I once read through an online FAQ session with the maker of QWOP and how he simplifies all his games by making them sports games. Because that way he doesn’t need to spend extra time explaining the rules. In QWOP, you have to sprint to the end. In GIRP (I guess a play with “GRIP”), you have to climb to the top.

I really hate to explain how it works as it pretty much speaks for itself, but again, you are a untethered body that needs to make it to the finish. Keyboard letters represent the rocks you need to climb and pressing shift or control flexes your muscles to ascend. In QWOP you need rhythm. In GIRP, you also need that, but you also need to plan your path.

I’m not a gamer at all, I don’t even own a game console or have any games installed on my computer. My geekery limits to code, comics, gadgets and random other things. But I still love point-and-click games, the more nostalgic, the better. A couple of years ago I came across MOTAS, which stands for Mystery Of Time And Space. It’s an “escape the room” kind of game.

The game starts in a room with a locked door, you have to click around and look for items to help you escape the room. And so you advance to each level of which there are 17 currently. When I discovered this game I spend hours trying to escape each room, it can get pretty frustrating. Since then I found and played a few others like The Crimson Room and the Viridian Room. And to me a very difficult one Escape the room.
Who am I kidding, I find them all difficult to solve, I will try for hours, sometimes solving it but mostly resorting to walkthroughs.

Most of these game by now are pretty much known or commercialized, except for MOTAS which is still on the makers own site. That’s the appeal to me, obscure old skool games with nostalgic feeling to them. I haven’t been able to find anymore games like MOTAS; independent, old skool and obscure. It’s because it’s such time consuming searching these games that I don’t have a list full of them. But if I did my productivity would be taking immense blows.

I once bought the classic Nintendo off eBay to play old games again, unfortunately the console only lived through a couple of games. It is thanks to Sheldon Cooper lamenting evils playing Donkey Kong on his classic Nintendo, that awoke this small gamer in me today, remembering me that there are still lots of unknown games awaiting on the internet.

IGN has made a Free-To-Play Games section on the site that will help gamers in choosing all of the cool, free games that are available on the internet but are not getting a lot of publicity. This a great resource as you won’t need to Google around or wait for friends to make recommendations, IGN has already done all of the dirty work.

The first game that is featured is a flash version of Valve’s Portal game. It’s set in a 2D environment, which makes it a different animal from first person perspective, full 3D Valve game.

There are other games that are already in the list so do check it out. Warning, it may take over your life.