Freeware/Abandonware Game Listing

Remove all ads!

What can I say? Aik inspired me. Aik's inspirational like that. I adore Aik. And so on and so forth. Anywho...

Note: In keeping with zee rules, I'm only posting games that are, AFAIK, legally available.

Allegiance: Microsoft's MMO space sim/shooter. Didn't do well enough, was abandoned, picked up by the community, now freely available. Not a persistent MMO anymore, really, but...c'mon, 60 person space battles, included manned capital ships.

X-Com/UFO : If you haven't played it, you should. Even with the decade-old, eyesore graphics. Still superb.

Star Control 2: Ditto above

Over the Reich: Turned based, WWII tactical combat. Airplane tactical combat. As realistic--or not--as you want it to be. Not for everyone, but great if you're into it.

Flight Commander 2: See above, but with modern aircraft (Korea through Desert Storm) and inferior graphics. Again, as (un)realistic as you want.

 

Do you have any freeware RPG's that you can add to the list?

 

Laxius Power is a decent old school RPG that was made recently. Very large in hours of gameplay (something like 150hrs for the first, 100hrs for the second and 200hrs for the third) and is pretty well made for an amatuer game maker.

They can be found here

The guy who made these must also be a fan of the BG series as he uses most of the BG2 portraits in the games (not very common to see them but they are around) and one of the critters in the second game is an image of an ankheg

[ January 07, 2007, 05:41: Message edited by: TrueBlueAussie ]

 

O.K. thanks Aussie! That definately looks interesting. I put the website in "my favorites" and I'll download it and give it a try when I've gotten tired of the games I'm presently playing.

 

To crosspost a few from other threads:

Soldat: http://www.soldat.pl/

2D Liero-esque multiplayer game. Involves lots of shootining, death, and such.

Dark Disciples: http://www.darkdisciples-rpg.com/

Old school CRPG with an emphasis on puzzle solving.

Cloud: http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/

Very artsy and totally original. Dreamy atmosphere.

The Museum of Broken Memories (and others): http://www.jonas-kyratzes.net/news.php

Of those I've played The Museum of Broken Memories and Last Rose in a Desert Garden. They're adventure games with a message, and are games that no one with half a brain could deny being 'art' as well. They're also rather depressing.

N: Way of the Ninja: (Can't find a download link - possible to play online at various sites though.)

A 2D minimalistic platformer which is also very very good.

Noctis: http://anywherebb.com/noctis.html

Space exploration game.

And I'll also second the recommendation for Allegiance. Might post some more later.

 

Continuum/Subspace - 2D spaceship madness since 1996, one of the early MMO-games and still one of the best.

Edit: URL-tags are limited... here is the wiki entry:

Code:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(computer_game)

 

There is a game I find highly addictive called "Little Fighter 2" avaliable for download at the official LF2 hompage:
http://www.lf2.net/

 

Frets On Fire: http://louhi.kempele.fi/~skyostil/uv/fretsonfire/

Guitar Hero for the PC, holding the keyboard like a guitar. Hundreds of songs available for download. Possibly my favourite game.

N (as mentioned above): http://www.harveycartel.org/metanet/n.html

A ninja physics game. Amazing and addictive.

Wesnoth: http://www.wesnoth.org/

Turn-based fantasy strategy. Good to waste an hour on.

Steam Brigade: http://www.pedestrianentertainment.com/

Not so easy to make it seem interesting. Side-scrolling 2-D strategy game where you fly in a balloon. Check the website... it's fun, I promise.

Complete agreement on the X-COM recommendation. Apocalypse is my favourite, although it has to be in turn-based mode.

 

My thanks for recommending Wesnoth. I love the graphics style and it reminds me of the good old days when all games had an indy feel and weren't a big corrupt dollarmill like now. Reminds me of Blackmoon Chronicles (not freeware but should be dirt cheap - it was just after release, I think) from Cryo.

 

Wesnoth is pretty cool.

However, Steam Brigade doesn't belong in this thread - it's not free.

Anacreon: http://www.neurohack.com/anacreon/

A DOS-looking turn based strategy game. Pretty good.

Savage: The Battle for Newerth: http://www.s2games.com/savage/index.php?page=savageindex

I haven't played a lot of this, but it looks quite well made at least. Multiplayer RTS/3rd person shooterish game - reminds me of Allegiance.

Photopia: http://adamcadre.ac/photopia.html

This is another one of those excellent artsy games. I really can't recommend it enough.

Prelude to Darkness: http://www.zero-sum.com/

A hardcore CRPG that has recieved good reviews at RPG Codex. It is however meant to be extremely buggy (and I believe it - got about 10 minutes into it before it froze).

I don't think the download link on the site works, so here's one that does: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=B4OWJFO0

 

Dink Smallwood is a great, fun and humorous RPG. You start out as a farmboy who goes out to explore the world around him. The game is only about 16 MB, but the world that you can explore and adventure in is actually quite large. You can download it from here, and there are mods and add-ons here.

Enjoy!

 

Hehe... I downloaded Dink Smallwood this afternoon and it is very funny. Not bad for a freebee I must say.

 

Are these games truly legal? I wonder if the original Monkey island is there I've heard nothing but good stuff about this game and well... I was two year old in '90 so...

 

@Aikanaro - I downloaded and played The Museum of Broken Memories for a while. Its a very deep game with indeed a message. In fact I can think of few other formats that would portray the kind of message the "artist" wishes to get across, as effectively as that. For now I'm going to leave it unfinished. I think the player has to be in a particular state of mind to properly appreciate the game and I'm not there right now. I am very glad that I gave it a try however and I whole-heartedly agree that it is art as well as a game. Thank you for recommending it.

 

Wait, savage is available for free? I meant to play that, but never got around to it. Guess what I'm downloading now...

I forgot about Ground Control; not the greatest RTS, but it's pretty solid. No base building, no resource management. The AI can be wonky, but you can't beat the price.

And no, you don't get crap mailed to you or anything if you fill out the info they request.

 

Well, most of what has been mentioned is TRULY freeware - the Dink Smallwood was released as free two years after it went out for sale.

Similar for Ground Control - appears Vivendi used this as some marketing for the sequel.

Microsoft with Free Alliegance (name's a bit of a gimme ) was surprising and tempting, but I find it's more a 'flight sim' with a lot of RTS elements, the community surrounding seemed a little insular, though. Personally, I prefer to sim offline, since a moments lag in a FPS merely means you didn't pick off that enemy and he knifed you instead; but a moment's stutter in a game like FA and you might plow your ship into a friendly station, ruining everyone's day.

X-Com aka Enemy Unknown is more abandonware which is ethically vague...

But if you want truly free (and often completently made) games, try Abandonia Reloaded.

One title that I was really surprised with was Freespace 2 - this was yet another sleeper from Interplay (we all know how that feels, don't we? ) that has a very funky clause in its EULA - see here - that makes it a little less dodgy than most abandonware titles; add to which, Volition (the developers) still held the rights to the source code (unlike the rest of the rights grasped in Interplay's dying claws) and released it, permitting people to make FS2_Open - a free, open-source engine that permits people to play FS2 and ALL the player-made mods (both Freespace games came with FRED, a very nice mission editor, which encouraged a lotta 'bonus content')

(I'm a bit of a flight-sim nut; does it show? )

As for RPGs, Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar was released by Origin as another 'marketing gimmick'.

Then, if you wanna go REALLY 'old-school' for RPGs, there's the roguelikes - Rogue/NetHack/Angband and the spin-offs, variants, mods and so on. There are easily thousands of ASCII-based rpg games that run the full gamut from a Diabloesque (Diablo itself is just a roguelike with a graphical facelift ) hack-n-slash to a deep, story-driven game of the level of IE games...

Um...The Secret of Monkey Island and its wonderful offspring would be a little less 'guilt free' - I haven't found any statement by Lucasarts releasing any of the games, but the first two are available over on Abandonia...

 

Freespace 2 is hardly a flight simulator... it is a very nice game though. Especially some of the mods that are available for it.

There would seem to be (with a quick look) a lot of older games on Abandonia Reloaded that, AFAIK, are not (re-)released as freeware.

 

Allegiance doesn't lag. Insane idea maybe - but truly, it doesn't. I'm on dialup - never experienced a single tiny bit of lag - it was built to run smoothly with 56k modems.

A few more recommendations from me - starting to putter out of them though.

Super Columbine Massacre RPG: http://www.columbinegame.com/

Extra super contraversial game - possibly worth a play just for that. This is another of those games which I'd be inclined to call 'art' - though many would contend that. Expect terrible gameplay.

Floe: http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/

By the makers of Cloud - another very artsy game.

 

Thanks AMaster. UFO: enemy unknown rocks! I've been sitting in front of my computer the whole day nailed to my chair! Even forgot to have some lunch.

Ow, my mousehand hurts!

 

There is GTA 2 and two other games here . I recommend GTA 2 if you can download very big files and like 2D games.