Free games you like.

[unz]

RPS has made a list of actually good free games while providing links and everything
www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/10/16/best-free-games-on-pc/#more-322163
Any free game you know of which didn't make it in the list?

[StarShaper7]

Dota 2, but that's more frustrating than fun about half the time, which is saying much since I've played over 1000 hours in the span of 2 years. Even more if you include the time I spent on the original Warcraft III map.

[unz]

I'm going with warsow since it's open source
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ8D2Vszmak

[NemZ]

Dota 2

Anything free to play isn't on the list if it also has optional payment structures for hats and whatnot. Same reason Path of Exile isn't on the list.

[Monk Ed]

I really enjoyed The White Chamber. Nice psychological horror point-and-click.

[unz]

^you mean the dead space inspired one?

[Monk Ed]

^you mean the dead space inspired one?

The White Chamber is a science fiction adventure game created by Studio Trophis using the Wintermute Engine. Originally designed as a university project, it was expanded to a full game and released for Microsoft Windows as free download in 2005.[1]

Dead Space is a 2008 science fiction survival horror video game(...)

[unz]

Oh alright. Thought I had most ss2 spiritual sequels in mind.
Never played the white chamber though.

[Dream]

At my teenage years i was super into online flash games. Sadly i don't remember any of them anymore, but Westerado was seriously cool and easily among the best ones i've played.

[Stan]

My Internet is super slow so I can't even look at that list, but my favorite free online game is Maplestory. There are real money in game transactions, but they're completely optional and mostly cosmetic. Otherwise you can play all of it for free. I've been playing since 2007 and love it!

[robersora]

I liked Temple Run. Also there's a game called Ortho Robot, which I really enjoyed. It's a stylish puzzle game.

[ArgonLeviticusGospel]

I'd say Yume Nikki as something that wasn't on the list, but I actually prefer .flow, a Yume Nikki fangame (well, there are a lot of Yume Nikki "fangames" but it debateable as to wherever you can really call them fangames as they aren't set in the same "universe" as YN due to the minimalistic story with no real dialogue but are more like a genre of sorts as it is based of the original's gameplay) which has a lot "scarier" atmosphere than Yume Nikki which was more just "eerie" on the whole and an endgame which happens after you collect all the effects among other stuff.

[Shinoyami65]

Not sure if anyone has heard of it or not, but Portal Stories: Mel came out recently; it's basically a free mod of Portal 2 with its own storyline and puzzles (still set in Aperture Science though). There are even voiced characters, and the voice acting is pretty good (I wish they could have got the original actor for Cave Johnson but the replacement does a good job of it). It's great if you liked the original Portal 2 and want something more from an indie developer; the puzzles are all good and are supposed to be based around logic rather than simple performance. I do wish the mod offered resolutions over 1024x768, though.

[Reichu]

My computer is currently just a laptop that can barely handle anything, so whatever gaming I do that isn't console-based is done on the phone. And since I feel weird in general about spending money on such a transient platform, most of those games are of the freemium variety. I'm not sure why I let myself get pulled into the habit again, but I did, so, oh well... Here are the ones I keep on my Start menu and check up on regularly.

Township: Probably one of the most respectable freemium games I've encountered, this one is in the farming / town creation / micromanagement vein. The game is fun and well put together, very nice as far as time killers go. Nagging you for your money via obnoxious pop-ups is very rare and limited to announcing intermittent sales on the special in-game currency. There are no in-game ads, no side-bars, nothing like that. There is the downside that you have to be constantly connected to the Internet, but at least the social aspect is well done. It's very easy to find "friends' via the game's own network and there are huge incentives for helping others out. The one feature that's annoying is that there will always be THAT ONE supply you need for progress that's significantly rarer than the others, which is obviously programmed in as incentive to spend the special currency to get supplies faster. However, with patience, progress can be made without spending anything. (I did give the creators a couple of dollars, though.)

Dragon Mania Legends  SPOILER: Show

Dragon Mania Legends: Shamelessly rides the coattails of Pokemon and How to Train Your Dragon, but for all its freemium-induced flaws this is another fun distraction. Like Pokemon, there is the overall goal of collecting all the mons and then making them fight each other. However, instead of catching them in the wild you have to breed them all from a limited starting stock. Basically, your currency can buy the starter single-element dragons (more become accessible as you level up, natch), and then you make them engage in Rated G fucking until you have a cascading amount of double and triple hybrids. The battles, as expected, operate on Rock-Paper-Scissors logic and are three against three, with the two sides alternating turns. The elemental system is similar to Pokemon's typing system but has some differences I'm still figuring out. The primary type seems to be the main determinant of elemental weakness, making your dragon suspectible to "Strong" attacks from the opposing element. As for the secondary and tertiary elements, I'm not 100% on that, but they do seem to affect both damage taken and damage given.

The principle freemium annoyance of this game is that leveling up your dragons requires food. Getting to level 10 is easy, and after that the amounts required increase so steeply it's fairly ridiculous. The farms simply don't produce enough relative to the gold you're putting in and the times you're waiting. At my current point in the game, I'm not sure if this is just a temporary bottleneck, or if it's the obvious "NOW, GIVE US YOUR MONEY!" ploy. (The latter seems more likely.) Furthermore, after you have two islands, acquiring additional land for your dragons to live seems similarly annoying. Lastly, on my Windows phone version (yeah, I know, Windows phone, lawl!), the only friends you can make in-game MUST come from your list of Facebook friends, which means, whomp-whomp, no in-game friends for me unless I go bug random strangers on a site I hate using!

Mirrors of Albion  SPOILER: Show

Mirrors of Albion: Hidden object game. Apparently these are a common fixture, but MoA is basically my introduction to the genre. If you have no idea what these things are, the basic idea is that the game provides a number of "locations" (so, a rendition of some place, like a bedroom or a garden) and it gives you a listing of "objects" to find within this image. Basically a video game version of those pictures you'd find in the kid's magazine Highlights. There is a degree of randomization, with at least a couple dozen potential objects to find at each place, and each one having three different places in the picture it could be. As a result, mastering each image takes quite a few goes, as least if you're a forgetful spaz like me. Additional randomized challenges are piled on as you level up, called "anomalies here", to make it harder to find the objects in a timely manner, like forcing you to search the image through a tiny spotlight or imposing a "furnace" effect that makes your phone's screen "steam up" and keeps you wiping away to maintain visibility. It's repetitive, of course, but if the underlying premise appeals to the player then this is a non-issue. There's a definite satisfaction to seeing one's score gradually improve as you learn the potential layouts, as well.

Where the game excels the most is art direction and atmosphere. The game takes its cues from both Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass and Victorian England in general, with fancifully lavish results. I guess the search locations are about what you'd expect, but it goes above and beyond with most of the NPC artwork (i.e. the large portraits that appear when you talk to one), which can be anything from beautiful to adorable to hilarious to "WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN". I'm always looking forward to seeing the next set of characters and the next available locations. (I know, that's quite nerdy of me.) The music, though limited in selection and running times, is quite nice and creates an appropriate ambiance; I'd love to hear an extended version of the main theme. Not that the art direction is perfect by any means. The NPC sprites that crowd the map screen are bland and jerky. The locations themselves have some issues, like not being high res enough upon zoom-in and having too many too-dark areas (like they assume your phone is ALWAYS on full monitor luminance). The smattering of NPC images that are rigged to engage in limited repetitive motions (sometimes VERY subtle) tend to yield an uncanny valley effect.

But those problems are pretty much nothing compared to what's lurking deeper. For all there is to like -- oh boy, is this a freemium game to the bone. There is a lot of shitty stuff about it: it takes forever to load; it bombards with you in-game popups (CHECK OUT THIS INCREDIBLE OFFER! GIVE US YOUR MONEY NOW!) every time you open the app and at random intervals during play; it is far too prone to slowdowns and crashing... If you're not spending the grotesque amounts of money on it that they apparently expect you to, expect to have a HUGE backlog of "new locations" that will stay locked for levels upon levels after you hypothetically gained access to them -- and all the meantime, the game will crowd your quest queue and map screen with objectives and NPCs that are specific to that location! The treasure-hunting aspect of the game (which is, I suppose, pretty much the WHOLE GAME) is a terrible mess: expect a typical series of objectives to be "get the Horny Hedgehog from the Boudoir at night so you can induce the Hot and Bothered Anomaly in the Graveyard so you have a 10% chance of finding one of the twenty-five Crusty Copy of Playboy Magazines you need to satisfy 25% of the requirement for gaining access to the Massage Parlor so you can start collecting fifty Silly Wabbits and finally turn in that one collection you need to win a box of Trix Cereal and get in the top 100 for the I'm Like Totally Cereal contest". (OK, most of those proper nouns were made up, but you get the idea.) If all of that weren't money-grubbing enough, the energy you need to explore locations and help other players takes a very long time to recharge -- and, of course, the higher your level, the more the game will starve you.

Why the fuck do I keep playing this? Well... THE GREMLINS ARE SO CUTE AND GETTING GIFTS FROM GAME-FRIENDS IS FUN AND LOOK A NEW HIGH SCORE WOOO

Cloud Raiders: Windows Phone doesn't have Clash of Clans, but it has this CoC rip-off. It took me a while to get used to the gameplay, but once I did it was actually kind of fun. The in-game "SPEND MONEY ON US!" notifications are, of course, annoying, but there is a real element of strategy here to things like carrying out attacks on other bases and in how you construct your own.

Adventure Town; A really basic and bare-boned town builder / adventure RPG where all you really do is harvest crops, collect money from & restock your shops, and tap on monsters to make your entourage of super-deformed animesque warriors auto-attack them. It's oddly charming, though, and doesn't nag you for $$$ at all. The creators are clearly nerds, as well -- for example, your characters will randomly shout "LEEROY JENKINS!" before charging into battle (among other things), and you can actually dress one of your dudes up as Cloud Frickin' Strife (I've found both his SOLDIER outfit and Buster Sword).

Runemals: An interesting hybrid game that's part action puzzler, part RPG, and part GOTTA CATCH EM ALL. Hard to succinctly describe how the gameplay works. It's a bit odd and doesn't feel like it would work, but it does. There are intermittent pop-up ads, but since they don't happen during actual gameplay campaigns I'm not as bothered. The elemental mons concept is obviously derivative, but they have their own visual look and aren't trying to be something else. Energy recharge times are very reasonable, though if you want your monsters to heal without using potions you'll have to wait a bit longer.

[Ieyasu]

I just realized Arkanoid The Revenge of DOH (yeah, it's actually called that) is free. As is Syndicate, Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikeback.

Childhood... is that you??