Horror meets skateboarding in the spookily rad, free Orange County

(Image credit: Tom Sykes)

Yes it's another retro-looking, first-person horror game, this time made for the Haunted PS1 Summer Spooks game jam. But, hang on a moment, as rather than walking around a creepy, boxy environment, you're skateboarding around one instead.

Orange County gives you a procedurally generated, decidedly dark city to explore, home to a few roaming cars you'd better avoid, if you want to stay alive. One of these is a funny-looking police or security buggy, seemingly out to bust your boarding self, specifically. It's not terribly hard to avoid these few vehicles, but it's more difficult to dodge the many walls of houses and shops, which for some reason cause the screen to turn horribly pixellated when you, inevitably, crash into them.

It's a bit annoying when that happens, but when you're out in the open, skating around the creepily empty streets of what seems to be a futuristic dystopia, Orange County feels pretty great. The controls are a bit finicky, but there's something wonderful to the feeling of skateboarding in first-person. I was reminded, more than a bit, of EA's Skate. (Thanks, Alpha Beta Gamer.)

For more great free experiences, check out our roundup of the best free PC games.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.

Latest in Horror
The new Prime Asset featured in the upcoming update for the Outlast Trials.
The Outlast Trials puts its already paranoid players under surveillance for a time-limited story event
The outlast trials setting
'You just have to make them think this world is real, and this world can hurt you': The Outlast Trials devs discuss a changing horror genre and an insatiable need for scares
Silent Hill f transmission trailer screenshots
Silent Hill f is no longer banned in Australia, but it still sounds pretty messed up
One of Repo's player characters, resembling a yellow pedal bin with googly eyes, encounters a skeletal, open mouthed face with glowing yellow eyes.
REPO dev says it wasn’t actually inspired by Lethal Company, and started as a singleplayer cleaning game: ‘It was nice, but far from what REPO is now’
Uplifted chimp Penn and cyber-rat Trip in the key art for Animal Use Protocol
Animal Use Protocol's dysfunctional chimp-rat alliance drags the Stasis series into a horrible new first-person era
A woman with short hair stands next to a pot plant, provocatively
GOG's version of Silent Hill 4 has been updated with missing content from the original console game
Latest in News
An Enshrouded player in a recreation of Erebor from The Lord of the Rings
Kings under the Mountain! 33 Enshrouded players spent 10,000 hours to recreate this iconic location from The Lord of the Rings
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened