Free Games

• Twitch

  • Earthlock

    • 2016
    • Earthlock is a turn-based adventure RPG inspired by the classic 3D JRPGs of the late 90’s, with a fresh take on turn based combat and character progression. Embark on a journey to save the beautiful world of Umbra, a harsh planet that stopped spinning thousands of cycles ago.

  • Kathy Rain

    • 2016
    • Set in the 90’s, Kathy Rain is a point-and-click adventure that tells the story of a strong-willed journalism major who has to come to terms with her own troubled past as she investigates the mysterious death of her recently deceased grandfather. Armed with her motorcycle, a pack of cigs, and a notepad, Kathy begins to delve into a local mystery surrounding her hometown that will take her on a harrowing journey full of emotional and personal turmoil.

  • Turok

    • Visually enhanced version of the 1997 release
    • First-person dinosaur hunting teeming with cunning enemies, traps, puzzles and deadly weapons all within a vast 3D environment ready to explore.

  • Etherborn

    • 2019
    • Third-person environmental puzzle platformer built on exploring and understanding gravity-shifting structures. You are a voiceless being that has just been born into a world where a bodiless voice awaits your arrival. Go forth and seek your purpose.

  • Lightmatter

    • 2020
    • An atmospheric first person puzzle game where you use lateral thinking to solve mind-bending puzzles with lights, shadows, beams, platforms, and lightmatter.

• Epic Games

  • Totally Reliable Delivery Service

    • 2019
    • Delivery Attempted. That’s the Totally Reliable Delivery Service guarantee! T.R.D.S. is a ragdoll physics simulation about terrible package delivery couriers. Work together using odd machinery, useful gadgets, and the wonders of physics to reliably deliver packages to their destination.

  • Drawful 2

    • 2016
    • A streamable party game for 3-8 plus an audience of thousands, it gets players to draw pictures based on ridiculous prompts on their smartphones and tablets and then everyone votes on what they think the prompt was

  • Gone Home

    • 2013
    • A first-person exploration game that has you arriving home after a year abroad to find your house completely empty. You’ll have to solve puzzles and look for clues to unravel the mystery

  • Hob

    • 2017
    • Action adventure game from the makers of Torchlight that tells a story without any text or dialogue and has you solving puzzles and repairing the planet

• Xbox

  • Project Cars 2

    • 2017
    • Motorsport racing simulator featuring dynamic tracks with temperature and weather variations between laps, 60 locations, and 189 cars to race

  • Knights of Pen & Paper Bundle

    • Includes 1 (2012) and 2 (2015) as well as all their DLC
    • Turn-based RPG’s that have you taking on the roles of in-game players taking on the roles of their characters in a traditional pen and paper RPG session in a meta roleplaying experience.

  • Fable Anniversary

    • 2014 remaster of the 2004 title
    • Choice-based action RPG that lets you follow whatever path, hero or villain, you choose, with fully remastered audio and video as well as a new Heroic difficulty setting

  • Toybox Turbos

    • 2014
    • Micro-machines style combat racing with a single-player career mode, 35 different vehicles, and split-screen multiplayer races

• PS4

  • Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

    • 2016
    • A continuation of the Uncharted trilogy that was free under the Nathan Drake collection back in January, the series is known for its Tomb Raider style third-person action adventure gameplay including shooting, combat, and puzzle solving

  • Dirt Rally 2.0

    • 2019
    • Racing game focused on rally and rallycross races that has you competing in timed stage events on tarmac and off-road terrain in varying weather all around the world

PSA

• It sounds like devices that have been updated to iOS 13.4 and macOS 10.15.4 are currently unable to make FaceTime audio and video calls with older devices running iOS 9.3.5 or 9.3.6, so if you need FaceTime to stay in touch with people stuck on those versions with older, unsupported devices while staying at home you may not want to upgrade until a fix is found

April Fools 2020

• In light of the current situation many chose to skip April Fools this year, so we ended up with mainly fun little digital offerings rather than the usual tricks and “damn, I wish that was real” products
• Blizzard gave all of the Overwatch heroes googly eyes, and I kind of wish that was a setting we could have all year round
• GTA Online and RDR2 got some snow this year, letting players break into impromptu snowball fights
• Guild Wars 2 brought players a message from the King of All Cats, along with a potion that has cats appear around you
• The makers of Superhot released Picohot- a playable Pico-8-based demake that brings the excellent Superhot gameplay to a virtual 1980’s style game console
• Totally Accurate Battle Simulator introduced their new Bug DLC, adding 11 new bugs to the game

With the massive spike in people working from home, we’re discovering more and more shady practices from the unfortunately “best in breed” video conferencing app Zoom

• Without including any disclosure in their privacy policy, the Zoom iOS app was sending data to Facebook whether or not you linked it to your account
  • The info included the model of your device, your time-zone, city, phone carrier, and unique advertising identifiers
  • They removed it, blaming the ‘Login with Facebook’ feature, but to use something like that without understanding the impact to your users is at the very least negligent
  • Keep in mind that this same company last summer was found to be secretly installing a web server with the Mac version of their software, which remained installed and running even if you removed the app from your machine – we originally talked about it back in episode 261
    • They called this a feature, not a bug, to allow users to automatically reinstall things when joining a conference
    • This one was nasty enough, allowing hackers to take control of your computers camera, that Apple used their macOS security features to silently remove it for all users
• Another piece that’s come to light recently is the fact that, when installing Zoom on a Mac nowadays they’ve snuck the entire installation process into the preinstall checks
  • Normally when an app uses an installer it runs a check to see if it can be installed and, if so, lets you follow the prompts to choose what’s being installed and where, and follow through the process
  • With Zoom, inside the preflight check script they’ve bundled in code that just throws the app into your system without user intervention- it goes right from checking if it can be done to being done
• And Zoom’s claims of end-to-end encryption have been proven laughably false, as they’re using their own definition of “end-to-end”
  • Normally, end-to-end means that the company offering the service can’t see what goes on- data is encrypted on your end and decrypted on the recipient’s with keys that the host doesn’t have access to
  • What Zoom actually does is use transport-security, similar to secure websites, where data is encrypted between your device and their server but then it could be decrypted, processed, read, or modified before being encrypted again and sent to the recipient
    • They say that they’re referencing the connection being encrypted from Zoom endpoint to Zoom endpoint, but that doesn’t offer anything like actual end-to-end encryption for users
• In addition to all that, another poorly thought out feature of the service is exposing people’s email addresses and photos to complete strangers
  • There’s a Company Directory setting in the app that is supposed to automatically group people and add them to eachother’s contact lists if they sign up with an email address in the same domain
  • In theory this would let people using their corporate accounts easily find eachother, and they’ve disabled it for super common email providers like Gmail or Hotmail, but there are thousands of people seeing the issue with email addresses from their internet provider
    • Several Dutch ISP’s in particular have been identified as having users appear for eachother in the Company Directory list
    • Apparently Zoom needs to manually blacklist specific domains, but really that kind of manual gruntwork means the feature should be opt-in, not opt-out
• And finally, there’s a vulnerability in Zoom chat links and how the URLs are converted that hackers can use to collect your Windows login credentials and potentially access your computer remotely
  • Basically if someone drops a link in the chat that uses a file path instead of a web URL, Zoom converts it into a clickable link anyway
  • If you click on it Windows will try to access the remote files by sending your computer’s username and encrypted password. If it’s a malicious link, then all they have to do is decrypt your password and they have everything they need to log in to your computer remotely
  • There’s no word on if Zoom is working to fix this one at all, and the only workaround is pretty technical and involves editing your PC’s registry, so you’ll need to be very careful about the links you click in Zoom’s chat
• If you do need to use Zoom, they have a web version that you should run in a private browser window without an account to try and keep some semblance of privacy

The Internet Archive is hitting some interesting legal waters this week and are now offering 1.4M copyrighted books for free online

• The Internet Archive has hosted something called the Open Library for about a decade now, offering people the ability to check out digital scans of physical books held by the archive
• Until this week they only allowed people to check out as many copies as the library owned, just like a physical library and very similar to how libraries generally handle e-books
• With public libraries closing down due to COVID-19 they announced a major change- no more restrictions or waiting lists. If you want to read a book, you get a copy for the full two week borrowing period regardless of how many are currently checked out
• Generally this has gotten some positive reactions, with The New Yorker declaring it a “gift to readers everywhere”, but authors and publishers aren’t quite as keen
  • Some authors are calling it a “tarted-up piracy site”, and saying that there’s no author, bookseller, or publisher bailout available so this is literally taking dollars away from the people who own that content
  • The Association of American Publishers called the move an “aggressive, unlawful, and opportunistic attack on the rights of authors and publishers”
• The director of the archive’s emergency library project, Chris Freeland, defended the idea, saying that there are 650M books that tax-paying citizens in the US have paid to access but can’t because the libraries are closed
• What he didn’t address is the real legality of distributing copies of copyrighted works
• Not to mention, Freeland seems to be positioning himself as a digital saviour lending books out to the masses with no other way to get them, when in reality many libraries and publishers already have or are setting up e-book that lines up more with traditional library use
  • Sure they’re all digital files that could just be copied, but authors deserve to be paid for their work and if that means I have to wait a few weeks to read The Steel Crow Saga then so be it

Mario’s 35th Anniversary celebration with rereleases

• Mario games are getting the spotlight this year as the franchise hits 35 years old
• Where the 30th year celebration coincided with the release of Mario Maker
  • And 2 pixel amiibo in both retro and modern Mario colours
• The 35th anniversary on the Switch includes remasters
  • And I am really excited to play these on Switch as I’m sure many other fans also felt like Nintendo forgot about these games
  • Games like:
    • Mario Galaxy from 2007
    • Mario Sunshine from 2002
    • And Super Mario 64 from 1997
      • Which we may get a rerelease of the DS remake from 2004
      • Which would be fine, because it added Luigi, Yoshi and Wario as unique playable characters
• I may be even more excited to see a continuation of the Paper Mario series, which have been one of the few RPGs I play and enjoy
  • And the only one I’ve missed is Colour Splash on WiiU which is still $65 and came out 2016
  • And the rumor is we will see one for the Switch sometime in 2020
• Announcements for the celebration were going to be paired with other big Mario announcements this year
  • Like the Super Nintendo World theme park and an animated Mario movie
  • And with the cancellation of E3, it did change the way Nintendo would be releasing information on this event
• We have already seen Nintendo partnering with companies which many have felt have been a long time coming
  • Like the new Lego sets where we get to build Mario style side scrolling environments with Goombas and Koopas to jump on
  • And now licenced Mario clothing through clothing makers Uniqlo and Levi’s
  • And it may have taken this long to see these kinds of partnerships because of Nintendo’s tight control on thier intellectual properties.
  • But it’s taken time to do it in a way Nintendo is comfortable, and has been made clear in a quote from Shigeru Miyamoto.
    • “We want to expand our video game characters to a variety of settings – not just in games, all while keeping their value,” Miyamoto said. “In other words, we’ll be collaborating with various other companies. If we’re able to accomplish that, we can create more opportunities for people to make contact with our characters on a much larger scale than usual.”
• We can all look forward to revisiting our favorite adventures with Mario this year
  • And more importantly sharing what we’ve loved with people who missed it the first time around
  • Then we can all explore Mario’s new adventures together this year and for many more to come

Fallout 76 Wastelanders update finally coming

• Fallout 76 Wastelanders expansion will release April 14th, bringing much needed fun content to the game that isn’t freemium cosmetics for your character and camp
  • Also, anyone who owns the game on Bethesda.net can get a Steam version for free
  • Also From April 14-28, anyone who purchases the game from Steam will also receive the Fallout Classic Collection with the original two games and Fallout Tactics for free
    • This applies to those who claim the free Steam version via their Bethesda.net account, as well.

Tidbits

• iPhone 9 cases have been arriving at Best Buy this week with a street date of April 5th, leading many to theorize that the new phones are due to be announced before Easter
• Apple has expanded the free trials of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro from 30 days to 90, and even if you’re already using a trial copy you can download and install the new version for an extended deadline
• Apple has also set up a program to ship iMacs to their retail employees and offer virtual training to expand their online and phone sales and tech support advisors
• Final Fantasy VII Remake is shipping early in many parts of the world, in some cases arriving over a week before its April 10 release date, so Square has released streaming guidelines and is asking players not to spoil it for others
  • They’re saying that while it will have many familiar beats, the remake introduces a lot of new content and surprises that they want people to be able to experience fresh for the first time