Best of the Best: Cheap and/or Free Games

For a game about a cat trying to get milk, it sure doesn't feature many cats...

Hey all, we're going to try a little something new here over the next month, and we want your feedback to help us out with our new experiment.   Once a week, for the next month, we here at Gaming Cuisine are going to post a review of a game that we love that is cheap or free.  Since these games will mostly be free-to-play games, we won't go into too much depth on the details of each title, but will instead focus more about what audience they're aimed at.

Also the price of the game will reflect how long the reviews are.  The more expensive a game is, the more words the review will contain.  Any games we review that are bordering the $10 mark will have a fairly standard review, but most free-to-play titles will just be short, easy to get through synopses, essentially stating why you should be playing the game we've featured.

The Black Mesa Project, a fine example of what people with too much time on their hands can accomplish.  For those unfamiliar this is a complete remake of Half-Life using the Source Engine.  It's awesome, don't wait for my review of it, just download it for free right now! 

Here's where we need your help.  While we're very good at finding good free and cheap games to play, we're sure many of you have suggestions for titles you'd like us to review.  Recognizing this, we want you to know that we will be glad to look at any title recommended to us, so shoot us as many titles as you can think of.  You can submit any titles you wish for us to peruse in the comments section below, or email us titles and/or links to check out at gamingcuisine(at)gmail.com.

Blacklight Retribution, another awesome and high quality free game.
Available on Steam now!

There are only two rules regarding the submission of titles we'll consider.  First, they have to cost $10 US or less, and second, they have to be available on multiple platforms.  That second rule doesn't mean a game has to be available on ALL platforms, but only that it has to be available on two or more platforms or consoles.  Finally, and here comes the hypocrisy, any titles we pick without input from the public may only be available on one platform at the time of writing.  So we can stem the cries of foul play in advance, I will explain the reason for this here: Mike, Austin, and I (as well as any other editors we bring on for this project), don't own every platform individually.  While we have the ability to cover every console and platform as a group, it may be impossible for one of us to cover a title if we don't own a compatible console/platform.  While we are trying to rectify this situation, we're kind of stuck right now, so bear with us.

To start us off with this project I present to you 

The Cat That Got the Milk 

PC, Mac
Free To Play

Minimalist, but beautiful. Source

The Cat That Got the Milk is a free-to-play, platform-puzzle game, available for PC/Mac that can be downloaded here.  Aimed at casual puzzle gamers, The Cat That Got the Milk doesn't offer much beyond the very basics necessary for a game.  While the game is very simple, due to its minimalist nature, it is also very elegant.  Including a beautiful soundtrack, and incredible backgrounds, I think it will surprise many players with its artistic touches.  In some ways it feels like more of an art project than a game. 

In The Cat That Got the Milk the player is constantly moving forward, and the only controls are the up and down arrow keys, which, unsurprisingly, move your character up and down along its path.  Despite such a simple control system The Cat That Got the Milk is a very enjoyable romp, if a short one.  The creators of the game state directly on the site that "it should serve you 10-15 minutes of quality time.  No more.  No less." (Emphasis in original.)  A bold, and strikingly funny statement for any game, let alone such a minimalist title.  Consisting of only eighteen levels I did manage to get through the game in about 10 minutes, though the later levels did take some small effort to get through. 

I suppose if you want to get technical you could say it took me 10 Minutes and 17 seconds. 

While this game doesn't have a lot of replay value, the creators weren't lying when they said the game is 10-15 minutes of quality time.  I highly enjoyed it, and had there been more replay value to this title I'd have rated it one of the best free games released in 2011 (yes it's a year old, and yes, you should still check it out if you haven't already).  The only downsides to this title, other than lack of replay, is that you will need to either wait for the download, or install Unity Web Player to play in your browser.  I don't feel either of these are a big deal though, as several applications use UWP, and the download, coming in at just 29.5 MB, only takes a few minutes to obtain at worst.

All in all, considering the high quality of the game, and its intriguing premise of living a day in the abstract view of a cat, it's highly worth your time to download and try, or even play in-browser.


I give The Cat That Got the Milk 3.75 Stars out of a possible 5, and recommend that any gamer that enjoys puzzle games, or just something different, try it out immediately.  It's definitely worth the 10-15 minutes of your time the developer has stated to be enjoyable.


Until next time, we'll be looking very forward to hearing your input, and remember, any and all suggestions are welcome.

Until then, Keep on Gaming.