13–16
N
The same team that brought the incredibly hard (in a good way) jumping platform/puzzle game N+ to the Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, and Xbox Live Arcade first made a free PC version of the game simply called N. You guide your tiny ninja around levels, flipping switches, avoiding obstacles, wall-jumping and sliding your way to the exit. It’s one of those games where you die over and over and over and you just can’t put it down. With approximately one hojillion levels in the game, you’ll be entertained for hours.
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Cave Story
It’s truly remarkable just how much game you can squeeze into a paltry 1 megabyte. Cave Story looks and plays a lot like an old 8-bit Nintendo game; the graphics and sound would be sub-par even on a Super Nintendo. But the gameplay is fantastic. Known by its Japanese name Doukutsu Monogatari, Cave Story requires you to run an English translation patch if you don’t want to play in Japanese (and there’s a lot of text). It’s a side-scrolling action RPG in the vein of old classics like Wonder Boy, and it’s a good enough indie game that a WiiWare version is under way. Why wait to pay to play it on the Wii when you can play it for free on your PC, right now? Gamepads are even supported.
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Marathon Trilogy
Before Bungie made Halo, they made Marathon. Okay, actually they made the excellent Myth, its sequel, and Oni after Marathon and before Halo. Still, Marathon is a well-regarded shooter series from Bungie Studios. Originally developed for the Mac (I know, right?), you’ll have to download the Aleph One code as well as the original source files—it’s pretty straightforward, but there’s a FAQ if you get stuck. Marathon is quite dated—it’s like going back to Doom 2 with a better story—but it’s a piece of gaming history that shouldn’t be ignored. And now that it’s free, it doesn’t have to be.
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Continuum
Once upon a time, there was a top-down 2D multiplayer space shooter called SubSpace that was enormously popular when it was a free beta test game, but crashed and burned when it was a for-pay retail product. Now it lives on as Continuum, a fan-maintained and run massively multiplayer online shooter. There are multiple ships with multiple upgrades you command in sort of an Asteroids-meets-Star Control kind of way as you fight to capture flags, defend resource points, and all other kinds of team-based activities. There are zones that maintain the old SubSpace look and rules, and custom zones with custom ships and rules. 12 years ago, this game kept us up to 3am far more often than we’d care to admit. Continued…
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1–4
Puzzle Pirates
One of the more popular free games on the ‘net, Puzzle Pirates is a persistent MMO with a very casual bent. You create a cute pirate that looks like a Playmobil figure, and sail the seven seas in search of pieces ‘o eight. The catch is, each activity (and there are many, from manning the guns to repairing the ship to bilging out water) is performed with a simple puzzle game. Everyone on the ship plays their puzzle at the same time, and the cumulative performance determines how well your ship does. There are tons of community features, lots of help and tutorials, tournaments, clans, etc. There is a money angle, though—you can play for free forever, but you can also purchase a subscription or buy doubloons to access more advanced features.
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Freeciv
It’s Civilization, and it’s free! Okay, so maybe this free and open-source strategy game "inspired by" the beloved Civ doesn’t have all the nice UI features or pretty graphics of Civilization IV. Maybe Freeciv has more in common with Civ II than the modern entries in the series. Once you come to grips with the keyboard commands and the way the game presents information on research, diplomacy, and cities, it’s really just as addictive as any other Civ game. Just…one…more…turn.
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TribesNext
Remember Tribes 2? There was still a hardcore community of players when Vivendi shut down the authentication and game list servers last year. Fortunately, there’s TribesNext, a free patch to restore multiplayer functionality with a new free authentication server and lobby. Oh, and the game’s free too, so you can just go download both the client and patch at the TribesNext site. What are you waiting for? Party like it’s 2001!
Ikariam
Take control of a town on a small Mediterranean island in this browser-based strategy multiplayer game. The pace is leisurely to the point of being something you only need to check in on from time to time. Set your people to gather some resources and start construction on a new building or two, then check in on your little corner of the world in a few hours. Ikariam is built for this—close your browser window whenever and your workers continue to work, your researchers continue to research…you get the idea.
You’re playing with other real people, so there is opportunity for diplomacy, trading, and armed conflict. You can spend real-world money to buy "Ambrosia" which you then exchange for increased resource gathering rates or advanced features that let you see more of your buildings at a glance, but the whole game is essentially playable for free. It’s actually a fairly deep, yet accessible game that’s quite easy to play without a lot of time investment. Continued…
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5–8
Fancy Pants Adventures
This is of the best flash games of the last few years. Fancy Pants Adventures is a side-scrolling platform game with slick animation and clever levels. Once you finish the first world, check out World 2. Honestly, with a few more worlds added this could easy go as a $10 Xbox Live Arcade or PlayStation Network game. Put yourself in the mood by listening to Jonathan Coulton’s Mr. Fancy Pants (not related to the game, but it would make a great theme song).
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Dyson
This beautiful, simple game certainly deserves its place as a 2009 Independent Games Festival finalist. Dyson’s premise is simple, but hard to convey in screenshots. You start on a spherical planet, spending your Dyson seedlings to plant new trees (either for defense, or to produce more seedlings). Click-and-drag to send seedlings to nearby planets to attack their seedlings and take it over. You win when you have conquered all the planets in the area. With smooth mouse zooming, minimalist art and sound, and simple but addictive gameplay, you’ll easily waste away an afternoon on this one.
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Chalk
Joakim Sandberg’s Chalk is good for a couple hours of free fun. The premise is simple—you guide your character around a chalkboard by right-clicking, and draw chalk lines with a left-click. Use your chalk lines to deflect bullets from enemies, remove obstacles, etc. The catchy tunes and sound effects help bring it all together into a nice, polished, scrolling "draw-er" of sorts.
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Dungeon Runners
Looking for your Diablo fix but sick of playing Diablo? Lamenting the permanent "hiatus" status of Flagship Studios’ Mythos? Dungeon Runners is there to fill the void. Technically, this is one of those "tiered" games where it’s free to play all you want, but you’ll have to subscribe for $5 a month to have access to some of the better items (subscribing also boosts your leveling rate and gives you some other perks). Even in its free mode, there’s a lot of good stuff in there. The 3D graphics are more than passable, animation and sound is decent, there’s voice chat and PvP—it’s every bit a "full" game experience. It may or may not be enough to subscribe to, but it’s sure worth playing for free. Continued…
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9–12
Savage 2
Like Allegiance (see below), this is another one of those hybrid games where most players take on an action/FPS type role, while a commander plays a more traditional RTS game, selecting units and giving orders—only the units are all controlled by real people. Released for free about a year ago, Savage 2 is still supported (there was a patch in early February). There’s ranged and melee combat, siege units, etc. There’s a little catch, though: If you want extended online stat tracking, replays, and a couple extra inventory slots, you’ll have to upgrade to a "prime" account for $9.99. Still, even the free game can be considered a complete experience.
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Dad ‘N Me
You know the Xbox Live Arcade smash hit Castle Crashers? It’s great. The company that made it (and Alien Hominid) gets its unique, silly, hilarious art and animation from Dan Paladin. Much of their programming and game design comes from Tom Fulp. It just so happens that Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin have a funny, silly, quirky beat-’em-up game on Newgrounds called Dad ‘n Me. You play a bully that runs around kicking down the sand castles and punching the faces in of all those dorks, dweebs, and boy scouts in the neighborhood. Okay, so it’s not exactly wholesome, but it’s a lot of fun.
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Allegiance
Allegiance started out as a Microsoft Research project back in the days when internet multiplayer gaming was considered a considerable challenge. Allegiance was sold by Microsoft Game Studios at the turn of the century, and nobody bought it. It was critically acclaimed, often called "the best game nobody played" and the like. After a few years, Microsoft released the source code and files and now it’s freely available and maintained by some fans. The nifty twist with Allegiance is that, while you’re playing a sort of action space sim game, there is a Commander on each side—a real person—who gives orders to everyone RTS-style.
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Ur-Quan Masters
One of the greatest games of all time is the venerable Star Control 2. The greatest version of that game is the one made for the ill-fated 3DO game system. The source code to that version has been used in an open-source project called The Ur-Quan Masters (Activision owns the Star Control name) and it’s all there: smooth scaling combat, exploration and trading, kickin’ music (even fan remixes are available). Only the 3DO version of the intro and victory movies are unable to be redistributed. You can use the keyboard or gamepads, you can play on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, you can play Super Melee mode over the Internet…just about the only thing you won’t be able to do is stop playing. The developers have even added nifty new features like a searchable starmap and the ability to choose between the PC or 3DO-style graphics in certain parts of the game. Continued…
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17–20
Dwarf Fortress
The full name of this game is Slaves to Armok God of Blood, Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress, but everyone just calls it Dwarf Fortress. It has been in development for six or seven years and was formally released about three years ago, and in fact, it is still not considered "completed." Despite the ASCII-like text character visuals and obtuse keyboard-only commands, it remains quite popular.
The world is randomly generated prior to each game with a pretty sophisticated fractal system. In the main Dwarf Fortress mode, you start with 7 dwarves (how’d they come up with that number, we wonder?) to whom you must assign duties as they construct their subterranean fortress. Build and defend your fortress, produce food, trade with traders, and more…it’s really rather complicated. There’s an adventurer mode which lets you run around as an individual character in typical "Roguelike" fashion. This mode is rather basic, compared to extreme complexity and sophistication of the Dwarf Fortress mode. If you can get past the 1980 visuals, climb the steep learning curve, and navigate the obtuse and unintuitive UI, you’ll be rewarded with a strategy game every bit as rewarding as Civilization or Sim City.
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Cloud
Cloud from USC is now several years old, but it’s just so charming and "poetic" that you should still experience it. The hook is simple—you fall asleep and dream of flying among the clouds. Steer your flying dream-self with the mouse as you gather together white fluffy clouds, and arrange them into shapes in the sky. When light and dark clouds fight, it rains. It’s a simple concept very well executed, even if the graphics are primitive. It really captures that "feeling" of flying in your dreams.
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Command and Conquer: Red Alert
As a promotion for Red Alert 3, EA released the original Command & Conquer: Red Alert as freeware that runs nicely on modern versions of Windows. Now you can play what started one of the best RTS game series on the market. Just the thing for some of those low-power netbooks. If you want to see the start of the entire C&C series, EA released the original Command & Conquer for free as well.
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F.E.A.R. Combat
As you get ready for the PC release of F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, why not brush up on your skills with the free multiplayer component of the original F.E.A.R.? Though multiplayer was largely ignored by the community at large when the original game was released, it’s actually quite good and there are still a handful of very active servers out there. The graphics hold up great—F.E.A.R. Combat is one of the best-looking free games on the ‘net. Continued…
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Cited From: extremetech.com
Kalypso Media announces
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