Freebies for everyone!

[TheOutrider]

Since people in the other free games thread kept asking for it to be stickied, I decided to sift through it, organise it a bit, remove double mentions and the legally-dubious (sorry) abandonware sites and put it all into a shiny little list for all to enjoy. I'll try to keep this list updated as stuff pops up.

Free Games

General Listings

• http://happypenguin.org/ - very Linux-focused, but some of the games also have Windows versions. Nice feature overview tables, too.
• http://www.drload.de/ - German site, but with a decent selection.
• http://www.liberatedgames.org/ - Listing of formerly commercial games that have been open-sourced. Also has games that are source-only (without the actual game content) releases, but generally a good overview.
• http://www.gamehippo.com/ - Freeware games, freeware games, more freeware games.
• http://www.gametunnel.com/ - Indie gaming; commercial stuff and demos/shareware mixed with freeware.
• http://shootthecore.moonpod.com/PClinks1.html - Shmups!
• http://mmolist.blogspot.com/ - Free MMOGs of any kind.
• http://www.planetfreeplay.com/ - General free games listing.
• http://www.newgrounds.com/game/ - Flash games galore
• http://www.jayisgames.com/ - a Flash/casual game review site.
• http://indygamer.blogspot.com/ - general Indie gaming blog. News and stuff.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Open_source_games - Open Source Games category at Wikipedia.
• http://downloadfullversionpcgames.co...wnload-online/ - a list of "full version" games, which include a few "liberated" ones as well as a bunch of free MMOs, open source stuff and god knows what else.

Specific Games/Developers

• http://www.rockstargames.com/classics/ - first and foremost Grand Theft Auto 1 and 2, plus Wild Metal.
• http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/index_e.html - ABA Games; Crazy Japanese Shmups.
• http://www18.big.or.jp/~hikoza/Prod/index_e.html - Hikoza'n-CHI X; more Crazy Japanese Shmups
• http://olofson.net/kobodl/ - Kobo Deluxe, 8-way scrolling top-down shooter.
• http://agtp.romhack.net/doukutsu.html - Cave Story, the now-legendary indie platformer in the style of Metroid or the post-SotN Castlevania sidescrollers.
• http://www.fileplanet.com/filelist.aspx?s=100964&v=0 - X-COM: UFO Defense aka UFO: Enemy Unknown, nowadays free.
• http://www.wesnoth.org/ - The Battle for Wesnoth, open-source hex-tile turnbased strategy
• http://www.freeallegiance.org/ - Allegiance, scifi RTS/space shooter.
• http://www.3dgamers.com/dlselect/gam...lgame.zip.html - Starsiege: Tribes
• http://www.fileplanet.com/142438/140...ltiplayer-Demo - Ground Control
• http://www.harveycartel.org/metanet/downloads.html - N, "that ninja game"
• http://www.binaryzoo.com/ - To quote from their own site, "Shoot stuff!"
• http://www.fsoinstaller.com/ - A shiny installer for the open-source version of Freespace.
• http://www.softnyx.net/ - Gunbound. Like Scorched Earth, only even more awesome.
• http://www.elderscrolls.com/download...oads_games.htm - Elder Scrolls Arena. See how it all started.
• http://armagetron.sf.net/ - Armagetron. The light cycle scene from Tron, in multiplayer.
• http://www.pakoon.com/ - Pakoon and Kumoon. These seem to be mostly Proof-of-Concept, but Kumoon at least is actually pretty fun.
• http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com...culardrop.html - Narbacular Drop, apparently a major source of inspiration for Valve's Portal. Very short, but interesting.
• http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/games.htm - Five Days A Stranger and a few other interesting adventure games.
• http://jet.ro/dismount/ - The Dismount games. 'nuff said. I still think that Stair is a lot better than Truck though.
• http://www.lf2.net/ - Little Fighter 2. 2D mass fighting game.
• http://www.naglmax.de/ - Burning Sand, another of those physics toy thingies. I don't know either.
• http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/ - Orbiter, a realistic space flight sim.
• http://trilogyrelease.bungie.org/ - The candles burn out for you, I am free.
• http://www.godgames.com/hd2/hddeluxe.html - Hidden & Dangerous Deluxe.
• http://www.3000ad.com/downloads/bcm.shtml - Battlecruiser Millennium.
• http://frictionalgames.com/penumbra - Penumbra. Pretty, creepy, free.
• http://nifflas.ni2.se/ - Knytt, Within A Deep Forest and other really charming exploratory platformers.
• http://withinadeepforest.ni2.se/ - Within A Deep Forest. Same developer and similar concept as Knytt.
• http://tremulous.net/ - Tremulous. Gloom/Natural Selection, the fifteenth.
• http://www.planetgloom.com/ - Gloom. See above.
• http://www.studiotrophis.com/wc.php - The White Chamber ^_________^
• http://studioeres.com/games/ - Missing, a supposedly good adventure game, and a few other things.
• http://neurohack.com/transcendence/index.html - Transcendence - seems to be an Escape Velocity clone.
• http://neurohack.com/anacreon/index.html - Anacreon - I have no idea, but looks to be a Spaceward Ho clone (think Master of Orion minus the micromanagement)
• http://ravencoast.com/gsindex.html - Grave Spirit. RPG Maker 2003 D: but somebody recommended it, so here goes.
• http://www.nethack.org/ - Nethack. It'll all go well until you meet that goblin with the cockatrice corpse.
• http://www.dungeoncrawl.org/ - Dungeon Crawl, yet another roguelike.
• http://doom.chaosforge.org/ - The Doom Roguelike. This is actually pretty fun.
• http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ - Dwarf Fortress. Might be awesome, but dear GOD the interface.
• http://datarealms.com/ - Cortex Command. Worms-ish thingamajig.
• http://toblo.csnation.net/ - Toblo. Throw bombs at stacks of blocks to make them fall over and take the enemy's "flag".
• http://www.glest.org/en/index.html - Glest. Open-source 3D RTS.
• http://www.netstormhq.com/news.php - NetStorm. RTS with some interesting concepts (floating islands you need to connect with bridges to make your units move around).
• http://smayds.com/games/veck/ - Veck. "It's a bit like Geometry Wars."
• http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/play/14043/ - The Fancy Pants Adventure. A flash game, by special recommendation.
• http://www.clonk.de/contents_en.html - Clonk. I have no idea what this is.
• http://www.fun-motion.com/physics-games/mu-cade/ - Mu-cade. Geometry Wars with a sumo twist.
• http://www.rndlabs.ca/bv2/ - Babo Violent 2. Uh, yeah. Top-down splattery deathmatch thing.
• http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Illwinter/CoE2/1.htm - Conquest of Elysium II. Fantasy turn-based strategy.
• http://www.totallyscrewed.net/newsite/games.htm#scz - Survival Crisis Z. Zombie apocalypse sandbox.
• http://www.neurohack.com/transcendence/ - Transcendence. "Nethack in space", supposedly.
• http://www.neurohack.com/anacreon/ - Anacreon, by the same guy as the above Transcendence. Sounds rather Master of Orion/Spaceward Ho-ish.
• http://www.pixeljam.com/gammabros/ - Gamma Bros. Pixelly single-screen shooter.
• http://www.konjak.org/chalk.htm - chalk, sidescrolling shmup with interesting mouse gimmicks similar to a few DS games.
• http://www.evildrbin.com/ninjah/ - Ninjah, like N but with a bit more of a puzzle element.
• http://www.tagap.net/ - The Apocalyptic Game About Penguins. Pretty graphics, but I have no idea what else it offers.
• http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=279075 - Death Worm. Eat stuff as a burrowing Tremors-style worm monster.
• http://www.3drealms.com/downloads.html - 3D Realms offer some of their old (and I mean ancient) games as freeware nowadays. Personally I really liked Boppin'.
• http://autofish.net/clysm/art/video_games/seiklus/ - Seiklus, another one of those atmospheric exploratory platformers.

Free Remakes

General Listings

• http://www.remakes.org/ - very nice remake news site with links galore.
• http://retrospec.sgn.net/ - Remakes of a whole bunch of stuff, most noteworthy probably Head over Heels.
• http://www.ovine.net/ - Ovine By Design. Tons and tons, among others Paradroid, Lunar Lander and XOR.

Specific Games

• http://www.agdinteractive.com/ - VGA remakes of King's Quest I and II; Quest for Glory in the works.
• http://www.infamous-adventures.com/index.php?page=kq3 - King's Quest III.
• http://reconstruction.voyd.net/ - A site dedicated to remakes of games in the Ultima series.
• http://sc2.sourceforge.net/ - Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters.
• http://priv.solsector.net/ - Privateer: Gemini Gold
• http://ufoai.net/ - X-COM: UFO Defense/UFO: Enemy Unknown (in development)
• http://www.u5lazarus.com/ - Ultima 5: Lazarus; U5 for Dungeon Siege.
• http://www.scottige.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=16.0 - Ghostbusters.
• http://www.infamous-adventures.com/kq3/ - King's Quest III.
• http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/ - Scorched 3D. Scorched Earth, in 3D. Nothing else needs be said.
• http://typhoon.kuto.de/ - Typhoon 2001, a shiny trippy remake of the venerable Tempest.

Source Ports

• http://zdoom.org - Classic Doom on modern machines
• http://www.doomsdayhq.com/ - more Doom, with sparklies
• http://exult.sf.net/ - Ultima 7
• http://cyxdown.free.fr/reminiscence/ - Flashback

Free Game Soundtracks

• http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/mp3/ - Diablo 2
• http://www.larian.com/Site/english/divinity/music.html - Divine Divinity
• http://www.redfaction.com/downloads.cfm#mp3s - Red Faction
• http://www.jesperkyd.com/projects/hitman2.html - Hitman 2
• http://www.longestjourney.com/download/music/ - The Longest Journey
• http://billbrownmusic.com/musicG1.htm - Rainbow Six, other Tom Clancy games
• http://www.coldstorage.org.uk/mp3_1.html - the non-licensed parts from wipEout and wipEout 2097

[NamelessPlayer]

I don't see Allegiance anywhere in that list. It's a space combat/RTS game.

Also not mentioned are Tribes 1 and 2. They were made freeware to commemorate the disappointing Tribes: Vengeance, but I'm not sure where to link them. Oh well, here's a PlanetTribes link, a Tribes 1 3DGamers link, and a Tribes 2 FilePlanet link. (I don't know about this "no Tribes 2 keys left" crap, since I bought a boxed copy a few months before it went freeware and just use that.)

Finally, I prefer http://www.gameflaws.com/cavestory as a Cave Story link. I'm not saying the AGTP one's bad or anything, but you can find more CS-related stuff here. Plus, there's a link to the AGTP page somewhere in there.

Those issues aside, this is quite a convenient thread.

EDIT: Changed the Tribes 1 link to 3DGamers.com, since FilePlanet apparently wanted money from you just to D/L the game. Couldn't find a Tribes 2 D/L link on 3DGamers. Haven't checked anywhere else.

[TheOutrider]

I've added Tribes; T2 indeed is free for download, but if you don't have a key, you're screwed. Gamespy aren't giving out any keys anymore, and without one, you can't play.

As for Cave Story, I intentionally just went with the regular link to the translators' site simply because the gameflaws one does contain some pretty heavy spoilers.

[edit] And no, Fileplanet doesn't want money for the T1 download; you just need a Gamespy ID. Even the free accounts are sufficient. I'm changing the link anyway, because the 3DGamers version is registration-free. [/edit]

[NamelessPlayer]

By the "GS wants your money" part, I meant that when I clicked the FilePlanet link, all I saw were the premium D/L links that required you to cough up money. No free servers.

Oh well, 3DGamers is probably the better site of the two anyway. (Note to self: Screw FilePlanet, make 3DGamers the primary game D/L site!)

[Mr.Duck]

A MrDuck Good Idea (Tm) implemented.

Rock on, Rideh!

[Zerker]

Wasn't Ground Control released for free a while back too? I'm sure someone can dig up a link

[dj_ivocha]

Ground Control

[Sluggs]

Another one for the collection... http://www.free-windows-games.com/

[TheOutrider]

Not going to add that, because each and every one of the installers they have installs spy- and adware, the notorious new.net among others. Plus, that vendor spams google, massively, with various "free games" sites.

Also, I guess most people are able to use google to come up with something like that. :P

[edit] Let me clarify this a bit. I don't think Ducky's intent in starting the original thread was "hey folks, what are your first five google results for 'free game downloads'?", but rather "so what do you guys use for your free gaming fix that you'd recommend to others?". My intent in sifting through the original thread was to organise the stuff people have brought up into a list; a list of the sites people here trust and use for their (legal) freegame needs, and a list of specific remakes/free games that have caught people's special interest here. [/edit]

[Jason Moyer]

There was a really good article on free games in CGW recently:

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3148013

Some of the stuff I've gotten from their list is really awesome. One of my favorites:

Mono
URL: http://www.binaryzoo.com/games/mono/
Binaryzoo.com sums Mono up the best on its website: "part Asteroids, part Robotron, part Paint Shop Pro." This game is a trip.in more ways than one. Drugs optional.

Also, I don't have the link handy but another thread somewhere links to the Freespace 2 isos (which are free/legal). I'll try and dig it up if no one else does.

[TheOutrider]

Oh god, yes, mono. That one's pretty kickass, aside from the fact the difficulty rises to nigh-impossible levels once you have only the corners of the screen left.

What happened to the free download of Caesar, by the way? Used to be on the Caesar III and, more lately, Caesar IV site, but it seems to be gone now, and I can't find it at neither VUGames nor Sierra.

[dj_ivocha]

Here is a link to download Caesar 1. The site is in German, but it's pretty easy to navigate even if you can't understand the language - click on the "Zum Download" button, located to the right of Caesar screenshot, and then on the next window, click on "Gratis Download", just below the "Wählen Sie den Download-Pfad"-box.

[Sluggs]

Let me clarify this a bit. I don't think Ducky's intent in starting the original thread was "hey folks, what are your first five google results for 'free game downloads'?"

Actually, i came across all the sites i posted, whilst looking for .adf files, for WinUAE, an Amiga emulator! And that was from spending about 1.5 hours in Google!

[TheOutrider]

Come now, free-windows-games.com isn't exactly an obscure and hard-to-think-of domain name for free games

[TheOutrider]

I sort of went and moved the current state of this into a freely-hosted wiki. That way, you people can easily add games and listings as you like, possibly even descriptions and that kind of stuff, and we can go cross-referencing random shit all over the place. clicky

Depending on what you guys say, we can either move this thing completely to the wiki or I'll just keep updating that list up there. Comments please.

[ignatios]

I know it's more work for you mang, but let's keep it in this thread. The nice thing about such threads is that you don't have to go off-site for the goods.

[Mr.Duck]

Seconded.

[Fig455]

thirded

Has anyone played StreetBike Fury? Fucking sweet. best. Free. Game. EVER/

[Silkworm]

Cho Ren Sha 68k -classic free game to be googled.

[SomeGuyNamedAl]

Freespace 2 also has the advantage of being freely downloadable (even states it in the EULA) and being open source, so there's a fairly significant engine mod that improves things by quite a bit, and lots of mods, even a port of Freespace 1.

Here's the ISOs, and you can find the source code here.

Here's the links for Freespace 2 from the previous thread that mentioned it.

[YogSo]

Two more free remakes to add:

* Ultima V: Lazarus (a free mod for Dungeon Siege, already discussed here).

* Exult (Ultima VII 3D remake port).

Edit: As Vigil noted below, you need the original UVII to play Exult, so it's not a remake.

[Vigil]

Exult is not a free remake of Ultima VII, nor for that matter is it 3D. It's a source port that allows you to play your still-very-much-commercial copy of Ultima VII in a variety of OSes including Windows. It would be misleading to include free source ports for commercial games in the free games list.

[ignatios]

Is it actually a source port? Do they have access to U7 source code? I thought it was a remake that happened to use the original game's resources.

[dj_ivocha]

http://www.virtualapple.org/ - tons of Apple II and Apple IIgs games, playable online . Though for now only Internet Explorer is supported, and you have to activate ActiveX. Lots of Sierra classics there as well, which also have better sound than the DOS versions (At least Space Quest 1 does - I just checked).

[Vigil]

Yes I suppose you're right ig, it's technically a reverse-engineered remake of the game executable made without access to the sourcecode. I'd class it as a sourceport though, as it is a replacement way of running the original game from the original files, rather than a standalone game in its own right (which is the traditionally understood meaning of remake IMO.)