101 Free Games for 2008

From Angry Boulders to Wormux, 1up and Games for Windows magazine offers a massive list of 101 free games. "While you're waiting around for the next Orange Territory: Biogate Crisis-- Tournament in Conflict to appear, hundreds of little independent and free games piling up unplayed. And believe it or not, saving pennies can put you on the cutting edge, as today's freebies are résumés for tomorrow's gaming greats: The team that created Portal cut its teeth on Narbacular Drop; the PlayStation 3 downloadable hit Everyday Shooter got its start as potential PC freeware--until Sony scooped it up after a gangbusters Game Developers Conference showing. So make a new Year's resolution: Let 2008 be the Year of Freeware."

Hurrican

[revlayle]

Hurrican is a free (as in beer) spiritual successor to the Turrican family of games. This is a fairly polished 2D, platformer/shooter game that follows probably more closely to the SNES Super Turrican game than the original 8-bit ones. But, after logging several days thru my first play through, you get: 9 big levels, 15+ bosses (give or take), lots of secret areas (I haven't found them all yet), and 3 or 4 difficulty levels. The game has been localized into most major langurages (except the final credits). Beware, it doesn't behave like after level 5 on Vista (at least on my Vista laptop), but it runs *very* well under XP (my XP desktop machine). Grab it here http://turrican.gamevoice.de/hurrican_site/ [gamevoice.de] - the main developer is Poke 53280, their main site is in German, but you can probably figure out how to get the game (they have a few other games, this one is the best by far, the other ones aren't bad, just not as good as this). Anyways, most free games bore me after a day or two max. This one has kept me fairly interested for a couple weeks. Well done!

If you don't mind ASCII

[Malevolent Tester]

Then this page might be of interest [roguelikedevelopment.org]

Soldat

[pragma_x]

This list needs more Soldat [soldat.pl]. Don't let the crummy website or screenshots throw you off, this game has it where it counts.

Read the Game Tunnel Review [gametunnel.com]

Have you ever found yourself lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling and wondering just how much better your life would be if someone decided to create a funky game fusion of Worms and Counter-strike, then pump it full of Red Bull and steroids?

Soldat is a real-time, multiplayer shoot 'em up combat game that has the soul of a vicious FPS packaged in the body of a system friendly side-scroller. Players move their soldiers around levels, strolling across hills and using their jet packs to navigate environments that bear no small similarity to ant farms, all the while trying their hardest to evade hurricanes of small arms fire.

Battle for Wesnoth

[pipatron]

How the hell can they miss Battle for Wesnoth, which is, compared to most others on that list, a truly free game, and very polished.

UFO: Alien Invasion

[tchristney]

An excellent game in development inspired by the classic X-Com series.

UFO:AI [sf.net]

Runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and others.