Games For Free

There are more so-called ‘free game’ sites out there than you can shake a stick at. Most of these sites are saturated in eye-popping ads and merely offer cut down versions of tiresome platform, puzzle or ‘shoot ‘em up’ titles. Hopefully, the kind of sources and games we’ve tracked down offer a few better options:

http://sourceforge.net/

One cost free way to find decent free games is to mine for them at the leading open source and free download sites. Sourceforge is the place to start, as you get complete downloads and the games are sure to be free.

http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Freeciv is a good example of the type of game hosted at Sourceforge. It’s an empire-building strategy title based on the Civilisation series. The interface isn’t as shiny as recent Real Time Strategy (RTS) titles and the instructions need more than a passing glance. However, scratch beneath the surface and you’ll find plenty of good gameplay.

http://www.kongregate.com/

Kongregate is well known for offering a reasonable standard of free ‘homebrew’ games. The quality isn’t always as good as players would like and some titles are less complete than they could be. Nevertheless, the site has a wide selection of games in all the usual categories, i.e. arcade, platform, shooters, strategy and puzzles.

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/

It’s also possible to get free games with licences or licence keys from sites which offer software freebies. Giveawayoftheday offers a new piece of Windows software for download each day. A link at the top right of the browser window also offers ‘free’ games. (Some are not as ‘free’ as others, so please watch what you click).

Sites that offer promotional downloads can return nothing of value for days or weeks at a time. So you just have to keep visiting until you’re rewarded with a useful application or a half decent game.

http://store.steampowered.com/

Steam isn’t in the business of giving games away and delivers ‘free’ or low cost gaming by another method. The site is packed with demos for most major game titles, has a range of games priced at under £7 or $10 and offers occasional discounts on major titles (which haven’t sold as well as they might). The ‘free’ part comes from the savings made from ‘try before you buy’ demo versions of major titles. You’ll want to go on and buy the complete versions of some titles but the money that went on games that sit idle on the shelf can now be spent on the games you really want.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/bamzooki/zookkit/

The BBC’s CBBC site for youngsters is packed with free games but most of them are programme branded clones of simple arcade or puzzle games. The games promoting programmes aimed at teenagers, e.g. M. I. High, sometimes offer more features but there’s a general lack of substance.

The same broad concerns apply to CBBC’s virtual world for kids, Adventure Rock, which looks good but simply isn’t very entertaining. Which makes us all the happier to have found Bamzooki. Kids over the age of about 8 can become engrossed in designing virtual robots and sending them out to challenge other players’ designs.

http://www.freerealms.com/

Sony’s ‘virtual playground’ sets out to turn free players into paid subscribers and is best avoided by parents who don’t know how to say, “no”. At the same time, there’s plenty on offer without paying for either a full upgrade for extra classes/ quests or ‘station cash’ to buy pets and the like.

In addition to offering a fairly complete children’s roleplaying game set in a sizeable ‘world’, Free Realms is packed with extra glossy minigames including Chess, a Five-A-Side Football/ Soccer game, an excellent Demolition Derby arena and plenty more.

So, Free Realms is free but don’t feed it a credit card number unless you want it to become paid. Having said that, if you have the time and pocket money is on the line, Free Realms is as good a place as any to help a kid to learn to get value for money.

Lecturing a kid on every purchase is unlikely to be useful but discussing purchases and options is going to get them thinking about how they spend their money.

http://www.subtangent.com/

You can purchase a ‘hands on’ copy of the amusing puzzle Rush Hour from Amazon or elsewhere for about £10 or so. At which point you’ll find that the ‘hands on’ version lacks the speed of play which makes the online version entertaining. The ‘hands on’ version can also come across as being a bit ‘candy-coated’ edutainment.

Subtangent’s excellent version of the puzzle costs nothing and lets players move their virtual cars quickly and smoothly. The same site offers a range of other ‘Maths’ orientated games. These aren’t quite as entertaining as Rush Hour but kids who like puzzles will often enjoy some of them, e.g. Broken Calculator and Hexagons.

http://scratch.mit.edu/

MIT’s Scratch lets anyone start to make their own videogames. It works by reducing the programming side to very, very simple ‘slot in’ commands, which ‘slot together’ to make and control basic computer games.

Sure, it takes a bit of time to build a working game but the payoff is massive in terms of the sense of achievement kids feel when they’ve designed a game. The process can be speeded up by using ready-made artwork from licensed sources, e.g. Wikimedia Commons or Treasure.

http://www.cms.playcatan.com/content/view/137/59/lang,en_US/

The Settlers of Catan is one of our top ‘paid for’ recommendations for Christmas, so we were pleased to find that anyone can play online for free. Just head over to the ‘Settlers’ site for a quick tutorial, to play Settlers of Catan online and to download a copy of the Catan Cardgame.

We’ve tried the online version several times and the game works smoothly on screen. The site’s owners would like you to sign up for the expanded version, which includes the Cities and Knights Expansion for more varied gameplay. There are several other options and add-ons that come with a full subscription.

http://www.treasurerpg.com/

There are dozens of ‘free’ tabletop RPGs available for download as PDF files but most are ‘lite’ or paid ‘add-on’ systems. Among those that are genuinely free a significant proportion rely on outdated approaches to gameplay.

Treasure is a completely free, fantasy RPG available for download as a PDF or in html. The rules are quick to learn and easy to play but not at the expense of offering a full RPG. Treasure can be played with text and/ or graphics representing all individuals, actions, items and events. To make it easier to start using graphics the site’s downloads include 500+ licensed and editable vector graphics.