The best free games of the week

A sinister cult, a competitive burger stand, mini mighty Jill Offs and a weirdo spaceship coalesce in this week's column.

A sinister cult, a competitive burger stand, mini mighty Jill Offs and a weirdo spaceship coalesce in this week's column. Read on for a game that lets you set your hat on fire, plus three other games that, sadly, don't. Enjoy!

The Aspect by backterria

It might look a bit like a Virtual Boy game in screenshots, but the fabulously moody The Aspect makes a lot more sense in motion. It's a very short platformer where you collect things from the environment, in order to perform some arcane ritual. Your cult might frequent the same tailors as the folks that make the ghost costumes for the hate-filled KKK, but as the itch.io page makes clear, "No it's not about the KKK". That settles that then. It's certainly a creepy costume though, and one that fits in with the sinister vibe of this nominal Metroidvania (it's like three screens big, before you get too excited). (Via Warp Door)

Mini Jill Off by Mozz

Mozz (it's not short for Morrissey...probably) has demade/remade/reimagined Auntie Pixelante's Mighty Jill Offas a Puzzlescript game. This is notable, because Mighty Jill Off is a platformer, and Puzzlescript is a turn-based puzzle game engine. Somehow, it works, and the result is another entry in the small-but-dedicated turn-based platformer genre. The puzzles here are smart, and eventually very tough, and the pixel art is bloody adorable.

Path of the Empyrean Pyre by Wandermayer

A very polished and very, very short first-personer where you poke around a derelict spaceship before making one important decision. Whether that decision makes any sense depends on how closely you listened to the game's twin narrators, who enPortal themselves into your head via radio feed. This is an unusual spaceship, full of runic text and glowing doodads, not to mention colours other than gunmetal grey and white. Explore! Choose! Then do it all again in order to witness the other ending.

Grab Them By The Eyes by Terry Cavanagh

Terry Cavanagh's latest funny, free browser game puts you in charge of a city burger stand. When a couple of hipster competitors turn up with a rival stand, you have to up your game in a bid for the hotly contested spot. You don't do this by increasing the relative yumminess of your burgers, oh no, but by shelling out for increasingly fancy signs. (Makes sense.) The fancier the sign, the more of Joe Public will be coerced into buying from your van rather than the schmoes across the way.

The system for buying and constructing signs is well-developed and a lot of fun—you'll need to constantly order new signs and accessories, to stop your customers from getting distracted and eating elsewhere. Emerge with the most customers at the end of a seven day period, and you get to keep your plot—fail, and you'll have to surrender it to your fashionable enemies.