I have been writing about free-ish and freeware games since 2006 and playing them since the 8-bit era and, well, I decided that compiling (and maintaining/updating) a list of the very best would be a mighty fine idea. Especially if it focused on games that never required you to pay anything. Sooo... here it is then:
[Latest update: 14 September 2015]
Action:
The Suffering: Formerly commercial, distinctly shocking and always fun. Also developed by the aptly named Surreal Software.
Hydorah: Locomalito's wondrous and taxing shmup; it should have come in a cabinet...
The Cat That Got The Milk: Navigating Kandinsky requires decent reflexes...
Privates: In which excellently rendered, condom wearing soldiers battle those pesky STDs.
Tribly: Art of Theft: Yahtzee's excellently stealthy steal-'em-up.
Fragment: Be stealthy while shattering stuff in a visually glorious offering.
Seiklus: An early indie classic and a wonderful exploration action-adventure.
Scavenger: In its shiny NES-like graphical armour it is simply dashing. Also sports jetpacks and cave (or, well, cave-like) environments.
Paradise Lost: Yes, the same.
Level 2 The Virus Master: Heavy metal shmup fun!
The Ur-Quan Masters: Essentially they undying (not undead) Star Control 2 and thus an amazing action, strategy, exploration, RPG mega-game.
Hide And Seek: Scaaaaaaaaaaaary. Boo!
Deadbolt: Got murder those zombies in this brilliant stealth-and-shoot-'em-up!
Adventure:
The Fabulous Screech: Is fabulous.
The Last Door: Excellent series of highly stylized, deeply atmospheric, well designed and Lovecraft-inspired point-and clickers.
Mudlarks: Supernatural secrets help sustain digitized friendships and create lovely point-and-click mysteries.
Heroine's Quest: The definitive re-imagining of Sierra's Quest for Glory complete with huge, detailed fantasy tracts of land.
Annie Android: Automated Affection: AGS cartoon adventure anyone? It's got a hot mailbot in it, you know.
Sarien.net: Not a game per se, but rather a way to enjoy some classic Sierra adventures online and in a lovably silly multiplayer environment. Larry and Space Quest should be the first ones to try.
Nanobots: Unique point-and-click adventure sporting lovable robots and innovative mechanics.
Space Quest - Vohaul Strikes Back: A fan sequel of sorts and the first full-length Space Quest adventure in over a decade.
^_^: For it silly and crafted by a Ben.
Space Quest: Decisions of the Elders: Over 30 rooms of extensive Roger Wilco shenanigans.
Warthogs: People that not necessarily hate but, well, dislike Harry Potter and love adventure games should probably play this little gem. It's a short, sweet, pixelated, impressively crafted and occasionally sarcastic.
The Book of Living Magic: A wondrous, excellently written, funny and touching offering by Jonas Kyratzes that comes complete with the whimsical art of Verena Kyratzes.
A Postcard from Afthonia: It's by team Kyratzes. You love it already.
The Infinite Ocean: No, I'm not tired of Kyratzes' games. This is a sci-fi one and it's excellent.
The Snakes of Avalon: Takes place in a pub, is smart, funny and revels in alcohol-induced hallucinations.
The Curfew: Dystopian, oppressive and written by Kieron Gillen. Oh, and the FMV in it is simply impressive.
Eternally Us: Point-and-click to love, life and friendship.
Digital: A Love Story: Enter the world of the '80s BBS in this wonderful and actually unique adventure game.
What Linus Bruckman Sees When His Eyes Are Closed: The only adventure game featuring two stories for you to simultaneously enjoy. A triumph of innovation that sadly lacks in the guns department, but makes up for it with its taxing puzzles and super secret ending.
Dead Cyborg: Episodic, fisrt-person, point-and-click adventures in SPACE.
Egress - The Test of STS-417: Horror in outer space in a stunningly illustrated point-and-clicker.
The Rebirth / The Reaper: Two games sharing at least one in-game painting; also, two excellent, short adventures by Ben Chandler and Francisco Gonazlez.
Maniac Mansion Deluxe: Truly excellent remake of Ron Gilbert's classic by the now defunct LucasFan Games.
Forge: Gorgeous, fanmade sequel to Loom.
Arcade:
The Button Affair: More stylish than a particularly stylish thing and an endless runner.
Frets on Fire: The indie version of Guitar Hero (or indeed Rock Band) that sports a ton of available content.
Snow Tale: Inspired by Snow Bros but actually original; wouldn't look out of place in an early 90s arcade.
Forget Me Not: Vaguely reminiscent of Pac-Man, this thing offer quite a bit of shooting and a ton of apparently hand-picked colours.
Maldita Castilla: An utterly stunning arcade adventure by Locomalito.
Dino Quake: Fantastic web-base take on the classic SnowBros formula with some of the chunkiest pixels you have ever seen.
Powerglove: Because the C64 will never die.
Interactive Fiction:
Blue Lacuna: The evolution of interactive fiction.
Dead Like Ants: Literary fun with insects.
Masters of Constantinople: Text away in a tale of intrigue, mystery and Byzantine betrayals while the Empire crumbles and knowledge has to be preserved.
Arcadia - pastoral tale: Play it for its rich setting, subtly subversive ideas, whimsical creatures and the sheer quality and quantity of its words.
Behind Closed Doors 5: The latest of the famous Zenobi series of quirky text-adventures, as always sporting a Balrog.
Calm: No genre can avoid the walking dead.
Cryptozookeeper: A huge, polished, well-written and lavishly illustrated piece of interactive fiction filled with weird animals and sporting tons of characters, a lovely soundtrack, odd visuals and quite a bit of splatterpunk-iness.
Fragile Shells: Escape the room; in space.
Zombies & Elephants: Everything can be mixed with everything else if you know how to write. And Verena Kyratzes does.
Love, Hate and the Mysterious Ocean: Imagine if you will a great tower in the ocean. Imagine zeppelins flying around it. Imagine odd scholars and weird language. Now play this.
Weird City Interloper: Unique dialog-based exploration and a wonderfully demented city to explore.
Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom: Filled with digital feelies this lost text-adventure that never really existed will let you parley with and regard thing in the Viraxian Empire.
The People's Glorious Text Adventure: In Soviet Russia texts adventure YOU!
Rogue of the Multiverse: New mechanics, a fanstastic sci-fi setting and excellent writing by Pacian.
Poizoned Mind: Adult, text heavy, hilarious and smart like a smart thing.
Pac-Txt: Pac-Man meets Zork and things get silly and almost fun.
The Play: Wonderful, polished choose-your-own adventure kind of interactive fiction by Deirdra Kiai in which you manage them loony acting people.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: By the great Douglas Adams and Infocom, all polished up and made available for free. Hilarious and downright frustrating.
Facade: The next step in AI development or the evolution of the Sims and cyber-voyeurs? No matter what you think, you really have a look at this innovative almost-gamy piece of software.
Platformers:
Spelunky: One of the greatest games ever. Ever! Also what Rick Dangerous should have been.
Poacher: Metroidvania done by wise game critic and accomplished adventure designer Yahtzee and done right. Also, with a healthy doses of humour and bunnies.
Alphaland: This platformer has the best plot ever seen in a platformer. Also sports some pretty platformy platforms.
Tiny Barbarian: Difficult and short, but this fantasy themed run-and-hack game offers some beautiful pixel graphics, amazing animations and a lovely chiptune soundtrack.
L'Abbaye des Morts: Fantastic production that comes close to besting Jet Set Willy.
Phenomenon 32: Much more than a simple platformer, Phenomenon 32 is a huge, black and white, fully voice acted game with an added strategic layer.
Treasure Adventure Game: Platforms set in a huge open world.
Cave Story: A rather cute indie monument.
La Mulana: Freeware metroidvania straight from 2005 with a distinct MSX aesthetic.
Volcosis: A gloriously confusing platformer that's both 2D and 3D.
Mibibli's Quest: Weird, wonderful and wery, wery big.
Tobias and the Dark Scepters: 13 years in the making with the documentary to prove this.
Retro Remakes:
Gods Deluxe: A remake of the brutal Bitmap Bros fighting platformer.
Beats of Rage: Always thought that Streets of Rage can't get any better, didn't you? Well, think again.
Thrust Extreme: With its lovely entourage of arcadey and neon lighted retro remakes. Obvious highlight said reimagining of Thrust.
Space Quest II - Vohaul's Revenge: Sierra's brutal yet funny sci-fi adventure has never looked better.
King's Quest III Redux: You know you want it; I knew I had to review it.
Ant Attack (ZX81): because nobody, really, expected this.
Hurrican = Turrican
SWIV Decimation: One of the best shmups for the Amiga brilliantly remade.
Oolite: Amazing and highly modular remake of classic space exploration game Elite.
Planet M.U.L.E.: Based on the C64 multiplayer strategic classic, this is a fantastic race for space colonization with beautifully remade graphics and sounds.
Typhoon 2001: An excellent Tempest remake.
Abadia Del Crimen Remake: The Name of the Rose inspired classic, classically remade.
OnEscapee: Obviously inspired by Another World, this is classic arcade-adventure gaming at its best and appropriately a remake/update of an Amiga game now released as freeware. Smart puzzles, difficult fighting scenes, amazing animation and some brilliant art are the chief reasons you have to download it.
RPGs:
Barkley, Shut Up & Jam: Gaiden: A surreal, vast, funny and quite frankly excellent CRPG of sorts.
SanctuaryRPG: Demented ascii questing against kobolds and computer terminals.
Dark Disciples 2: Traditional, fantasy RPG-ing from a top-down perspective.
UnReal World RPG (URW): Incredibly deep and detailed rogue-like graphical RPG that's almost accessible be mere mortals and explores a low-fantasy version of the European Far North.
Lands of Lorez: Because pixelating a dungeon crawler is a very wise thing to do; all unnameable horrors get -1 eyes.
Runesword II: A CRPG designed to appeal to us pen & paper RPGers. The thing features turn-based strategic combat, 50+ skills, races and several full-length adventures & worlds.
Zangband: One of the best and most beautiful roguelikes around.
The Ruins of Cawdor: Sierra's final installment in their online RPG series has now been patched, upgraded, generally messed around with, turned into a single player hack 'n' slash dungeon romp for modern PCs.
86856527: Not exactly an RPG, but it sure is deep, wonderful and confusing.
Avant-garde: A different kind of roleplaying, but not the one involving whips. Lovers of 19th century art will, uhm, love it.
Deepfall Dungeon: It's quite a bit like Eye of the Beholder.
As Was Foretold: Train your hero, be sadistic and evil, yet save the world.
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall: The same.
Maleus Goblinficarium: Dice-based combat of the endless variety. A brilliant rogue-like-like (of sorts and swords)
Shooters:
The Marathon Trilogy: Top quality FPS offerings from the era before HALO and after the Mac was invented. Playable on everything with a keyboard.
Duke Nukem 2.5: Much better than forever.
Traitor: A shmup with an excellently written plot and a huge world to explore. Utterly unique.
Wing Commander Saga: Shooting with a bit of simulation thrown in and it's all happening in the Wing Commander universe.
Left 4k Dead: Just like Valve's zombie shooter only vastly different and in a mere 4kb.
GUN GODZ: Gangster rap on Venus shooting by Vlambeer.
Cube 2 Sauerbraten: It's got its own graphics and physics engine and looks all shiny and lovely. A technically impressive FPS and one that seems to have been created with oldschool gamers in mind. Fast and simple both in single and in multi-player mode.
Elders of Madness: A horizontal shmup sporting a sanity mechanic? Why, yes, thank you. Even Lovecraft would have probably appreciated this one.
8bit Killer: An aesthetically brilliant and quite challenging take on the classic FPS formula.
Strategy:
Naked War: The brilliant two-player strategy game the Pickford Brothers developed finally got itself a free play mode.
UFO Alien Invasion: Deeply tactical and inspired by the classic X-COM / UFO series.
American Dream: Sort of a life management sim, only this time around you'll be able to buy an in-game ZX Spectrum.
Battle for Wesnoth: Ever evolving turn-based fantasy fun in 16 glorious bits.
Dwarf Fortress: You simply cannot ask for a deeper gaming experience than this. Difficult to grasp, impossible to master, yet a true, procedural masterpiece.
FreeCiv: Remember Civilization? Well, FreeCiv isn't as polished, looks dated and relatively simple, but it's free and quite excellent. And it is Civ (FreeCiv, but still...).
Twitchy Thrones: Very simply real time strategy ludum dare thing I simply cannot put down. Well, metaphorically.
Compact Conflict: Incredibly addictive, abstract turn based fantasy that proves how easy it is to cram a glorious board game in 13k.
Unique/Experimental Stuff:
Gravity Bone: A rather more novel use of that ageing Q3 engine. Brilliant, beautiful and innovative.
Masq: An interactive story for grown-ups.
Enviro-Bear 2000: The outrageous winner of the TIG Source Cockpit competition and the only game to ever let you play as a bear.
Unmanned: Thoughtprovoking, wildly innovative and humane.
Oiche Mhaith: By Terry Cavanagh and Increpare.
At A Distance: Another utterly unique game by Terry Cavanagh; ideal if you live in an expo centre.
You Shall Know The Truth: Politics, Wikileaks, Surrealism.
Leaky World: Molleindustria managed to turn political theory into game mechanics.
Liberal Crime Squad: Because satire cannot fit into genres.
Caesar's Day Off: Properly funny. Two thumbs up. And a lion.
Will You Ever Return Trilogy: Beyond bizarre and at times delightfully unsettling.
Opera Omnia: Still waiting for someone to explain this to me.
Experiment 12: By Terry Cavanagh, Jack King-Spooner, Ian Snyder, Zaratustra, Richard Perrin, Michael Brough, Robert Yang, Alan Hazelden, Benn Powell, Jasper Byrne, Jake Clover and TheBlackMask.
Maze Walkthrough: Walk through (well known) sci-fi corridors. Get lost. Repeat.
Space Gardener: Because digging in space is as relaxing as watching a flower grow.
Simulation:
Orbiter 2010: The most realistic and cost-effective of exploring space available to the modern gentleman. Also works with ladies.
ICBM: A wonderful '90s game set in the '80s and promptly released in 2015. Nuclear war has never been this pixelated.
An American Dream: Well, it does simulate stuff and is a game by Terry Cavanagh.
Sweatshop: Food for thought.
Every Day The Same Dream: The ultimate and utterly depressing life sim.
trAInspotted: This, reader, is how you program trains. Seriously.
Love Hotel: Simulating a dream job with chunky pixels.
Atom Smasher: Making atoms collide is a ridiculously involved affair apparently. Oddly enjoyable too. And with lovely graphics!
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