Beggars CAN be Choosers

For the average gamer money is in short supply, and given the choice between a full priced title or several indie games it's not surprising a lot of people on a limited budget choose to go with the latter. I'm here to tell you that downloadable games can sometimes be had for free. No, I'm not talking about piracy (despite that word appearing in the title of this blogging webpage). Rather, certain genres of games have a large number of free high quality flash equivalents.

I'll keep this limit to two genres in particular. First is tower defense. There are great titles to be had on Xbox Live like Trenched and Toy Soldiers, but the catch is they cost money. Don't be disheartened though, you can play some excellent tower defense titles such as GemCraft, Kingdom Rush and The Space Game. All feature deep gameplay and while I wouldn't say the graphics are impressive they run the gamut from functional to stylish.

The second is a genre that is harder to classify, but I'll boil it down to a single title going for $10 on PSN versus a number of flash titles floating around on the net for free. The PS3 game is called Eufloria has alternatives called Phage Wars, a sequel and a competitive online version. Star Baron, another great choice, just make sure to play the full version and not the beta. Then you got Solarmax which is probably the most polished of the three, but also the shortest.

This is just the tip of the iceberg though. There's a vast number of great games I haven't mentioned (or in some cases even played). So go check out some websites like Armor Games, Kongregate and New Grounds if haven't recently already. Maybe you wont like all the games you try, but hey they're free of charge and it's pretty hard to beat that price on PSN, Xbox Live or Steam.