Cossack And Magic

In Brief
Cossack And Magic is a side scrolling capture the castle game. You can see a video of game play HERE, HERE and HERE

The Game
Cossack And Magic is a side scrolling capture the castle game created using the unity engine. It opens with a configuration window that enables you to select the screen resolution, a toggle for windowed and full screen modes as well as which monitor to use if you have a multi monitor set up.

The game includes two modes of gameplay called Company and Battle. In company you have a single soldier you can create multiple times so long as you have enought gold to purchase them. You earn gold steadily over time which can be spent on creating new soldiers, much like in many RTS games for example Age of Wonders, Cossacks Art of War, Age of Empires and Magesty; though this game is nothing like those classic games.

While you are creating soldiers, the enemy is sending his own forces against your castle. Send waves of soldiers until you defeat the enemy and destroy his castle or until he defeats you, at which point you or your enemy wins the game and are given various statistics such as the number of soldiers you created and the number killed by you and your enemy. Each level becomes harder to beat, with new enemies being introduces.

There is a level map with six levels available for the Company mode. The battle mode enables you to select from several soldiers and effects for example rain, that impedes the movement of enemy forces. Health recovery, armour etc. Money earned is slower in this mode, but you can create much more powerful soldiers, for example in my first attempt I spent most of the cash I started with on a soldier that cost 550. It was able to survive all the way to the enemy castle easily killing most enemies and also destroyed the castle with at least a quarter of its health still intact. The graphic is vaguely retro cartoony in appearance Overall it's a nice little time waster; though once you've played several levels in both modes it may become a little tedious. Still for free it's well worth downloading. It's an ideal coffee break game.

It's different to virtually every game we've been given via the game giveawayoftheday since its inception back in 2006. The closest game I can think of that has similarities was the limited giveaway called The Last Roman Village, a side scrolling tower defense game given away April last year and August the previous year; however today's game doesn't come close to the game play potential of that game.

Other free games worth adding to your game library
The latest Epic freebies include Alien: Isolation, A first person psychological/survival horror game based on the Alien movie franchise and set in an atmosphere of constant dread and mortal danger. It was previously given away on the 21st December last year. This is an opportunity for those who missed it the first time to grab it now. I bought Alien: Isolation when it was first released on Steam back in October 2014 as I love the Alien movie franchise and have purchased all of the games related to the franchise. My favorite game in the series is Aliens versus Predator Classic 2000 that was originally released 21 years ago, and which always gave me the same adrenaline fuelled rush I got when I first watched the original franchise. It was later re released on Steam and is now only £3.99. The re imagined version Aliens vs. Predator released in 2010 looks better visually, but IMO does not have the same scary moments when Aliens suddenly pop up in front of you coming down dark corridors. Even today the original scares me and I get the same feelings I used to get as a child when hiding behind the sofa trying to watch Dr Who.

We also get Hand of Fate 2, an RPG roguelike deck builder card game; Master a living board game of infinitely re-playable quests - unlock new cards, build your adventure, then defeat your foes in brutal third person real-time combat! (combined cost of both games is over £50/$70/€58).

From Thursday, 4pm UK time, the games changes to Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms with add-ons. All players who log into Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms through the Epic Games Store between Thursday 29/4/2021 at 11AM Eastern and Thursday 6/5/2021 at 11AM Eastern will receive the Epic Champions of Renown add-on worth over $100.

Please see Delenn's threads for other Steam and Non Steam freebies HERE and HERE respectively. There won't be new freebies added every week from these sections apart from the Epic games, but it is worth checking them regularly for details of any games going for free. Delenn usually posts details when a game is being offered free for a temporary period. These include games from Good Old Games (all DRM free), Ubisoft's uPlay client, Valves Steam client, EA Games Origin client and other indie developers.

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 favorites 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. :)

Notes on Security

I scanned a zipped copy of the installed game and it found zero hits from 61 antimalware engines. The downloaded executable may include some low level adware that only opens your browser to Falcowares home page after the game has installed, but does not inject any malware into your system. When your browser is opened to Falcowares home page it earns them 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/7a3f47f143e48928d6e6202ae27da19b290d0fcda569f33871c662e32cfbe1a2/detection