Kingdom: Classic and Oxenfree are two more Linux games you can grab totally free

> then toss gold to peasants and turn them into your loyal subjects in order to make your kingdom flourish

I take it as a given that some of them turn out to be anarcho-syndicalists questioning the legitimacy of your claim to power? I mean, I'd be pretty surprised if one of them didn't say something along the lines of -- Strange women prancing about on horseback, waving swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical equine ceremony.

I bought Oxenfree two days ago.

Scratch one more game from my wishlist. Oxenfree I mean. But what's with all these free games lately?

So much free stuff! It's almost like Christmas...

It's nice to have free good games.

It reminds me of the old paper magazine, there was a free game every month for each magazine.


Last edited by Jahimself on 19 December 2017 at 11:39 pm UTC

I shouldn't have played Kingdom: Classic to see how it runs on my system.

On the plus side, I managed to make it to day XXXII on my third attempt before everything suddenly fell apart.

> then toss gold to peasants and turn them into your loyal subjects in order to make your kingdom flourish

I take it as a given that some of them turn out to be anarcho-syndicalists questioning the legitimacy of your claim to power? I mean, I'd be pretty surprised if one of them didn't say something along the lines of -- Strange women prancing about on horseback, waving swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical equine ceremony.

Well you know if they don't take the gold they'll just be repressed. ;)

I already have both games so I was hoping to get codes to post them on here tomorrow in case anyone misses the giveaways, disappointed that I can't.


Last edited by lucifertdark on 20 December 2017 at 7:01 am UTC

I shouldn't have played Kingdom: Classic to see how it runs on my system.

On the plus side, I managed to make it to day XXXII on my third attempt before everything suddenly fell apart.

I don't get it. I tried to watch a few gameplays on youtube but they were confusing. What's the appeal of this genre of deliberately badly drawn 2d side-scrolling games? I am sorry if this question feels like trolling but this is the way I see it.

Well, when you're stacking the deck with the "deliberately badly drawn" assumption right from the start, I can see how you wouldn't enjoy anything like it. It's hard to see the appeal to anything when you slam your mind shut before you even approach it.

As to the game itself, I've found that actually doing the tasks, and dealing with an ever larger area that needs to be looked after, is much different than just watching. I personally find it absorbing and the graphics, yes done in a deliberately limited style but I personally value those sorts of limitations, is appropriate to the game's atmosphere.

But I'm not here to sell you on something that you seem predisposed against, and could have just tried yourself for free anyway. If you don't wanna play, you don't wanna play.

I shouldn't have played Kingdom: Classic to see how it runs on my system.

On the plus side, I managed to make it to day XXXII on my third attempt before everything suddenly fell apart.

I don't get it. I tried to watch a few gameplays on youtube but they were confusing. What's the appeal of this genre of deliberately badly drawn 2d side-scrolling games? I am sorry if this question feels like trolling but this is the way I see it.

Well, when you're stacking the deck with the "deliberately badly drawn" assumption right from the start, I can see how you wouldn't enjoy anything like it. It's hard to see the appeal to anything when you slam your mind shut before you even approach it.

As to the game itself, I've found that actually doing the tasks, and dealing with an ever larger area that needs to be looked after, is much different than just watching. I personally find it absorbing and the graphics, yes done in a deliberately limited style but I personally value those sorts of limitations, is appropriate to the game's atmosphere.

But I'm not here to sell you on something that you seem predisposed against, and could have just tried yourself for free anyway. If you don't wanna play, you don't wanna play.

Ok. Anyway, thank you for taking the time to try and tell me one aspect of your take on it. To be frank, the "retro"-style of some games turns me off because I played a lot of games in the 80s and 90s, and I felt quite limited by these graphics. Since we are in a time of photorealistic 3D gameplay, people mimicking the limitations of old times seem like a bad joke, or some conservatism against actual, objective improvements. Maybe you are right and I created a mental blockade against this, but when I played 2012 XCOM, I found it amazing that they modernized the game and did not miss the essence of it with much better graphics.

I'd say "much better" is something of a matter of taste, not "objective improvements". Not that I dislike modern XCOM, but frankly I quickly get bored with photorealistic graphics pretty quickly. In my case I want to see stuff that was designed by artists, that suits the mood of the game. Salt & Sanctuary, for instance, accomplishes this very well. You can see the hand of the artist in everything about the game. Slime Rancher is the same way, everything in the environment is distinct and internally consistent. Or Borderlands. Or Kingdom.

As to mimicking limitations, as a creative myself I can speak directly to that. Sometimes setting limits on yourself can produce some really amazing results. Whether that's drawing with a limited colour palette or writing a whole story in under 200 words or 140 characters, you force yourself to make sometimes dramatic decisions about your work. The same goes for choosing to work with pixel art or a 16-bit style. There's a challenge to see how much you can push those restrictions, and some people achieve amazing results. Some of the tableaus in Hyper Light Drifter are absolutely stunning.

In addition, there's how the human brain works. It's a common lament among artists that an inked piece doesn't look as dynamic as the sketch that it's based on did. And that's because in the sketch, your brain is filling in details that haven't been set down firmly yet. You might have two or three or five lines, and by choosing one as the one you'll keep, you pin things down and a little of that energy flows away. In Kingdom, the same effect is in play. There's a lack of detail, so as you play and concentrate on other things besides the graphics (Can I afford to build this guard tower? Do I have enough archers?) your brain is working in the background to fill in details because it has the space to do so. Not everything is defined. This isn't necessarily the case for all pixel-based games, but it feels to me like it is for Kingdom.

That's not to say that nostalgia and "good old days"-ism isn't a factor, but I don't think it always is, nor is it the most important one to consider.


Last edited by Nezchan on 22 December 2017 at 8:59 pm UTC