There has been a problem trying to upload the zipped installed game to Virus Total (twice). Each time I've tried, it's taken over half an hour and each time the upload has failed to complete. It usually only takes a couple of minutes to upload a half gigabyte file, so todays should have been much quicker. I will try again later today.

Ultimate Puzzles Cars:

In Brief:
Ultimate Puzzles Cars by Uniden is a simple 16 square piece's jigsaw puzzle with four images and no lugs. You can see a video of game play HERE

The Game:
Ultimate Puzzles Cars is another of those jigsaw puzzles from UniDen with square shaped puzzle pieces that have no lugs. We get four images to solve (unlike the last jigsaw from Uniden called Ultimate Puzzles Marine Life where we got five puzzles). The theme this time are Cars. We've had several of this type of puzzle game previously from this developer, i.e. America, Countries, France, Nature, Nature 2, Marine Life, Animals 2 & 3, China and Japan as well as a few other non jigsaw games such as Knight's Tetris, and Legend of the Fallen Castle 1 & 2.


Each of the four puzzles is made up of 16 square pieces. which are placed on a 4 x 4 grid i.e. Some of the pieces are not oriented correctly, so you will need to change their orientation by clicking on the piece with the left mouse button. Each click turns the piece clockwise 90 degrees; there is no anticlockwise movement. To place a piece on the board use the left mouse button, grab using the LMB then drag to the grid section you think it belongs on. If it is correct it will lock in place; if it's the wrong place it will move to a random place on the periphery of the jigsaws grid. The addition of rotating the pieces and also placing the randomly placed pieces in different positions each time you attempt to complete the puzzle adds to the difficulty slightly. Also, some pieces will overlap at the start of each attempt and in some cases totally obscure one or more pieces. You can move these around the periphery without them springing back to where you dragged them from. You can restart any of the puzzles at any time by clicking on the back arrow located in the top left of the puzzle.

All four puzzles are 'relatively' simple to complete and normally shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes. An adult could easily complete the whole game in around 10 to 15 minutes (at the very least).

I think the developer is asking far too much over on Itch.io for a jigsaw with only four puzzle images and with only a small 4 x 4 grid with square shaped puzzle pieces at $5 per game. In my opinion if all of the series were to be combined, it would be a fairer price. That said, it's free to the giveaway community today; plus, if you love jigsaw puzzles, there are free jigsaw programs available online that in my opinion are far better than today's jigsaw puzzle.

The giveaway team gave away a jigsaw puzzle over a decade ago called Infinite Jigsaw Puzzle on Feb 13th 2008 which allowed your own images to be added to the game; plus, it had 50 plus images included with the game of different categories as well as several jigsaw shapes from complex lugged shapes to various geometric shapes (though no squares) and you could adjust the difficulty from around 25 pieces to over a thousand. You could also create new categories to place your image as well. I've still got that puzzle and sometimes dip into it, with several hundred images added over the years since I've had it. I'd buy it from the original developer if I could find them (Media Research Group); basically as a thank you for such a great jigsaw game that I received for free and have had many hours of enjoyment from it over the intervening thirteen years.

Notes on Security
I scanned a zipped copy of the installed game and it found zero hits from 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:


Scan to be added later (assuming the issue I mention t the top of this review is fixed)

Other Free Games:
Today is your last chance to get the latest games from Epic Games, which end at 4pm UK time/11am EST. There are two games available that include Horizon Chase Turbo and Sonic Mania. From late afternoon today until Thursday 8th July the next game to be given away for free The Spectrum Retreat - a challenging, first-person puzzle game set in the near future. You awake at The Penrose hotel, a peaceful yet unsettling refuge from the outside world. As a valued guest, your existence is embedded into the corridors and guest rooms of The Penrose.


and will be available to add to your EPIC games library until Thursday 1st July at 4pm UK time/11am EST when a new set of games will be available to add to your account. Since Epic Games started to give away games I've accumulated over 270 games not counting duplicates, most of which are either AAA or high end indie arcade games.

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).
To those who contributed to the Indie Bundle for Palestinian Aid over on Itch.io, they raised $899,963.91, which was a great achievement.

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.


The Indie Gala developers freebies are available HERE (latest additions) and HERE (81 games in the Showcase, most full versions). Recent additions include In Between Land Sonya: The Great Adventure, The Last Dream: Developer's Edition, Deep Despair Cube Runner, Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders, Whispering Willows Snow White Solitaire. Charmed Kingdom, Adam Wolfe (Complete Edition), Doodle Devil, Deep Space Anomaly and the latest addition Kick Ass Commandos; plus, many more in the showcase section HERE and the Freebies section HERE.

It’s worth adding most of the 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. :)