Okay everyone, Free Games What Need Playing is back after a bit of a hiatus. Today we’re serving up a couple of browser-based games to keep you busy without draining your wallet. Pick your poison: First we have a retro-inspired, point-and-click pseudo-strategy game (dear lord, the hyphens!) that’s more about getting a high score than winning. After that you can try your hand at what has got to be the world’s most bizarre and disquieting racing game. At least until they add a “kill for points” Death Race feature.

So cast your eyes downward and take a look at what we have in store for you. You may not like what you see, but I can assure you it’ll be anything but boring.

Society: The Game

(http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/558373)

Making a simple game is relatively easy, but making a simple game that’s also compelling takes a lot of work. Enter Society: The Game, a kind of retro-styled arcade mash-up of real time strategy and civilization building. I know, it sounds awesome already right?

The idea is to march around the map with your leader and spread your cultural influence as far as you can before time runs out. Or before your leader dies, whatever comes first. Playing is as simple as clicking your mouse and watching your leader walk to that location, but it takes more than random clicking to get those high scores. To really do well you have to carefully monitor your leader’s health, grab experience through item gathering and tree cutting, find rival civilizations to dominate and gather followers to aid in virtually all of these activities. Like most awesome “simple” games, there’s a lot more going on under the hood than there initially appears to be.

Simply walking into trees will cut them down (draining your health) and net you experience, while gaining levels will give you a larger health bar. Standing next to an unowned town long enough will convert it, but it also drains your health. All towns will gain levels over time (represented by numbers displayed on them), making unowned ones harder to take over and converted ones produce “crops” that can be harvested for health. They can also produce followers that will stick with your leader and greatly improve your ability to do just about everything.

Society: The Game is a little light on content, as there’s only the one game mode, but it’s a fairly robust and addicting mode (as far as arcade-style games go), so that’s okay. Fun and free, that’s the way we like ‘em.

Hot Throttle

(http://games.adultswim.com/hot-throttle-twitchy-online-game.html)

Adult Swim never fails to make an impression, I can tell you that much. Not content to settle with suicidal office workers or werewolf ice cream truck drivers, they’ve seen fit to give us Hot Throttle. And let me tell you, “weird” doesn’t even begin to describe this game.

You’re a car, but not really. You’re more like a crazy sweaty man who runs around in his underwear and thinks he’s a car. You guide your little wacko around a given track with the arrow keys, and occasionally hit “X” to use a power-up which you may have acquired from a trash bag. There’s no actual accelerator, so the key to out-racing your competitors is to avoid obstacles that will slow you down and eventually get into “the zone,” which will see your half-naked car-man hunch down and really turn on the juice.

There’s an option to tackle each track individually, which will probably help familiarize you with them (especially the beach), but the real meat is in the Tournament mode. Like you’d expect, it involves consecutive races over multiple tracks, but in between each race you can use points you’ve acquired (by wrecking stuff and injuring people) to upgrade your… vehicle. These upgrades are simple but will incrementally increase your speed, point-gain and more. They won’t save you from bad racing, but they can make things a little easier if you invest in them enough.

Ultimately, it’s up to you if you want to risk trying Hot Throttle. On one hand you’d be playing something that undoubtedly qualifies as “an experience.” A horrifically surreal and somewhat homoerotic experience, but an experience nonetheless. And a rather fun one at that. On the other hand, you run the risk of someone actually seeing you play it, which can bring about any number of sitcom-style hijinks and misunderstandings. The choice is yours.