25 Good Free Video Games
Too many free video games suck and/or are trying to steal your money. Here’s a list of free PC games that are both good and actually free. If you’re looking for something new to play and you don’t want to think about your Steam backlog, try one of these. These are all games that I personally have played and actually liked, and they were released for free and are still available for free. A lot of them have re-releases or remakes that are paid, but I’m not considering those when I write this, just the free versions. This list isn’t in any particular order except for the order I thought to put them on the list in. It’s also a little tilted towards the late 2000s and early 2010s because, well, that’s when I was a teenager with no money and was playing a lot of free PC games. I've included links to all the games on the list.
Chart made with Topsters 3
Cave Story
A true classic. The game that defined the online-release “indie game” as you know it. Cave Story is a metroidvania where you explore the interior of a massive cave system, shooting your way through obstacles and meeting many characters. All the way back in 2004, Cave Story both showed that pixel art had a place other than nostalgia-baiting and that a one-man team could make a full-length game worth playing. Cave Story’s had a few re-releases and ports over the years, but the original version is still free and still good.
La-Mulana
Aeon Genesis English translation
Troubleshooting & compatiblity information
La-Mulana is a pixel-art metroidvania, but not just another pixel-art metroidvania. La-Mulana is about puzzles. You play as Lemeza Kosugi, Indiana Jones but green, and explore the sprawling La-Mulana ruins, investigating its history and searching for the secret of Life hidden within. Unfortunately, the ruins want you dead. Between the many deathtraps, swarms of enemies, and the occasional wrath of God for desecrating the wrong part of the ruins, it’s an uphill battle to get any exploring done, and the game’s puzzles get mind-bendingly complex. Still, it’s one of my all-time favorites for a reason, and if you’re the kind of person who likes it, there’s nothing else quite like it. Read the manual first and bring a notebook. There’s a Steam remake that plays a bit smoother (and a sequel!), but the original freeware version is the one I and many others first fell in love with. Unfortunately, it’s definitely showing its age – see the troubleshooting link for the many potential problems it could have on modern systems.
Dwarf Fortress
The fortress builder. The one and only true king of the genre. The concept of Dwarf Fortress’s main draw, Fortress Mode, gives you a straightforward goal: Lead a small team of dwarves setting out to found a new settlement, dig your new home into the mountainside, and prosper as your settlement grows. Defend yourself from raids and invasions, trade with traveling caravans, and expand the fortress into a true Mountainhome. This game is massively, monstrously complex. Everything that’s reasonable and some things that aren’t are simulated, and much of the game’s difficulty comes from wrapping your head around the sheer number of different things you need to learn to manage a fortress well. Expect to lose, and not just when you’re new. Losing is fun! Watching your fortress crumble can be as fun as building it is, and every defeat lets you learn a little more and do better next time. The game’s also got an Adventure mode where you explore your generated game world as a solo adventurer, and a history viewer where you can see all the (also dynamically generated) historical events that happened in your world, including things you yourself did in the other two game modes. This is another game with a Steam release, which has a somewhat more human-friendly UI.
NetHack
If you ask people to imagine a classic roguelike, they’re probably going to think of NetHack. It’s the classic formula: explore a massive dungeon in a turn-based grid-based fashion, search for the Amulet of Yendor at the bottom, try to not die. Die a lot. Though originally released (way back in 1987) with ASCII graphics, a variety of tilesets are available for people who don’t want to spend their first 20 hours examining everything until they can remember what a lowercase purple x is (it’s a grid bug, from Tron). NetHack is massively complex and massively difficult. I’ve been playing it off and on when I get an itch or don’t have anything better to do since 2007, and I’ve never even come close to beating it. Using a wiki or other spoilers would probably make it easier, but, well, they’re called spoilers for a reason. Puzzling out how everything works is a big part of the fun for some people. You might want some advice on how to play, or you might enjoy stepping into the unknown.
Yume Nikki
A weird little game about exploring a shut-in girl’s dreams. If you’re looking for action or a dense story, you won’t find it here. This game is 100% atmosphere. Well before games were getting called “walking simulators,” this one was showing how good they can be. Yume Nikki is surreal, a little creepy, and packed with stuff to find. If one end of “games as art” are your story-driven, character-driven games, your Spec Ops The Lines and your Planescape Torments and your Pathologics, this is the opposite end of the spectrum – almost a pure mood piece.
Iji
Iji is a side-scrolling platformer that takes a lot of cues from the immersive sims of the late 90s and early 2000s. This is the one to pick if you do want action and a dense story. Try to survive an alien invasion of Earth with only your wits and an experimental alien nanotechnology combat suite. The game’s areas are open-ended, with alternate routes and secrets all over. The skill system gives you a lot of playstyles to explore, too. It’s a solid game with a lot of replayability and a story that might take you by surprise.
OFF
English translation (no other downloads needed)
You are in control of The Batter. The Batter has a sacred mission – purify the world. OFF is a truly bizarre RPG, offbeat and downbeat. The combat is pretty simple, standard RPGMaker stuff with an active time gauge. There’s puzzles in it, and they’re enjoyable, but that’s not what people play this game for. They’re there for how weird the game is, and it delivers. The world of OFF is truly bizarre in a way that few games can hope to pull off, feeling cohesive despite how extremely strange everything in it is. Expect surreal visuals, striking music, and a story to match both.
OpenTTD
A free, open source version of Transport Tycoon, expanded and with multiplayer. Admittedly, I haven’t played very much of this one, myself, only enough for a tasting. I didn’t find out about this one until I was old enough to have too much stuff to do to allow myself to get sucked into it. Build out various forms of transport routes and make a bunch of money. This is a type of game that is a form of addictive substance for people with a certain type of brain. If you have a brain like that, you probably already know how much of your time this game will eat.
The Ur-Quan Masters
Also known as Star Control 2, this is a true classic later released as freeware. This is, without exaggeration, perhaps the best sci-fi adventure game out there. Some time ago, there was a war between the Alliance of Free Stars and the Ur-Quan Hierarchy. The Alliance secretly sent a colony-and-research mission to a Precursor site, and now after a time the descendants of that mission are returning to Earth with a massive Precursor starship on their side. Explore the stars, find out what’s happened to Earth and her allies since the colonists left, and fight for a free galaxy. As seriously as it sounds, the game’s quite funny, too. It does show its age in some places, especially the lack of tutorials or anything like a quest log. Take some notes and don’t hesitate to try out ships in Super Melee if you’re having trouble with the combat. The Ur-Quan Masters is one of the games I really, truly fell in love with back when I first played it.
Aurora 4X
Aurora wiki (includes download instructions)
This is one that I keep taking a run at and playing for a couple hours every year or two, but just haven’t been able to get my teeth into yet. Aurora is an infamous game among those who know it as the most complex 4X out there. This is the spreadsheet game, accept no substitutes. Developed by one madman over the course of a couple decades now, Aurora is a sci-fi 4X game that simulates everything. Everything. And you can control all of it, too. For example, if you want to build better warships, you’ve got to worry about research, technology development as a separate step from that research (with a LOT of options on how exactly you want your new starship parts to function), ship design as yet another step, and then finally building those ships. Which you’ll have to have a strong economic foundation to do, which is a whole other can of worms (said can will have to be moved from planet to planet on individually tracked freighters, of course). And personnel management is a part of all of this, too. Getting your ships to where they want to go is also a federal issue, and combat at the tactical level is a skill all its own. I fear that I am still selling the monstrous, frightening complexity of this game short. If Stellaris felt like baby mode, if Distant Worlds left you wanting more detail and more simulation, then try Aurora. As I said up top, I haven’t been able to crack this one yet, but people who scare me tell me it’s great.
Space Station 13
BYOND client, required to run the game and allows you to find public servers
Altogether too many communities to list.
Space Station 13 is a lot of things to a lot of people; everything from wacky multiplayer arena to semi-serious hidden role game to roleplaying forum. Whatever you’re playing, the basics are usually the same. You’re an employee aboard a remote space station (usually a research station), try to do your job and stay alive while some threat menaces you and the station at large. That threat could be traitors among the crew, a pirate attack, shapeshifting aliens, or just the incompetence of your “friends.” Or many, many other things. Often several things at once. In addition, there’s a few total conversions based on the game, the most popular of which is Colonial Marines, an Aliens-themed game where a platoon of Marines faces off against a Xenomorph hive on some godforsaken rock. SS13 has a bit of a steep learning curve, but it’s a game I keep coming back to in its various forms and communities. It’s a good time, once you get a little knowledge under your belt.
Ib
vgperson's English translation
Another strange, explorative game. A young girl gets lost in an art gallery, and suddenly finds herself alone. Explore the gallery, solve puzzles, and try to find a way home. Though it also leans heavily on its surreal world, Ib also has a few interesting characters to meet and a strong emphasis on those characters. It’s a mildly spooky good time. This is another game that’s got a remake on Steam for purchase, but the original version is still free.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
A roguelike with a focus on survival, rather than dungeon-crawling. The world has ended, zombies roam the Earth, and all you’ve got are your wits and whatever you picked on the character creation screen. Good luck. This is another one that’s firmly in the realm of classic roguelike – turn-based, difficult, and high in complexity and interactions. There’s no victory condition to shoot for in this one, just survival for as long as possible in zombie-infested modern-day America. It also sets itself apart from other roguelikes with a powerful construction system, letting you build out a fortress to ride out the apocalypse or simply reinforce existing structures for a little extra safety. I’ve only scratched the surface of what’s in this game, from vehicles to mutations to NPCs, and you can definitely do more exploration and dungeon-crawling (in the form of research labs and infested areas) if you want.
Barkley: Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden
Archive.org link included because the official site has some weird gambling-related text included on the page. I'm genuinely unsure if it's some joke I'm not cool enough to get or not, but if you're afraid to download from the official page, use the other one.
Tales of Game’s Studios Presents Chef Boyardee’s Barkley, Shut Up & Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa, the game to end all games, the greatest RPG of all time (maybe), finest of vidcons. 12 years ago, the sport of basketball was banned forever after Charles Barkley performed the “Chaos Dunk”, a jam so powerful that it kills nearly everyone attending the game instantly. The world’s greatest ballers were hunted down, and basketball survived only in the shadows. When another Chaos Dunk is performed in post-cyberpocalyptic Manhattan, this time killing millions, Barkely is instantly suspect number one. He must evade the authorities long enough to find the truth, lest it – and basketball – be lost forever. This one sounds extremely silly, and it is, but it’s also a great RPG. The real Space Jam 2.
FreeCiv
A free, open-source version of Civilization. Most heavily inspired by Civ II, but it’s highly customizable and has a lot of different rules you can tweak. You probably already know what Civilization is and whether you like it, but just in case: You control a nation, guiding it from the year 4000 BC up until the modern day (end dates are often around 2000 but depend on what happens in your specific game), managing its economy and military. It is the defining 4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate). If you’re used to the newer Civ games, this one might take some adjustment; Civ II was a very different game from V or VI. But you might find you like it better. Great in multiplayer.
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
Another classic now made freeware. In the land of Britannia, evil has been defeated (for details on how, see Ultima I-III). The world is at peace, at least compared to before. What’s everyone to do now? To lead everyone into a more peaceful age, Lord British announces that he’s looking for someone to become an Avatar of Virtue, someone who can set an example for the rest of the world. Your quest, then, is to become the Avatar by living out the eight virtues and visiting their shrines when ready. This is one of the foundational RPGs, one of the first to take the genre away from its hack-and-slash roots with its open world and non-combat-focused goal, and one of the first video games at all to worry itself with morality and the player’s choices. It definitely feels every bit its age, but given its influence and its legacy it’s well worth checking out.
Eversion
A cute platformer where you play as a little flower guy. The princess has been kidnapped, and you have to save her! A simple platformer where you go from left to right and collect gems along the way. In addition to the usual jump, you have the ability to “evert” at certain points, which changes the world slightly, allowing you to interact with objects in different ways depending on what state the world is in. Also, the game opens on a Lovecraft quote. Short and sweet, a personal favorite of mine. This is another one where there’s a Steam version available to purchase.
Space Funeral
Another well-loved weird RPG Maker game. I like these, if you can’t tell. The world has been corrupted, and the only hope is for Phillip (that’s you) to find the City of Forms, a perfect city that all things come from. The world being corrupted means that everything looks garish, there’s a lot of blood, and some things are incomprehensibly glitched. The gameplay is fairly standard as turn-based RPGs go, but everything else about the game is absolutely off-the-wall. I’m running out of words to describe strange games, but this one might be the strangest so far.
The Battle for Wesnoth
A free and open-source turn-based strategy game. Command a lot of different armies in a lot of different campaigns and scenarios in a fantasy world. There’s also a lot of user-made content, including more missions to try. I never played the multiplayer, personally, so I can’t vouch for it, but I suspect it’s as fun as the rest of the game. Gameplay is a bit more luck-based than you’d expect from this style of game, though over the course of a large battle your rolls are probably going to even out, and much of strategy is in stacking advantages so that you aren’t too reliant on the RNG to serve you a win. It’s also got beautiful pixel art for all its official content.
Embric of Wulfhammer's Castle
Fair warnings first – this one’s Not Safe For Work (although fairly mild as these things go). Adults only past that link. In the aftermath of a successful D&D-like campaign, the victorious adventurers have been given titles and land by the new king. To weld those adventurers into the kingdom’s nobility properly, their leader, Embric, is being married to the niece of the old king, the Duchess of Elstwhere. When the Duchess arrives at Embric’s new castle, he’s apparently out of town. The Duchess decides to take this time to get to know the place she’ll be living and the people in it. The game is mostly focused on exploring the titular Castle and its immediate surroundings and interacting with its many inhabitants (many of which are bisexual and lesbian women). A mostly-comedic yuri romp, with occasional serious moments. Despite that description probably making it sound like a trashy excuse to draw fantasy women making out (especially when you learn it was originally released to 4chan’s yuri board back in 2011), this game really is quite good, both when it’s being silly and when it’s taking itself seriously. It’s packed with characters and stories to find. Still, adults only.
FRANKEN
A goofy, charming RPG. A hero (that’s you!) fights monsters so they can save the world. A short game, about an hour long, and extremely funny. Technically contains battles, but they’re about as simple as they can possibly be, leaving the focus on the humor. It’s a game that was clearly made with a lot of love for classic RPGs, even as it pokes fun at them. Short and sweet.
Beneath a Steel Sky
The last in the category of “classics turned freeware,” Beneath a Steel Sky is a cult classic point-and-click adventure. In a dystopian future, Robert Foster, an outsider, is suddenly taken to Union City and finds himself at the heart of strange events. He must explore the city, searching for the truth behind his sudden abduction and a way to survive the city. Deceptively funny and quite good-looking, especially for its era.
5 Days a Stranger (and its sequels)
Consider this a recommendation for all of the Chzo Mythos games (5 Days a Stranger, 7 Days a Skeptic, Trilby’s Notes, and 6 Days a Sacrifice, all available on the same website as 5 Days). A wonderfully creepy set of adventure games by Yahtzee Croshaw (better known now for Zero Punctuation and Fully Ramblomatic). 5 Days, specifically, is about a cat burglar called Trilby who decides to break into what should be an abandoned manor, but finds himself trapped inside with a group of other people. Although this spot technically went to Five Days a Stranger for being the first of the series, Trilby’s Notes is easily the highlight, the point at which the horror-adventure of the previous two games comes together into a genuinely creepy experience. Still, the others are worth playing, too.
Katawa Shoujo
This one is also for adults only. Katawa Shoujo is a game about a young man attending a school for people with disabilities, meeting various students and finding love. If you’ve only vaguely heard of this game, you probably know it as “that visual novel 4chan made that was surprisingly good.” I’m here to tell you that you’re basically right, it is in fact a heartfelt, well-written VN. Be aware that the version on the official website contains erotic scenes. The Steam version does not contain them by default and must be patched to add them, so if you aren’t interested in those then that’s the way to go.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
Another classic roguelike, in the mode of a dungeon crawler (surprise, surprise). Stone Soup sets itself apart with a development ethos that’s focused on making it more accessible without cutting out actually interesting challenges and choices. Quality-of-life is through the roof compared to a game like Nethack, and choices offered to the player are both more clear and more impactful, rather than forcing the player down a specific route due to early decisions, often in ways that are unclear to a new player. Quality of life is a relative thing, as this is still a classic roguelike – expect to spend some time learning hotkeys and basic mechanics. Still, if Nethack is a bit too mysterious and unforgiving, give DCSS a try, you might find it more fun.
Honorable Mentions
These games didn’t make the cut for the actual list, but I felt they were still worth mentioning due to importance or personal affinity.
I Wanna Be The Guy
I Wanna Be The Guy is important enough that I feel I should mention it. It was hugely popular in its day and it’s still influential in the space of extremely-hard indie games, particularly platformers. There’s a simple reason it didn’t make the main list: I don’t like it. Call it a skill issue, call it genuine criticism, I did not have fun playing this game. You might. If you want to die a lot, go for it.
MUGEN
MUGEN is an extremely-customizable free fighting game engine. As far as I can tell, it is usually played by pitting two random pop culture characters with broken movesets against each other, although I assume there’s plenty of reasonably-balanced characters for you to play with too. This is one that I felt I should include for importance in its day, but I never actually played myself, so I can’t really speak to its quality. According to a friend of mine, at least, it’s quite good. I’d love to hear from more people who play a lot of fighting games on this one, write to me.
Liberal Crime Squad
Fan wiki with fan-updated version
The world (America) is in turmoil. An Arch-Conservative president has been elected, vowing to enact his agenda. Only one force can stop him: The Liberal Crime Squad. Indoctrinate the public into your ways, send them out to stop evil, and turn America around until the government is as Liberal as you. This is an old favorite of mine, and a game that I personally find extremely funny, but there’s better things that could go on the main list. Also, it’s Bush-era political cartoons distilled into a video game, so if you weren’t alive and forming long-term memories in the 2000s, you may not find this game even a little bit funny. Probably only known for being "the other game the Dwarf Fortress guys made."