Slashdot Mirror
What Are The Best Free Games Online?
almostdead writes "CNET has just put up a story about what it thinks are the best online flash games of all time. These include titles like Line Rider, Bejeweled, Desktop Tower Defense and Portal, all of which I enjoy playing a lot. But my thirst for free games is peaking at the moment, probably due to an incredibly boring job and lack of imagination. Can you suggest any more good free games online?" Two words: Puzzle Pirates.
http://www.addictinggames.com/kittencannon.html
Dwarf Fortress has been a decent time waster for offline play (great for airplane rides as it turns out).
:)
For an online flash game I can't believe they left out Gold Miner, one of my favorite turn-brain-off-and-play flash games of all time. Great for those long corporate meetings...shhhhh.
The flash game can be completed in a single sitting quite easily. If you quit it and come back later then it allows you to skip to the last level you were on, which is as much saving as I cared about (I don't remember if it keeps any kind of score for you). Definitely a fun game, but not much replay value.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
http://www.orisinal.com/
Cutest amongst the cute.
http://www.adultswim.com/games/ninebillion/index.html
Hapland is one of my favorites. Not abundantly popular, but it makes for a really good think.
http://www.foon.co.uk/farcade/hapland/
Also... If you're on slashdot, you've probably already heard of Notpron
If you haven't, you'll be unproductive for the next 16 hours, at which point you'll be stumped on level 21.
I love me some fl0w.
http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/
There is a war going on for your mind.
Phosphor. a shockwave based FPS. yes, that's right, an FPS. pretty good graphics too.
The flash version doesn't do justice at all to the real Orange Box version. Plus it's only $19.99 for Portal standalone.
the Motherload! Great game. You dig with a miner unit, get money, upgrade and then dig deeper and deeper for the big scores. I wasted hours playing that game.
import system.cool.Sig;
I've been playing a fair bit of OpenArena:
http://openarena.ws/?about
Open sourced Quake III code with new models and textures and whatnot.
Battle for Wesnoth is a good networked turn-based strategy game, my girlfriend likes it too.
http://www.wesnoth.org/
Zombies is a fun single player game that's open source (Windows and Mac only):
http://www.codenautics.com/zombies/
For anyone who liked Tron, there's a maddeningly difficult game called Armagetron Advanced that lets you race the bikes:
http://www.armagetronad.net/
There's a good list of open source games for windows here:
http://osswin.sourceforge.net/games.html
And a big list of general open source games over on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_games
They're not Flash games, but they're Free.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
for good old fassioned runescape (.com) cant beat a free MMO that plays in the browser with half decent graphics.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Some of the best free games online are still MUDs. Like microbrews in an era of WoWeiser the King of MMORPBeers, they're capable of catering to specialized tastes in ways a game meant for the masses (for its strengths) just can't.
Granted, not Flash games. There's something of a disconnect between the title of TFA and the title of the Slashdot story, here.
Battle for Wesnoth is a turn-based strategy game; raise armies and fight battles. Play solo campaigns where you can advance your troops' skills, or play short battles against other players online. http://www.wesnoth.org/
Freeciv is a Civilization clone, also single player or multiplayer online. http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
And if you're willing to go really old-school, nethack is always available; the annual tournament is ongoing in the month of November. Current standings at http://nethack.devnull.net/tournament/scoreboard.shtml or enter for free at http://nethack.devnull.net/tournament/howitworks.shtml ; you can always telnet to nethack.alt.org to play or download from http://www.nethack.org/
There are all kinds of trophies for smaller achievements, so first-time players can hope to get something but it's still competitive for experienced players--I pulled off 6 ascensions in a row at the June tournament and didn't make the top 3 for most consecutive, so the level of play is quite high.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
I just moved to a new city - from Stockholm, Sweden to Phoenix, Arizona, so Ive had a lot of free time on my hands and much of that has gone to looking for good, free games. I havent limited this to only flash, obviously. Beggars cant be choosers.
But here are some I found that were very addicting!
(flash)
Motherload
http://www.miniclip.com/games/motherload/en/
A game where youre a miner on a mars colony. Deeper you go, the more dangerous, but the more valuable the gems. Upgrades and planning ahead are really important. Actually takes the better part of the day to beat, and it incorporates a save function.
(flash)
Aqua Energizer
http://www.miniclip.com/games/aqua-energizer/en/
Really addicting puzzle/maze game.
I dont like straying from the subject, but usually we are limited to buggy beta-type games when the pricetag is $0.
It may be interesting for a lot of people to know that Rockstar has released Grand Theft Auto (1) to the public, free of charge
http://www.rockstargames.com/classics/ (download link). The good people at Virgin Interactive have also released Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn to the public, also free of charge: http://megagames.com/news/html/freegames/commandandconquertiberiandawn.shtml (download link).
These are some great classic titles that are all worth being played again!
That is all.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Great for a lonely/drunk Friday evening, when complex games are too mentally exhausting.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
May I humbly suggest a game which has withstood the tests of time and remained a vibrant growing community of players, uses commonly available materials and requires very little resources to play and study? I speak of the oriental game of Go (or baduk or weiqi, depending on where you are from).
There are free java clients (such as KGS) you can download and play any of the thousands of constantly online players. I also work on an open source server to allow people to play Go as a turn based game, similar to old chess-by-mail setups but adapted for the internet, which is optimized for display on mobile phones such as the iPhone.
Go takes little time to learn the rules, but can be a lifelong pursuit. It costs almost nothing to play other amateurs, and I love to play people at my server, David's Go Dojo. Feel free to come and register for an account and start playing a few games, or download KGS and get access to thousands and thousands more players around the world.
Play here: http://go.intellectualpirate.com/
iShudan project page: http://code.google.com/p/ishudan
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
It uses OpenGL, so it needs to be able to talk directly to your video card.
That said, the code is signed, so it should be safe. And if it isn't safe... you know who to sue.
The purpose of the article is Flash Games in specific. So your examples are neither here nor there. Personally, I'm amazed that no one has mentioned Newgrounds Rumble, one of the best brawlers of all time! It was one of the highest rated games over on Newgrounds, and hung around for AGES. More recently, it was ported to WiiCade so that you could play against your friends on the WiiMote controller. (Which is a lot more fun than trying to share a keyboard, let me tell you.)
Actually, I should probably expand on that a bit more. One of the nice things about the Wii is that you can have multiplayer flash games. Games like Wiimote Wars 2 and Slipstream are simply amazing when you get the chance to play against your friends and family members. Much, much, much better than playing single-player games. Which is good, because there isn't much in the way of online-multiplayer flash games.
Of course (DISCLAIMER!), I both have a family to play these games with and I have connections to WiiCade. So feel free to take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Don't miss Frozen Bubble. It also run on my Symbian S60 3rd edition phone (Nokia N73).
http://www.frozen-bubble.org/
http://www.planarity.net/
So simple, and yet so addicting...
Yes, I'm rather biased...but...
BZFlag is still a great on-line game.
It's a real-time strategy first-person shoot-em-up action game... kinda like playing chess .. with tanks .. in a slow motion FPS style.
Cheers!
Sean
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
It might look like it at first, but while it does share many similarities with the genre, it's not a roguelike game. It's a sandbox-style kingdom-building game of absolutely incredible complexity. They just released a huge update about a month ago that gave your digging a z-axis and, combined with a fluid dynamics engine, you can do some pretty hilarious things to defend your fortress.
And to get you started, check out the "my first fortress" and other starting guides in the game wiki:
http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Main_Page
Oh, sure, it's a bit of shameless self-promotion, but I encourage anyone who enjoys turn-based pseudo-RPGs like LORD or KoL to check it out. It's a free casual RPG I'm writing in my spare time, at least in part as an exercise in stretching what's possible to do with PHP and AJAX. So... maybe not a "flash game" per se, but fits the general theme of casual games one can play over their lunch. ;)
Now go kill some slimes! http://www.pseudoquest.com/
That green slime had it coming.
http://www.corwin.ca/gridlock/...
Would be addictive if there were more than 40 levels.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
If you like Risk, go to . Highly addictive, lots of play variation possibilities. Not Flash, but DHTML/AJAX (even better). Good playability.