Demos

Gold Slam, a free to play online tennis game, just entered open beta and invites players to jump into the action. go to goldslam.aeriagames.com to create an account and start playing.

Download Gold Slam (335 MB)

Tales runner is a free to play MMO racing game inspired from popular fairy tales such as The Frog Prince, Jack and the Bean Stalk, and the Japanese classic, Momotaro. Tales Runner has several modes to offer such as a standard racing mode, a relay race mode, or even a survival mode for up to 30 players. Every type of gamer will discover Tales Runner to be a fun and interactive game. Go to talesrunner.gpotato.com for more information and to register for an account.

Download Tales Runner Client (592 MB)

Now, before you get all reactionary and declaim this title as "yet another Bejeweled clone", let me just say two things right up front: 1) It is a Bejeweled clone, and 2) There's more to it than the standard Bejeweled swap mechanic. What's the big difference? Explosions. Read on for the full scoop!

Set during the end of China's Han Dynasty and the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D., Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI presents the most visually captivating evolution in the history of the series. Blurring the line between video games and art, RTKXI features visuals evocative of classical Chinese ink-paintings along with debates and duels rendered in real-time 3D animation.

Download the Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI Demo (280 MB)

Mabinogi is a free to play anime-styled MMORPG that takes place in a fantasy land inspired by Celtic mythology. The real-time combat system relies more on strategic gameplay than most other MMO games, but players will be free to explore a world outside of combat. Even owning a pet brings special benefits. Go to mabinogi.nexon.net to create an account and start playing.

Download Mabinogi Install Client (757 MB)
Download Mabinogi Patch (25 MB)

Read Mabinogi first impressions on Massively

As promised last week, Nvidia has now released new official drivers for its GeForce 8, 9 and 200 series of graphics cards today. The 177.83 drivers are the ones that enable those chips to have hardware game physics support for PC game that support the PhysX software that Nvidia bought early this year (although its likely that there will be some framerate loss with that support).

Nvidia's new drivers are not the only thing the graphics chip company has available for download. You can also download the previously released PhysX enabled free multiplayer shooter Warmonger from developer Netdevil, the Unreal Tournament 3 PhysX mod, the Folding@Home support and several tech demos (some interactive, some not) that show off various PhysX effects.

The wait is over, and Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People has finally premiered, ready to grace our screens. Download the first episode demo, entitled Homestar Ruiner, today! The demo let's you play through the tutorial and the first parts of the game.

Download the SBCG4AP: Homestar Ruiner Demo

Reflexive Entertainment's The Great Tree is a game containing elements reminiscent of other titles while still retaining its own unique identity. Regardless of which other games it might remind you of, it's as addictive as anything else, belying its fairytale appearance.

In The Great Tree, you play as a fairy, charged with collecting free-floating pollen to nourish the titular tree that grants life to all fairies. Don't let the faltering voiceover get in the way of your enjoyment of the game; the story itself can be safely ignored. It's really all about the increasingly frenetic gameplay. More on this after the jump.

Download The Great Tree Demo [Windows]
Download The Great Tree Demo [Mac]

The demo for Legend: Hand of God is available from Big Download. This RPG adventure takes place in the fantasy land of Aris and players adventure among orcs, dwarves and other fantasy creatures. A broadband connection is highly recommended for this demo, since it weighs in at over 1 Gb.

Download the Legend: Hand of God Demo (1.8 Gb)

Space Siege, the sci-fi themed action role-playing game created by Chris Taylor (Supreme Commander, Dungeon Siege), has a demo ready for download. This much anticipated demo lets players shoot through the first level of the game to get a feel for the controls and the interactive environmental objects. It also lets you modify your weapons and perform a couple cybernetic upgrades to get a feel for more power as you fight back against the alien threat. Although the short-but-sweet demo doesn't show how other characters will treat you after you sacrifice your humanity for cybernetics, it's enough to get players ready for the game's full release on August 12.


Download the Space Siege Demo (935 Mb)

Florensia Online is a free to play MMO that takes place in a bright, maritime world. Quests take place on both land and at sea, and players will be able to customize their own ships to explore the world and battle. Open beta sign-ups started on Monday July 21, but there's still plenty of time to jump into the fun. Go to www.florensia-online.com to sign up.

Download the Florensia Online Open Beta Client (1.56 Gb)

Download the Florensia Online HD Trailer (75 Mb)

It takes a lot of testing and ideas to create a game like Spore, so the developers put together conceptual prototypes to test out possible gameplay designs and run simulations. The public normally never learns of these prototypes much less use them, but the Spore designers decided that it would be fun to release some of the prototypes to the public to see where the world's imagination can take them.

Be warned that these prototypes are not fully functional games. EA does not support them, nor are they tested or easily explained. More information about the prototypes can be found on the Spore community site.

ParticleMan "simulates gravitational attraction between particles in a cloud." As far as we know, it has nothing to do with the They Might Be Giants song.

Download the Spore ParticleMan Prototype from Big Download

BIOME "is a programmable cellular automata simulator that allows users to develop simple "SimCity-like" grid simulations."

Download the Spore BIOME Prototype from Big Download

It looks like it won't be long before the public will get a chance to play a portion of Space Siege, the long awaited sci-fi action-RPG from developer Gas Powered Games and publisher Sega. A banner and a countdown clock on NVIDIA's NZone gaming site indicates they will debut the demo which seems to indicate a release late on Sunday or early on Monday.

The game, which has your player character fighting off nasty aliens on a ship that carries the last members of the human race, is scheduled to ship to stores late in August. There's no word at the moment on what the demo will contain at this point.

Ever since Lance Armstrong stopped kicking everyone's butt year after year in the Tour de France, the only news about professional cycling that reaches the U.S. these days is the doping scandals. Even now, with the ToD in full swing, doping scandals continue to rock the sport. So why not give a virtual try at managing a professional cycling team the old fashion way -- with blood, sweat and tears.

Cyanide Studio and Focus Home Interactive have made the demo for Pro Cycling Manager 2008 - Tour de France edition available. The 760 MB demo puts players in charge of the Euskaltel team as they try to win the Tour de France's 16th stage: Cuneo – Jausiers. Your team is beginning its last week of competition before the final charge towards finish line at the Champs-Élysées. Unfortunately your team stinks (probably because none of your riders are using performance enhancing durgs) and has yet to win a single stage. Needles to say the sponsors are getting a bit irked by your lack of Lance Amrstrong-ness. So as the team's Director of Sports you must guide your toeam through the demo's 157.4 km mountain stage to their much needed first victory.

The demo also offers a tutorial mode as well as a track cycling event called a Keirin race, which pits you against six riders racing at nearly 50 kph for three laps. Download the demo now from Big Download!