Free Games

If you were a fan of the MechWarrior games, MechWarrior 4 Mercenaries was released for free, and has had new content added to it.

Downloading and installing can be a bit confusing at first though, and there is a common issue with antivirus software detecting a virus, but the people who released it say it is a false positive. Unfortunately, some av programs seem to delete the file even if you tell it not to.

mektek's downloads page

Dwarf Fortress

If you like managing a civilization, and don't mind a game with simple graphics or a very steep learning curve, Dwarf Fortress may interest you.

Dwarf fortress is a free game that lets you take seven dwarves + supplies to a location in a randomly generated world to build and manage a fortress full of booze loving dwarves. You can build it above ground or mine out a fortress deep underground. The population of a fortress can increase both through immigrants, or by dwarves getting dwarfy with each other and having babies.

The population of a fortress can decrease through famine, lack of booze making dwarves go crazy, strange moods causing one dwarf to turn another dwarf into a legendary shoe, an angry bear, collapse from digging, cave monsters, the spirit of that dwarf that was turned into a legendary shoe coming back as a poltergeist because of improper burial, kobold invasion, elves that you tried to sell a wood product to, flood, fire, dwarf fell into magma, were-ape attack, the undead, vampire dwarfs, mega beasts, dragons, or because the bowels of hell were breached and a flood of demons were unleashed upon the poor dwarves.

You can build complex traps or devices, using triggers like pressure plates or levers and linking them to other things like trap doors, screw pumps, or floodgates (I heard someone made a working in-game computer, though apparently it was really slow).

There is also an Adventurer mode that lets you play as a single character and explore the world. If you are exploring a world that you have built a fortress in, you can go visit it.

The game uses ascii graphics, but there are community made graphic packs that can be installed. There are also other community made utilities and mods that can be installed. I would recommend getting the Lazy Newb Pack, because it comes with several very useful utilities, graphic packs, and a user interface that makes managing them much easier. The Lazy Newb Pack also makes changing some game settings easier.

Some issues with the game are that it is a difficult game to learn, it is very time consuming, and it is very demanding of the cpu.

Bay12 Website

Race into Space, a free version of a board game (and in 1993 a computer game) that allows you to control and direct your very own space-race between the USA and USSR.

sourceforge.net/projects/raceintospace/

Two free games that made a Forbes top 10 list for the family holidays; www.forbes.com/sites/danielnyegriffiths/2012/12/20/2012s-top-10-games-best-games-for-the-family-holidays/

scoutshonour.com/digital/

and unmanned.molleindustria.org/

I tried the first of those two a while back and wasn't all that taken with it. The second I can tell you nothing about, other than the guys (and girl) who review games on Forbes are usually well worth listening to.

Black mesa is a brilliant free game. www.blackmesasource.com/ Although at 3.5GB its not easy on the internet connection
Also thefreegamesdb.com is something I knocked up and is a side hobby of mine, if you have any feedback on it (useability, looks, etc) I'd love to hear it

For all your old game needs
www.abandonia.com

Then you might want to have a look at "ASCIIportal", too

Stretching the definition of 'Free' slightly here, but those looking for games might want to check out GOG.com.

This is a download site similar to steam and origin, but tends to deal with older games (usually from what I can tell going back to the early 1990's). Their games come without DRM, are cheap (except of course for the newer games) and don't require you to download malware - the down loader simply allows you to down load games you've bought and can be turned off completely otherwise. In fact once downloaded you don't even need to have the program running to install games, and can copy them to a disk or USB stick to load onto another PC.

All the games come with extras, ranging from patches to wallpapers and in some cases the soundtrack as well. Some of the games are also available for the Mac.

Joining up gives you a dozen free games (these are old games, but do cover a fair range of different genres so there should be something there for everyone. They also have a number of promotions from time to time, including releasing some titles for free - I got Torchlight, Fallout 1,2 and Fallout Tactics for free during promotions. The last 3 are currently on a free offer for anyone who joins up. Outside holidays they have promotions (and hefty discounts) of around 20 or so games every weekend.

Well worth checking out for anyone who wants the odd cheap game, or to relive a misspent youth, to pass a few hours with.

to relive MY misspent youth, someone would have to rewrite the games for modern computers. the ones I grew up with played on a 128X64 monochrome monitor.