101 Free PC Games

"Computer Gaming World" may now be "Games for Windows: The Official Magazine", but they haven't forgotten the little guys. Straight from the new issue, 1up is hosting an impressive list of 101 freebie PC games. Every genre and topic you can think of is covered by the exhaustive exploration of 'free'. From the article: "We've tracked down another 101 absolutely, positively, no-strings-attached free games that are actually worth playing, grouped them into handy categories, and put most of 'em up on FileFront.com. There's something here for everyone, from RPGs to real-time strategy to Asteroids Flash games, though we have to confess up front: There are actually more than 101 free games here. So no complaining that you're not getting your money's worth." My favorites include Ninja Loves Pirate , Tripline , Iris (HL2 Mod), Super Mario: Blue Twilight DX , and Star Control II .

Ouch...

[tha_mink]

Slashdotted before the first post. Tough luck. Free games post on slashdot...who would have figured?

I've always been a fan of conquest myself.

Re:Ouch...

[AKAImBatman]

Works fine for me. If you really can't get to it, try the Coral Cache mirror:

http://www.1up.com.nyud.net:8090/do/feature?cId=31 56339 [nyud.net]

I wouldn't worry too much, though. It's just another "look at all the free games!" list with very little time spent on trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. Some of the "games" are expansion packs, some are flash games, some are OSS games that everyone knows about, some are clear copyright violations, some are just plain weird, and some are repeated more than once.

The worst part of it all is that they missed a huge number of great games. For example, Privateer Remake is not on the list, but a Babylon 5 expansion pack is? Go figure.

If you're looking for a smaller list of free game recommendations, try my Top 10 OSS Games You've Never Played [intelligentblogger.com] article. I have personally played all of them, and enjoyed them to a varying degree. Not everyone has the same tastes as I do, but it might be an interesting list for you to check out in addition to this article. :)

Hmmm

[PingSpike]

I think calling mods to a game, free games, is a bit of a stretch. They're only free if you already own the original game. Hell, the main reason I bought half life 2 was anticipation of mods for it. And the ONLY reason I bought UT2004 was for mods. (Killing Floor sold that game for me) I'll still check the list out when I get home though.

Re:

[tepples]

I think calling mods to a game, free games, is a bit of a stretch. They're only free if you already own the original game. Hell, the main reason I bought half life 2 was anticipation of mods for it.

Likewise, I think calling games to an OS, free games, is a bit of a stretch. They're only free if you already own the original OS. Hell, the main reason I bought windows was anticipation of games for it.

Moral: What is a comprehensive Unreal Tournament 200x mod other than an operating system on which games can run?

But...

[gerbalblaste]

But how many of them run on linux?

Battle for Wesnoth Does!

[paladinwannabe2]

The game I've been spending too much time on recently is Battle For Wesnoth [wesnoth.org] which is an open-source game that runs on Linux, OSX and Windows. Not surprisingly, it's on this list...

Re:

[Yr0]

why is this important? linux is not a gaming system.

If you want games with good graphics, that the majority of people can play, use windows. suck it up.

I'd rant more about the total uselessness of linux to support anything approaching stable 3d, but I'm tired, and frankly cannot be bothered.

you might as well ask: But how many run on Macs?

go back to gnuchess you hippie.

Frets on Fire does! And on Intel Macs too!

[molukki]

Check out the ultimate Guitar Hero clone, Frets on Fire! [kempele.fi]

Re:

[FunkyELF]

I can't get to that link from work because it is blocked by our proxy.

Does the list contain PySolitare?

There is a port for Windows. It is the best solitare package ever....over 200 solitare games.

Re:

[TherilAlPenn]

The Ur-Quan Masters (Star Control 2) does.

Re:

[kermit1221]

Apparently you glossed over where this list came from. Who cares how many run on Linux? When you want games for Linux, don't look at a list coming from "Games for Windows".

And it was modded Insightful? Yeesh...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Wolfenstein Enemy Territory

[kevlarman]

you misspelled http://tremulous.net/ [tremulous.net]

Re:

[Workaphobia]

Yep, Tremulous is pretty good once you get used to it.

Actually, the balance is god awful. The game feels like it's slanted against you regardless of the team you choose; matches regularly go to sudden death before they can even begin to be decided, making the first half hour of the game moot; and development is virtually invisible to most of the community and may have stagnated for all I know. So it's more like once you go through this initiation and begin to accept these facts, you may want to leave and sa

Re:

[PingSpike]

I enjoyed ET (Not as much as RtCW multiplayer itself) but its getting a bit long in the tooth these days.

Re:

[the linux geek]

Hardly the best. It was decent a few years ago, but now the graphics are EXTREMELY dated compared to other games. It's essentially a standalone Q3 mod, which is, I suppose, nice, but not great.

Re:

[Sidn]

...and a very nice tactical fps full conversion: http://www.truecombatelite.net/ [truecombatelite.net]

Re:

[Hatta]

They also left out the best single player RPG ever:

http://www.nethack.org/ [nethack.org]

Re:

[ajs318]

Bollocks, beaten to it. Yeay for Nethack!

BTW did you know you can do something like:

# useradd -m -gusers -p! -s/usr/games/nethack nethack
# passwd nethack
(enter a password for the user)

..... then login as user "nethack" with the password you gave. You go straight into a game of Nethack; and when you save or quit the game, you get logged straight out.

By the way, try pressing ! for a shell sometime in mid-game .....

Re:Wolfenstein Enemy Territory

[ampathee]

You misspelled http://www.adom.de/ [www.adom.de] ;)

Too bad Vista won't let you play them...

[Anonymous Freak]

(See earlier Slashdot story [slashdot.org].)

Yeah, I know Vista will let you play them, but not easily if you want to have parental controls on.

ugh

[exspecto]

At first glance, the article title registered as a spam email or text ad in my brain. Took a moment for it to sink in that it was an actual article. Anyone else have that reaction?

Re:

[GigsVT]

The word "free" has picked up unfortunate connotations lately.

just need 1 free game

[indy_Muad'Dib]

tremulous > all

Re:

[indy_Muad'Dib]

http://www.tremulous.com/ [tremulous.com] shut up Ksempac, heres your damn link

Hm.

[Wilson_6500]

Looks like an independent version of Gloom, a Quake 2 mod (one that probably also inspired the Natural Selection mod for Half-life).

Re:

[kevlarman]

if you look on their website, they do mention that tremulous was inspired by gloom (i'm too lazy to dig up the link), and a few of the tremulous devs have worked on gloom at some point.

Re:

[ThePowerGorilla]

I wonder, too. Go read the list and get back to us....

Some they left out

[the linux geek]

There are some important free games that they neglected to mention.

Nexuiz, for instance. High quality open-source deathmatch game running on the Darkplaces engine, which is arguably superior to quite a bit of the stuff currently on the market. (Read: Source.) There's also Warsow and Alien Arena, both with similar premises to Nexuiz. These all have excellent graphics, and make up in fun what they lack in imagination in terms of gameplay.

Re:Some they left out

[AKAImBatman]

Nexuiz - High quality open-source deathmatch game running on the Darkplaces engine, which is arguably superior to quite a bit of the stuff currently on the market.

Nexuiz is just incredible. It looks every bit as good as Quake 3 (perhaps better), but is based on the original Quake engine. Talk about parallel development!

Here's the game: http://www.nexuiz.com/ [nexuiz.com]
And the Engine: http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/ [icculus.org]

Re:

[tepples]

They are games. Rip-off clone games at that.

And Snood vs. Bust-A-Move is what? And Unreal vs. Quake is what?

Tremulous!!

[tupletuple]

Easily the best free (oss) game in existence is Tremulous! http://www.tremulous.net/ [tremulous.net] Check the demo if you don't believe me http://mods.moddb.com/3449/tremulous/ [moddb.com] Windows and Linux clients, as well as an independent Mac client, 100+ servers, all free. And the wallwalking ROX!

Cave Story

[Anonymous Coward]

How could they have forgotten this shining gem of indie retro gaming?

Re:Cave Story

[Thansal]

Soem one mod the guy up.

Cave Story [romhack.net] is an AMAZING game, and should be played by all people.

any one how does nto enjoy it must be shuned as not a real gamer!

(ok, so it is a good game, and I am beign silly atm, but yah, the game is wonderful)

Wow...

[__aaclcg7560]

It's been years since I seen a copy "101 Free BASIC Games" on the bookshelf.

WTF? No Cave Story?

[SaidinUnleashed]

Why was Cave Story [gameflaws.com] not on this list?

It's free, has an English language patch, and works perfectly in Wine.

Not to mention it's one of the best games ever made for any platform.

Signed

[Wilson_6500]

Cave Story is probably the only platformer I've ever played that actually had an engaging if simple story and characters that I gave a damn about. The art looks a little cutesy, but the story isn't exactly all daisies and posies. The synthetic music has a nice nostalgic quality to it without sounding dated. It's not orchestral, but it's not Nintendo, either. It is slightly on the short side--the game does, however, have multiple endings, which helps boost the replay value quite a bit. The (real) final level

More Free Games

[Thansal]

Game Hippo [gamehippo.com]

not always the best (they tend to be remise on some of the newer games/updates), but always worth looking through.

Also, check out Acid Bomb and Bacteria 2 [simondonkers.com] if you really like logic puzzles. Both are easy to get into and verymuch on the addictive side!

They listed Future Pinball why not Visual Pinball?

[Joe The Dragon]

Visual Pinball is better as it can use plugins like
vpinmame that lets you play real pinball games with the real game roms.
http://www.pinmame.com/ [pinmame.com]
There is even an online play addon
http://www.vpplus.org/ [vpplus.org]
http://www.pinball-originals.com/index.php?c=8 [pinball-originals.com]

more info hear
http://www.vpforums.com/ [vpforums.com]

Re:They listed Future Pinball why not Visual Pinba

[tepples]

Visual Pinball is better as it can use plugins like vpinmame that lets you play real pinball games with the real game roms.

Potentially OT. These roms are not Free nor even free.

Re:

[Joe The Dragon]

with out the roms there is still alot of cool free tables out there for vp

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Potentially OT. These roms are not Free nor even free.

You can get ROMs for most machines off the manufacturer's web site. Williams/Bally is a bit harder since Williams exited the pinball games market, but the Internet Pinball Database has copies of the ROMs as do many other websites.

So they're free, just not Free.

Re:They listed Future Pinball why not Visual Pinba

[Purity Of Essence]

I love Visual Pinball and vpinmame can potentially be awesome, but ultimately it is effing lame because after almost six years of development vpinmame still doesn't work on multiprocessor systems. I wish those guys would get their heads out of their asses already. I haven't had a single processor system since 1999. Non-functional vpinmame makes the baby super computer cry.

Re:

[Joe The Dragon]

Visual Pinball needs to be updated for multiprocessor system and you only need to have Visual Pinball on one cpu and vpinmame on an other one.

But right now there is only one game that needs that much power and the next one is a few months away form being unlocked.

Re:

[Purity Of Essence]

Actually, I went ahead and tried it again on my new system and I didn't even have to monkey with CPU affinity. The problem is still listed in the bug list, but it seems to work ok now. Maybe the problem is still there but this machine may be beefy enough to grunt right through it. Thanks for the info and the glimmer of hope. I finally can play again!

Re:

[Joe The Dragon]

that bug is in pinmame not vpinamme and it may have been fixed by now.

Dink Smallwood

[Hercynium]

I just want to put in my vote for Dink Smallwood [rtsoft.com]. It's like King's Quest or Legend of Zelda, on drugs.

Last year, after years of collecting dust, the publisher released an update with some nice new features and bug-fixes. And (I just looked) it's now open-sourced.

There's a *huge* collection of mods, add-ons, extra levels, etc available for free and the people making them are just as twisted as the original author. Many of the mods I tried were really, really fun. Some were incredible in what they added to the original game.

Re:

[night_flyer]

Of course its twisted, he also was the author of Legend of the Red Dragon for BBSs so many years ago

Re:

[Aladrin]

I miss that game. I should get that running again. I think there's a web version of it. It was 1 of 2 games I actually liked enough to register when I had my 2-line BBS. The other was only because it was the first multiplayer game I'd ever seen for a BBS, and I just had to have it.

Re:

[night_flyer]

check out my homepage link...

Re:

[Aladrin]

Oooh, very nice. Thank you!

BTW, your 'online game scores' page is borked.

Re:

[night_flyer]

thats what I get for changing the name of the directory the new game is going to be in

Iris is borked?

[carterhawk001]

The Iris mod installer is skipping every file and not unpacking. any thoughts?

Star Control II

[JoshDM]

Greatest game of it's generation. Then X-Com.

I wonder if they have Rocket Jockey.

Re:XCOM

[roguegramma]

I completely non-understand the controls of SC II/uqm,
but I second xcom as best game - in the form of ufo2000.

Other good games are Glest (singleplayer) and Anacreon 2 is a decent game too, although a bit on the unplayable side after you worked it out.

PCWindows

[TLouden]

That just about says it all.

How are people still unable to get this basic difference and allowed to write for these groups.

Re:

[TLouden]

Terribly sorry about the confusion there; What I meant is the PC is NOT Windows.

The not equal symbol doesn't work too well

Where the hell is NetHack?

[alexo]

Where the hell is NetHack in that list?

Re:

[KokorHekkus]

Maybe because NetHack is like reading a book and not watching a movie. It demands more from the player to enjoy it since the action takes place in your head and not on the screen. NetHack creates a wonderful universe to play in... but only if you have the imagination yourself to put the oh so well constructed pieces and connections together in your mind.

Not a really great NetHack player. But I've kept returning to it for years... again and again and again. Can't recall a time when I've thought "that's ju

TUMIKI Fighters

[Lehk228]

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/windows/tf_e. html [asahi-net.or.jp]

TUMIKI Fighters should have been on that list

my list

[euri.ca]

Quick plug, for my brief lists of free:

multiplayer games: http://euri.ca/games/multiplayerGames [euri.ca]

and painfully indie games: http://euri.ca/games/indieGames [euri.ca]

Crappy article

[Poutsi]

I RTFA and it was complete bull. If they approve game demos and mods to their list why they didn't list any good games? :p

There's lots of really good games available for free. For example old commercial games that have been released as freeware (I'm a diehard abandonware fan). Just to mention few: Betrayal at Krondor, Beneath a Steel Sky, Descent: FreeSpace, FreeSpace 2, Hidden & Dangerous, One Must Fall: 2097, Railroad Tycoon Deluxe. Then there's open source games like America's Army.

There's also free multiplayer games: Freeciv, Allegiance, Starsiege: Tribes and even MMORPGs like Anarchy Online [anarchy-online.com], Kal-Online [kalonline.com] or RuneScape [runescape.com].

Check these Wikipedia lists for more great free games:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_ga mes_released_as_freeware [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_first-pe rson_shooters [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_g ames [wikipedia.org]

I'd say any of these is better than all the games mentioned in the article. :p

Re:

[LarsWestergren]

I have some more to that list:
Puzzle Pirates [puzzlepirates.com]
Bang! Howdy [banghowdy.com]
Soda Play [sodaplay.com]
JSettlers [sourceforge.net]

Hello, Plasma Pong?

[mrscorpio]

http://www.plasmapong.com/ [plasmapong.com]

Liberated Games

[owlman17]

Liberated games [liberatedgames.com] has an extensive list of free, not to mention, legal games for download. There are the classics, old games and not so old games. Not abandonware, they've gone to great lengths to make sure there aren't any on the site.

Spring

[KDR_11k]

In case you don't feel like waiting for Supreme Commander or played the beta and didn't like it Spring [clan-sy.com] is a good way to get your mass warfare RTS fix. Apply different mods for different results.