Planet Zeta:

In Brief:
Planet Zeta is a retro 2D side scrolling action platformer. You can see a video of game play HERE & HERE

Introduction:
Planet Zeta is a classic 2D platformer shooter with a side view. You play as an astronaut who made an emergency landing on an unknown planet. He needs to find the necessary spare parts for the ship to get off the planet. The planet is simply teeming with creatures that are hostile to the player.

reference accessed HERE via the Steam store on the 21st May 2021

Key Bindings:
A & D keys OR Controller Cross = move left or right
K or controller A = Jump
While on ladders you can jump down by pressing K or controller A
K or controller A + movement keys = jump to the side
J OR rt = fire weapon
K -= move up ladders
S = move down ladders
E or controller X = interacting with objects such as electronic door locks or picking up new weapons
Q or controller Y = change weapons
To jump off platforms hold the S key or controller crossbar down and press the K or controller A To push boxes hold L or controller X and the double space key

The Game:
Planet Zeta is a reasonable playable side scrolling action platformer with a Sci Fi theme where your protagonist has crash landed on the planet Zeta and has to overcome various enemies while searching for parts to repair his ship.

All menu items are selected using either the up & down arrow keys or the W & S keys. To activate a selection use the enter key. In the settings menu you can change the language from English (default) to Russian. toggle between full screen and windowed mode as well as change the sound and music. There are two language.

If you've played the game before you can continue where you left off, otherwise start a New Game. If you start a new game when you've saved previous progress, that will be lost.

You start the game with a pistol with 30 bullets, but pick up various weapons e.g. , M16, AK47, or Mossberg500; but you can only carry one primary weapon at a time. when you pick up a primary weapon, you lose the one you are carrying.

The first rifle you pick up near the beginning of the game is an M16 with 30 bullets. Shortly after you can pick up a shotgun (Mossberg500) with 16 shells, but, as mentioned above you'll lose the M16 rifle. The shotgun is more effective against monsters at close range, but the monsters are relatively quick when attacking, increasing their movement speed when near your character. At times you'll need to jump to avoid being swamped by numerous monsters.

On your travels you'll see health, shield and ammo packs. If your health and shields remain at 100%; indicated by the red and blue bars in the top left of the screen next to the selected weapon and ammo count) they will remain. If you have lost any health, or damaged your suit shield these consumables will be automatically picked up. Ammo is cumulative, so pick up all you find.

When you encounter lifts, to be able to use the lift you usually have to call it using the E command, then the E again, but immediately press the movement key in the direction of the lift and jump immediately after to get on the lift (platform).

You'll find ammo supplies for the shotgun separate from the pistol and rifle ammo.

Notes on Security
I scanned a zipped copy of the installed game and it found zero hits from 57 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/41334b98d43d823ff8389676b327cb0e4cb0ef03c4b1744b2e093205c59d3013/detection

Other Free Games:
The latest game from Epic Games is now live and is called NBA 2K21 which you'll find HERE

Please see Delenns threads for Steam and Non Steam freebies HERE and HERE respectively. It’s worth adding these 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, 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 Defense plus a reflex game called Keyboard Killers are still free.

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. :)