This month you can descend into the ruins of an ancient civilisation or rise up from the roots of an old tree. Escape fans can try to get off a runaway subway train or attempt to flee a small room watched over by a masked figure. Cat lovers can pay a visit to a famous feline circus owner, or become a cat themselves in a quest to save its home. Alternatively, you can take a trial run at a job in a bar, or simply find out how strange things can get after a night of drinking. All these await you in this month’s roundup of releases from the freeware scene.

Vsevolod

The island republic Britannia has declared war, and a group of Germanian and Slavic archaeologists head for home. All except one, the nobleman Vsevolod Nikolaevich Peremishlov. From his decade-long pursuit of artifacts from Svarog the Creator, he is sure the vaults of the svarostan on Obzorye Island contain what he seeks. Delving deeper into the ruins he discovers ancient technology and magics that may well prove to be what he desires. But some things are better left undisturbed, and Vsevolod may come to regret what he has uncovered.

Svarun Studios’ first release is an impressive piece of work, serving as a prologue to a proposed much larger game. Backgrounds are hand-painted in a beautifully realistic style, from the mountaintop at the start to a misty graveyard and on to the dark vaults below the ruins. These also include animations, such as the sea washing on the beach. The main character is rendered in a marginally simpler style, but is equally well-animated. The game opens with a gentle folk song, sung in English, and outside scenes continue to play music in an East European folk style. Within the underground vaults, a more dramatic, sepulchral tone is heard.

Using a verb coin interface, you will explore the surface of Obzorye Island before delving deep into its interior. The detail of the scenes can make hotspots difficult to locate, though a change in cursor and hotspot labels go some way to offsetting this. As well as the more conventional actions, a sing option – only unlocked near the end of this prologue – gives players the opportunity to learn spells in a manner clearly inspired by Loom. As well as collecting and using inventory, there are a handful of standalone puzzles that involve deciphering the operation of ancient devices.

Vsevolod can be downloaded from the developers’ website.

The Old Tree

Deep within the roots of the old tree lies a storeroom of pods. Within this room, one of the pods stirs, revealing itself to be a small octopus-like creature. The tiny beast must now make its way through the many corridors and chambers of this ancient plant, seeking a route to the summit. Only there can it finally fulfil its purpose in life.

As a taster for an intended series, this offering from Red Dwarf Games proves both intriguing and odd. The visual design is a detailed fine art style that bears some similarities to Amanita’s Samorost games. The bark interior of much of the game has the look of the titular old tree, though such things as fluorescent lighting and the inclusion of a lift show this is no ordinary plant. The animations are fluid, particularly the crawling progress of the player character, who can travel on walls and ceilings as well as floors. Gentle unearthly music plays throughout, supplemented by sound effects such as the squeaking of wheels and the organic splat of the protagonist dropping from ceiling to floor.

As suggested by the setting, this is a slightly surreal adventure. As the animated pod, players point-and-click to progress through a series of obstacles to reach the final goal. Each room or corridor serves as a standalone scenario, so there's no need for backtracking. With no place for the player character to store anything, inventory plays no part in this game. Instead, you must directly manipulate the environment to succeed, sometimes timing your actions carefully with the actions of a room’s inhabitants. Since you are not restricted to objects within the pod’s reach, often you will manipulate items from a distance.

The Old Tree can be played online at the developers’ website.

Process

You wake to find yourself on a run-down subway train hurtling through a tunnel. With no recollection of how you got there and the train apparently empty, you search for clues. Breaking into the control room, you make a terrible discovery. This train is rushing towards a collision and the main control systems are down. Now it is a race against time as you struggle to find a way to save the train and yourself from destruction.

Denis Tambovcev has created a powerful experience that is as much an interactive art project as a game. Using fully-panoramic nodes, the setting is realistically presented. The train has seen better days, with a generally grimy look and the metalwork spotted with rust. The handful of glowing display screens, as well as the few lights dotted about the train, cast a feeble radiance over this miserable scene. Within normal play, sound is limited to effects, primarily the rattling of the train wheels as it hurtles ever onwards. In the numerous cutscenes within the game, strange images also start to appear, and dramatic music serves to augment the idea that more may be going on here than first appears.

The controls are simple point-and-click, with the cursor changing over hotspots. This smart cursor is invaluable as the darkness of the setting can make smaller items hard to spot otherwise. You will gather a small amount of inventory and have to work out how to operate the various controls you discover. There is also a section where you must determine how to circumvent a strange force that hinders your progress. Once you gain access to the control room you trigger a countdown to impact display, together with a screen that updates as you bring various systems back online. The overall tone is dark and the countdown runs in real time, giving you 20 minutes to solve the mystery. Whilst there is no save system, it is possible to pause the game if interrupted.

Process can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

The Fabulous Screech

In the Land of Living Magic sits the town of Oddness Standing. It is the end of the season and the circus has one last show to perform before closing up for the winter. But this is no ordinary circus; this is the show of The Fabulous Screech and His Trained Humans. As a gift for your anniversary, your partner has secured you a ticket to this wonderful event. Enter the tent and see a performance unlike any you’ve seen before.

Jonas Kyratzes makes a triumphant return to the setting of The Book of Living Magic to create an amusing and touching story. The graphics are presented in a slideshow format using the same brightly coloured, children’s book illustration style of the previous game. Whilst simple in appearance, these include plenty of detail such as God’s bunny slippers, and suit the fairy tale tone well. The soundtrack includes a gentle guitar piece, as well as more showman-like music for the circus itself. There are also a handful of appropriate sound effects.

This is not the most challenging of games, each section consisting of just a few scenes involving some fairly simple inventory and dialogue puzzles. There is also a whack-a-mole variant minigame that requires a modicum of dexterity. The simplicity of the puzzles is more than made up for with the wealth of detail on offer, however. Everything you click has an individual description, right down to the separate books on a bookshelf. These comments are clever and witty, including a wonderful explanation for why a drawer would contain handcuffs, silk scarves and a vibrating egg. The story, whilst also quite simple, is elegantly told, with the ending likely to bring a tear to the eye of all but the most hardened soul.

The Fabulous Screech can be played online at Kongregate.