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The Soul of Dracula is a 2D platformer inspired by the Castlevania series, featuring appearances from mainstays such as Death and the Count himself in the role of level bosses. You play as a vampire hunter who must venture into the Dark Prince's castle and defeat him using only your whip and the familiar array of ranged weapons at your disposal.

Though many of the enemies had appeared in monsieur Belmont's adventures before, the developer of this tribute project had included a couple of twists and surprises that will please even the most hardcore of Castlevania fans out there. Download the game here. (Windows, 1.84MB)

Marsh is another vertical-scrolling shooter created by the developer of EX -extra-, featuring three ships with different weapon configurations to choose from and five levels to play in total. In addition to your primary and secondary weapons, there is also a special attack that can be deployed at any time, provided that you have at least one bomb counter in the blue bar at the bottom of the window.

The type of bomb launched is dependent on your current energy gauge, which can be increased by destroying enemy ships over time. A destructive laser beam is fired if the energy indicator is maxed out, else your ship will drop a carpet bomb that destroys all other harmful projectiles on screen for a couple of seconds. The game can be downloaded here. (Windows, 22.6MB)

Tikei no Kami is a puzzle game in the style of Psygnosis' Lemmings, where players have to guide an eggplant-headed character towards the exit in each level while avoiding any traps or obstacles that might be in his path. To achieve this you would have to drill your way through floors and walls, then build the necessary bridges or place spring contraptions to assist our hero reach higher platforms.

Hold the left mouse button to drill or place an object from your item stash. Right-click to switch between your tools. You can alternate between windowed and full screen mode by pressing the left Alt and Enter key at the same time.

To use the scroll option when viewing levels, just hold the left mouse button for a couple of seconds when the cursor is over the up or down arrow indicator. Download the game here. (Windows, 13.3MB)

Madness is a seven-day project that explores the theme of insanity in a roguelike very well, where players take on the role of an adventurer who has to descend ten dungeon floors and defeat the evil Dungeon Master who resides at the lowest level. If you enjoy light roguelikes, then this is definitely one game that you should download just for the concept alone.

Everything after this point is spoiler territory, and it is recommended that you try the game out yourself instead of having me reveal all of the surprises that you might encounter during your adventures here. (Windows/Linux, 1.58MB)

Jump, Copy, Paste is a 2D platformer in which you overcome obstacles by copy and pasting parts of a level to build new platforms or create a passage through a wall. Parts which are greyed out cannot be affected by your copy and paste ability, so players need to work around those areas as they collect all yellow pieces to unlock the exit door.

There are seventeen levels to play through, and the game does get trickier with the introduction of bad guys, laser beams, switches, portals and even sawblades in the latter stages. (Windows, 2.20MB)

Fish Face is a one-button arcade game with three levels to play, each taking roughly five to ten minutes to complete. Here you play as a fish that uses its buoyancy to move in and out of the water, avoiding walls or enemies that will hurt our aquatic friend on impact.

Red loops can be collected for points, while the blue ones act as checkpoint locations that you can return to when your fish crashes into a solid object. Fish Face was originally created by Beau Blyth for submission into the Gamma IV competition, though the game eventually lost out and didn't make it through the final cut. (Windows, 3.36MB)

Version 0.05 of Rodain Joubert's puzzle-roguelike game Desktop Dungeon was released today, with the addition of new character races, classes and dungeons being the first thing that most players will notice upon starting a brand new quest. Anything that you've unlocked in the previous version can be carried over to this new release by simply copying the old character files from one folder to another.

There are brand new character graphics and tiles for each individual dungeons as well, while the mouseover text is definitely a welcome addition. Glyphs are now converted to bonuses by dragging them to the convert icon, and spellcasting is easier with the implementation of keyboard shortcuts. Basic custom tileset support is already included with this build, and editing them is just a matter of replacing the old graphics with new ones. Still Windows only.

Freeware Game Pick: Desktop Dungeon (IndieGames) Continue reading