Great Games To Put On a Free PC?

Lumpy writes "I am giving several new PC's to a local charity that will be giving them to needy kids this Xmas. They are not powerful, basically baseline Dells that have Intel graphics and Celeron, but more than enough to do homework and other studies on. They are going out with XP on them, an Ubuntu CD, and a bunch of OSS software like OO.o and the others. I would like to include some games for the kids. Strategy, fun, etc. Great freeware games that are fun to play. What would be the best games that a 13-16 year old will like to play that are free and legal to give away, and will run on this lower-end hardware?"

Comments

Battle for Wesnoth

[javilon]

http://www.wesnoth.org/

Re:Battle for Wesnoth

[stoolpigeon]

Yep - great game in a format a lot of teen gamers will already know. I love playing it and the ability to download new scenarios and make your own is pretty cool. It is very well done - and a lot of fun.

Re:Battle for Wesnoth

[ShieldW0lf]

Wesnoth is a good one.

Might also look into Teeworlds, World of Padman TORCS, Neverball and OpenArena.

Re:Battle for Wesnoth

[pm_rat_poison]

Pingus Lemmings clone with penguins!

Re:Battle for Wesnoth

[xgr3gx]

Also Urban Terror (like Counter-Strike) urbanterror.net

Re:Battle for Wesnoth

[TheRaven64]

A great game, very polished (except for the spelling in the cutscenes). Why not link to this list which contains Wesnoth and a lot of others. When I'm bored, I visit this list and pick one I've not tried yet.

Re:Battle for Wesnoth

[wrecked]

If you like Urban Terror, you'll also like True Combat Elite, a spec-ops/terrorist tactical shooter based on the Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory engine. The pace is slower, with the emphasis on stealth. Aiming is by iron-sights or scopes only; there are no crosshairs.

On the subject of freeware, open source and Free games, I wonder why no one checks Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freeware_games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabetical_list_of_open_source_games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_games_released_as_freeware

FreeCiv

[WiiVault]

its a great choice and will run on almost anything.

Scorched earth

[genner]

The greatest game that's less than a meg. http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/game/144

Re:Scorched earth

[whtmarker]

It is not illegal to download shareware. It has been shareware since 1991.

Re:Scorched earth

[HyperQuantum]

Atomic Tanks is a FOSS clone of Scorched Earch: http://atanks.sourceforge.net/

Frozen Bubble

[TheRealMindChild]

Frozen Bubble

Great for all ages and skill level

Re:Frozen Bubble

[Hatta]

I'll put this here, since these are kind of arcadey games.

ABA games has a number of free arcade shooters that are tons of fun to play. Most of them are available in Debian's repository, so they should be available on Ubuntu too. You can get windows binaries at that link. In particular, check out rRootage, Torus Trooper, and Tumiki Fighters. But they're all excellent games.

Freeciv

[Calmiche]

FreeCiv is a freeware version of Civilization that I still play. They have linux and windows releases.

http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Download#Windows_Packages

Here's a link..

[slummy]

OSSWin Games List

Take a look at the Platform and First Person Shooter games.

Couple ideas...

[JMZero]

Ur-Quan Masters (Star Control II, but free)

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (great role-based strategic shooter, inexplicably free)

Re:Armagetron

[Anthony_Cargile]

Oops, somehow the link got messed up - http://armagetron.sourceforge.net/.

Urquan Masters/Star Control 2

[Robbat2]

Very worthwhile, for both the strategy and melee modes.

Urban Terror

[EmperorOfCanada]

Urban Terror is basically counter strike. It is based on the Quake III engine. I was surprised that it was both free and very well done. Available for windows, mac, and Linux. Lots of servers hosting games with lots of players. Free download http://www.urbanterror.net/news.php

Cave Story

[SeePage87]

Great game with cute robots. Can't go wrong.

Plenty of older games have been release as freewar

[Daravon]

I seem to remember there being quite a number of older titles released as freeware. Older iD titles, some of the earlier GTA titles, Tribes 1/2. With the number of mods available just for Quake 3, there will be tons of playtime just in one title. Red Alert was also released free, if you want to include some variety (as opposed to endless FPS games).

There are also current (ish) titles that might run on them. IIRC, Enemy Territory has a Linux port as does America's Army.

There's also the free games usually available for Linux that have Windows ports, such as FreeCiv.

Re:Nintendo Emulator

[tekiegreg]

While a great idea, I'm sure "legal" is a requirement as well, so unless he's willing to buy licenses for these hundreds of games, forget it :-/

Re:public domain

[jawtheshark]

old games that are now in the public domain

and then...

Maniac Mansion, Dune 2, Battle Chess, Secret of Monkey Island,

You are dreaming right? None of those are in public domain, not with copyright laws 90 years after death of the creator. They're abandonware at best, and that most certainly isn't legal.

I though of fl0w and Plasma Pong. However Plasma Pong seems to be down :-(

Re:Nintendo Emulator

[maxume]

Never mind willing to buy, no one is selling.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Angband

[dogmatixpsych]

Angband http://rephial.org/ is all the kids will ever need. Just kidding, but it is an awesome game if kids get past the fast that it is ASCII character-based.

A Few of my Favorites

[Jurph]

FreeCiv, a freeware implementation of the Civ and Civ II rules - http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Dwarf Fortress is a fantastically complex game, like a cross between SimCity, NetHack, and Oregon Trail - http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Main_Page

NetHack is a classic dungeon crawler with ASCII graphics - http://www.nethack.org/

Command & Conquer is an old but awesome RTS, now available for free from EA - http://www.commandandconquer.com/intel/default.aspx?id=62#NewsMain

Abandonware is murky but you can find install files for many abandonware titles online as well.

Freeciv is non-intuitive. Here are some others.

[Khopesh]

As much as I love playing Freeciv, I worry that it's not quite ready for people who have never played either it or some other version of Civilization. It is not at all intuitive, and it's not engaging to somebody who isn't already a known quantity at the whole getting sucked into the game thing.

How about OpenArena (a.k.a. Quake III) or Extreme Tux Racer? TetriNET/Blocktrix, a good multi-player Tetris game, is also a winner. Finally, there's a really good list of "open source" games over on Wikipedia.

GameTap

[Belial6]

Install the GameTap client. While they have a pay service. They also have 150 free games. These are real commercial games including:

Tomb Raider Legend
Metal Slug 2
Bubble Bobble
Sensible Soccer 2006
King of Fighters '96
Robotron 2084
Elevator Action
Burger Time
Commandos 3
Warlords Battlecry III
Cannon Fodder
Hitman
More...

While the pay part of the service is worth the money, the free part has a suprisingly high number and quality of available games.

Re:Why noone mentioned some of the classical games

[dslbrian]

For fans of the board game Settlers of Catan, there is a similar online version which is quite nice:

Sea3D (here are some screenshots)

That one is a bit old, but stable (it is similar to Settlers plus the seafarer expansion), and the S3D Connector website can match up players.

The newer version in devel is Cities Online (similar to cities and knights expansion).

Those are pretty good board games.

Simon Tatham's Puzzle Pack

[wizzahd]

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/

'Net' is my favorite puzzle in the set, but there are 27 different puzzle games total including Mastermind, Minesweeper, a number sliding puzzle, and Sudoku.

Available for PC, Mac, Linux, and Palm.

Re:Why noone mentioned some of the classical games

[Enderandrew]

Micropolis is the official SimCity for Linux I do believe, but Lincity-NG is an even better clone more akin to SimCity 2000.

Re:Why noone mentioned some of the classical games

[hairyfeet]

And here is a list of FPS and MMOs. While you didn't list what kind of Intel graphics chip it shouldn't take you very long to pick a few out of these lists that will work. Basically anything pre 2003 should work with a 915. I haven't tried the newer GMA chips but I heard they are even better. Personally I like any of the free FPSs based on the Quake engine myself. You just can't go wrong with a little Quake style blasting to help relieve that schoolwork stress ;-)