Best Shareware Games Of 2003 Explored

Thanks to AVault for their feature discussing the best shareware PC titles for 2003, as the writer points out: "As software stores stock fewer new computer games, shareware titles and Internet releases offer an alternative for those who want to play on their PCs. Most of my favorite recreational offerings from the past year never made it into retail outlets." Picks include Chain Reaction ("Remember the old Dynamix game The Incredible Machine? Even though the company is defunct, its creators have developed a new 3D version"), Ultraball ("combines the fun of a Breakout game with all the action and excitement of a pinball game"), and Dr.Blob's Organism ("...a fast-paced shooter in which you blast gelatinous one-celled organisms as they try to escape from a Petri dish.")

Comments

My favourate shareware (or is it freeware?)

[Brutus (moo)]

title is IcyTower, basically you jump up a tower trying to get as high as you can, or the best combo (where each jump in the combo skips atleast one floor), quite addicting and challenging.

Crimsonland

[Hettch]

Crimsonland is by far the best game on that last. You really should give that game a whirl. Truly addicting smash TV style from days past. Guns + Buckets o' blood + powers = good times :) (sorry, don't mean to be trolling)

Gee.

[Anonymous Coward]

I salute the sentiment, but I was hoping they'd detail more than four games on that website.

Still, a dollar tends to go farther on most shareware/small house titles than on the commercial ones, and the authors are usually much cooler with the gaming community (no small feat; I've seen the message forums.) Maybe the best title I've picked up that didn't hit store shelves was Galactic Civilizations, and that guy even made a number of free add-ons for it that one could download. Pontifex is pretty cool, too.

Re:Gee.

[SuperMo0]

I was hoping they'd detail more than four games on that website. Gee, "NEXT PAGE" buttons are a really great advancement in technology, doncha think?

For me..

[hookedup]

Almost anything from PopCap Games. Titles like Diamond Mine, Bookworm, Alchemy, and of course, any japanese politicians favorite, Bejeweled, are enough to keep you occupied for months.

Re:Do people still call them that?

[PainKilleR-CE]

Even CD-RWs are cheaper than those floppy disks were back when shareware was really big. Beyond that, you don't need to burn a CD until you plan to give it to someone else, and if the game sucks just uninstall it and delete the installer.

My favorite isn't even shareware or freeware...

[SuperMo0]

It's just a collection of flash games. Orisinal has a GREAT selection of games. They're kind of quirky, acid-induced maybe, but they're still kinda cool and challenging in most cases.

Re:Do people still call them that?

[bugbread]

The easier it is to copy something, the more likely it is to be shared. For most people the amount of time and effort involved in burning 1 CD is way less than the amount of time and effort involved into writing a program to 10 separate floppy disks. In fact, you'd have to have an amazingly old CD burner to find writing and swapping out 10 floppies to be faster and easier than writing a single CD. So, yes, people still call it shareware, and with good reason: they share it.

EVN

[Illissius]

One game you should definitely check out is Escape Velocity: Nova; I haven't actually tried it yet, but if it's anything like the original, then it's better than 99% of games out there, shareware or not. If only there were an MMO version... :)

Re:EVN

[BackwardEngineer]

Speaking of which, I had a friend who owned a Mac and had the original. I used to play that all the time until I moved away.

As soon as I heard that they were making Escape Velocity: Nova for Windows, I knew I had to buy it.

Great game, love how its open ended. Just wish I knew how to make a ton of money so I could buy those huge ships.

is it Really the BEST shareware of 2003?

[bear pimp]

This caught my eye over at diy games. It seems some of the developers (my guess!) who were missed of the list might have been a bit annoyed! I'm inclined to agree though: If I see that Bob Mandel has written a review a generally avoid reading it. Still, the man wrote over 20 of his own games (They were so great he didn't list them on his CV), so I'm sure he's more of an expert than I...

Re:Biplanes

[bear pimp]

Biplanes rocked! I can't think how many hours my brother and I wasted playing that game! I guy called Mathew Bushell has already ported it to a pc, and you can set multiple skins (press z in game) The amiga version is best for gameplay though. more info here Check the downloads, and yes there's even a linux port so maybe some of the people on slashdot will even try it out ;)

Re:Bah, you get what you pay for..

[doublem]

fills me with the urge to stab it's creator in the eye.

I think you'll want to seek professional help, if something as simple as a game you can exit and never see again causes you to want to maim someone.

You clearly have serious anger issues.

Does shareware make $$?

[Astro Del Gato]

I have been reading a lot about how difficult it is for an independant developer to break even in the mainsteam game industry. Does anyone know how shareware games fare? How many copies can you sell? Are there any shareware game developers that can be considered financial successes?

Re:Does shareware make $$?

[American AC in Paris]

I have been reading a lot about how difficult it is for an independant developer to break even in the mainsteam game industry. Does anyone know how shareware games fare? How many copies can you sell? Are there any shareware game developers that can be considered financial successes?

Well, it all depends on how you define 'success'.

My own little game has brought in over $1000 in donations and profit from tchotchke sales over the past year. I wrote the game in my free time (I was unemployed for a while, which helped) and I treat it like a full-time hobby. I've made more than it cost me to create the game, so I'm happy about that, and I consider most of the time I took making it time well spent. (I could have done without the weeks of tracking down forehead-slapper bugs, but it comes with the territory.)

I'm lucky in that I have free hosting through a friend, so I don't need to worry about bandwidth costs, which is a big plus. Even if I had to buy my own server space, though, I'm making enough that I could come close to breaking even, or maybe even earn a little bit.

Thing is, I never planned to earn money off this game. I wrote it for two reasons: it sounded like a fun thing to do, and I wanted to get some name recognition. Today, most of my hits are coming directly to the game's home page; even six months ago, I was relying primarily on other peoples' links. This tells me that people have heard of the game and are coming straight to the site to get it--the name is out there, and it's generating it's own buzz.

Now that I've gone through it, I've learned that the real trick isn't to make money--at least, not right off the bat. The real trick is to get noticed. Once you get noticed, the Internet practically builds a game's reputation for you. If your game is fun and engaging, it gets forwarded around and shared. You don't need to pay a dime for this.

Look at Ambrosia. They started out with Malestrom, which was and still is one of the best versions of Asteroids out there. The game got noticed, people passed it around, linked to it, and Ambrosia got a name. Today, they run a solvent shareware business; they've developed a solid registration system, they have tons of titles, and (most importantly) tons of people know who they are.

Shareware can make $$, but if that's the first thing you gun for, you'll have trouble. Make your game fun, free as in beer, have non-obtrusive requests for donations, and seed it onto the net. Make a name for yourself. Then start looking into ways to make a business out of it.

Tom

(P.S. A tip: release early in the year, so you don't get passed over on the 'Best of 200X' award lists...)

Re:Does shareware make $$?

[ReyTFox]

To a large extent it depends on the dedication of the developer. It's rare for a shareware company to turn a living-wage profit, the first year or two. However, if you recall the early 90s, Apogee(pre-Duke3D) and Epic(pre-Unreal) were both highly successful shareware developers. Nowadays we have a lot of "new kids:" Dexterity, GarageGames, Spiderweb and PopCap are some names that come to mind. All of them now turn profits, and they all got there in unique ways:

Dexterity builds games(mostly puzzle games) that are "perfectly sellable" with just enough limitations to encourage a purchase.

PopCap also does puzzle games, but offers two varieties: the browser-based demo, and the "deluxe" downloadable version, which gives them an edge on penetrating the market - with no demo to install, they can get more potential customers.

Spiderweb has a niche in classic RPG gaming, which has apparently proven very profitable.

GarageGames is made up of former Dynamix(Tribes developers, and did many titles since the mid-80s) employees, and is perhaps the most idealistic of the bunch. They play two roles - a developer/publisher of games, and a community-building institution for independent developers, by offering their Torque engine(originally the Tribes2 engine, but with continual improvements for the last few years) up for sale for the fantastic price of $100 and then providing a set of forums tailored for developers. They lost money on this venture initially, but are now able to boast of getting minimum wages :) Since they give developers a minimum of 65% royalties on their work when they publish with GG, I would say they're actually pretty successful for that.

Nowadays the market is pretty heavily saturated with puzzle games of the match-em-up or move-em-around categories, and simple clones of other games(classic arcade games and Solitare). That's not all that different from what you see in the AAA-end of the market, but what makes indie development attractive is that you can take more risks.

The real secret to success is to continually build the reputation of your company, offering several strong products and building word-of-mouth and community relations over a long period of time.

A retail title can get by with less advertising in proportion to development costs, because it's already getting the advertising of shelfspace at a retailer.

A shareware title, however, MUST gain "buzz factor" to really break out some good sales numbers. The usual sell-through rate of demo downloads to purchases is only 1 or 2%, and there isn't any one place for a developer to connect with the market, so good word-of-mouth is essential to success.

Re:Ya know what?

[baywulf]

I don't understand the reasoning. Shareware implies that you can try before you buy. And if the game is not really good then people wouldn't want to pirate it. If it is good, then your argument breaks down and they shouldn't pirate the game.

Dr.Blob's Orgasm..??

[Knacklappen]

Dr.Blob's Organism ("...a fast-paced shooter in which you blast gelatinous one-celled organisms as they try to escape from a Petri dish.")

I must be ill-conditioned somehow, because I read "Dr. Blob's Orgasm", which made perfectly sense with "in which you blast gelatinous one-celled organisms"