Games You Should Know About... Even More Cheapass Games

Wow, I'm surprised that my previous post got over 260 views in one day (on Geek Streak).  I guess you guys must really like getting free games.  Since they were in such high demand, I'll give you the other two games that Cheapass Games put out.  While the previous two games were sort of original (though Strange Adventures in Infinite Space was somewhat inspired by Star Control), these next two are clones of old games with a few twists.

For instance, Plasmaworm, which was the first game Digital Eel created, is just a newer interpretation of the classic game Snake -- you know, the game where you lead this snake around a playing field, trying to eat little dots on the screen that would make your snake longer.  That part hasn't changed, but they did add other things to the mix, such as walls and zones that either increase or decrease your speed.  Your "snake" looks more like some strange organism that you could only see with a microscope and the "food" are little symbols that may look familiar to some (I did see the logo for Kill Doctor Lucky, among others).  You can even create your own custom levels and challenge yourself or your friends (just remember the name you gave the level when you saved it, as that is the password you need to enter in the main menu).  It may not seem like much, at first, but exploring the new features does add some replay value to it.

The extra features on Plasmaworm really does give this game

a longer shelf life than its predecessor.

The next game, Big Box of Blox, is Digital Eel's take on the Genesis game Columns.  While the "match three or more" mechanic isn't exactly the same (you can't match three diagonally in this game, but you can eliminate other matching blocks that are connected to the matching set), the game works, for the most part, identically to Sega's puzzle "classic."  The thing that sets this game apart from the original is the different game modes.  Each game mode has its own theme and extra rules.  For instance, there's one game mode that looks like a Lovecraftian nightmare, complete with squamous blocks.  In this mode, there's question blocks (no, not like in Super Mario Bros.) that, when matched up, turn into slot machine wheels which cause some certain effect, such as eliminating all blocks in a certain row, column, or diagonal, depending on the results.  Other modes slowly raise the bottom of the playing field, making it progressively harder, or have "imprisoned" blocks which have to be matched up twice: once with other prison blocks, and again with the kind of block that was locked in there (they're not all the same blocks behind those bars).  If you like Columns or other cascading puzzle games, such as Tetris, you may enjoy Big Box of Blox.



Well, that's all the computer games that Cheapass Games published.  If you want to download these games, use the link here for Plasmaworm (only available for PC -- sorry, Mac users) and here for Big Box of Blox.

Enjoy the free games and I'll see you next week.