We have to admit, this is probably the silliest unlock we've seen so far. The final unlock revealed as a part of the Heavy update is none other than a sandwich. This is no ordinary sandwich, though. This sandwich is filled with such nutritional delights, such savory meats, that it heals a full 120 health upon consuming. You have to stand still for 4 seconds while eating, though, and you make vigorous consumption sounds when eating, drawing enemies like a picnic draws ants. Overall, it's a humorous and altogether useful addition to the game. Oh, and for those who want a little bit of comedy, scroll down and watch the "Meet the Sandvich" video for some extra hilarity.

If you want to try out the wild and wacky Sandvick in the game you can do so now as Valve has just updated the shooter with all of the updates previously revealed including two new weapons, new achievements for the Heavy class, a new Payload map and the new Arena gameplay mode with five new maps.

Download the "Meet the Sandvich" HD Trailer (10 MB)

For the indie and amateur developer, a shmup is a great way to learn the ropes of the industry. The engine is easy to build, you must make it interesting and unique, balance it to provide a good challenge, and the concepts are very simple to understand. A student team at KobeDenshi have followed this philosophy and created Border of Life, a grapple-mechanic horizontal shooter. The graphics are effective, but the gameplay could use some more refinement. It's hard, mostly because the controls are difficult to get used to.

[Via Lithium Leaf]

Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden: Chapter 1 of the HoopZ Barkley Saga is one of the strangest, goofiest, and altogether fun freeware RPGs you can play. A bizarre sense of humor, decent gameplay, and well-made sprites and environments made it an instant classic in the indie scene. Following in the footsteps of this incredibly strange endeavor, Ghosts of Aliens takes this sort of surreal humor and applies it to traditional RPG tropes. You are the ghost of an alien, given a second-chance at life as long as you kill 5 Doom Beasts. The gameplay is traditional JRPG stuff. Choose option, hit enemy. Altogether, not a bad game.

[Via IndieGames]

Sometimes you just have to sit down, get some drinks, and plug away at an addicting strategy game. Exercise your mind, either against computer or human opponents. I know this need very well, and as I haven't featured many strategy games on Freeware Friday, I present to you Battle for Wesnoth. It's an open-source strategy game that is one of the best freeware releases you can find, strategy or not. However, unlike Freeciv, it can be played in nice, bite-sized increments.

Once again, Tarn Adams dazzles with another update to Dwarf Fortress. This one, 39f, introduces a few new features as well as bugfixes. The biggest feature addition is that refugee groups now get their own spaces and movement instead of being relocated to a (possibly hostile) nearby civilization. Another added feature is a mention in the legends for scaling a mountain in Adventurer mode. There's also various bugfixes, ranging from making sure that erosion no longer causes mountains to raise up to making sure that bottomless pits don't have lava at the top. You can download the new version at the Bay 12 Games site. All saves from 32a onwards are compatible.

Nothing like traversing your roots to make you all nostalgic. Genetos is a freeware shmup that goes back and takes a look at all the old styles of shooter, getting players in touch with their shmup roots as it pushes forward the generations. The gameplay is simple. You play it like any other shmup, only collecting green items will push you towards a "generational shift". When you shift (which is always during a boss fight), you are suddenly using a ship from the next generation to fight a boss of the last generation. It goes from Space Invaders to Galaga to Raiden to Bullet Hell at the moment, with one stage still left before all the stages are finished.

As promised, Valve has given us another taste of what their new update has to offer. This time, it's one of the new Payload maps. Badwater Basin is a response to the assertion (which is backed up by cold, hard data) that Gold Rush is heavily favored towards defenders. With much less chokepoints than Gold Rush and larger spaces, it helps keep players from getting stuck into a position to where they cannot advance. Also, instead of a 3-stage map, Badwater is just one large map with many checkpoints, which encourages the BLU team to keep pushing hard to add time. Just another awesome addition to the Heavy update!

The Sudden Strike series has never seen critical favor. They appeal to a very niche market of World War II tactical game buffs, and that's perfectly alright. If you are a part of that niche, you'll love the Sudden Strike series as well as the following news. The sequel to Sudden Strike 3, Sudden Strike: The Last Stand, has exited the alpha stage and is now chugging along in the beta phase. If the past is any indication, soon the open beta of the next entry in this tactical gaming franchise will be out there for all to try.

Valve promised us more information on the Heavy update each weekday, and they did not disappoint. Today we have some juicy bits of information for you concerning the new achievements and the new melee weapon for the Heavy. First, the weapon. Dubbed the K.G.B. (or Killing Gloves of Boxing), they give the Heavy guaranteed criticals for 5 seconds if he kills an opponent with them. It appears, though, that it has a slower attack speed, and it take a full second and a half to switch to the minigun and wind-up to fire, reducing the impact of the critical bonus.

Second are the achievements. Notably, a lot of them deal with the interaction between the Heavy and the Medic. There are some interesting ones that appear to reveal more about the upcoming weapons. For example, Marxman and Five Second Plan both appear to show a weapon that has not been revealed yet. A mine? Return of the infamous MIRV from Team Fortress Classic? We'll find out soon enough! You can check out the full list of achievements and Valve's comments on the K.G.B. at the update's site.

For those of you just insanely eager to get your mitts on the new RPG by BioWare, crack open those wallets, because they have just announced the public showing schedule for conventions. The first convention that it is going to be displayed at is Gen Con, which is this weekend, August 14th through August 17th. The next convention after that is the largest European game convention, Liepzig's GCDC, the following weekend. Finally, for those of you heading to Penny Arcade Expo on August 29th through the 31st, you are in luck. That is the final public showing of Dragon Age this month. We're sure there will be more public showings, but if you must absolutely see Dragon Age in the month of August, those are the conventions to be at. If you need another reason to be excited about Dragon Age, just take a peek at the trailer right here on Big Download.

For those of you familiar with Puzzle Quest, you will take to Corpse Craft like a boat to water. Both games take the puzzle genre and then mix in another genre to make something monstrously addicting. Where with Puzzle Quest is was the RPG genre, with Corpse Craft it's strategy games. And it's loads of fun. Click on blocks of 3 or more to destroy them, adding resources to your pool. You may then use those resources to summon undead creatures to eliminate your opponent. It's addicting (as all puzzle games are), simple, and well executed.

[Via IndieGames]

The very first thing you can say about the folks over as Mechafetus (NSFW) is that they are positively insane. The second thing is that they really know how to make funny, yet great, art. Combining these two qualities has created the thoroughly bizarre Hikkikomori Quest. Playing a hikkikomori (a Japanese term for a recluse), you must adventure out to find the love of your life. Featuring bizarre (and definitely mature) imagery, multiple endings, and incredibly hard gameplay, it's not for the weak of heart. The game is much like Earthbound, Phantasy Star, or Dragon Quest, only done in the Mechafetus style. You will have a laugh playing it. We guarantee it.

A sequel of sorts to the incredibly unique You Have To Burn The Rope, You Have To Fertilize The Egg is much more... interesting. Taking place inside a vagina, you play a top hat wearing sperm on his way to fertilize an egg and "make the princess". It's all rather silly, especially since the song, instead of urging you on like the You Have To Burn The Rope song, describes your exact situation. Thankfully, nothing is actually explicit, instead being rendered in cute black-and-white cartoony graphics. It's there for a giggle, and it definitely elicits one, especially since there's nothing else to the game.

[Via IndieGames]

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

After a few weeks hiatus, Freeware Friday is back and better than ever! And this week, it's to showcase possibly one of the best freeware racing games of all time. Yeah, I know, normally I do action and platforming and whatnot, but this game is incredible to no end! It's freely available just about anywhere, has excellent community support, great modding tools, and is just downright incredibly fun to play. The fact that it's on Steam (meaning you can obtain it incredibly easy anywhere) just furthers its incredible gameplay. I am, of course, talking about the phenomenon that is Trackmania Nations Forever.

Since indie competitions are such a large part of the independent community, ignoring them would be very foolish. There's lots of undiscovered talent out there as well as established masters, and indie competitions are the best way to bring them out of the woodwork. They are held everywhere from TIGSource to poppenkast, and always bring together lots of great talent. Indiedaze takes the best entries from a recently finished indie competition and showcases what we think are the best of the best. Sometimes they coincide with what the original competition's top three were, sometimes they are completely different. In any case, they are always the games we liked most, and worth all the attention you can give them.

TOJam, otherwise known as The Toronto Independent Game Development Jam, is a three day annual marathon of game-making, intended to make developers create a reasonably polished and executed game. They must create the concept, graphics, and code entirely during the three day period. Needless to say, it's like an endurance trial for game developers. The third annual TOJam occurred two months ago, and the games were released for general consumption just last month. After savoring all of the delights of the competition (and trust us, there is a lot of great content), we have decided on our favorites!