Well this is lovely. Haunted Garage, despite the slightly misleading name, is not a horror game. It's a game about forming a band, by collecting massive, over-complicated instruments and placing them inside a minimalist room. You find these instruments in another world, naturally accessible through a magic door, with a bit of chatting and finding and adventure-gaming required to collect them all.
The point-and-click adventure portion is nice enough, if a bit simple, but I'm not sure I've played a game that does instruments as well as Haunted Garage. Fiddling with instruments in real life is a joyful endeavour, particularly if they're electronic and adorned with dials and knobs and whatsits to tinker with all day long. Similarly, the fantasy instruments in this game make all sorts of wonderful noises, from a set of bellowing pipes to various drums to some enormous pots that make a pile of eerie sounds.
Plus each device comes with a switch, or maybe switches, and also some dials, or cables to plug in to activate parts of it. Acquiring a new instrument, finding a place for it in the room, and then fiddling around with it: these actions form a lovely, original, playful loop.
If you like making music, or really just tinkering with machines, you should download or play Haunted Garage online, post-haste. (Thanks, Alpha Beta Gamer.)
For more great free experiences, check out our roundup of the best free PC games.
