The weekly freebie is back after a brief hiatus and we’ve got a doozie lined up for you this week. It’s a relatively new side scrolling action game called Bonesaw that plays like a cross between Kirby, River City Ransom and Mega Man. It also happens to have a totally kick ass old school soundtrack.

In Bonesaw, players take on the role of The Golden Knight, a hockey player who must save his teammates who have been kidnapped by an angry ref and sent to an alternate dimension. Sound odd? I thought so too, but the author has a good sense of humour which really comes across well in the game and ultimately the story makes at least as much sense as most Mario games.

Along the way to saving his teammates, the Golden Knight must do battle with plenty of rival hockey players as well as other nasty enemies, but he’s obviously not completely defenseless. When the game starts off, the Knight can only punch and kick,  but he’ll soon come across a hockey stick he can use to pummel baddies. Of course players also have access to the titular weapon, the bonesaw.

Your bonesaw meter refills slowly as you fight baddies and when it’s full you can summon the saw for some real carnage. The saw feeds of the blood of your enemies which is represented onscreen by little Mega Man style dots, it has 3 special attacks and it refills your health bar while it’s active. In short it’s a bad ass weapon and it’s saved my hide more than a few times already.

I only found out about the game recently and I expect I’m probably around half way through at this point, but from what I’ve seen so far this could be one of the best side scrollers in years. I did see a few frame drops here and there which I found quite inexplicable considering Bonesaw looks like an old Nintendo game, but it’s hardly anything game breaking. If anything it only adds to the retro charm.

Bonesaw can be downloaded for free here. Take some time to explore the page while you’re at it. There’s some interesting info about how the game was made and the developer Kyle Pulver goes into a little more detail regarding the very unusual storyline.

If you want to use a gamepad with the game instead of standard keyboard controls, you’ll want to download JoyToKey here. Of course JoyToKey is also freeware and I’ve found it has come in handy a few times since I downloaded it for Bonesaw.

Well there you have it folks. The last month has been hectic, but hopefully I can get back to posting a weekly freebie every Tuesday again starting next week. Remember to let us know what you think in the comments section. I’m sure would Mr. Pulver love to see some feedback on his awesome game.

1. 

   trash

   I can only agree. Bonesaw is a great jump’n'run which everbody should have played.

   September 9th, 2008 at 1:25 am
2. 

   HedonicWill

   Can’t wait to check it out. Although, I prefer XPadder.exe for the gamepad.

   September 9th, 2008 at 4:21 am
3. 

   Qlawdat

   Looks great

   September 9th, 2008 at 11:38 am
4. 

   Polluted

   Xpadder, eh? Never heard of it. Bonesaw mentions JoyToKey somewhere in the readme so I mentioned it for people who don’t usually read those.

   It was actually kind of a pain to get it working with my sixaxis.

   September 9th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
5. 

   JudeMaverick

   Looks like I can’t open the web page for some reason. Are there any other mirror sites to download it?

   September 9th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
6. 

   Bassium

   Aww this game looks really fun, too bad I can’t download anything yet. *Sad face*

   September 26th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
7. 

   ShadowGHX

   Wow this game looks awesome.
   Im gonna download it once I get on my good computer.

   October 13th, 2008 at 1:15 am