Image: Remar Games

Capitalism may sleep over the weekend, but freeware games can attack at any moment. Yesterday evening, we were blessed with the release of Tower of Gold, the long-awaited latest game from Dan Remar, prolific Swedish indie developer and one of the lead people at the even more prolific Ludosity. I've been a fan of Remar's games (both free and commercial) for over twenty years now - the man does not miss, so I jumped straight into this one the second it launched.

Presented in gorgeous DOS-styled pseudo-EGA graphics, Tower of Gold is a platform puzzler epic set in a strange Norse-inspired fantasy world. You are the last prince of an immortal god-king, on a quest to put the souls of those lost to rest after a disastrous war that left the world broken and your father grieving and sequestered away at the peak of his grand golden tower.

Basically, everyone is horribly depressed and literally haunted. Your home village is sealed off by the spirit of one of the first warriors to lose their lives in the war, and until they're sent off to the beyond, nobody can really rest. That first rite is the game's tutorial, introducing you to both its magical puzzle-platformer side and its first-person exploration.

The platforming is the meat and potatoes, starting simple but building up complexity as you learn a whole book of spells that let you interact with the world in unusual ways, but draw from a limited magic pool. A bit Immersive Sim-ish, in that some puzzles have multiple valid solutions, depending on which order you got your spells and which order you explored the world in.

When you're not hopping around, pushing blocks and collecting the required fragments of each ghost's spirit, you're walking around the world and towns from a first-person, grid-based perspective. It's very much in the style of the early Might & Magic games, and while there's no combat out in the overworld, there are some puzzles and mazes to navigate, and plenty of characters to talk to in their homes. And the writing is exemplary from the bit I've played so far. It's heavy, and messy, and interesting.

This is a world of sad, introspective people. Nothing good seems to have come from war (as is so often the case), and resentments run deep. How could an immortal king be as unwise as to even allow a war? How could the royal family fall in line so easily? How could people who were once friends have committed the worst of violence against each other? There's a lot of musing and some good dialogue options. The tutorial even lets you choose whether you forgive the fallen local hero, or hold their spirit to task for being complicit in such evil, even if it was for a supposedly noble cause. It's heavy stuff.

And on top of all that, it looks great, the difficulty is well-tuned and comfortable - not overly hard or too easy - and the music is stellar. A moody chiptune epic for sure. I've only played a little ways into this one, but hope to dive into this next... once I've cleared Queen's Domain off my to-play list.

Tower of Gold is out now for free, available via Remar Games' own site, or on Itch.io where you can donate a few bucks if you think it's worth it. We certainly do. Also check out Remar's other free games, especially Iji, Hero Core, and Princess Remedy. Bangers one and all, plus Ludosity's more commercial output.