This month you can play a dead cyborg or an undead cheerleader. If you fancy a bit of stealth you can sneak into a research institute to rescue your stolen cat or become an inept thief breaking into a museum to steal a diamond. Science fiction adventures range from the down-to-earth tale of a young reporter starting out in a futuristic city to the outer space perils of a luxury space-liner controlled by an insane computer. Finally, you can look back on the past with an introductory instalment to a new series. All these await you in this month’s roundup of freeware releases.

Chance of the Dead

When the dying have left things undone, it is the responsibility of the Unfinished Business Departedment to give them a chance to put things right. Normally that opportunity is given in the final moments of their clients’ lives, with all details handled by the departedment’s operatives. In the case of Janet Burdie, some lost paperwork resulted in something of a delay. Called up from her grave five years after her demise, Janet is offered the rare opportunity of a second chance to clear up her unfinished business herself. All she has to do is ensure her Triple Layered Coffee Cloud Cake comes to the attention of the leading judge in the Campus Cake Competition, guaranteeing her the first prize she always wanted. But as zombie cheerleader Janet sets out on her quest, she may find that it is not just she who has a second chance at stake.

This game from Ghost deserved its first place finish in the July MAGS competition (theme of “Second Chance”), even though it didn’t have to face any challengers to achieve it. The graphics are reminiscent of the lower-resolution style of the early LucasArts games, with clear detail and good use of colour to make even smaller items fairly easy to locate and identify. The game is also well animated, especially the undead protagonist, who has one foot that drags when she walks and a highly toothy grin when she is pleased with her actions. Sound effects like the gurgling of a coffee machine are well supported by a dramatic soundtrack. This background music serves to make the relatively mundane cake-making activities feel like a great heroic undertaking.

As may be gathered from the story, the zombie protagonist does not make this a horror game; its humour quickly coming to the fore. But there is also a more serious story, with Janet having the chance to set right something that went wrong after she died. In the short space of the game, both stories are brought to a satisfying conclusion. In your quest for culinary excellence, you will use your own bones in unusual ways and have to deal with a strange appliance support line. Control is point-and-click, using a small verb list including the zombie-specific “Bite” action. Most puzzles revolve around inventory, though there is also a clever riddle based around someone else’s secret recipe. For the more culinary gamer, the game files also include the cake recipe for those wishing to emulate our departed heroine in real life.

Chance of the Dead can be downloaded from the AGS website.

Stealing the Diamond

Henry Stickmin has not had the most successful of criminal careers. His attempts to rob a bank met with repeated, painful failures. His subsequent attempts to escape from prison met with similarly uncomfortable consequences. With such a woeful history, you would expect him to put his nefarious past behind him. However, when a large Tunisian diamond is exhibited at the local museum, Henry proves he isn’t the sort of stickman to let his unfortunate past put him off. The time has come for more hair-brained schemes, unreliable gadgetry and terrible consequences, as Henry once again tries to pull off the heist of the century.

Puffballs United’s third episode in the story of a stickman thief provides a surreally funny game, where failure is as much sought-after as success. The graphics are line-drawn cartoons with simple shading. Whilst the bodies of all the characters are stick-like, the circular faces include simplified but highly expressive features. In addition, many characters have limited clothing and other items, such as the hats and walkie-talkies of the exhibit guards. These characters are also all fluidly animated. As well as a variety of sound effects, the game is fully voiced to a good standard. At appropriately dramatic moments, music also plays, often aping the style of game that is being parodied at the time.

Whilst there are three ways to win, what makes this game a real joy are the forty hilariously unique ways of losing. Equipment malfunctions, or on occasion works too well, and many of the available actions have disaster written all over them. Whenever you fail, you get the option of reconsidering your last action, stepping back to the sequence before, or simply starting over. As a result, any replays of particular sections should simply arise from the player wishing to view a particular section again. Depending on the approach you take, some actions require moderately quick decisions, but the retry system should allow most players to get past these. Control is mostly point-and-click, with keyboard used on a couple of occasions. Whilst the game features some references to the previous episodes, playing them is not needed to enjoy this one.

Stealing the Diamond can be played online at Stickpage.

Dead Cyborg: Episode 1 – The Beginning of the Death

In a run-down military base, you wake up in a cryotank. The tanks around you are broken-looking and empty, and the rest of the base doesn’t look like it has fared any better. Logs and computer warnings indicate a terrible exchange of weaponry has occurred and the base is flooded with radiation. As you desperately search the corridors for help or medication, you find decay and destruction everywhere. What happened here and exactly how were you involved in it?

This first game in a proposed series by Endre Barath puts the 3D Blender Engine to good use. The game is presented in first-person view, with full panoramic panning in all directions. The base is rendered in high detail, with rusting panels, the flash of malfunctioning door locks and broken but sometimes functional robots. When a light source is behind you, you will also see your shadow, its shape hinting at something not entirely human. Operational machinery is fully animated, casting its own shadow when appropriate. Whilst having dramatic opening theme music, sound within the game is restricted to that of your surroundings. Broken cables crackle with electricity and falling pipework rattles against the metal floor. There are also occasional voices for robots and computer warning messages.

The keyboard is used for movement, while the mouse is used to look around and interact with the environment. Whilst those who suffer from motion sickness would be well advised to avoid this game, others will find this episode to be an impressive debut. The grim science fiction setting is well realised with a huge amount of detail. This detail can work against the player, as vital objects can be hidden away in corners, though there are clues to the locations of smaller objects. A small inventory is put to good use, but interacting with the environment whenever possible is also highly important. Even when you can’t immediately proceed, interaction will often serve to give you a clue or fill in backstory. As well as the green log cubes scattered around the base, there are also bar codes on the walls which contain robotic messages, providing a mechanical perspective on the situation. This episode is split over four levels, with passwords provided at the beginning of each level acting as a save system.

Dead Cyborg can be downloaded from the developer’s website. The game can also be played online with the Blender plugin, downloadable from the same page if required.

The Returning of the Quantum Cat

Over a decade ago, you were a highly regarded hacker. But you quit that life, turned your back on technology and settled down to be the warden of a remote forest. Now, with only your cat Barsik for company, you patrol this snow-filled waste, keeping an eye out for poachers. Then, on a routine trip to the local store with your feline friend, a mysterious man kidnaps Barsik. Tracking him to a nearby scientific research institute, you determine to use some of the more physical skills you picked up in your hacking career to break in and rescue your furry companion.

Using the INSTEAD engine, this game from zavnvatvi brings the text adventure up to date for modern audiences. Four-fifths of the screen is taken up by a background mimicking the appearance of a paper scroll. At the top appears a pencil sketch of the current location, with links to available locations offered just below it. The remainder of the scroll contains feedback on your latest action and a description of where you are. This description includes highlighted words for objects and people you can interact with directly by clicking on them. The remaining fifth of the screen, on the right-hand side, contains the text-only inventory and game controls. Clicking inventory items selects them for use on links and each other. Along the way, the soundtrack plays synthesiser music that is somewhat reminiscent of ‘80s movies.

For those brought up with text adventures, the presentation – if not the interface – will feel very familiar. Whilst your character will refuse to take actions that would lead to your death, the feeling is that the institute is an extremely unsafe place for you to be. The puzzles will also feel familiar for text alumni, with timing puzzles involving making a certain number of actions and some repeated sequences of movements. As this game was not originally written in English, there are occasional odd phrasings, but none are severe enough to make the meaning unintelligible. The refined interface removes the word-guessing problems that plague some text games, but you will still need to use your brain. Simply clicking on each link in turn will not be enough to advance in most cases.

The Returning of the Quantum Cat can be played online at Kongregate.