My son had an important viva exam for his Master of Pharmacy degree this morning and has another exam later this afternoon; so I've not written a full review of todays game, but have covered the first half hour or so of the game (see images etc below). I need to help him with his revision by acting as a foil; (by asking him questions that are likely to be asked). Thankfully his viva voce exam this morning went really well . :) Apart from some practical work experience he has to cover over the summer recess, he's finished after this next exam until October.

Azure Sky:

In Brief:
Azure Sky is a reasonable side scrolling retro pixel 2D action platformer.

You can see a video of game play HERE, and one via the Steam page HERE and some Steam reviews that appear mostly positive, however, I agree with the only negative review that most of the positive reviews may have been posted by the developer and their friends as they were all posted back in January over two days and all are similar. That said, I enjoyed p[laying the game. It is basic, but playable in small doses. You can see the Steam reviews HERE.

The Game:
When you start your journey you will initially meet your sensei Makoto. He speaks to you and says ''I hear you are going on a long journey towards adventure, explore a new world and master magical abilities'' I lefta couple of things for you. It's not far, go get them. Press E for more information and a small quest pops up that asks you to Find Equipment. Once found you return to Makoto press E again an a story board pops up that says ''What awaits me on the other side''

Once you've left Makoto you are given your next quest, which is to find Mikayo. You can dash using a combination of A or D plus Shift and to air jump use W and Space. If you press space on it's own you float upwards out of view than slowly return to the ground. You will need to air jump to reach some platforms.

Shoot using your various spells by using the Left Mouse Button, Change your spell using the number keys each spell you pick up will be numbered from 1 to 7. You can pick up various potions such as Health and Mana potions. These are indicated along the bottom of the screen. To use them just click on them with your left mouse button. You can carry up to six potions at a time. Some enemies drop potions, which you just have to walk over to pick up. . Health potions will heal damage caused by enemies and Mana enables you to use special skills such as Fire Blast, Poison Bomb, Mystic Sword and Heal all of which cost 25 mana to use. Other skills such as Healing Totem and Storm cost 50 and 75 Mana respectively. There are six skills available, but only become available as you reach specific levels apart from Fire Blast which you start with at level 1. Storm is unlocked at level 2 , poison bomb and heal are unlocked at level 4, Mystic Sword and Healing Totem are unlocked at level 6.

There are save points indicated by scarecrows. Once you pass one of these, if you die you should return to the scarecrow you last encountered; however, you can only die a few times before returning to the beginning of the level (I didn't make a note of how many times this was, but I think it was three times). If you leave the game before a save point, when you return you can continue from the last save point. The red health bar located above your character indicates your health, the blue bar indicates how much Mana you have and the white bar is associated with weapon use. If your health bar reaches zero, you die and will return to the last save point you encountered. If your health is low and you have a health potion, this is the time to use it; especially if your potion rack is full

Some drops appear to be un-pickup-able. With these you have to swap the weapon you are using by standing over it and pressing E, the weapon you are carrying will be dropped and you pick up the new weapon. These are distinguished by colour. You start with a green weapon and the first one you may find is a blue weapon; however, on a few different tries I found different coloured weapons such as the purple weapon which fires four streams rather than two that you get with the green and blue weapon streams. The blue weapon fires faster than the green weapon. Each hit from an enemy weapon takes between a fifth and a quarter (20 to 25%) of your health.

Pressing any one of the numbered keys from 1 to 7 will unleash the spell that is associated with that number. However they can only be used once they are unlocked and will use up your mana on each use. As mentioned elsewhere, enemies drop mana which you pick up as potion bottles, so you can replenish your mana whenever you pick up more. On your travels you may pick up the occasional companion.

Key Bindings:

W = Jump
A = Run
D = Run
W+Space = Air Dash
A or D+Shift = Dash
Spells = 1,2,3,4,5,6,7.
Inventory
Use = LMB
Throw = RMB
E = new quests.

Issues:
I tried pressing I to bring up the inventory, but each time I did that I received a code error, so do not press I (which is the traditional key binding for the inventory. You character turns towards your mouse, but will walk backwards if you use the D key to move forwards. Enemies can move through area's you cannot pas such as the ground area's that are located at higher positions. They can shoot you, but you cannot shoot them while they are in these locations.

Notes on Security
I scanned a zipped copy of the installed game and it found zero hits from 63 antimalware engines. The downloaded executable may include some low level adware that only opens your browser to Falcoware's home page after the game has installed and places four shortcuts onto your desktop (which can be safely deleted once the game has installed). The installation does not inject any malware into your system. When your browser is opened to Falcoware's home page when the game has been installed, it earns Falcoware games some money, part of which is given to the developer of the game for allowing the game to be given away free. You can see the results of the scan via the following link:

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/ef116a94acf988dd3743af6f288d6dfc72b2003b7e9d6db7b011ea1062b12ae7/detection

Other Free Games:
The latest game from Epic Games is now live and is called Frostpunk it's a society survival game where heat means life and every decision comes at a price. In an entirely frozen world, people develop steam-powered technology to oppose the overwhelming cold. You face the task of building the last city on Earth and securing the means necessary for your community to survive, which you'll find HERE. It ends tomorrow Thursday 10th June at at 4pm (UK time/11am EST), where it will be replaced by a mystery game. If you play online with friends there's a decent PvE/PvP free FPS game called Scavengers and you can still get the clicker RPG Idle Champions as well as other multiplayer games. I've been posting redeemable codes (time limited for 5 to 7 days from the day of posting) for free chests over in the forums HERE. They contain various items that boost your heroes abilities and health as well as affect your group of heroes in game, for example potions that boost health or DPS, contracts that can improve armour or weapons already used by the heroes or other contracts that add specific amounts of gold to your bank as well as items of jewellery, armour or weapons that buff your characters stats. I don't usually play clicker type games, but this one is well supported by the developer and has a massive following. I'll be posting codes for as long as I continue to play the game. I've posted some help sheets and links to a game wiki via the above link as well

Please see Delenn's threads for Steam and Non Steam freebies HERE and HERE respectively. It’s worth adding these to your favourites and checking regularly for available freebies. Most are only free for a specific time. If you miss the deadline you’ll miss out. Once added to your account, it’s yours to keep. Delenn has recently posted details of more Steam games that are temporarily free. One may be until it leaves early access??? - i.e. Tower Ball - Incremental Tower Défense plus a reflex game called Keyboard Killers are still free. Delenn posted details of a free origin came called Battlefield 4 which is available for free if you have an Amazon Prime account (If you like FPS games, it's a brilliant game to own. (not sure if it's still live).

Please also check out Delenn's thread about the charity bundle over in the forums that costs $5 (or as much as you wish to donate over $5) and includes over a thousand games HERE; Dana also posted a link to the bundle a few days ago.

You'll find hundreds of freeware games of all arcade and indie genres on Itch.io and Caimans Games as well as other sources. Please do check out the game discussion forums for older posts HERE (the sticky section is useful). Many of the earlier posts may be out of date with respect to the links I and others have provided to the free games; however, you only need to know the name of the game to find most of them via other sources. Many of those games from 2008 to around 2017 were posted as part of a project to supplement the lack of weekday games when the game giveaway went to weekend only games around Easter 2008 (mainly instigated due to the financial crisis of 2008) until November 2018 when Falcoware stepped into the weekday slot; however, from around 2015 onwards we did start to get the occasional Steam key for various games offered as limited giveaways, with a restriction on the number of keys available (anywhere from 25 to 2000+). These included over 60 decent AAA games and indie arcade games ; for example some of the better AAA games included , lucky Warhammer: Vermintide 1 & 2 plus DLC for version 2; Dreadlands, Mount & Blade: Warband, Immortal Unchained and Conan Exiles.

I've not posted details of any Indie Gala freebies since my older computer went on the Fritz back in October last year. Since then Indie Gala have added quite a few more free games, some of which are definitely worth downloading. You can find the latest freebies HERE and their showcase list, which includes all the freebies still current; (many of which have been included for a couple of years now) HERE.

It’s worth adding these links to your favourites and checking regularly for available freebies. Most are only free for a specific time. If you miss the deadline you’ll miss out. Once added to your account, they are yours to keep. :)