Okami meets Hyper Light Drifter in gorgeous free adventure Atma

(Image credit: Tom Sykes)

The beautiful, polished Atma feels like a 'full' game compressed to a fine jewel, an action adventure with no fat you can play for free over an afternoon or so.

The impressive pixel art reminds of Hyper Lift Drifter (though they could have maybe toned down the bloom slightly), while the central mechanic recalls the 'pause the game and draw lines on the screen' of the similarly Zelda-inspired Okami.

You're Shaya, a spiritual guardian, and you're attempting to aid your lover who has become trapped between the living and spirit realms. This you do by exploring a gorgeous world and using your powers to influence it, making the occasional moral choice along the way.

Your first power is simply to dispatch enemies, as you slow the action by hitting the space bar and draw connecting lines between the creatures, but pretty soon you gain the ability to manipulate the wind. As you may have guessed, you use directional wind gusts to blow blocks this way and that, and to activate wind-powered switches. Typical Zelda stuff, but implemented well.

You can download Atma here, and I highly recommend it. (Thanks, Warp Door.)

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.

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