Little Adventure:

In Brief:
Little Adventure is a 2D platform adventure with RPG elements.

You can see a video of game play HERE & via the Steam store page HERE. You can also see the reviews (all 10 are positive) posted by the Steam community so far since it was released on Steam on the 23rd April this year HERE

The Game:
Little Adventure is a colourful adventure platformer with two modes of play. Standard and Arena. The latter is locked at the start of the game.

When you start the game you are first given the option of playing in Russian or English. The first game screen includes a small window where you are given the option of selecting a short introduction, which you can skip if you wish. You get three lives, which are easily lost if you just so much as touch an enemy. I lost two lives straight away in my second encounter with a green blob like creature (you are told to jump over the first blob as at that point you have no weapon) after picking up a sword and on my third encounter I died immediately (despite swinging my sword frantically). When all lives have been lost you'll see a small circled arrow with a PRESS 'R' Restart message; this will take you back to the last signpost that you encountered before dying. These signposts also appear to be used as save points; thankfully.

To move in this 2D adventure use the A & D keys to move left & right and the W key to jump. When you start your adventure you will meet a friend called Ben, at which point you'll ask him if he's ready to go on an adventure? Then you tell him to go east and your character will catch up.

Collect coins which can then be used to unlock DLC content (in the Steam version you have to purchase some DLC's with real money), in this free standing version from Falcoware there appears to be three DLC packs , each costing 250 gold (the packs are coloured Red Blue & Green) and accessible from the main menu. The settings button give you the option of muting the sound and toggling between English and Russian; just in case you neglected to choose when you first boot up the game.

Collect keys to unlock doors to the next level. Walk across signposts to get help; for example, when you are approaching your first monster (a green blob) you are advised to jump over it and run further. At this point you have no weapons to fight back with. To enter or leave a house, walk to the entrance and press the E key. You'll find a sword in the house. To pick it up, just walk over it and it will automatically appear in your hand. To use it press the left mouse button. You'll also find a chest in the house with gold inside it. To open the chest and collect the gold press E; gold will then be added to your gold tally. which is indicated just below your life count and above the number of keys you've collected. Whatever weapon you are carrying in your hand will be indicated in a shield symbol in the top right of the game screen.

After your first encounters with the green blobs, you can pick up an extra life, which you'll need if you've previously lost all three lives because when you restart you only regain one life. A larger signpost than previous ones informs you that you are now entering an area of forest, where you'll encounter your first pink blobs. When you jump on one of these, you are propelled high into the sky. Very useful for returning to higher platforms.

As you progress you'll find new area's to explore for example the caves and new enemies as well as friendlies such as the blacksmiths forge. You'll meet up with Ben a few times where you'll receive messages from him for example:

''And here you are, impassable caves are waiting for you! Go there with caution. I can't help you. We will meet at the exit to the caves''

At this point you cannot retreat, to previous area's you've already been exploring, so make sure you've explored all of the area preceding the caves before you drop down to the forge area next to the cave entrance. To enter the caves stand opposite the entrance which looks like an old mine entrance, press E.

Conclusion:
I didn't finish assessing the game fully; unfortunately, I've already exceeded the amount of time I have started to allocate to my weekday reviews, partly because I was quite engrossed in playing the game, and hadn't kept track of the time; which is easily done when you are enjoying a game. From the couple of hours of game play I've completed, I would say this is definitely worth downloading, especially if you enjoy playing platformer games. It's well constructed, though there are a few issues which I've detailed below.

Issues:
Enemy wasps can fly through area's inside the platforms and sometimes it's almost impossible to avoid being killed by them because they come at you from area's you don't affect, but they kill you before you've had a chance to take one swipe at them. Another example is if you spawn on steps following a death; with the wasp above you. You can't hit it until it's on level with you, but it can kill you while you are trying to get up the steps. Every time I encountered this scenario I died. Finally, your characters movement is rather slow. It would have been an improvement if there was a walk fast command included. Otherwise this is a decent platformer that I will be attempting to complete eventually. Especially as I want to crack open at least one of the DLC packs that cost 250 gold. I'm hoping it will include the Bow as this will give you a better chance of survival. In the Steam version of this game you have to pay £0.79/$0.99 for it via a DLC pack.

Notes on Security
I scanned a zipped copy of the installed game and it found zero hits from 59 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/9fc8792f34a18854427084e383b6538c9a64eeb31e09af2fa61eecbb1f7b44e5/detection

Other Free Games:

The latest game from Epic Games is called Control a third person action adventure. There's also another game this week that was added Wednesday called Genshin Impact an open world anime RPG adventure. Both are available free until the 17th June.

Next weeks games include Hell is other Demons an action-platform shooter, with Rogue-lite elements and Overcooked! 2; Journey back to the Onion Kingdom and assemble your team of chefs in classic couch co-op or online play for up to four players. Hold onto your aprons … it’s time to save the world (again!); both will be available next week Thursday 17th June at 4pm UK time/11am EST

Also from Epic, If you play online with friends there's a decent PvE/PvP free FPS game called Scavengers with a coop mode (I checked it out recently and it looks fantastic as well as plays well) and you can still get the clicker RPG Idle Champions as well as other multiplayer games. I've been posting redeemable codes for free chests that contain various buffs and other items for Idle Champions (time limited for 5 to 7 days from the day of posting) 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. Delenn has been updating these regularly for years now. 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, 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. :)