The Best Free Online (in-browser or downloadable) Games

snesbox.com is blowing me away - a snes emulator in flash!

it says "free trial" - how much does it cost, eventually?

I think that might have been an ad rather than the site itself..?

oh, you're right! god, i feel like an old fart (but not ilx user "old fart"). anyway, tried it out earlier and now i'm 2 hours into secret of mana. of course, emulators are nothing new but it's pretty cool to have a free flash version that works well.

http://www.depressionquest.com/

Between this, Cart Life and Actual Sunlight, 2013 really is the Year of Bleak Realness in indie games. Frankly, I'm pretty inspired by it. Yeah, you could say they cover a narrow, first-world perspective of depression, but to me they've been incredibly, hauntingly on point; I want these games to get noticed not just for the topic they address, but for bringing new voices to gaming.

respectfully, i think i disagree. specifically about depression quest.

as you say, it covers a narrow perspective of depression, but i'd go further. from what i've played - admittedly not much - i found the game's assertions about depression pretty frustrating.

i'm in a strange frame of mind at the moment and i have to make allowances for that, but there's something troubling for me about bold statements on what depression is and what it feels like. i'm irritated because i feel that something complex, existential, subjective, problematic is being nailed into a tick-list of symptoms.

and in this game in particular it felt like a very class-constrained, vanilla experience.

i'm worried that groups that advocate for recognition of some mental illnesses or disabilities create quite a constrictive definition of impairments that are far more fluid and evanescent - like in some way they are disabling or medicalizing people's soul (psyche, whatever you prefer)

i'll probably come back to this game cos it seems well done and i might want to explore but right now, it doesn't sit right with me somehow

I played Depression Quest a little while ago, and yeah, there's stuff to like about it, but I found it way too oversimplified. Like, I get that they tried to show that sometimes you can't choose the 'right thing' if you're already suffering by greying out options, but it's far far too easy to guess at the paths to choose if you want to get your character to die in a mire of depression or to be on the road to recovery. And maybe that's partly the point, but I already know this shit and it doesn't help. Most of the criticisms I have, I do think they thought about and tried somehow to deal with, but it's not successful. I don't know if it could ever be successful.

i'm worried that groups that advocate for recognition of some mental illnesses or disabilities create quite a constrictive definition of impairments that are far more fluid and evanescent - like in some way they are disabling or medicalizing people's soul (psyche, whatever you prefer)

I pretty much entirely disagree with this, though. There's a reason why this shit is medicalised, and it's because it's debilitating. I can choose to live with my special depressed snowflake life, or I can get help, or I can kill myself, but none of those options really change the fact that I have a medical disorder, and that a public offering of help to other people who have the same disorder is a good thing, even if I don't want that help myself. Fuck a soul/psyche.

i think i want to reply to that on the depression thread when i get a chance. i take your points tho.

The perspective i'm coming from is that, by and large, most people do not understand depression at all, despite it being a common ailment. I completely agree that the game simplifies the struggle, but i welcome the attempt to communicate it, even in a pretty raw form such as this. Admittedly, perhaps that is too forgiving, but we all gotta start somewhere...

i'm worried that groups that advocate for recognition of some mental illnesses or disabilities create quite a constrictive definition of impairments that are far more fluid and evanescent - like in some way they are disabling or medicalizing people's soul (psyche, whatever you prefer)

I can choose to live with my special depressed snowflake life, or I can get help, or I can kill myself, but none of those options really change the fact that I have a medical disorder, and that a public offering of help to other people who have the same disorder is a good thing, even if I don't want that help myself. Fuck a soul/psyche.

I agree that it is horrifically obvious where certain paths go, so as a game, that doesn't work. i tried to role play it as best I could (would I really seek treatment at this point? would i open up to this person?) and a good game would have a greater dimension to this. That said, I really did appreciate the breakup scene towards the end where every option is terrible.

isn't cart life 2012?

i... wait what's going on here?
http://candies.aniwey.net/

basically leave it running in a tab and come back to it occasionally.

You currently have a wooden sword.
You're in the pink! Ready for fighting!

wait waht

is this the frog fractions of 2013?

basically

speaking of which i just hung out and played games with the frog

this game is uh super weird

goddamn whale f u

haha srsly

This is pretty neat but it's way more like Progress Quest than Frog Fractions. So far, anyway.

it's true but i'm kind of hooked anyway. it's nice to leave it running in the background while you eat dinner, then come back and have so many candies and lollipops. my lollipop farm is growing exponentially.

drags on at the end a bit though. should be more intermediate quests up to the final boss, at a certain point they're useless for getting candy

Anyone know if you can get more than 100 lollipops per second? I figure I'm going to throw up to 100k at it before giving up.

i'm early enough in the game that it's blowing my mind that someone could need more than 100 lollipops/second!

:D

i will appreciate these halcyon days on the lollipop farm when i was thrilled with getting 15 pops/minute. i was so innocent...

It's terrible, this is the sort of thing that's going to keep me up until the stupid hours of the morning, and then I will wonder what on earth I am doing with my life. And then I will beg for more lollipops.

       .---.
       |   '.|  __
       | ___.--'  )
     _.-'_` _%%%_/
  .-'%%% a: a %%%
      %%  L   %%_
      _%\'-' |  /-.__
   .-' / )--' #/     '\
  /'  /  /---'(    :   \
 /   |  /( /|##|  \     |
/   ||# | / | /|   \    \
|   ||##| I \/ |   |   _|
|   ||: | o  |#|   |  / |
|   ||  / I  |:/  /   |/
|   ||  | o   /  /    /
|   \|  | I  |. /    /
 \  /|##| o  |.|    /
  \/ \::|/\_ /  ---'|

i answered all the frog questions...was kinda hoping for a better reward.

That's totally the Tom Baker Doctor Who.

xp

somebody please remind me to vote for this in coint and plick 2013. even if it ends in 20 minutes, or i get totally bored in 20 minutes, it's entertaining right now and worth some points. and if i did the math correctly, it provides infinite value, as it is free.

Anyone know if you can get more than 100 lollipops per second? I figure I'm going to throw up to 100k at it before giving up.

i'm at 71K, and i'm going to keep going. when it comes to investing lollipops, i have no fear

i stopped investing at 30k

now i'm just raiding the castle like a candy boss

shit, i accidentally closed my game window. my lollipop farm is lost :`(

i can't even raid the castle because i'm just a lonely lollipop farmer. shit, i just now realized i could be investing those l-pops into faster candy regeneration.

but i don't even care, i'm just going to keep throwing pops into the well

xpost

oh no! you didn't save?

*saves*

no, i'm going to have to start from scratch. fortunately i didn't get too far yet.

i enchanted my sword with the imp spell thing. hope that was the right decision.

I have a Sword of Life. Which, uh, kind of looks like something else.

wtf crafting now!

lol i went and saw a film and y'all got totally hooked!

god why am i doing this?

You have 644122 lollipops!
You have 0 chocolate bars :(

story of my life

fucking castle gates fucking flying thing keeps sending me back to the start arrrrrrrgh

so stupid, but i like this

fucking castle gates fucking flying thing keeps sending me back to the start arrrrrrrgh

― we're up all night to get relegated (Noodle Vague), Thursday, May 2, 2013 12:52 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think you have to use the Beserker potion, that's how I got through it.

i got thru with some health potions, already wasted my berserker potions