Cheese Rolling is the best free Steam game about the age-old English tradition of hurling yourself down a hillside in pursuit of tumbling dairy

Every year since at least 1826, hundreds of questionably-hinged individuals from around the globe gather at Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire to enjoy the privilege of throwing themselves down a steep slope to chase a rolling wheel of Double Gloucester cheese. Competitors risk any number of bodily injuries, as the annually overtaxed emergency medical services of the region will tell you.

If, like me, you've been faintly, distantly jealous of those cheese-crazed tumblers and their yearly submission to gravity's bone-shattering whims in hopes of claiming praise and prize (the prize is cheese), I have great news: There's a game for that now, and it won't cost you any money. Or fractures.

Cheese Rolling launched just two days ago. In it, you play as one of up to eight hapless Britons. Said hapless Britons are perched atop a hillside. There is a cheese wheel there, and it is already rolling, and you must grab it first to win.

What follows is a physics-based tangle of flailing, flopping peasantry. You have just enough control over your character's movement to trick yourself into believing you're improving at the sacred art of cheese rolling, only to watch as you—and everyone else—reach a high enough velocity that you overshoot the cheese wheel and end up at the bottom in a frantic pile trying to be the first to writhe out of the mass.

As is becoming a standard for physics-based chaos simulators, Cheese Rolling has proximity chat. I could only find one other person online while I was playing, but that meant I could clearly hear his fading wail of "Fuck" as he narrowly missed the cheese and bounced impotently into the misted distance.

Luckily, there's a more than adequate singleplayer mode for anyone who wants to get in early and master your technique. For reasons we may never be able to explain, Cheese Rolling doesn't have much of a following yet. If you ever hoped to secure your place as a cheese-chasing legend, now's your chance.

Cheese Rolling is available now on Steam.