In Charles Portis’s 1968 novel True Grit,
churchgoing spinster Mattie Ross is quoted
as saying “there is nothing free except
the grace of God.” This is an incorrect
statement because there are lots of video
games that are free, so really it should be
“the grace of God and also Warframe,”
one of the 10 free games that I, RPS video
person Astrid Johnson, will be talking to
you about today.
There are plenty of free games out there,
and we have a list of 50 of the things in
the description below. But if you want our
handpicked selection of the best then give
this video a watch, and why not subscribe
and click the little bell thing while you’re
at it so you can see more of what we do? Oh,
and thanks to Logitech G and the G432 7.1
Surround Sound gaming headset for sponsoring
this video. To check out the tech behind the
G432, click the link in the description.
Warframe is a slick and stylish space ninja
simulator that’s been heralded for being
free-to-play at all, given its polish. You’re
a Tenno, an ancient warrior awakened by the
Lotus to combat the rising Grineer Empire.
This translates to: crouch, slide, jump, jump
again, shoot, violently beat, and unleash
an assortment of powerups against your foes
in procedurally-generated cruisers, space
stations, and varying assorted chunks of planet
surfaces, all using your Warframe of choice.
Each Warframe has its own set of abilities:
mine, the Loki, lets me turn invisible and
confuse my foes with decoys, for example.
You can farm resources to craft different
weapons, like this assault rifle that pins
my enemies’ rag-doll corpses to walls, and
this really big axe that does a big smash.
You can also build more Warframes, giving
you all manner of slightly different ways
to play the game. Yes, you can speed crafting
and unlocks by paying for Platinum, but there's
so much game here to get through you'll amass
the needed resources without too gruesome
a grind.
And it keeps on growing, with an expansion
schedule - all free - that puts most paid
games to shame. It's getting space battles,
another open-world region and a ludicrously
ambitious co-op mode that links squads in
giant space operations - check out Matthews
recent video report on the game for the full
details.
Doki Doki Literature Club is a completely
normal and fine visual novel about a high
school literature club that doesn’t get
weird or unsettling a couple of hours in whatsoever.
In this completely free and completely also
very normal game, you join the literature
club at your school and make poetry to try
and impress the other four members who are
perfectly ordinary girls that don’t have
anything funny going on with them at all.
It’s a real goofer of a game that won’t
leave you feeling uncomfortable, moved, or
existential about anything at all really,
it’s just a really pleasant and chill experience
and it’s so good at being really pleasant
and chill that I decided to put it on this
list because it’s free and also relaxing
and eVERYTHING IS FINE! I’M FINE! EVERYTHING
IS ALRIGHT I’M OKA--
There are plenty of battle royale games out
there. You’ve got your Fortnites, your Plunkbats--that’s
PUBG for the uninitiated--and then, you have
Apex Legends. Rather than your standard solos,
duos, or four-man squads, Apex Legends gives
you a triad to slide about with and adds the
fun flavour of a character shooter with a
comfortably-sized and diverse roster that
stops short of being overwhelming.
While it’s not all-out parkour like in Titanfall,
Respawn Entertainment’s mastery of slick
and satisfying movement is definitely present
here, and it makes the sometimes-laborious
battle royale staple of trudging across the
map to different hot spots entertaining all
on its own. Ahhhhh, lovely.
The gunplay is also deeply satisfying. You
use big shootahs a lot in video games so it
can get really difficult to keep things feeling
fresh, and while there isn’t anything particularly
unique about the way Apex Legends’ guns
handle, they handle tremendously well. Oh,
and there are dragons in it now, which is
good news for all the dragons out of a job
after Game of Thrones wrapped up.
Perhaps one of the most fascinating games
to ever exist, Dwarf Fortress has been in
development since 2002 and rather than an
actual release date listed on its Steam page,
developer Tarn Adams has instead elected to
remind us that time is subjective. It’s
one of the deepest and most intricate simulation
games out there right now and puts you in
charge of a band of merry dwarves constructing
a fortress in a massive world. Almost every
action in the real world is represented in
some way in Dwarf Fortress. For example, when
your dwarves are chopping down trees, there’s
a small chance that the log falls and hits
them in the belly, causing them to throw up.
At time of recording, I’ve yet to dig deep
into Dwarf Fortress for myself, as it always
seemed like quite an intimidating beast. The
footage you’re seeing now is from RPS treehouse
resident Nate Crowley, who when asked for
around ten minutes of gameplay, sent me a
50-minute personal let’s play that not only
looks a lot more interesting than my first
playthrough would have been, but has also
given me an incredibly helpful beginner’s
guide so that I can take a crack at it at
last.
Nate is a star when it comes to Dwarf Fortress:
you can check out his series for Rock Paper
Shotgun, Basement of Curiosity, in the description,
and read about his ongoing quest to run an
illegal underground zoo. Maybe it’ll inspire
you once you’ve downloaded it for free.
Which you’re going to do, right?
If you haven’t heard of Frog Fractions,
then that’s fine and you’re valid, but
I’d be a little bit surprised. Released
in 2012 by Twinbeard Studios, which primarily
consists of developer Jim Crawford, it’s
a love letter to edutainment games that sees
you assume the role of a frog protecting fruit
from bugs by eating them up with your big
frog tongue, racking up points in the form
of fractions. That sounds like some pretty
mundane stuff, but soon you’ll be hopping
on a dragon and entering warp speed, going
on a bullet hell quest to Bug Mars, pouring
pink goop into a coffee can on a spaceship
in a text adventure, and eventually becoming
President.
Former RPS contributor Nathan Grayson described
Frog Fractions as potentially “the greatest
game of all time,” and I can see why. Its
constant surprises, endless expanse of mechanics,
and absurdist charm are really captivating,
about as much as the years-long hunt for its
elusive and mysterious sequel, which eventually
released when thousands of Frog Fraction Fans
solved an ARG involving a physical box and
found Frog Fractions 2 hidden within the content
of another game, Glittermitten Grove. I'm
starting the rumour that Frog Fractions 3
will be found inside the wrapper of one lucky
Sonja Bar. Happy eating, frog fans.
I used to play Team Fortress 2 when I got
a PC that could actually run anything around
the age of 14. That was back in 2012, though,
and the game has evolved so rapidly and so
much that I couldn’t even tell you what
half of what’s going on is. At its core,
it’s Valve’s character shooter that predated
the likes of Overwatch and literally thousands
of others, it’s got this obsession with
hats, and there’s a thriving community around
the game. You have the Pyro, the Sniper, the
Scout, the Heavy, and a few more, all with
their own weapons, skills, and ha-ha-hilarious
animated trailers.
It’s largely the same. But there are contracts
now! And powerups, sometimes. Some of this
is quite new to me, but given that the core
loop of Team Fortress 2 is so simple and engaging,
it just means there are more things for me
to figure out how to enjoy on top of all the
fun I’m already having. It still has upwards
of 60,000 players a day--which makes it currently
the 12th biggest game on Steam--so if you
fancied dipping a digital toe back into a
swimming pool full of bowlers, trilbies and
beanies (and why wouldn’t you, it’s free)
then you’ll still have plenty of people
to murder!
You’ll no doubt have heard of or even played
Spelunky before, but the one you do know might
not look like this. That’s because this
is Spelunky Classic, made in GameMaker and
originally released by Mossmouth in 2008.
It was later remade for a 2012 release, but
you have to pay for that one, so the OG is
what makes it to this list.
Principally, Spelunky is a roguelike, but
a better way of communicating what it’s
about is by describing it as an arcade Indiana
Jones simulator, complete with your player
character lamenting just how much he hates
snakes. You wander around the procedurally-generated
dungeons to collect gold, get killed by a
snake, save a… damsel in distress… fall
too far and die, collect a shining golden
statue… and get crushed by a rolling boulder,
get trampled by a giant spider, skewered by
a flurry of arrows from an ancient trap, try
to save ANOTHER damsel in distress but get
skewered by some spikes in an accidental murder-suicide,
get blown up when a bomb bounces back at y--IT’S
MADE OF METAL WHY WOULD IT BOUNCE THAT MAKES
NO SE--
It’s pretty fun! You can even download the
source code and open that up in GameMaker
to see just how it all works, which is really
nifty.
Dota 2 scares me because I don’t understand
it. Like, what’s that guy doing there? What’s
this? Proper mental. But the standalone sequel
to Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients
is popular for a reason: it basically invented
the MOBA genre, and even for folks who can’t
quite wrap their head around how to play it,
there’s a lot to enjoy.
You and four mates, or angry internet randos,
fight another team of five on a battlefield
made up of three lanes. Each team has their
own sinister glowing orb called an Ancient,
and you have to protect yours and destroy
theirs, classic stuff. There are over 100
heroes for you to choose from, each with their
own lore, aesthetic, and abilities, and the
game is largely about combining different
heroes with different tactics in order to
best the other team. When you get to see a
big group of professionals going at it, there's
a certain grace and beauty to how a game of
DOTA 2 plays out.
See fellow RPS treehouse inhabitant Matt Cox,
who has played more games of Dota than he’s
had hot dinners, which is at least six times.
This is him playing it now because as I’ve
said, Dota 2 scares me. He’s doing pretty
good, isn’t he? Yeah, he’s a natural at
this, doing a stand-up job mate no issues
ye--oh he died. Ha! What a mid-lane-moron.
Line Rider is absolute bliss. It was originally
released in 2006 by Slovenian student Boštjan
Čadež, and I remember playing it in the
computer rooms at school when I looked like
a potato that somebody spilt black eyeshadow
on. You’re this little tiny lad in an endless
white void that just sucks you into its blank
maw as you descend, neverending, always consuming…
but you can also draw lines that you ride,
hence the name Line Rider.
There isn’t really an objective outside
of the ones that you make for yourself. It’s
a sandbox without all the grainy textures
between your toes, and you have a selection
of different tools and lines to create whatever
kind of ridiculous sledding course you want.
There’s plenty of creative fun to be had,
as it’s literally like having a pen and
some paper. You can draw loop-de-loops, giant,
Evil Kenivel-style ramp jumps, and if you
fancy yourself an artist like me, you can
even draw all sorts of different objects for
your little line rider guy to vault over...
or crash into in a really disappointing way.
Do you fancy an absurdist espionage adventure
that takes just shy of fifteen minutes to
enjoy? Gravity Bone may be for you, and it’s
f**king marvellous every step of the way.
You’ll serve drinks spiked with bugs to
red-haired socialites, take photographs of
exploding birds, and even engage in a high-stakes
chase sequence, but it never feels rushed,
and it’s exactly as long as it needs to
be.
Gravity Bone’s story is told in very few
words, but it communicates an awful lot in
the little time that it has. Focusing less
on telling a blatant and chronological narrative,
it instead opts to simply evoke the atmosphere
and ambience of the quintessential spy thriller.
It won’t leave you reaching for the tissues,
but it’ll definitely put a smile on your
face. It serves you this through the medium
of absurdist gags and a scrapbook assortment
of “gameplay mechanics” that somehow all
come together in a way that works.
It’s developed by Blendo Games, fronted
primarily by one man, Brendan Chung. It got
heaps of praise back when it first released
in 2008, and that makes a lot of sense. It’s
just… really nice to play. With it being
free, as well, it serves as an excellent means
of getting into Chung’s work, with the option
of going on to pay--albeit not that much--to
play its 2012 sequel, Thirty Flights of Loving,
if you fancy some more.
So that’s ten of the best free PC games
out there right now, in our opinion. You might
have your own opinion. Feel free to share
it in the comments. That should give you plenty
to try out, but if you’d like to read about
a few more, then why not check out a more
comprehensive list on our website, linked
in the description?
And thanks again to Logitech G for sponsoring
this video. Featuring 50mm audio drivers,
a 6mm mic and DTS HeadphoneX two point oh
surround sound technology under the hood,
the G432 headset immerses you in the action
and ensures you’ll always be heard for a
complete gaming experience. Find out how to
order yours by following the link in the description.
Before you follow any link, if you haven’t
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Thanks for watching and hopefully see you
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