Free Games while in isolation: both for just you and with friends!

Exposure

Exposure

Monarch of XCOM
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As more and more of the world ends up going on lockdown or otherwise shutting down non-essential services, some companies have decided to put up some of their older (or sometimes newer) catalogue of games up for free grabs during this time. We do normally have other threads about this on a general basis, but we felt that having a dedicated thread for free games coming out during this time in the world (or are just free in other ways normally and might be something new for people to try) would work out better for visibility.

And without further ado (and some shameless perusing of ResetEra's free games thread to make sure I haven't missed anything recently):

Fully Free Games Partially Free Games F2P Normally
  • (PC, uPlay exclusive, free to grab until April 3)
    Genre: platformer, supports up to 4 player co-op

    www.epicgames.com

    World War Z Aftermath | Download and Buy Today - Epic Games Store

    Download and play World War Z Aftermath at the Epic Games Store. Check for platform availability and price!
    www.epicgames.com www.epicgames.com
    (PC, Epic Game Store Exclusive, free to grab until April 2)
    Genre: the closest thing to a Left 4 Dead sequel we'll ever get (that also won't be VR only). Supports up to 4 players in co-op, features crossplay with Xbox (PS4 is planned later on)

    Tormentor x Punisher

    Everything in Tormentor❌Punisher can be killed in one hit, from bosses to yourself. Bosses conjure traps to make the arena hellish. Demons adjust to your play style and punish you. Perform combos on enemies and gain cool upgrades. Reload your machine gun by firing your shotgun. Let's do this!
    www.epicgames.com www.epicgames.com

    (PC, Epic Game Store Exclusive, free to grab until April 2)
    Genre: twin stick shooter

    www.epicgames.com

    Figment | Download and Buy Today - Epic Games Store

    Download and play Figment at the Epic Games Store. Check for platform availability and price!
    www.epicgames.com www.epicgames.com

    (PC, Epic Game Store Exclusive, free to grab until April 2)
    Genre: action adventure



    (PC, Steam, free to grab until March 30)
    Genre: digital board game

    store.ubi.com

    Buy Child of Light for PC - A fairytale inspired RPG

    The kingdom of Lemuria is in despair The Black Queen has stolen the Sun, the Moon and the Stars. You play as Aurora, a young princess with a pure heart whose soul is brought to the kingdom of Lemuria. Embark on a quest to recapture the three sources of light, defeat the Black Queen and restore...
    store.ubi.com store.ubi.com
    (PC, uPlay exclusive, free to grab until April 11)
    Genre: platformer



    (PC, Steam, free to grab until March 31)
    Genre: shooter, Quake-inspired from what I've heard

    (PC, DRM-free, unknown end dates)
    Genre: this is basically a grabbag of various games hosted on itch.io, so expect them to run the gamut from relatively short prototypes to surprisingly developed games



    (PC, Steam, free to grab until April 11th)
    Genre: it's a couch party game, although I have heard some people managed to make it work with streaming.


  • (PC on Steam, PS4, XBOX, first episode is forever free to play)
    Genre: episodic adventure (puzzle and conversation oriented)

    rb-d2.itch.io

    Project Wingman Alpha by RB-D2

    3D Arcade Flight Sim Action Game
    rb-d2.itch.io rb-d2.itch.io
    (PC DRM-free, demo for game currently still in development)
    Genre: indie Ace Combat. Demo contains a basic "conquest" mode and three basic missions, so if you can't afford Ace Combat 7 or just want to see someone else's different take on the genre, you can definitely get some hours out of this.

    (PC on uPlay/Epic Game Store, PS4, Xbox, 6 hour trial + can play freely with friends who do own the game)
    Genre: tactical shooter that just had a recent update so you can make sure it always feels like a tactical shooter. :V
    Supports up to 4 player co-op, does not feature bots if you were used to that from the previous game.

    freetrial.finalfantasyxiv.com

    Play FINAL FANTASY XIV's Free Trial

    Become the Warrior of Light, and fight to deliver the realm from certain destruction. Play the Free Trial up to level 70 for FREE with no restriction on playtime!
    freetrial.finalfantasyxiv.com freetrial.finalfantasyxiv.com
    (PC on Steam and standalone client, PS4)
    Genre: MMO. Trial lets you play a character up to level 35 without needing to pay for the game or for a subscription.
    WARNING: Square Enix puts a weird limitation on playing the trial - once you subscribed to the game for any period, you can no longer play the game with the trial, even if your character is still under the trial level cap.

  • (PC on Steam, Xbox, PS4, Nintendo Switch)
    Genre: it's a Battle Royale that was basically ahead of its time on casualizing the genre, including bot support for newbs and low skill level players along with other mechanics to make it have an "easier" entry. Unfortunately it was halfway through doing this when Apex Legends came out early 2019 and murdered its chances of fully recovering.
    On the plus side it's managing to slowly recover some players a year afterwards and honestly it's a game I always felt bad for not having the chance to try redeeming itself from its earlier rocky launch. Supports solos, duos, and full 4 player squads.

    Apex Legends
    (PC on Origin, Xbox, PS4)
    Genre: the aforementioned Battle Royale that killed Realm Royale, I've put 400+ hours into this game if you want to know my personal thoughts on it as a shooter and how well it does the battle royale thing, even if it makes balancing missteps from patch to patch. Game modes are generally trios only, though it has matchmaking if you're going solo/with one friend.

    (PC on Battle.net, Xbox, PS4)
    Genre: Call of Duty's latest take on Battle Royale, this time with keeping things closer to the standard CoD formula compared to Black Ops 4's Blackout mode. It's honestly more fun than I thought it would be, but it's also weirdly way more frustrating to me at times. Supports solos and trios.
    WARNING: this game is an 80GB minimum download on all platforms.

    Destiny 2 on Steam
    (PC on Steam, Xbox, PS4)
    Genre: it's the sequel to the online looter shooter that started the whole trend off. You get a few PVE campaigns, raids, and many PVP modes to start with as a completely new player.
    Normal PvE generally supports up to 3 players, Special PVE and PVP can range from 4 to 6 players.
    NOTE: I would heavily recommend looking up the SV/SBer clan discord and looking for help and tips from there, the current new player tutorial experience of Destiny 2 is...not great.

    Warframe on Steam
    (PC on Steam, Xbox, PS4, Switch)
    Genre: it's like an online looter shooter except you're space ninjas that can be grossly overpowered and murder through swaths of the opposition! Although it may not feel like that at times depending on how DE has felt about your favourite type of weapon or warframe or...well, you get the point. Generally has 4 player co-op support.

    Home | The Lord of the Rings Online

    The Lord of the Rings Online
    www.lotro.com www.lotro.com
    (PC on Steam or standalone client)
    Genre: MMO. Has most of its "please pay for this" content made available to everybody until April 30th.

    Path of Exile on Steam
    (PC on Steam, Xbox, PS4)
    Genre: it's like Diablo, but it's F2P! Alternatively, it's part of the genre granddaddy that online looter shooters aspire to be. Supports up to 6 players in a party.

Feel free to also suggest other free games being offered in this period, or free trial games, or just always free games you think deserve a look at. This is not meant to be a completely comprehensive list, just a bit of a guide to games you can get legally.

Legally in this sense currently excluding games that have potential implications with how you can play any legally bought copies of games you may have. e.g if a game you want to suggest has something like "so yeah to play it we have to play on servers using illegally obtained from the original publisher/developer" applicable to it, for now I'm gonna ask you to not talk about that game in here lest it look like the staff is endorsing that kind of thing.
 
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Some free stuff off the top of my head:

The latest version of KeeperRL is free because of COVID. Normally around £10 on Steam, this (and only this) version is free to download and keep. Think Dungeon Keeper meets Dwarf Fortress.

The old school Tribes games are free.

Marie's Room is an excellent short narrative game, recommended for fans of Life if Strange.

Sang-Froid - Tales of Werewolves is a cool tower-defence/RPG game about fending off werewolves that are trying to attack your cabin. Used to be a premium game, now free forever. No microtransactions. There's a pretty good review of it here.

Steel Panthers (WW2 and contemporary flavour) are good for wargame fans. Very old-school though, and look and feel their age, but that's old hat to wargame fans at this point, I guess. There is a lot of available scenarios to play.

Battle for Wesnoth is an open source, extremely polished, high fantasy strategy/tactics game and easily recommendable. Lots of custom campaigns, MP play, general content available.

A Slower Speed of Light is a cool concept game, with low replayability but everyone should try it once. You move around, and as you collect orbs you begin moving faster and faster until you reach the speed of light. Feature include: Doppler effect, the searchlight effect, time dilation, Lorentz transformation, the runtime effect. It's cool and trippy.

OpenLieroX. Liero is a really old school game; the closest description is probably something like "realtime Worms".

Star Control 2 Open Source (The Ur Quan Masters). Used to and sometimes still does make the top quartile of "best games ever" lists. The open-source port of it is worth a try.

Transcendence - Old school open world 2d space combat and exploration sim. Original version is free from its website. Steam has paid version with extra expansions.

Command & Conquer. There's a load of classic Command and Conquer games for free.

I'll probably write up some more free opensource games later, and try to resist the urge to just recommend ALL the roguelikes.
 
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Freeciv and FreeOrion, opensource clones of Civilization and Master of Orion type of games are always free.

stormbringer951 said:
and try to resist the urge to just recommend ALL the roguelikes.
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Well, I'm going to recommend Tales of Maj'Eyal at least, which is always free sans expansions. It has functional graphics, a pretty good ui where you don't have to remember 100 shortkeys, and gameplay which is not balanced around hoarding consumables, while still having great character customization and tactical combat. So if somebody wants to try out the genre without the classical hurdles.

Also, it's basically the world of the Lord of the Rings... if written by Michael Moorcock and Lovecraft.
 
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Aww man, free games, to bad I don't have gaming consoles or a strong enough computer to play them.

Also if I'm not wrong, MonHun World is giving their vanilla game for free but I saw that a week ago so might be long gone by now.
 
Since you brought up Transcendence with it's strong EV energy, I'd like to point to the most popular spiritual successor to Escape Velocity, Endless Sky.

It's 100% free and still being expanded on by the dev. And while it's not strictly "finished" it is entirely playable - I've sunk almost 500 hours in.
 
if you have an xbox Phantasy star online 2 finally got an english release not sure if it is a demo or a full release but it seems to have a fair bit of stuff to do. (personally speaking i could use a party)

Crossout seems interesting as well though i have no experience playing it though.
 
An update on the Ubisoft front for those PC players who are interested in platformers: they're now giving away Rayman Legends for free from March 31st to April 3rd 9 AM EST.

For the lesser freebies available on all platforms: Breakpoint now has a permanent trial version that gives you up to six hours of standalone playtime with the game (however this does count any gametime you had with Breakpoint during the free weekend :V). In addition, a temporary "friend pass" mode that lets you play co-op with a friend who does own Breakpoint even if you only have the trial version, will be in effect for the game until June 16th. Time spent in friend pass mode will not count against your free trial time.
 
Ilikebob said:
Aww man, free games, to bad I don't have gaming consoles or a strong enough computer to play them.

Also if I'm not wrong, MonHun World is giving their vanilla game for free but I saw that a week ago so might be long gone by now.
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For low end computers I have a list!

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

A brutal and deep RPG that is very modable to fit your specific interests. Think of it as cripted fallout with low grade graphics.

Space Station 13


There is no other multiplayer game like this. It can be absolutely fantastic after you get the basics down. Just watch out, a lot of server communities grew from chan culture. Stick to Paradise and CM.

Dwarf Fortress
It looks like Askii. Most of the gameplay is text. Sometimes dwarves drown in soup. It's a rough game but if you want something that feels like an infinite DND campaign, this is it. With some imagination and a good tileset, this game can last you for the rest of your life.



If nothing else, just sub to Kruggsmash.


If you're not interested in fantasy, then try out the Long Night mod.
 
ATinySloth said:
For low end computers I have a list!

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

A brutal and deep RPG that is very modable to fit your specific interests. Think of it as cripted fallout with low grade graphics.

Space Station 13


There is no other multiplayer game like this. It can be absolutely fantastic after you get the basics down. Just watch out, a lot of server communities grew from chan culture. Stick to Paradise and CM.

Dwarf Fortress
It looks like Askii. Most of the gameplay is text. Sometimes dwarves drown in soup. It's a rough game but if you want something that feels like an infinite DND campaign, this is it. With some imagination and a good tileset, this game can last you for the rest of your life.



If nothing else, just sub to Kruggsmash.


If you're not interested in fantasy, then try out the Long Night mod.
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They seemed interesting, I'll check it out later, thanks.
 
dmehta19 said:
So I actually just released a game on Steam that's free.

It's called ArchiTac

My team and I are still working on it but it's pretty nice and simple fun.
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i'm happy you managed to create a game i hope to see you succeed in your endeavors (yes english is not my first language yes i'd like some pointers on how i should have wrote this)
 
So I've been a bit distracted with well, distracting myself as well from this whole thing as well, so some updates on the free game front that are quickly expiring (PC only so far, sorry console gamers):




(PC, Steam, free to grab until April 8th)
Genre: ...it's Pinball. :V
(Comes with free DLC tables)

(PC, Epic Game Store, free to grab until April 8)
Genre: you and up to three of your friends go around delivering stuff with the reliability of your average FedEx driver if they had rock solid insurance for any possible screwup on the job.


(PC, Epic Game Store Exclusive, free to grab until April 9)
Genre: action adventure


(PC, Epic Game Store Exclusive, free to grab until April 9)
Genre: walking simulator



(PC, Steam, free to grab until unknown)
Genre: 2D RPG town builder
(Comes with a free DLC!)

Ah, yes, one more thing: On April 18th, it seems like as part of Sega's usual "Make War, not Love" sales thing for the year, Total War Shogun 2 will be made free to keep if you're into half real time tactics, half turn based empire builder games.
 
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So my friends have made a bunch of games that came out recently and I just figured out how to do the banner link so I will relink my game and theirs now. These are all free!









 
Oh, yeah, might as well throw out the big freebie going around the internet:

If you were ever remotely curious about GTA V and got a PC that can run it, it's free on the Epic Game Store for the weekend.

Note that it's currently still down because "free copy of GTA V" is about as popular as you might expect for a free copy of one of the most top selling games ever, so you might need to wait until tomorrow to actually get it. :V

(This is also why I don't currently have a link I can actually show here, so just check the store page url (https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/) until it starts working again. )
 
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