrives on deep, tactical competitive play. Smite's first 4v4 Siege tournament, between the two best Smite teams in the world, will be a great litmus test for Siege's competitive future.

The PC Gamer US staff recently packed up desks and moved across the office, which meant it was time to dig into some of the boxes crowding our shelves. We sorted through a treasure trove of old game discs and manuals, finding some great stuff just about every Star Trek game on PC and some even better stuff, like Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 9.

What should we do with these old games? If you want us to play any of the weird gems we dug up, let us know in the comments below. But please, please don't make us install that AP History study guide. We don't want to go back to school.

Minecraft is pretty popular, but it's also kind of a time sink. To get around this, some servers allow impatient players to pay for perks, letting them essentially buy their way to the top, or to whatever measure of "victory" they aspire. The only problem is that this runs contrary to the terms of the Minecraft EULA, which forbids monetization of content created by Mojang, as well as mods and plugins. "You can do whatever you want with them, as long as you don't sell them for money / try to make money from them," it states. "We have the final say on what constitutes a tool/mod/plugin and what doesn't."

It's the kind of thing that people generally click past and ignore, but that may not be an option for much longer. Mojang looks set to begin cracking down on Minecraft servers that allow players to pay for perks.

Developer Erik "Grum" Broes recently emphasized in a chat that server owners are not allowed to make money from the game without permission. As noted by Reddit, Broes called out WoodyCraft for offering perks on its servers in exchange for "donations," saying that regardless of the fact that most of those perks are based on plugins, "You cannot make money with Minecraft without our permission."

That doesn't mean the end of donations, as Broes acknowledged that they're allowed by the Minecraft EULA. "But we'll most likely hack down on the fact that most people give 'perks' for donations which under almost all laws makes it a purchase," he explained. "You cannot 'give' people ranks based on an outside payment. It's really simple, money you spend outside of the game cannot reflect inside the game at all."

He also said that a new EULA with changes "that should be enough to tame the bad stuff" is likely on the way, although he added that the updates should actually give more rights to server operators than the current one. And in cases where particularly egregious offenders refuse to modify their ways, Broes said Mojang would take a tiered response: "We'll ask nicely and then send really mean lawyers. :)"

It's safe to say that the reaction to Broes' statements hasn't been universally positive. It costs money to run Minecraft servers, after all, and offering something above and beyond basic access is an effective way to attract support. Even so, Broes' stance is firmly backed by none other than Minecraft mastermind Markus "Notch" Persson. "I have no idea what's happening with eula, I've been home with a bad cold. But basically, you can't charge for our game. Duh," he tweeted earlier today. "You can charge for hosting servers, but not for gameplay features."