The Desert

In Brief
The Desert is a 3D first person platform game using the Unity engine. You can see a video of game play HERE. It has some similarities to the other limited giveaway running today called Woodle Deluxe, which bags you a Steam key if you enter before all the keys have gone.

The Game.
The aim of The Desert is to survive the traps that include spikes, vicious spinning cutters, hammers and spears to find the portal and escape to the next level. Use your ears to guide you to the correct path. There are multiple pathways, but only one will take you to the portal. The louder the music, the closer you will be to the portals exit. If you don't have your sound turned on you'll likely get lost in the city maze. There is quite a large area to explore. Use WASD to move Forwards, Left, Back and Right, the Space bar to Jump and the Shift key in combination with any of the movement keys to move faster. You can climb ladders to get onto the roof of some buildings to avoid some traps. Don't fall into the water, it ends the game. There are a few graphical glitches for example a building near the quay side floating (see the last image), but overall a nice looking game, though the graphics are retro.

Other free games worth adding to your game library
Today is your last chance to grab the excellent 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 later today i.e. 4pm UK time, the game 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 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/f0d3ed17c70522c2f41f6bd8dd65969db7e4616cf5633be876eba96c07d1f4eb/detection