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PC Games (Games)

Game To Play During Lunch? 230

Posted by Zonk from the not-to-eat dept.
Menace writes "Every work day myself and a few other co-workers get 1 hour for lunch. We typically end up with about 20-30 minutes for some form of entertainment during our lunch hour. We are looking for some more multiplayer PC games that can give us a fun and thorough gaming experience in a 20-30 minute sitting. We currently play a few games such as Tetrinet and Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. Please keep in mind the systems we are able to play these on aren't geared for gaming and can hardly run WC3. What games do you play during your lunch hour, or can suggest that meet the specified criteria?"
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Game To Play During Lunch? More

Game To Play During Lunch?

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  • Old games (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tzanger ( 1575 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @01:54PM (#12914918) Homepage

    I'm talking about Duke Nuk'em, Worms, Worms2, even the venerable Scorched Earth... surely they still work? They were a blast. :-)

    • Or new games that are light. While it's not multiplayer, KOL can be a blast if you have someone to talk to and discuss ideas with. It's a blast regardless, but sharing the amazing content and quotes with others makes it all the more fun.

      http://www2.kingdomofloathing.com/login.php [kingdomofloathing.com]
      • I heartily second that. I wish I could point you toward another web-based browser game (that we're currently developing), but a) It's not ready for public consumption yet, and b) I don't want the servers to die before it even opens. :)
    • YEAH! Scorched earth! We've played it sooooo much. And the free 3d remake Scorched3d is even greater. It doesn't need a good computer and it'll occupy your lunchtime. We've played it countless hours and it still fun, a bit like tetrinet.
    • I always found Diablo II was a fun game to play @ lunchtime. Doesn't take too powerful hardware, and you can network and play w/others. Simple hack & slash mindless fun :)
    • The venerable Scorched Earth on steroids and modernized:
      Scorched 3D [scorched3d.co.uk].
    • We used to play Carmageddon (1 and 2 -- there's also 3, and possibly a 4th coming out soon) on our lunch breaks, and in our hotels when we were travelling. Lots of fun playing "tag" or smashing into each other, or running people over. Still a lot of fun, even if the graphics aren't the best compared to today's games.
  • Try BZFlag [bzflag.org]. It's incredibly addictive, even though gameplay is straightforward. They have versions for practically every OS on every arch, and the requirements are fairly low. If you can run Warcraft, you can run BZflag.

    You can set up your own company server for bzflag (Toss a cheap/obsolete workstation in the corner, mark it as the BZFlag server), or you can connect to some Net servers for battle with other people.

    • If you can run Warcraft, you can run BZflag.

      Are you sure about that? The last time I checked, bzflag needs an opengl accelerated video card to even play smoothly, despite barely having any real graphics, even though warcraft ran fine on the same machine without any opengl acceleration at all.

    • You can use a machine that you're playing on as the server, if you want. That seems a bit easier for 20 minutes of gaming than setting up an entire machine for that purpose :)
    • I have to agree - great drop-in/drop-out game... play on the net... or set up one of your workstations as a server.

      If you can manage to get WC3 to work... bzflag will work well.

  • SNES 9x (Score:3, Insightful)

    by turtled ( 845180 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @01:56PM (#12914927)
    Just Friday a friend and I hit up the Netplay feature in SNES9x, and played Mario Kart for an hour. It was a blast.

    I would go for quick fun games wrather than long drawn out games you can't finish on your lunch hour / half hour.

  • Card Games (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xyu ( 556711 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @01:58PM (#12914935)
    We usually play some Texas Hold'em or Euchre depending on the number of people around.
  • Is quite fun, and should run on your machines if Warcraft III works.

    It gets pretty addictive, so be careful. And it's free, both to download and play.

    Link: RoE Home Page [cyberwar.com]

  • Quake 3 (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A half hour of Quake 3 at lunch is a staple at my job.

  • Competitive Nethack... (Score:4, Funny)

    by rekenner ( 849871 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @02:09PM (#12914990) Homepage
    ... First one to ascend gets a free lunch!

  • Star Craft (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MichaelMarch ( 686675 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @02:15PM (#12915017) Homepage
    In 20 - 30 minutes you can play a round or two either in single player mode, multi-player mode or even online. It's a quick game and every time you play it's different. I have a 3Ghz machine with a gig of ram, and I still play StarCraft from time to time. A game I use to play on my 133Mhz!

    • Re:Star Craft (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anxarcule ( 884937 )
      Starcraft games can run a lot longer than 20-30 minutes. If you want short games, you better stick to the tiny maps, like Bloodbath on the original CD of the game.
  • Yessirree, Quake 1 (or WinQuake if you don't want to use the original DOS-extender version). Set it up for 10 minute sessions and frag your friends to death. My friends and I used to play it on 200MHz machines in 320x240 software rendered with really good frames, although you could probably still find glquake if your machines have even a minimum of 3d rendering capability.

    I'd also recommend modding the game (really easy to do) or finding a mod that reduces the amount of rocket damage. I find the rocket

  • Soldat (Score:5, Informative)

    by mpr ( 446204 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @02:18PM (#12915032)
    http://www.soldat.prv.pl/ [soldat.prv.pl]

    Good fun, low system reqs and highly networkable 2D shooter!

    From the site:
    Soldat is a unique side-view multiplayer action game. It takes the best from games like Liero, Worms, Quake and Counter-Strike and gives you fast action gameplay with tons of blood and flesh. Soldiers fight against each other on 2D battle arenas using a deadly military arsenal. This is what multiplayer was invented for.

    Most important features:

    * Game environment based on real physics rules
    * Over 18 weapons available:
    - guns like MP5, Ak-74, M79, M249 Minimi, Barret M82A1, XM214 Minigun
    * Multiplayer network game over the Internet or LAN
    * Intelligent bots
    * 6 game modes:
    - Deathmatch
    - Pointmatch
    - Teammatch
    - Rambomatch
    - Capture the Flag
    - Infiltration
    * 35 different maps
    * Editors: Soldat Map Maker and Interface Maker
    * Lobby server and dedicated server for Windows and Linux
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Soldat is an awesome game, but I haven't been able to get it to work under Wine or Cedega.

        I just fired it up under Wine ( 20050524 ) and it seems to work. Haven't registered, so all I get is the intro screen.

  • Practical lunchtime diversion (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Sort of a turn-based online game. Everybody's playing it...

    Your turn [indeed.com]

  • Low req, easy to get, easy to setup, Free, Fun (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MBraynard ( 653724 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @02:20PM (#12915040) Journal
    Download the original Unreal Tournament. That was a staple at my old office and you will find it to be exactly what you are looking for.
  • With so many ways of playing half-life multiplayer, you will likely have a blast. Add in some of the GREAT free mods out there (I recommend Azure Sheep, great muplitplayer maps, and the counterpart where you play as the aliens). Also Opposing Forces is really great as a teamplay mod. Forget about steam and activation and all that crap and get a copy of the original 3-in-1 pack and set up a LAN game. You don't even need to set up a dedicated server or something, just have whoever picks the server option be

  • Arcade Classics (Score:5, Informative)

    by Eil ( 82413 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @02:25PM (#12915064) Homepage Journal

    I used to be a gaming fiend during my teenage years, but now I can't sit down an play more than about a 2 hours a week without feeling like I'm wasting an enormous amount of time. To make matters worse, RPGs used to be my favorite genre and 2 hours/week isn't enough to keep me interested in the plot or characters, so I end up never finishing games anymore.

    Then I got into arcade (MAME) emulation. Arcade games are pefect for me now, because I can sit down, load up a game, and start having fun immediately rather than having to first take the time to get into the story or learn how the game works, etc. Most are geared specifically toward multiplayer fun. They're also easier to quit playing once your alloted time is up.

    Two that I highly recommend are Puzzle Bobble (Usually called Bust a Move over here) and Super Puzzle Fighter.

    • Re:Arcade Classics (Score:5, Insightful)

      by herc_mk2 ( 586993 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @07:07PM (#12916645)
      One of the problems w/ MAME in particular (though not it's exclusively limited to MAME) is copyright issues. The OP didn't mention how things are in his office, but most corporate environments are pretty picky about what you put on *their* machines and networks, especially with respect to licensing issues.

      In other words, whether it's Half-Life or a ROM for "Crazy Climber," you had better make sure that you either have the appropriate number of licenses, or proof that the game allows unlimited distribution. Otherwise your IS department will (rightfully) come down on you. Some companies even have a "grounds for immediate termination" clause in there -- you might want to check.

      (I don't want to start a flamewar about when something crosses from abandonware to public domain. Your IS department will likely look at it from the most conservative approach, namely, "can we potentially be sued by the license holder if this is on one of our assets." Plus, they're worried about viruses, and so forth, which can have a much bigger impact in the coroporate world than on your home LAN.)

  • Some suggestions (Score:2, Informative)

    by ogonek ( 833611 )

    You might want to try Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, which is free and multi-player. You can get links to download locations here [activision.com]. And if WW2 shooters is not for you, you can try the ETF [etfgame.com] mod, which makes it a sci-fi shooter instead.

    Other good multiplayer games are Starsiege: Tribes and Tribes 2, both were freely available, but it seems now only Starsiege:Tribes is [fileplanet.com].

    In 20-30 minutes you should be able to play a game or two of any of those I've mentioned.

    • Mod him up (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Enemy Territory is free, team-based, cross-platform, designed to be played with a (configurable) time limit, has both strategy and shoot-em-up aspects, and has system requirements comparable to Warcraft 3. If you've got at least a half dozen people to play it's perfect; if not it's probably still worth giving a try with a few bots on each team.

  • Soldat (Score:4, Informative)

    by neostorm ( 462848 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @02:29PM (#12915079)
    Good, good fun. Very fast paced.

    http://www.soldat.prv.pl/ [soldat.prv.pl]

  • Non-computer games? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spectral ( 158121 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @02:31PM (#12915090)
    I know you mentioned computer games, but I'm a huge fan of pulling out a deck of Fluxx or Set whenever I have some free time and a friend or two nearby. Rather addicting games. There are implementations of Set multiplayer online.. some are better than others. It's been a while since I played online though, so I don't even have the URLs to the one I really liked anymore.

  • Buy a deck of playing cards. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by embo ( 133713 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @02:38PM (#12915121)
    Seriously. And I'm not talking about Magic or anything like that. I'm talking about Hearts, Spades, Euchre, Pinochle, Whist, Pitch, etc. There are countless games you can play with a $1.00 deck of cards.

    I used to work at a place where we did this every day, and the human contact and team building aspects of playing cards were much more enjoyable than any computer game.

    Any time we got bored with what we were playing, we'd switch games, or add in a house rule. Plus it lent itself well to activities outside of the workplace. Things like parties at someone's house where we'd all be playing cards. Gatherings to watch a football game, etc. Even better, it's easy to always have a deck of cards in your car, or carry one to a bar with you, so you can always break out a game of something.

    And if this isn't enough to sway you, real, live, actual, breathing WOMEN play cards. No, seriously. You might have never met a woman before, but I have, and trust me, they would much rather play cards over a beer than have you say, "Wanna play Warcraft with us?".

    Buy a deck. Buy 12. Learn a new game. Have fun. Get laid.

    Well, at least have fun.

  • Marathon/Aleph One (Score:3, Interesting)

    by danaris ( 525051 ) <danaris@NosPaM.mac.com> on Sunday June 26, 2005 @03:12PM (#12915338) Homepage

    Not state of the art, but pretty darn fun. If you don't know about it (which you should), it's the Marathon series of FPS games that made Bungie really famous before the big buyout (or sellout, depending on how bitter I'm feeling on any given day). They open-sourced it, and a community built it up to what is now Aleph One [bungie.org].

    Should run on some pretty old hardware, and netgames are as long or short as you want them to be.

    Dan Aris

  • DDR! (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 )
    DDR is a fantastic game for lunch breaks. We all head down to the local arcade and have dance competitions. It builds stamina and comraderie like no other game does. We have tournaments every month, and everyone has a great time. A Korean guy won it last month, but it looks like Jenkins from Finance will win it this month.

  • how about... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by manboy9 ( 891227 )
    how about Ur-Quan Masters? It's a remake of the calssic Star Control II. It's known for it's great storyline and non-linear gameplay in single player mode, but the real fun is in super melee. The ship types are varied and easy to learn, so there's great replay value. Best of all, it's Free and free. Check it out at http://sc2.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net].
  • Crack Attack [freshmeat.net].
  • Moonbase Commander is a good multiplayer game for up to 4 players. Turn based strategy. They used to have a demo available.
  • during any time between helping teachers, me and the rest of the high school tech class played starcraft brood war almost every time. Our teacher did, too. You can play in the same net game with the same cdkey, or the battle chest is only 20 bucks. We also played Soldat a bit, and Worms World Party. WCIII was played, even though it lagged to hell on our dells with onboard video. I also got a few other students to play stepmania with me, though that can get expensive on the disk space fast. I would ha
  • http://www.puzzlepirates.com/ [puzzlepirates.com]

    Or Eve Online [eve-online.com] if you like that sort of thing...

    • I agree, Puzzle Pirates is a greay way to spend a few minutes on a game. Some activities (i.e. setting sail for another island) basically commit you to at least a half hour but the game is full of nice (and short) puzzles as well.

      Har!

  • On expert, down to the VERY LAST TWO SQUARES and I picked the wrong one. Goddamnit.
  • Instead of spending even your lunchbreak behind a screen, who don't you go out for a walk?
  • Not just lunch-- how about playing games during all the sorts of little breaks you end up with? 5 minutes between meetings. A few minutes while your kid takes a nap. 10 minutes just to clear your head.

    Play by e-mail seems ideal. I tried Laser Squad Nemesis, though, and it crashed during the tutorial. :P The great thing about PBEM is that you can play with your friends, even if you all have breaks at different times.

    A PSP also seems a good way to go (though for solo play): it resumes your game exactly
  • This is a game that I used to play from a long time back, but it is still very fun and very fast paced. (It is 2-d, and will run on anything) http://xblast.sf.net/ [sf.net] seems to be the latest place for it, and they have precompiled win32 binaries for you too.
  • Ambrosia Software [ambrosiasw.com] has a wonderful series called Escape Velocity. Escape Velocity Nova was the first one ported to Windows. It's wonderful because it saves every time you visit a planet (which is about every 1-2 minutes). It'll run on anything.

  • Get out of the office! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by theonetruekeebler ( 60888 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @04:48PM (#12915893) Homepage Journal
    Get some exercise. Walk every flight of stairs you can in 20 minutes. If you're on a campus, briskly walk a trail.

    If you're going to wuss on exercise, just go sit cross-legged on the lawn playing cards and munching. Play bridge, if you're up to it, or spades, hearts, pitch, oh-hell, rummy, gin, whatever.

    Get a few games of go or chess going. Keep the boards up all the time so that whoever's playing can wander by whenever they please to stare at the board. Or play go and chess online with each other.

    You'll thank me later if you actually drag yourself away from the computer, but if you insist on staying in your cube, find a nice FPS and blow the hell out of each other for 20 minutes a day.

  • Get PSPs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @05:02PM (#12915975) Journal
    Sounds like a perfect time to pull out some PSPs and play games together on an ad-hoc wireless connection.

    One thing nobody talks about that is solid gold for gaming on small amounts of time is the PSP's sleep feature. You can put it to "sleep" anytime, and come back later and resume play. Say goodbye to boot-up times - it sleeps and wakes up in less than a second.

    "But what about the battery?", you ask. I've put games to sleep on the PSP, come back over 24 hours later, and woken them up - and not even a bar of power has disappeared from the power meter. In sleep mode, the PSP uses very very little power. I don't even turn the thing off anymore, except if I'm going to switch games. I just put it into sleep, and wake it up when I have a few minutes to play. Being able to just pick up where you left off, and not have to spend 2 minutes going through the boot-up and splash screen and menu process, is pure gold. You don't realize how wonderful and welcome this is until you make use of it.

  • MidTown Madness II for PC (it's like from 1999 or something, the new version is only for Xbox.)

    Scorched Earth 3D (real nice up-to-date 3D version of a classic)
    http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/ [scorched3d.co.uk] (it's free!)

  • I haven't done this, but I'm been thinking about it. Put a saw, some sandpaper, and glue in the car. Spend 20 minutes a day building. Wouldn't be hard, and I could get a lot done over weeks of it.

  • xenocide3001(.net) was an AMAZING web based MMORPG that took little attention to either casually have fun or dominate the universe. Unfortunately, the writer of the game was burnt out, and I think he's shut it down for awhile. Here's hoping Kalak reads Slashdot!
  • Like some people pointed out, why spending you free time in front a computer: get you some great board games/card, and have some fun !

    We have been doing this since 2003, and it's a "tradition" that attracts more and more people (depending of course on the workload). Here is a list of games that did very well:

    • all time winners are Carcassone [boardgamegeek.com] and its Hunters and gatherers [boardgamegeek.com] variation.
    • Magic [ttp] comes close second. It of course requires some deck creation time, but hours of fun are waiting ahaead.
    • King Me ! [boardgamegeek.com] gav
  • Think outside the box!

    Here's something that's cool to try: Go retro. I mean, hardcore retro.

    Here's how it works:

    Get a copy of, for example, Zork I - III, which are freely available, on just about any platform you care to name. Start with Zork I, and set a limit: Since all the Zorks show the score and the turns to get that score, the challenge is to get the most points, in the least amount of time, without cheating (as in, looking up hints, etc.) - so, you could say: The person with the best points/turns
  • They are really really old, but you shouldn't really let that stop you.

    The cool thing about delta force is that there are a million bad guys. You play the scenarios as multiplayer and you can just gun down bad guys as your whole group makes their way across the same map.

    In our office, this was good, because it was low key while still somewhat interesting. We tried DM or CTF as well, but it just got too intense..and therefor noisy. (And management put a stop to it.)
  • It is painful at times, suffers from perma-death and is expensive to play, but it _is_ the biggest massively-multiplayer game out there.

    You will jhave to leave the office and potentially encounter other players, but it can be worth it. Check out levels called "parks", they are a good place to start and the graphics are neat.
  • A Packman, of course.
  • Do you have internet access, try Kingdom of loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com)

    good chat structure lots of laughts... become a disco bandit or turtle tamer or even a pastamancer (or many more)

    I play this in work... fab philanthropy around it as well
  • You could play any of the Myth series of RTS games. Each game lasts between 7 and 10 minutes so you could easily do two or three games during your lunch hour. You can also play via your intranet or via the fan-supported online game server PlayMyth.net [playmyth.net].

    Plus, these games will easily run as they're several years old. (Myth TFL is 1997, Myth II is 1998 and Myth III is 2001).
  • I recommend the Grown-Up Rules version, where the last one to cum wins.
  • It's really hard to answer a general question without some idea of hardware specifics.

    Then again, sometimes it doesn't matter - I play Guild Wars during lunch on my PIII 1000 with a GeForce2 MX400 (a completely too slow and unsupported configuration that only works with all settings at low, though I usually have to reboot afterward as it gets really flaky after that). If you have something along that line, try Unreal Tournament 2004 - it works quite well. Far Cry works on my GF4 and I think even my old G
  • We recently released what I like to call a casual RTS/Action hybrid for Windows called Epidemic Groove [dejobaan.com]. It's a single-player game written to be played over a lunch break, (with matches typically taking 10-20 minutes). In it, you alternate between Construction and Invasion phases. In the former, you have 60 seconds to build defensive walls, medical lasers, repair pylons, and electrified fences to create an impenetrable structure. In the latter, you have to use those defenses and your reflexes to fend off pat
  • Oldie but goodie.

    Maybe the best RTS game, ever.

    Want an overnight lan party game? Pick from the largest maps.

    Want a quick, 5-20 minute office lunch game? Pick one of the (many) small maps.

    Shooters are good too. Quake 2 will run almost anywhere.

    Also, you could go for the one-game over many-lunches type of thing. Any multiplayer strategy game that supports saving. Like Master of Orion 2 (or 3, but 2 was awesome, and 3 was mediocre). Or Civ III play the world. Log on for lunch, play 5-20 turns, then go bac
  • http://tantrix.com/ [tantrix.com]

    You can play it online or at a table. The table version is better when you're out eating lunch in restaurant.

  • That way you can all get on-line at the same time, and socialize using the internet even though your physical seperation is a whopping 5 feet!

    --LWM
  • When my brother worked for a summer to clean up his old high school, he and his friend hooked up a Playstation to one of the classroom TVs and played a little MGS every day, eventually beating it. They then incorporated some of Solid Snake's best moves into their work, including trying to sneak into the bathroom without tripping the motion sensors for the lights, and hiding from their boss in boxes ("Huh? What's in the box?").
  • My roomate has been really into games such as Cactus Bruce [terragame.com] and others such as Zuma [topshareware.com] etc. Shareware isn't dead, there are tons of little addicting games out there, many which allow you to try for awhile before buying.

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