This Week's Waste of Time: Fantastic Arcade Edition
Free versions of exhibiting games
By James Renovitch, 9:10AM, Fri. Aug. 24, 2012
Just as I was about to post This Week’s Waste of Time column, Fantastic Fest goes and announces the lineup for its Fantastic Arcade. Put simply the titles coming to the fest continue FA’s tradition of outdoing itself. But what would the end of the week be without free games to play? Good for us both that several of the games can be played in some form online.
I should mention that the games you will see at the Fantastic Arcade will likely be superior versions of the already spectacular games found below. Many of the titles are being tweaked and expanded for release on mobile devices and/or download. So, enjoy the games, but don’t think they are the finished projects. That said:
A few of the games have been featured in previous This Week Waste of Time columns. Those include Hexagon from Terry Cavanagh, Vlambeer’s Luftrausers, and even Vectorpark’s Windosill was featured in our recap of past Independent Games Festival entrants.
Rarely does a needlepoint graphical style get used for anything but relentless cuteness, but Lone Survivor manages a creepy and slow-paced intensity. There a demo available for free. If you like it, why not buy the full version.
Molle Industria returns to the Fantastic Arcade with another interactive political statement called Unmanned written by Adbuster and author Jim Monroe. The game follows a day in the life of a military drone pilot as he manages his home life and stresses of work.
These are some of my favorite games of the past year and you should play them all and be confident that the other games announced as showcases at the Arcade will be just as uniquely impressive. That includes local offerings from White Whale Games and Stoic that will show God of Blades and Banner Saga respectively.
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Fantastic Arcade, Fantastic Fest, Luftrausers, TWWT, Lone Survivor, Hexagon, Windosill, Unmanned, ff2012, Fantastic Fest 2012