About the Free Games
Each of these titles have been around for a while and are no longer available commercially, but are still fun to play. Luckily I own the copyright and distribution rights and for each one! So what better way to let people experience these classics then to give them away for free?
Alien Carnage
Released by Apogee in 1993, Alien Carnage is the renamed version of Halloween Harry - a remake of the second game I ever got published. It's a classic side scrolling shoot 'em up in which you're pitted against a horde of alien zombie invaders. It was a lot of fun to make and eventually spawned a sequel, Zombie Wars.
Flight of the Amazon Queen
In 1995 we developed a point and click graphic adventure that told the story of Joe King, pilot for hire, and his misadventures in the Amazon jungle. This is a tongue in cheek Indiana Jones style adventure, and now, with the help of ScummVM, it’s free!
You’ll need to get ScummVM first, so go here to get ScummVM and follow their instructions on how to install it.
Alternatively,you can buy the iOS version from the App Store for less than a cup of coffee!
The Chronicles of Jaruu Tenk
In 1999, I developed a type of software that we coined “Screen Opera”. The first one we developed was “The Chronicles of Jaruu Tenk” and was my attempt at creating a living, persistent world similar to the one I experienced when I first played David Crane’s Little Computer People on the Commodore 64.
In Chronicles, you got to explore the world of a little alien called Jaruu Tenk. He was an Observer on the small island of Bloofen Jut. The software was time based and each time you visited Jaruu more things would appear in his world. He even updated his journal everyday and got the newspaper delivered daily. You could also talk to him by typing on the keyboard. Chronicles could be set up as a screen saver and when it kicked in you would return to Jaruu’s world reflecting the time of your visit – morning, day or night. His friends would also pop by for a visit and he’d engage them in conversation. Leading up to Christmas he’d even set up a Christmas tree.
The game was developed purely for fun. We had no pretensions in making a lot of money out the title. It was something that I really wanted to see made – and at that stage no one had attempted it since Little Computer People. It took over a year to put together, work being done at night and on weekends in between developing the Mike Stewart’s Probodyboarding game. Making Chronicles was a pure labor of love.
With the success of The Sims on PC, and Animal Crossing on Gamecube, I figured it would be cool to let people experience this very early attempt at this style of entertainment – for FREE.
Download it here - Windows only!
Halloween Spirit Board
This was inspired by the classic program Eliza with a dash of Halloween thrown in for good measure. I had lots of fun writing the responses to possible questions. I also included a simple text file system that anyone can edit and totally change the program’s personality.