Following Freeware – December 2016/January 2017 releases

Even with two months in one, our latest round-up is a light one. But no less intriguing, as you can travel through a second back door into a strange science-fiction world, or find horror lurking just next door to you. Alternatively, you can stay up all night trying to concoct a coffee substitute, or message your way through a game inspired by a classic text adventure but played using a modern social tool. All these await you in this short but sweet collection of releases from the freeware scene.
 

Willem’s December Winners

A Place in the Sun

Perhaps you know a workaholic, people for whom a job is the most important thing in their lives and who do nothing but work, all day long. They don’t see their children grow up and don’t have friends because all they do is busy themselves. The nameless protagonist of Tor Brandt’s A Place in the Sun is one of those people. We meet him when it’s late in the evening and he is working on an assignment that has to be finished by tomorrow. He is very tired and needs coffee, but in the kitchen he discovers that he is all out of the stuff. And so he decides to make himself some replacement coffee.

A Place in the Sun is shown in third-person view. The game world, comprising a few rooms of a house and a bit of the street outside, is presented in very simple, clear pixel art in subdued colors, predominantly turquoise. The protagonist looks terrible: sleep deprivation has made his eyes small and wrinkly, and he walks with a slow gait. There is no voice acting, with all spoken text displayed on the screen, but during gameplay a gentle, sad tune is played. The drawings, music and dreary palette, together with the way the man acts and reacts to the things happening around him, make the atmosphere very depressing.