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Game To Play During Lunch?
Menace writes "Every work day myself and a few other co-workers get 1 hour for lunch. We typically end up with about 20-30 minutes for some form of entertainment during our lunch hour. We are looking for some more multiplayer PC games that can give us a fun and thorough gaming experience in a 20-30 minute sitting. We currently play a few games such as Tetrinet and Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. Please keep in mind the systems we are able to play these on aren't geared for gaming and can hardly run WC3. What games do you play during your lunch hour, or can suggest that meet the specified criteria?"
Get some exercise.
--
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I'm talking about Duke Nuk'em, Worms, Worms2, even the venerable Scorched Earth... surely they still work? They were a blast. :-)
Try BZFlag. It's incredibly addictive, even though gameplay is straightforward. They have versions for practically every OS on every arch, and the requirements are fairly low. If you can run Warcraft, you can run BZflag.
You can set up your own company server for bzflag (Toss a cheap/obsolete workstation in the corner, mark it as the BZFlag server), or you can connect to some Net servers for battle with other people.
Just Friday a friend and I hit up the Netplay feature in SNES9x, and played Mario Kart for an hour. It was a blast.
I would go for quick fun games wrather than long drawn out games you can't finish on your lunch hour / half hour.
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
We usually play some Texas Hold'em or Euchre depending on the number of people around.
Is quite fun, and should run on your machines if Warcraft III works.
It gets pretty addictive, so be careful. And it's free, both to download and play.
Link: RoE Home Page
42
A half hour of Quake 3 at lunch is a staple at my job.
I think Ruby on Rails is more up-to-date and dynamic for the time period in question.
Tetrinet is always fun. Soldat might be worth a look (warning: some blood)... maybe even Worms?
... First one to ascend gets a free lunch!
* Continuum, previously known as 'Subspace' (you may have to run a server locally).
* WinBolo
* A list of multiplayer action games at the-underdogs.org sorted by rating.
In 20 - 30 minutes you can play a round or two either in single player mode, multi-player mode or even online. It's a quick game and every time you play it's different. I have a 3Ghz machine with a gig of ram, and I still play StarCraft from time to time. A game I use to play on my 133Mhz!
I'd also recommend modding the game (really easy to do) or finding a mod that reduces the amount of rocket damage. I find the rockets to be too powerful since they can gib you with one hit. That can be fun for a little while, but it seems somewhat less satisfying than hunting and combating your enemy.
Good fun, low system reqs and highly networkable 2D shooter!
From the site:
Sort of a turn-based online game. Everybody's playing it...
Your turn
Download the original Unreal Tournament. That was a staple at my old office and you will find it to be exactly what you are looking for.
http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/armagetronad/, altough I may be a little biased. LAN multiplayer, online, and local games.
Measure once, cut twice
With so many ways of playing half-life multiplayer, you will likely have a blast. Add in some of the GREAT free mods out there (I recommend Azure Sheep, great muplitplayer maps, and the counterpart where you play as the aliens). Also Opposing Forces is really great as a teamplay mod. Forget about steam and activation and all that crap and get a copy of the original 3-in-1 pack and set up a LAN game. You don't even need to set up a dedicated server or something, just have whoever picks the server option be on the fastest machine, and if you got one with a cracked serial, make sure that it doesn't dial home and disable itself. Oh, be sure to set the option for the low ping time physics.
zosxavius photography
I used to be a gaming fiend during my teenage years, but now I can't sit down an play more than about a 2 hours a week without feeling like I'm wasting an enormous amount of time. To make matters worse, RPGs used to be my favorite genre and 2 hours/week isn't enough to keep me interested in the plot or characters, so I end up never finishing games anymore.
Then I got into arcade (MAME) emulation. Arcade games are pefect for me now, because I can sit down, load up a game, and start having fun immediately rather than having to first take the time to get into the story or learn how the game works, etc. Most are geared specifically toward multiplayer fun. They're also easier to quit playing once your alloted time is up.
Two that I highly recommend are Puzzle Bobble (Usually called Bust a Move over here) and Super Puzzle Fighter.
You might want to try Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, which is free and multi-player. You can get links to download locations here. And if WW2 shooters is not for you, you can try the ETF mod, which makes it a sci-fi shooter instead.
Other good multiplayer games are Starsiege: Tribes and Tribes 2, both were freely available, but it seems now only Starsiege:Tribes is.
In 20-30 minutes you should be able to play a game or two of any of those I've mentioned.
Good, good fun. Very fast paced.
http://www.soldat.prv.pl/
I know you mentioned computer games, but I'm a huge fan of pulling out a deck of Fluxx or Set whenever I have some free time and a friend or two nearby. Rather addicting games. There are implementations of Set multiplayer online.. some are better than others. It's been a while since I played online though, so I don't even have the URLs to the one I really liked anymore.
Enemy Territory is free, team-based, cross-platform, designed to be played with a (configurable) time limit, has both strategy and shoot-em-up aspects, and has system requirements comparable to Warcraft 3. If you've got at least a half dozen people to play it's perfect; if not it's probably still worth giving a try with a few bots on each team.
Seriously. And I'm not talking about Magic or anything like that. I'm talking about Hearts, Spades, Euchre, Pinochle, Whist, Pitch, etc. There are countless games you can play with a $1.00 deck of cards.
I used to work at a place where we did this every day, and the human contact and team building aspects of playing cards were much more enjoyable than any computer game.
Any time we got bored with what we were playing, we'd switch games, or add in a house rule. Plus it lent itself well to activities outside of the workplace. Things like parties at someone's house where we'd all be playing cards. Gatherings to watch a football game, etc. Even better, it's easy to always have a deck of cards in your car, or carry one to a bar with you, so you can always break out a game of something.
And if this isn't enough to sway you, real, live, actual, breathing WOMEN play cards. No, seriously. You might have never met a woman before, but I have, and trust me, they would much rather play cards over a beer than have you say, "Wanna play Warcraft with us?".
Buy a deck. Buy 12. Learn a new game. Have fun. Get laid.
Well, at least have fun.
Not state of the art, but pretty darn fun. If you don't know about it (which you should), it's the Marathon series of FPS games that made Bungie really famous before the big buyout (or sellout, depending on how bitter I'm feeling on any given day). They open-sourced it, and a community built it up to what is now Aleph One.
Should run on some pretty old hardware, and netgames are as long or short as you want them to be.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
DDR is a fantastic game for lunch breaks. We all head down to the local arcade and have dance competitions. It builds stamina and comraderie like no other game does. We have tournaments every month, and everyone has a great time. A Korean guy won it last month, but it looks like Jenkins from Finance will win it this month.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
how about Ur-Quan Masters? It's a remake of the calssic Star Control II. It's known for it's great storyline and non-linear gameplay in single player mode, but the real fun is in super melee. The ship types are varied and easy to learn, so there's great replay value. Best of all, it's Free and free. Check it out at http://sc2.sourceforge.net/.
Crack Attack.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Moonbase Commander is a good multiplayer game for up to 4 players. Turn based strategy. They used to have a demo available.
during any time between helping teachers, me and the rest of the high school tech class played starcraft brood war almost every time. Our teacher did, too. You can play in the same net game with the same cdkey, or the battle chest is only 20 bucks. We also played Soldat a bit, and Worms World Party. WCIII was played, even though it lagged to hell on our dells with onboard video. I also got a few other students to play stepmania with me, though that can get expensive on the disk space fast. I would have loved to get some quake running, but I never found a copy of it to use, and I was sad.
http://www.puzzlepirates.com/
Or Eve Online if you like that sort of thing...
On expert, down to the VERY LAST TWO SQUARES and I picked the wrong one. Goddamnit.
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
I'd highly recommend RuneScape. It's a great MMORPG that's free and will run on any machine. I work at high schools that are out during the summer & last summer I got so addicted that I had to cut myself off... however it's summer again... and I'm back on...
get yourself a GBA and bust out warioware/ twisted. great for a lunch break or buy the cart dump it and run it on your comp emulated :) for PC games though quake 1,is a good choice so is the game revolt (its abandonware you can find it HOTU) which is a REALLY fun RC car racing game that runs on just about anything. if you can run WC3 then revolt will run fine, its also a blast multiplayer :)
Instead of spending even your lunchbreak behind a screen, who don't you go out for a walk?
just get a DS or PSP or something. then you dont have to stay near your computer to play games during lunch hour.
Not just lunch-- how about playing games during all the sorts of little breaks you end up with? 5 minutes between meetings. A few minutes while your kid takes a nap. 10 minutes just to clear your head.
:P The great thing about PBEM is that you can play with your friends, even if you all have breaks at different times.
Play by e-mail seems ideal. I tried Laser Squad Nemesis, though, and it crashed during the tutorial.
A PSP also seems a good way to go (though for solo play): it resumes your game exactly where you left it as soon as you turn on, instead of cumbersome save systems.
A chess board left next to the desk is good if you play with people you work with.
Any other suggestions? Good PBEM games? Other ways to play with friends?
This is a game that I used to play from a long time back, but it is still very fun and very fast paced. (It is 2-d, and will run on anything) http://xblast.sf.net/ seems to be the latest place for it, and they have precompiled win32 binaries for you too.
How about playing that great game "see who can get as far away from their desk as they can during lunch"?
Seriously. It's lunch. It's so you can have a break. Leave your desk and stretch your legs. It's unhealthy to be chained to a desk for 8-9 hours.
the authoritative list, by hardcore gaming fans of board games shows that the FASTEST (under 12 minutes per round) and most fun game is Lost Cities.
:
:
the current database list is at
http://scv.bu.edu/~aarondf/Top100/list.txt
Lost cities is usually in the top 35 of all known popular games on the planet in the list (there is a longer list at that site)
But the best part is that a FREE, no-advertisement Java-in-a-browser SAFE implementation of Lost Cities is at
www.Flexgames.com
There are actually three different multiplayer games at www.Flexgames.com, but the Lost Cities section is the most active.
The site has chess club player rankings, and makes the game better than the card came even if playing office coworkers (it tallies scores, sorts your hand, and displays the remaining card count in the deck)
All of those electronic additions makes the game more fun on a computer.
Please try it out. Its addictive and very fun. many players on that site have played THOUSANDS of games according to the statistics logs. (There are many types of reports available).
in-web-browser Java multiplayer online games are safe too (such games run in unpriviledged sandbox)
The only problem is that the first time you run a java web multiplayer game, it needs to cache the files, and that takes a minute on dialup, but is very fast on broadband, and once in the cache it is not too bad.
So try Lost Cities.... the highest rated short duration two player game in history.... and now its free and online and leaves plenty of time to eat during luch or WHILE you play. You can eat and play at the same time, no need to chat during the game.
try it, there is no ads, you can use a fake email address (if paranoid), and its free and quite well designed : flexgames.com
plus.... i need more opponents now that the winter crowds have thinned out. (Why do so many people only play card games in the cold months?)
Ambrosia Software has a wonderful series called Escape Velocity. Escape Velocity Nova was the first one ported to Windows. It's wonderful because it saves every time you visit a planet (which is about every 1-2 minutes). It'll run on anything.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
best card game : Lost Cities
very fast and very addicting.
slightly over half the most active players at one of the various sites that have free no-advertisement safe-java electronic versions of Lost Cities, such as www.FlexGames.com are female.
The Parent poster is correct. Women and men both are equally attracted to strategy card games that offer a small amount of luck.
Try it out though.
Lost Cities is my favorite game in the world now, and most of my co-workers and friends too.
If you're going to wuss on exercise, just go sit cross-legged on the lawn playing cards and munching. Play bridge, if you're up to it, or spades, hearts, pitch, oh-hell, rummy, gin, whatever.
Get a few games of go or chess going. Keep the boards up all the time so that whoever's playing can wander by whenever they please to stare at the board. Or play go and chess online with each other.
You'll thank me later if you actually drag yourself away from the computer, but if you insist on staying in your cube, find a nice FPS and blow the hell out of each other for 20 minutes a day.
This is not my sandwich.
Can't beat Worms World Party
A great game, simple setup and exciting head to head play. Free and cross-platform to boot. bzflag.org
I recommend Maple Story. It's free, fun, addicting, and great to play with friends. :)
Note: If you're ok with 2D side-scrolling games, that is~
One thing nobody talks about that is solid gold for gaming on small amounts of time is the PSP's sleep feature. You can put it to "sleep" anytime, and come back later and resume play. Say goodbye to boot-up times - it sleeps and wakes up in less than a second.
"But what about the battery?", you ask. I've put games to sleep on the PSP, come back over 24 hours later, and woken them up - and not even a bar of power has disappeared from the power meter. In sleep mode, the PSP uses very very little power. I don't even turn the thing off anymore, except if I'm going to switch games. I just put it into sleep, and wake it up when I have a few minutes to play. Being able to just pick up where you left off, and not have to spend 2 minutes going through the boot-up and splash screen and menu process, is pure gold. You don't realize how wonderful and welcome this is until you make use of it.
On a par with card games, while more limited, it's easier to keep eating with dominoes in front of you than trying to keep your sandwich in your fingers and your hand to yourself... or something
MidTown Madness II for PC (it's like from 1999 or something, the new version is only for Xbox.)
Scorched Earth 3D (real nice up-to-date 3D version of a classic)
http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/ (it's free!)
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Spike TV has Star Trek: TNG from 12 - 2 and MacGyver on at 3 (Alaska Standard time. Move an hour from normal listing). During lunch I get home about 10 after 12, make some food, watch 45 - 30 minutes of Star Trek.
I tried gaming during lunch but it's easier to eat while watching TV then it is trying to shoot Germans in Medal of Honor:AA.
Xhentil Do'ana
As Zos mentioned, the original Half Life provides great variety. It also has very low specs. I am a firefighter, and we set up a lan here at the station. Half Life has provided us with years of laughs. We all brought in rigs of various specs; it works well on all. If you lack the 3d horsepower, you can run it fine in software mode. Team Fortress, Day of Defeat, and Deathmatch just to name a few of the modes and mods. You can also host the game on one of the clients rigs, time limits can also be set. This game is still being played at lunch time here at the Danvers Fire Dept.
After a week of doing hardcore DDR, you'll be able to do it for 15 to 30 minutes without breaking a sweat. If you stop your diet of donuts and coffee then you'll become fit very quickly.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
you should look into Zap! from Garage Games.
It is an indie game with fast paced multiplayer chaos.
The graphics are minimal and the gameplay solid.
You could play two or three rounds in 20-30 minutes.
And you can try it out for free. I believe if you don't regisiter then it simply will log you off every 20-30 minutes, which sounds just about perfect for you.
Now I've seen Everything
On what kind of games you like.
Anyway a standard game of Quake3 or any of its MODs (eg. Urban Terror) usually lasts for 20 minutes, and it ain't that demanding on hardware.
An oldie but a goodie:
Spaceward Ho!
Can be hard to track down, but halarious gameplay and the more the merrier.
I haven't done this, but I'm been thinking about it. Put a saw, some sandpaper, and glue in the car. Spend 20 minutes a day building. Wouldn't be hard, and I could get a lot done over weeks of it.
xenocide3001(.net) was an AMAZING web based MMORPG that took little attention to either casually have fun or dominate the universe. Unfortunately, the writer of the game was burnt out, and I think he's shut it down for awhile. Here's hoping Kalak reads Slashdot!
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
During my "breaks" at "work," I like to play a little game I call Read Slashdot. What you do is, everyone goes to slashdot.org. Then everyone reconvenes and talks about the interesting stuff they read on Slashdot. Optionally this can be done next to a water cooler for convenient cool water consumption.
:)
Then play Quake III Arena with the remainder of your time. If you see the boss coming, switch over to a running instance of lynx so it looks like you are doing technical work. Have fun!
Most men are not thought unwise until they speak.
I don't like cockfoolery, and I will confront anyone I find committing cockfoolery. And I will call them the cockfools that they are.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
We have been doing this since 2003, and it's a "tradition" that attracts more and more people (depending of course on the workload). Here is a list of games that did very well:
If you are interested, just tell me, I'll keep you posted.
Have cool lunches, guys !
[Pruneau
For two straight years, every single school day, myself and 3 of my friends would play hearts for the whole 1 hour lunch break. Only once did someone (me :D ) shoot the sun (getting ALL tricks, not just all the points, results in +52 for everyone else).
There are also lots of hearts variations that can be found on the net to change the game a bit (for example, jack of diamonds worth -10, booster 9s, turbo charged cards, etc.) I definitely recommend hearts.
Seriously. Go play Ultimate Frisbee.
You can start with a patch of grass as small as the size of four tennis courts and with as little as 2 vs 2 players. At my previous company we used to play sideways across a baseball field with between 4 vs 4 and 6 vs 6 players.
It'll improve your cardiovasular health and get you outside. You might even develop a tan. We were fairly aggressive players (but still keep it non-contact, people get injured if you don't), so it was often 40 minutes of hard sprinting / catching / jumping and intercepting. We often didn't care about the score, the joy was in playing as hard as we could.
You'll need a change of clothes (running shoes, optionally with cleats, t-shirt + shorts, towel, bottle of water, sunglasses to protect your eyes from the sun). It also helps if there are showers in your office building so you don't stink like a pig for the rest of the afternoon.
It also helps if management understands that you might take an extra 10 minutes for your lunch if the game runs late or something (make it a rule to leave the office 10 minutes later if that happens). Although better yet - have your boss come play with you to help pad the numbers and improve your friendship.
The computer games will still be there when winter rolls around (or the sun goes down), so make the most of the summer while it lasts.
I make computer games for a living - and yes, I just recommended that you didn't play computer games for your lunch break.
[nt]
The unofficial
Ahhh, Tribes 2. I got that game a year (or two?) after it came out and I'm still playing it. Now you can pick up a copy of Tribes 2 for about five bucks, if you can find it. I recommend the Classic mod, it speeds up the gameplay and is a little more fun than base. If you want any UI enhancements or scripts, just email me, I've got more than you could ever want.
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
I always found Diablo II was a fun game to play @ lunchtime. Doesn't take too powerful hardware, and you can network and play w/others. Simple hack & slash mindless fun :)
Place sig here.
Think outside the box!
:). I'd bought them with the explicit purpose of being legally entitled to play 4 player Doom II, on our corporate LAN, for business purposes that I, as Vice President, deemed necessary for the morale of our technicians.
Here's something that's cool to try: Go retro. I mean, hardcore retro.
Here's how it works:
Get a copy of, for example, Zork I - III, which are freely available, on just about any platform you care to name. Start with Zork I, and set a limit: Since all the Zorks show the score and the turns to get that score, the challenge is to get the most points, in the least amount of time, without cheating (as in, looking up hints, etc.) - so, you could say: The person with the best points/turns played ratio after 5 business days wins.
The best thing is: Since your computers are old, this is ideal for them - it places no demands at all upon them. And, it supports save games, etc., so, it's ideal for time-limited play.
It's not "multi-user", in the traditional sense... but why does it have to be?
Just a thought.
But, if you're only into the FPS kinda thing, I'd suggest Doom II, if your LAN supports IPX. If it doesn't, I'd suggest the variants that offer TCP/IP connectivity... or, talk to your LAN Admin: At this point, IPX is all but phased out, and so, represents a miniscule amount of traffic, with regards to your purposes... adding IPX to a few PCs' network stacks won't even touch his overall traffic.
Doom II, under DOSbox, would run REALLY fast in your environment.
And, there's a lot of nice DM WADs around, still. Unfortunately, they're limited to 4 players, if you use the original Doom II.
TeamTNT is one place to check. They've some of THE best DM WADs I've ever seen for Doom II: Eternal Deathmatch, was, and is, in my mind, one of the best, most finely crafted, Doom II DM WADs EVER made. Fast, clean...
I used to setup after hours Deathmatches with my techs to play it, as a morale booster: We had enough PCs in the office to support 4 players. So, I bought 4 copies of Doom II. And, for the cynical, I DID it on purpose... and it was a tax-write-off, to boot, as I paid for those 4 legal copies with my corporation-issued credit card... and my accountant approved it as a tax write-off, under Federal Law
So, the first 4 (out of whoever showed up) were chosen randomly, as the rest of us watched, cheered, etc... and the winner, after half an hour, stayed on, while the next 3 replaced the losers....
The cool thing was, it was a never-ending cycle - all we had to do was recycle the losers, for so long as they were willing to stay... and, even better, we all got to learn each others play styles, and kill the better players, from time to time, even if one was so poor a player as me (their Boss... but not as bad a player as you'd think: Sometimes, it's good to "die", so as to bolster morale *grin*).
But, please - don't only consider purely multi-player games: There's a multiverse out there now: You can CHOOSE anything you want, and apply it as you wish... the REAL question is: HOW do you want to be challenged?
Think outside the box!
Regards,
dj
http://www.chaosleaguegame.com/
:)
If you are after something that you can play in 20-30 mins then Chaos League is your game.
It is a Fantasy RTS Football game, basically a re-hash of the old Blood Bowl table top game. If you liked Blood Bowl you will love Chaos League.
Not only do you have your usual fantasy races like Undead, Dwarves, Elves and Orcs but you also have Barbarians and Preatorians (Dog People) to name but a few. You can also create a Mercenary team made up of all the races.
Before the match starts you can allocate cash to bribe the ref, hire hooligans, dope your players and drug test your opposition. Once the game begins, not only do you have brute force and tactics on your side but a wide range of magic including specal spells cast by your fans!
You can play real-time or turn based. The game clock runs for 10 minutes making it perfect for your lunch-time needs
Me and my friends used to play this game called Wormhole by Centerfleet at lunch a lot. Unfortuentally, it no longer exists. Anyone ever play it? You could play Crack attack for a free game. Otherwise, you could probably get in a round of Worms. As someone else suggested, playing SNES on emulation might be fun. I like Family Feud. I'm not sure if you can get in a game or not, but I believe you can use savestates.
Alot of people play Spore Cubes during lunch.
(just google for it)
We've been playing Diplomacy at lunch at my work.
One move a day. Aside from work, where else are you going to find seven strategy geeks?
You can download GTA 1 & 2 for free from http://www.rockstargames.com/classics/ both have fairly modest system requirements.
"Due to funding cuts, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off"
At my old company, we were so cheap we'd use scotch tape and tape a 8"by8" square up on the wall about 8 feet over the floor. Two players would then sit in their office/swivle chairs side by side and thrown one of those sponge/nerf balls (ones that you get at conventionsfor free) in to the square. The other player then must catch the ball before it touches the ground. That player then throwsthe ball in to the square and so on. Points are added up if a player misses the catch and the ball touches the ground or a player stands up, butts must be down on the chair. players switch sides when one player reachs a predetermine score, inorder to remove any "side" advances. The winner is determined by when a player reaches a predetermined score after switching sides. "Fun" increases when you throw harder or throw "curves" so that the other player must roll their chair across the room to catch the ball. Rules can be added, modified, or removed at anytime but the basic rules must remain. At one point, the games started to get physical and people were getting hurt.(it's best to keep things a little mellow so that the office police doesn't stop the fun)
You can get the old original abandonware Star Control 1 or 2, or the remake, Ur-Quan Masters http://sc2.sourceforge.net/>. The head-to-head 2-at-the-same-keyboard mode makes it one of my favourite multiplayer games you can play at a single computer (Worms and Scorched Earth and their successors being the other notable mention).
A fun game that has full MP and SP support is Counter-Strike 2D. Its a top view shooter, and its free.
http://lieroxtreme.thegaminguniverse.com/
:D LieroX is really cool, it's similar to soldat. It's a bit on the buggy side though, but it's so user friendly that a LOT of people can pick it up and play on a cheesy old machine. Sometimes after an exam we'd head down to the computer lab and play a few rounds.
We played LIERO all the time during programming classes
Basically, it's a side-view two-dimensional shooter. A lot of the levels involve you using your weapons or quick movement to bore through things. You can easly make your own maps with an image editor.
I always wanted to try Counter-Strike 2D, but never got around to it...
They are really really old, but you shouldn't really let that stop you.
The cool thing about delta force is that there are a million bad guys. You play the scenarios as multiplayer and you can just gun down bad guys as your whole group makes their way across the same map.
In our office, this was good, because it was low key while still somewhat interesting. We tried DM or CTF as well, but it just got too intense..and therefor noisy. (And management put a stop to it.)
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
At my workplace, we have about 35 of the 500 employees playing Call of Duty during lunch. We just make sure to restrict the bandwidth across the WAN so it doesn't slow down those people who actually work while we're at lunch.
CoD is ideal as it is relatively new (keep in mind we have business machines, not gaming machines) and runs okay on the range of graphics cars we have (onboard, few GeForce 4s in the IT dept, a few really nice cards for those who need them for their job). We've been playing for ages and trying to find something new to move onto, but so far no luck with anything that is new-ish and will run on the range of graphics cards we have.
I take my DS with me so I can play wherever/whenever I have lunch.
A shrubbery
You may consider alternatives as well. I don't know about the rest of you, but sometimes I just want to relax during my break. As embo pointed out, play a game of cards, or go for a car ride (location/scenery permitting). Also, maybe call somebody you havn't talked to for awhile. Maybe do something productive or creative in 30 minutes? Call me crazy, but lately I've been cringing at the thought of all the time I've wasted in my life playing video games. I love video games as much as the next guy, but I also enjoy the finer things in life. And if you still have so much time on your hands and don't feel like just snoozing on a couch for awhile, you're not working hard enough. Maybe you should consider a move to blue collar...
What about something like MOO2 ? Or the Panzer General / Scorched Earth series ?
Something turn based you can keep minimised when you're not playing.
that is all
Have you considered playing a MUD? If the systems can't handle the graphics required by most MMORPG's, then the text based MUD's might be a good choice. Check out http://www.mudconnector.com/ to search hundreds of MUD/MUCK/MUSH sites. You can search according to criteria and find suitable games. Most of these are free, too, which can't be said for the graphical games.
so simple and easy, yet tremendously competitive and addictive. Wall acceleration is funny. Decent(ish) graphics too. Link to SF site
It is painful at times, suffers from perma-death and is expensive to play, but it _is_ the biggest massively-multiplayer game out there.
You will jhave to leave the office and potentially encounter other players, but it can be worth it. Check out levels called "parks", they are a good place to start and the graphics are neat.
-- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"
How about spending £100 and geting a DS each? You can play wirelessly during lunch AND play something going home and coming to work?
:)
:) )
There's quite a few fun wireless games coming out, and if your lunch is only an hour - time to get/eat food this might me ideal
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Animal crossing/ Mariocart DS Metroid/ Advance Wars DS etc etc (Hell, even Nintendogs
Visit London Scalextric Club
A Packman, of course.
There you are, staring at me again.
Man, forget Magic, forget Hearts and forget anything you've heart about before about card games, the funniest game I've found untill now is Munchkin! It's more fun than classic card games but one deck is fully playable, unlike Magic.
20 minutes to unwind...
I have a little more time and go rowing.
realkiwi
Do you have internet access, try Kingdom of loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com)
good chat structure lots of laughts... become a disco bandit or turtle tamer or even a pastamancer (or many more)
I play this in work... fab philanthropy around it as well
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
You could play any of the Myth series of RTS games. Each game lasts between 7 and 10 minutes so you could easily do two or three games during your lunch hour. You can also play via your intranet or via the fan-supported online game server PlayMyth.net .
Plus, these games will easily run as they're several years old. (Myth TFL is 1997, Myth II is 1998 and Myth III is 2001).
I recommend the Grown-Up Rules version, where the last one to cum wins.
Maelstroem or supertux doing breaks.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
Oh, and of course, Quake :)
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
It's really hard to answer a general question without some idea of hardware specifics.
Then again, sometimes it doesn't matter - I play Guild Wars during lunch on my PIII 1000 with a GeForce2 MX400 (a completely too slow and unsupported configuration that only works with all settings at low, though I usually have to reboot afterward as it gets really flaky after that). If you have something along that line, try Unreal Tournament 2004 - it works quite well. Far Cry works on my GF4 and I think even my old GF3 (though not very well). For action RPGs I've played Diablo II, Dungeon Siege, and NWN on this machine.
Just avoid Battlefield 2... it runs great on my 2.4GHz Athlon with a 9600SE card, but that is the minimum graphics card it will work on and near the minimum CPU (1.7GHz). It won't run at all on a GeForce 3 or 4 (the other 2 machines in my house, one with a 1.87GHz CPU and the other with an overclocked 2.0 running around 2.2GHz).
Just type: <
Very quick game. One move.
We recently released what I like to call a casual RTS/Action hybrid for Windows called Epidemic Groove. It's a single-player game written to be played over a lunch break, (with matches typically taking 10-20 minutes). In it, you alternate between Construction and Invasion phases. In the former, you have 60 seconds to build defensive walls, medical lasers, repair pylons, and electrified fences to create an impenetrable structure. In the latter, you have to use those defenses and your reflexes to fend off pathogenic attack. Here are some shots:
GIF animation of Construction Phase
Shot of infected red blood cell attacking
It's an indie title, but it's been well-received by those who have played/reviewed it. Give it a try!
We're indie. We're working on our 14th game.
Why limit yourself ot PC games especially when you say they're not really gaming machines?
Nintendo DS has quite a few party type games and the best part is you only need to buy one copy (though everyone needs to get their own console).
Band Brothers (import), Puyo Pop, Bomberman support up to 8 players.
PSP has the same technology available, but I'm not sure how many games currently support it.
We used to play Carmageddon (1 and 2 -- there's also 3, and possibly a 4th coming out soon) on our lunch breaks, and in our hotels when we were travelling. Lots of fun playing "tag" or smashing into each other, or running people over. Still a lot of fun, even if the graphics aren't the best compared to today's games.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Doom 1 + 2
:/
Easy learning curve, Short intense fights. But it's better with more then 2 players. It's a bit old, but it's fun till the last second ^^
A problem cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created it.
http://armagetron.sourceforge.net/
http://www.charreddirt.com/ A revamp of the classic Scorched Earth game.
Oldie but goodie.
Maybe the best RTS game, ever.
Want an overnight lan party game? Pick from the largest maps.
Want a quick, 5-20 minute office lunch game? Pick one of the (many) small maps.
Shooters are good too. Quake 2 will run almost anywhere.
Also, you could go for the one-game over many-lunches type of thing. Any multiplayer strategy game that supports saving. Like Master of Orion 2 (or 3, but 2 was awesome, and 3 was mediocre). Or Civ III play the world. Log on for lunch, play 5-20 turns, then go back to work.
There's also the Age of Empires games; they are quick and fun, as are the Age of Mythologies games.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
http://tantrix.com/
You can play it online or at a table. The table version is better when you're out eating lunch in restaurant.
play go. a 13x13 game should fit in a lunch break.
While not truely multi-player you can set up your own clan once you reach the proper level.
http://www2.kingdomofloathing.com/login.php
Another one to try is Adventure Quest. It's flashed based RPG type game.
http://battleon.com/
. . . with Julie in accounting.
I haven't played in over 3 years, but if there are still servers up, play Subspace. It's free, fast, and fun. If you've never heard of it before, think multiplayer asteroids, only instead of destroying asteroids, you're trying to destroy other ships (kinda like a 2D version of Descent in a way).
That way you can all get on-line at the same time, and socialize using the internet even though your physical seperation is a whopping 5 feet!
--LWM
NetHack. Play online by telnet at nethack.alt.org. You can spectate other people's games and send them messages while they're playing.
Ticket to Ride is a fast lunch board game. It can handle up to 5 players, and you can play it online for free (as long as one of you has a Days of Wonder account that someone got for buying one of their games - that person sets up the game).
Settlers of Catan is a little long to play over lunch, but as long as your boss plays, it's cool, right?
When my brother worked for a summer to clean up his old high school, he and his friend hooked up a Playstation to one of the classroom TVs and played a little MGS every day, eventually beating it. They then incorporated some of Solid Snake's best moves into their work, including trying to sneak into the bathroom without tripping the motion sensors for the lights, and hiding from their boss in boxes ("Huh? What's in the box?").
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google for it - it would meet your requirements well I believe
If you and your friends ever consider buying Nintendo DSs, there are plenty of fun "quick" games for that... Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt can be played from anywhere to five minutes to over an hour and a half (that was the longest amount of time I ever got to play multiplayer MPH:FH; after that, I had to go to class, but I really wanted to keep playing), as well as fantastic puzzle games like Bomberman, Puyo Pop Fever, and Meteos. Plus, non-competitive multiplayer games like Animal Crossing DS and Nintendogs are coming out, as well as more competitive games like Metroid Prime Hunters, Snowboard Kids, as well as the turn-based strategy game Advance Wars DS (w/real time mode), a turn-based version of Age of Empires II, and the real-time Shogun Warriors: The Lost Army (where you select and command troops with your stylus)... and you can stand outside and look cool while playing games and feeling the breeze.
Sure, it's an extra piece of hardware, but most of these games only need one copy of the game to play multiplayer. And, the DS is super sexy and you can play it outside and has a stellar lineup especially when compared to the Competitor Who Shall Not Be Named.
I know I'm being something of a crazed DS evangelist but... hey, it's what I do!
the games usually last about 4-5 minutes each.
My roomate has been really into games such as Cactus Bruce and others such as Zuma etc. Shareware isn't dead, there are tons of little addicting games out there, many which allow you to try for awhile before buying.