Free Games That Don't Suck

A Brief Forward:

The goal of this guide is to provide an answer to my friends that have bought PCs and are left with an “and now what?” reaction. Even if you can afford to start dropping stacks on games maybe you don’t want to. Maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe you don’t know what the hell you like. This guide is intended to help with at least some of that.

The PC is a bit of a different beast to consoles when it comes to what games are available for a couple reasons: the truly staggering backlog the PC has and the ability to use a mouse and keyboard.

The mouse and keyboard difference is simply the mouse makes UIs more navigable and useful and then you can have a more complex game when you have tens of buttons at your disposal for hotkeying. PC games don't have to be complicated but they can be more complicated than their console counterparts if they need to be.

The backlog is the more interesting wrinkle to PC gaming. The console with the most games is probably the PlayStation 2 with 4,500 games give or take. On Steam alone there have been 11,627 games released. And that was just in 2021. The scope and scale of the library of potential titles on PC just dwarfs any other platform. Which in turn creates a discoverability nightmare for games, especially for free ones. I’m hoping I can do just a small bit to help with that and as such I’m going to skip extremely popular and well known free games such as Apex Legends, Fortnite, Warframe and Path of Exile. Hell I’d only even recommend two of those.

UFO: Alien Invasion

Hyperspecific Genre: X-Com

A game inspired by X-COM but is neither a remake or a sequel. Has the same core split gameplay loop of a base and strategy management section followed by turn based tactics battles. UFO:AI runs on a modified version of the Quake 2 engine and looks pretty decent, you’re not gonna get something that looks like Firaxis’ XCOM but it looks better and is friendlier than the 93 X-COM that it is inspired by. Supports Co-op and versus multiplayer and the co-op is pretty radical for anyone that has dabbled in Xcommanderless playthroughs of XCOM 2.

Link
Dec 6, 2023

Super Crate Box

Hyperspecific Genre: Platforming Run and Gun Hoarding Simulator

This game is an action platformer with a gun game style ruleset: every box you pick up changes your weapon. Survive as long as you can as the game gets tougher. Weapons are a good mix of solid shooter classics and more unique options like the disc gun (buzzsaw blades) or how dual pistols fire both in front and behind you. Not much to say about this beyond that it is a good arcade style game and tons of fun. And we Stan good arcade style games.

Link
Dec 6, 2023

Super Animal Royale

Hyperspecific Genre: Fortnite - but cute!

SAR is a battle royale with a super cute graphical style and notably it is not nearly as sweaty as most royale games. Supports solo, duo, and three player squads. Free but you have to use Discord to team up with friends or support it for 12 bucks, which is perfectly reasonable, and get rid of that limitation. Very fun!

Link
Dec 6, 2023

Realm of the Mad God

Hyperspecific Genre: Bullet Hell MMO Roguelite Soup

RotMG is a bullet hell MMO with permadeath and there is just a ton to unpack there. It is a bullet hell so you fire streams of bullets like you’re in a shmup/bullet hell game and so do all enemies. It is an MMO so you’re dealing with large player counts where each world can hold about 80 players at a time and multiple worlds are active at once. Permadeath is why people call it a roguelike sometimes but really all it means is when your character dies you start over. This is not nearly as punishing as it sounds and leveling to max level takes under an hour to a couple of hours depending on what you’re doing. Things going for this game are that it’s free, it’s a unique concept and there is a lot to do. This is a freemium game so be warned there is a cash shop but you can get tons of enjoyment out of this game without paying a cent and I think it’s not the worst game to support if you decide to throw a buck or five its way.

Link
Dec 6, 2023

OpenTTD

Hyperspecific Genre: Capitalist Wet Dream

Do you like logistics games like Factorio? Do you like beating your head against a wall trying to make mail delivery profitable (it will never be profitable)? Do you like Simcity but thought it needed more accounting? That’s what Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe is: economic warfare and the constant struggle to make a buck. American as Hell. Will run on a literal toaster to boot.

Link
Dec 6, 2023