SLACKERJACK - Battle for Wesnoth

Keeping with our new-found tradition (one day and counting!) of avoiding throwaway online flash games, here we present you with yet another decent-sized download for your gaming enjoyment.

Battle for Wesnoth is a totally free, open source (meaning you can get the code for it and modify it yourself, if you have the time, patience and know-how. In other words: you can’t) and feels very professionally made, even with its freebie status. Certainly something of a rarity in the world of gratis games.

The game plays like - for anyone familiar with it - Fire Emblem, a highly regarded and thoroughly excellent strategy game available on all sorts of Nintendo consoles. They’ve yet to bring the version out on Wii where even your granny can play it though, so it hasn’t exactly achieved the mass market penetration the company has been hoping for.

It’s the usual fantasy setting you should expect from many games of this ilk, but for the love of everything don’t let this put you off. Snobbery will rob you of a fine experience and one that shows the indies can do things just as well as the big guns.

For those that don’t know, the game basically involves you taking turns to move about and fight. It’s like chess, but with more variables and less Gary Kasparov.

Yes, so it is another one you can’t waste time on over your lunch hour, but it’ll exercise your bloody brain cells and last more than fifteen minutes before you get bored of launching penguins into the sun. So stop whining, download it and play it. For a thoroughly free experience it really is very well made, and it’s updated regularly to kill off any annoying bugs that may plague the thing.

Just don’t come running to us if you do happen to get hopelessly, completely and totally addicted to Wesnoth. It’s good enough to become an obsession, that’s for certain. And did we mention it’s free?

Get it here.

Don’t worry, the flash crap will come back when I’m not in charge anymore. Philistines.