Reap is a low-key, sepia-toned survival sim – think Minecraft on a Gameboy and you’re not far off. Here, your ship has broken up on the rocky shore of a mysterious island, and it’s up to you to make the best of it. Despite the simple presentation, there’s a lot going on. You’ll need to manage your hunger and energy levels by eating turnips – but you’ve only got a finite supply. To survive in the long term, you’ll need to plant more, scavenging tools by exploring the map for promising flotsam. It all keeps you rather busy. There’s also an overarching goal of recovering the pieces of a treasure map and digging up a chest filled with unimaginable riches – but if you ever want to find it, you’d better tuck into those turnips!
All told, there’s far more depth to Reap than you might first assume. So if you’re looking for somewhere to lose yourself for an afternoon, why not visit Reap’s island and see what you can unearth? Universal Paperclips is a ‘clicker’ game: a simple, browser-based game where you repeatedly click your mouse to make a number go higher. Sounds a little dry – but clicker games are brought to life by colourful themes, unlockable features and surprising twists and turns for patient players.
Mar 12, 2017 - A Mac is never going to be as good for gaming as a dedicated Windows PC. While you can buy games through the Mac App Store, major games. Civilization VI, and Football Manager 2017 are available and work without.
This game is no exception – and it’s created something of a stir across the internet since its release. You take control of an artificially intelligent computer at a paperclip factory. Your simple job – initially, at least – is to make and sell as many paperclips as possible, managing production, marketing and R&D. But this is a game with wings.
Before long, paperclips are a secondary concern: your ever-more-powerful AI is too busy playing the stock market, solving world hunger, and curing male pattern baldness. To reveal much more would be to spoil the fun. But there are hours of slowly revealed fun to be had here, and an epic scale barely hinted at by the game’s humble beginnings. At the very least, try to keep playing till the music starts – you’ll know what we mean when you get there! As Below is a fun, mouse-driven platform game with a cartoonish graphical style that hides some rather ruthless gameplay. You play as a humble grub who’s had enough of living underground and sets out to conquer the above-ground world – a world of floating platforms.
Holding down the left mouse button aims a jump, and releasing it sees you flying up into the blue. You can then latch onto the underside of higher platforms, burrowing through to the surface before leaping up all over again. But this isn’t some benign game of ‘see how high you can climb’. Your grub is hungry – and to stay alive, you’ll need to devour defenceless and rather skittish birds as you hurtle through the air.
Eat enough, and you can evolve your grub to gain extra abilities: from a long, manoeuvrable tongue to the power of flight. At first, catching the birds is a real challenge, but as your grub grows more powerful they become easy prey – and you’ll relish the satisfaction of plucking them out of the air. It's compelling, tasty fun. These days, being king (or queen) is pretty easy. But in times gone by, you’d actually need to make important decisions – with potentially serious consequences for you and your subjects. In its own light-hearted way, that’s what Sort the Court sets out to simulate.
Having decided whether you want to be a King or Queen, you’ll entertain a series of courtiers, peasants and other visitors – all of whom will come to you with a request. All you need to do is say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to each one. In each in-game day, you’ll have half a dozen or so such decisions to make. Then, as the sun sets on your kingdom, you’ll discover what effect your choices have had on your population’s size and happiness – as well as the all-important royal coffers.
Sounds simple enough, right? But by the end of day four, I’d bankrupted my kingdom through frivolous fishing subsidies and a steadfast refusal to rely on witchcraft to generate cash. Yep, that old chestnut.
As the days roll by, the consequences of your earlier choices come back to haunt you, often in unexpected ways – and a hand-drawn art style, with charming day-night cycle, gives you even more of an incentive to play on. Fans of indie gaming may well be familiar with: the fast-paced, lo-fi fencing game which pits two players against each other in a brutal and highly entertaining tug of war.
Well, it was only a matter of time until such a successful title earns a parody – and EGGNOG+, while certainly poking fun at its better-known forebear, actually succeeds in being a fun and frantic little two-player title in its own right. For the uninitiated, this is how it works: the battlefield stretches across several screens, with ‘goals’ at each end and both players starting in the middle. Kill your opponent, and you can run one screen towards your goal – and if they kill you, they can do the same.
Reach your end of the screen and you’re the winner! But this basic description doesn’t quite convey the intense and highly acrobatic nature of the combat.
From cheeky rolls and plunging dive-kicks to intricate and finely balanced swordplay, Eggnog+ – like its inspiration – is a game that rewards skilful play and thoughtful practice above mindless button-bashing. An essential play for fans of the original, or anyone looking for a game that balances skill with simplicity. We love a good one-button game here at Team Knowhow, and it’s always interesting to see how developers refine their ideas to work well with this simplest of control schemes. From the daring leaps of Canabalt to the compulsive fun of Cookie Clicker, one button can go a surprisingly long way – and then there’s Sisyphus. This game is so simple, so stripped back, that it effectively works as a parody of the one-button genre. You play as the titular character of Greek mythology, famously cursed to roll a boulder up a hill for all eternity – and indeed, that’s exactly what you’ll be doing.
Tap the button as fast as you can to shove that big rock – but let up for a minute, and it’ll slide all the way back to the beginning again, taking your high score with it. And that’s it. If that sounds a little boring, then you might be right. But you might also find yourself playing again and again to beat your high score – which is as compulsive here as it is in just about any other ‘clicker’-type game. Sure, the theme underlines the basic pointlessness of the gameplay. But that doesn’t mean we’re not going in for another round. Weddings can be stressful at the best of times, but when a slug monster crashes the party and clones the bride things get even more stressful!
In this game, you're tasked with finding the true bride from among the slug clones by carefully questioning and investigating each one to catch them in a lie. If you've played games like The Secret of Monkey Island you'll immediately recognise the point 'n' click control scheme of Holy Molluscamony, with an assortment of verbs to choose from.
These will let you perform a variety of actions like open, push, talk to, pick up amongst others. As you explore the game, you'll find objects to pick up and people to talk to – and hopefully some clues to help you find your friend! Holy Molluscamony is packed full of weird humour from the very beginning, which got me hooked into playing right through til the end. I also really enjoy the pixelated art style, which harks back to the days when point and click games were at their most popular. If you miss the old days of point 'n' click adventure, install Holy Molluscamony on your Mac today and see how long it takes you to save the bride.
If you've ever felt the frustration of having too many keys on your keyring and having to spend ten minutes trying to find the one for your front door, you might not understand why someone would subject themselves to the same thing in a video game! In You Have 293 Keys you must search through a pile of keys in order to find the one that unlocks the dungeon door, opening up your escape route. Unfortunately, the pile is quite large and you can only try one key at a time!
You could get lucky and find the key you need straight away, or you could end up wading through a mountain of keys fretting about losing the one you want. It's easy to discard your unwanted keys by throwing them off the side of the map, but be warned – you could end up losing the right key and being stuck in the dungeon forever. What I like most about You Have 293 Keys is the juxtaposition of something mundane - finding a key – with something adventurous like escaping a dungeon. The colourful design and moody synth music in the background are added benefits, giving you a reason to stick around long enough to find the key of your dreams. When you get too frustrated to continue, you can also take pleasure in dragging whole piles of keys off the edge of the floor.
Give it a go and see how quickly you can make it to the exit! Like a 2D version of Quake, Tiny Arena spawns you in to a variety of deathmatch arenas against a number of lethal bots. You'll rocket jump your way around the platforms, trying to line up the perfect shot while avoiding enemy fire to get to the score limit first. There are pickups to top up your remaining health as well as railguns and rocket launchers to give you the edge in a one-on-one conflict. Starting with a machine gun with an infinite supply of ammo, the railgun pickups are able to shoot through platforms and the rocket launchers explode into a large area of damage which can damage multiple opponents. Each level is part of the game's campaign mode, and each have a different score limit, time limit, number of bots, and difficulty handicap so no two levels are completely alike.
There's a freeplay mode too where you can pick your own level options and set your own difficulty level if the campaign mode isn't challenging enough. In a cyberpunk future of sci-tech, cyberjacking and memes, freelance Police-Detective Jonathan Murphy P.I begins a slow day at the office when a call comes in about the latest murdercide. Murphy is tasked with investigating the crime scene – but must first quit 'boogie-boarding the meme waves' and get out of his office.
Like most point-and-click games, the right mouse button examines an object in the scene and the left mouse button performs actions upon said object. This time, however, when Murphy examines an object, his inner voice delivers a descriptive monologue dripping with similies and metaphors, sounding exactly like a veteran, grizzled film-noir character – whereas his normal speaking voice sounds like a morning radio DJ, with all the pep and enthusiasm that comes with it. The game is a short parody, but it's beautifully drawn and fully voice acted. It's also loaded with puns and jokes that are so bad they're good! Some of the best jokes are hidden in the examination monologues – so you should examine absolutely everything! We even noticed a touch of Alan Partridge – and a final punchline that paid off with a hearty LOL.
Similar to Pictionary, Quick, Draw tasks you with drawing several pictures to help the computer guess what it is you're drawing. You're only given a word or phrase with no prompt on how you should draw it. You could be the next Da Vinci – but it won't make a difference. Normally a computer would struggle to tell the difference between one person's drawing of a cat and another's – but Google's experimental 'neural network' artificial intelligence means that the more the game is played, the better at guessing it will become. In fact, Quick Draw uses some of the same machine learning technology that helps Google Translate understand your handwriting.
It doesn't just look at your final image to guess your picture – it looks at which strokes you make first, the direction of lines and the smaller details. But the really impressive thing is just how accurate Quick Draw is. Put it to the test today and see what a start-of-the-art AI can do! Made for, this short adventure game tasks you with exploring shifting catacombs while dodging all kinds of traps. There's a great use of space, with rooms appearing from beneath the desert every time you step on a new floor switch. Secret doors open, new corridors are formed, and new traps are revealed with every new switch. Some switches open new rooms – while others will reveal hidden traps and safe paths while you're standing on them.
The game will only take a few minutes to complete, but it's a very relaxed adventure with plenty of challenging moments to make the ending feel worthwhile. It's a fairly basic tiny pixel art game, but one full of charm and the music is enjoyable too. It feels like a taster for a much larger game – one that we'd definintely want to play! If Hell was a video game, Contrast may just be our version of it. It's a puzzle platformer with a difference – in that you must navigate a series of increasingly difficult environments to reach the end goal, but you've lost all sense of depth perception!
Platforms are coloured in either super-bright white or shadeless black, which become invisible when the background, the walls and the floors all match the same colour! Sometimes, what looks like a solid platform is really just a black or white hole, leading to the similarly coloured floor below. All 16 levels start the same way, with you walking around the environment and platforms. You'll need to inspect them from different angles to work out the best way to navigate to the end goal: a glowing yellow box. The only way you can see these platforms is by contrasting them against an object with their opposing colour – so you'll often need to memorise the paths and gaps leading to the end. This frustrating puzzler is ultimately very rewarding, however, when after countless retries you finally manage to complete a level.
Sometimes, all it takes is a leap of faith! Fans of the Wild West will be keen to play Smokin' Guns, a rootin' tootin' first-person shooter based on the wonderful Quake 3 Arena engine. Intended as a semi-realistic simulator of America's Old West, Smokin' Guns gives players a variety of historically accurate weapons and movie-inspired maps to play around in – so no BFGs or railguns to keep you entertained! The weapons aren't just visually accurate to their real life counterparts, either.
Each weapon has its own pros and cons that make them stand out from each other. Will you pick a pistol with low damage but quick reload times? Or maybe opt for a sawed-off shotgun to devastate your opponents at close range, but suffer from having only two rounds to fire before you have to reload again! There's quite a decent variety of weaponry to choose from, with your standard pistol, rifle and shotgun categories as well as 'special' weapons like throwable knives, dynamite and mountable Gatling guns to stir things up a bit.
If you're a fan of Quake 3 Arena you won't recognise much: this is a complete overhaul of the game, with all new maps, weapons and game modes. If you want a true Wild West experience, why not try the 'Duel Mode' which limits your weapon choices to pistols only, and starts off each round with you and an opponent facing each other. Once you've picked your pistol of choice and the music runs out, the contest begins! Take your shots, and if you're the winner you get to move on to your next opponent almost straight away – while the loser has to wait in a queue until their next turn is up. Make sure your aiming skills are good, because you'll do varying damage depending on the body part you're shooting at! Head shots are nearly always an insta-kill, but you'll probably survive getting shot in the leg or arm a couple of times. If you know you're not as skilled as the other players, make sure to grab pick-up items like a boiler plate to use as armour, or money to purchase more powerful weapons.
These items can make all the difference in a competitive game – so just hope you reach them before your enemies do! In celebration of the upcoming StarCraft Remastered, Blizzard are giving away the original StarCraft for free! If you love real-time strategy games and haven't played StarCraft yet, now is your chance. StarCraft is the sci-fi alternative to Warcraft, another RTS game which eventually evolved into the MMORPG World of Warcraft – one of the most popular MMOs ever made. StarCraft never got an MMO facelift, yet is noted as being one of the most important RTS games in history.
It also remains one of the biggest eSports in the world – which explains why it's now getting a full-HD remaster decades after it was initially released. Choose from one of the several available factions to play as, then get stuck into the campaign mode where you'll have to move your troops and build base defenses in order to beat your opposition. Each faction has its own perks, abilities and history for you to learn and exploit – my favourite faction are the biologically engineered Zergs. These don't use much technology, but can regenerate health rapidly – and thanks to their high breeding rates you can spawn small armies of Zerg warriors to swarm your enemies! For a game that came out almost 20 years ago, it's still very enjoyable to play.
It's challenging in all the right places, forcing you to adapt to whichever race of beings you're fighting instead of letting you use the same tactics over and over again! And if you love playing the base game, you'll also be pleased to hear that the Brood Warexpansion is also available for free, adding new maps, character units, campaigns and upgrade advancements for you to enjoy. All told, it's a great slice of gaming history for your Mac – so grab a copy today and begin the Zerg rush! Wave Run is the frustratingly taxing, insta-restart game you need to play this month! If you've played Super Meat Boy, you'll be instantly familiar of the mechanics of this title – which has you jumping and jetpacking over spikes through a series of mazes. Press Z to jump, then either tap or hold Z to jet through the air with your water-powered jetpack!
Each section is scored based on how fast you can reach the next checkpoint. Hit a spike trap and you'll instantly respawn at your last checkpoint and your time will reset – but collect water refills every once in a while to keep your tank full, and you might just make it! The developer has managed to find the sweet spot with the controls, so you just know every mistake is your fault, rather than being blamed on unfair game mechanics! The decision to hide spike traps in water was a particular highlight that had us shaking our heads knowingly at the developer's tricks – and we didn't even realise you could dash with the X key until we'd already admitted defeat! Taking us back to the days we used to play NBA Jam on the Sega Mega Drive with our mates, Shut Up and Slam Jam is on very familiar ground with its 2-vs-2 competitive b-ball court carnage! When a charity basketball match conicides with a kid's karate tournament at the same venue, it's decided that the event will be a combination of the two.
Up to four players can participate in two teams of two, but bots are also available if you want to play by yourself. There's a variety of kicks, jumps and all kinds of weaponry to take down your opponents without fear of giving away a penalty.
Deal enough damage and your opponents will hit the deck for a few moments, leaving your free to run down the court! The sound design is fantastic, especially the roar of the crowd, the squeak of sneakers on the court floor and some genuinely funny commentary from the pundits.
The game was put together for – but has since been polished to perfection with a few recent tweaks. You’d be forgiven for thinking Max Gentleman is nothing more than a fancy hat simulator, like Team Fortress 2 or Transformice. Instead, you’ll find a great party game of hat acrobatics as you attempt to stack as many fancy hats on your head as possible, while avoiding the flying mugs of beer and other obstacles that threaten to topple your tower of trendy toppers. Play solo or competitively against a friend, and stack those hats like they’re going out of fashion!
The mechanics are surprisingly simple; move your character left and right to position yourself and use the up and down keys to highlight your hat of choice. When an enemy throws an object at your hats from the edge of the screen, you can ‘jump’ your highlighted hat (and the stack above it) to avoid being hit and keep your score running. To get the highest scores, you’ll have to time your hat hops to perfection – and the higher your stack of hats, the harder it becomes to avoid the projectiles tossed at you! If you’re after a good party game you can play from the comfort of your sofa, with plenty of humour and easy-to-understand controls, you can’t go wrong with Max Gentleman. Built for the National Museums Scotland Game Jam, this endless arcade-style pixel-art game challenges you to fly Dolly the Sheep (Yes, that Dolly) through the air collecting lost clones. You see, the other clones have been up to mischief by seeing how many of them could fit into an atom smasher.
Catastrophe strikes when this results in the creation of a Grossman-manifold vortex - oh no! Still with us? We hope so, because what follows is a fantastic point-chasing game which has you dodging atom smashers, riding Concorde and even taking rockets into space in the search for missing clones and items from the museum's collection of artifacts.
Collecting an artifact gives you a temporary forcefield allowing you to make a mistake without it ending the game. Hit an atom smasher without a protective shield and the game is over, and your final score calculated. We managed to collect every artifact on our best attempt, can you beat our score? We were here is a two player co-op experience where communication is vital. Solving puzzles with your mates is a huge amount of fun which is probably why escape rooms are extremely popular at the moment. The first person puzzler is set in a castle but you'll each be in two seperate locations, one in a library and the other roaming around the rest of the castle. The clues you'll need to solve the puzzles you face can only be seen by your opposite number.
Thankfully you're given walkie-talkies to speak with one another to relay the information. There's a sense of urgency which adds to the tension. Your goal is to escape but time is limited.
The game has full VR support as well so if you're lucky enough to own an Oculus Rift or a HTC Vive, you can jump right in and be fully emersed in the world. For the rest of us, we can play with gamepads so there's no reason to skip this one. Deck Dungeon is a super-simple card game RPG which tasks you with progressing through several levels of a dungeon while clicking on cards to find loot, battle enemies and survive for as long as possible.
There are five types of card, types including money, hearts, weapons, enemies and bosses. Money is used to buy more powerful weaponry. Weapon cards have an 'ATK' rating, which is how much damage it will cause to enemies with a successful hit. To equip these, you'll need to spend the same amount of money as the ATK rating. Small amounts of money can be collected from cards – but the mega-money can only be collected from slain enemies!
While battling enemies, you'll likely take damage and lose HP. When you lose all of your HP, the game is over – so you're going to want to find heart cards to reclaim lost health. These, of course, also cost money so you're going to need to find a balance between reclaiming lost health and upgrading your weaponry. A stronger ATK means you can take down an enemy in a fewer number of rounds, and you're less likely to take damage.
But the more powerful enemies can devastate your HP in a single blow – so be sure to have spare cash to recover after each battle! Boss battles are normally tougher, but reward you with a maximum HP boost and lots of cash to play around with. Just don't get over confident!
Rex is a digital board game that's similar to chess: there are fewer pieces and a smaller board, but tons of scope for scheming and strategy. Each player has a King, which can move three spaces in any direction; two priests, which can move two spaces in any direction; and two guards, which can move – you guessed it – only one space in any direction. The aim of the game is to remove all of your opponent's pieces from the board by taking them in a move. Gone are the advanced strategies of check, castling and 'Petrov's defense' – here, it's all about back-to-basics, toe-to-toe scrapping with your opponent. For new players, a full tutorial showcases each of the piece's available moves – and once you're ready, there are increasing levels of difficulty with AI opponents ranging from Novice to Expert –and there's even a two-player mode where you can battle it out against a friend, or team up to take on an AI. As well as 'Battle' mode, there's also 'Duel' mode, which has you tasked with taking the enemy king as your main objective. Pieces may still be in play – but as soon as the king falls, it's all over.
It's the most powerful piece on the board, and can be deadly in the right hands. Flight is a golden oldie that we recently got some time to play through again! The paper plane game was first published by Armor Games in December 2010 and since spawned countless other 'grind'-style games – which have you repeating the same level over and over again while collecting power ups, scoring points, hitting boosters and trying to travel as far as you possibly can.
After an initial fling into the skies with the mouse cursor, you're in control of the aircraft's pitch and booster engine until you burn through your fuel. After each run of the level is over, you're granted cash to spend on upgrades like a better plane design, a powered engine, better fuel economy and score multipliers. Some upgrades give you some degree of control over the plane – but all of this uses precious fuel. You'll aim to collect stars to earn cash, with golden shooting stars being worth extra and giving a handy speed boost.
Paper cranes can also be collected, which add to your cash pot and can be upgraded to give similar boosts. Finally, windmills are spaced out across the canopy and give an extra boost into the skies if you hit them when coming down for a sudden landing. All told, the game is well presented, very addictive and just begs you to have just one more go! With recent news that the much-anticipated sequel will be released sometime next year, this month we've taken another look at Kyle's original AOL Instant Messenger simulator game. Harking back to our younger days of Windows XP, instant-messenger programs and being full of teenage angst, Emily is Away reminds us of the days we'd log on to MSN Messenger after school, waiting patiently for our friends to sign in and then playing it cool (read 'freaking out') when our crush would appear! Rule number one was never to start a new conversation as soon as they came online: you had to give it a minute or so, so as not to look too interested – but inevitably, they'd log off again soon after and you'd miss your chance! Anyway, where was I?
Oh yes! Emily is Away plays on these experiences and follows the relationship between your character and best friend Emily over five years of their lives in a branching narrative. From high school graduation through moving away to college, you'll decide which way the relationship goes with the choices you make – with you having to physically ' each pre-scripted message. It's a wonderful way to make the game feel like you're actually responding to Emily's messages – and even includes moments where your character self-censors to avoid showing his true feelings. We can't wait to try out Emily is Away Too next year – so if you've got a spare hour, give this one a try and relive those nostalgia-fuelled days of emoticons, cool lime-green fonts and music-inspired away messages.a.
An entry in the under the theme of 'One Room', General Room places you as a high-ranking general tasked with fending off enemy forces in a tabletop map battle. These enemy forces include light infantry, rocket troops, minigun-wielding juggernauts and a selection of different heavy vehicles, which are all dropped before marching towards your base.
You have some troops and tanks of your own that you can pick up and place on the map – but your best defense is a good strong flick to ping the enemy pieces off the table! It might sound like cheating – but all's fair in love and war, as they say. You'll want to assist your units by getting rid of enemy rocket troops early, as these can be lethal to your infantry and light tanks. You can even pick up and move enemy troops away from the front line, so your troops can mop up a much smaller resistance before moving forward. Once you've taken out the enemy troops with some Subbuteo-like flicking skills (and a little help from your army), you're able to take down the enemy headquarters and claim victory! The game has some fantastic artwork and sound design which makes it infinitely charming and replayable.
Definitely worth a quick playthrough! Recently, we took a look at Robin Johnson's Draculaland in, which happily led us to check out his latest work of interactive fiction, Detectiveland, which at the time of writing is being judged as part of.
The game places you in the gumshoes of Lanson Rose, private investigator, as you scrape together a meagre living by solving three unique cases, which you can play in any order. Like Draculaland, the game is completely mouse-controlled to avoid the kind of annoying word parser troubles seen in most other text adventures. You'll find clues – some useful and some useless – and store them in your bottomless pockets, while interacting with many different characters with unknown motives and exploring a whole town full of streets and avenues to get lost in. Thankfully, you can hail a cab to get you where you need to go faster!
Bloodlust is a stylised infinite-wave survival game that places you in the cape of a hungry vampire who must feed to stay alive.? As your health slowly drops, mobsters with machine guns – or 'shady vampire hunters', as developer Lung calls them – spawn into the game area and try to take you down with a hail of silver bullets. As the bullets fly, you'll need to dodge them with a dash move – while also taking down the mobsters and feeding on them to regenerate your health.
Bigger mobsters earn you more points while also regenerating more health with each feed. While dashing, you're also invulnerable to damage,so you can cut through the bullets while attacking. You can't overuse it, though, as it has a cool down that can leave you vulnerable! The game is points based – so your aim is to survive for as long as possible while racking up points with each successful feed. The Little Crane That Could is a fun construction simulator for both Mac OS and iOS, putting you in the driving seat of an industrial crane and challenging you with a variety of tasks to complete. You’ll take control over driving your crane and manipulating the arm and claw to pick up, move and drop all kinds of items – from bridge parts to basketballs!
The controls are fairly simple, but the execution isn’t, and you’ll need to drive carefully or you’ll crash your crane and fail the level. What I like about The Little Crane That Could is that even though it portrays itself as a ‘serious’ game, it’s also a little silly – and that’s a good thing. Instead of going for the realism of having to actually work on a construction site, you’re treated to something much more fun, like dunking basketballs or building a bridge while you’re balanced on it! If you enjoy playing the free version of the game, you can buy extra levels from the App Store, but there’s so much replay value to be had with the main game that I’ve not felt the need to upgrade yet. I would recommend this game to anyone with the patience to play it: you’ll need good coordination to not tip your crane over or drop your load in the wrong place, and you’ll end up playing some levels again and again until they’re perfected. If you’ve played games like Surgeon Simulator, Farming Simulator or Euro Truck Simulator and didn’t quit out of frustration, you’re bound to enjoy The Little Crane That Could!
Doblons.io takes you to the high seas as you battle other players for naval supremacy. We love the '.io' games – they're basically the games you used to play on graph paper at school brought to life! Doblons looks deceptively simple, but there's some important decisions to make should you survive long enough to upgrade your ship. More weaponry may sound like the obvious one to go for – but you'll lose precious speed which may leave you unable to flee if you run into a fight you can't handle. As you sail around, you collect coins that will allow you to purchase upgrades such as a stronger hull, a faster turning speed and greater damage for your cannons. You can even purchase extra ships for your fleet, which follow you around collecting coins and causing a nuisance for the enemy. Each enemy you kill gives you points which brings you further up the leaderboard.
Be careful though: once you're sunk, it's all over! Successfully navigate the waters for long enough and you might even feel ready to tackle the mighty SS Doblons, Dutchman and Black Pearl – AI controlled 'Boss' ships bristling with cannons and armour.
Be warned, it takes a lot of firepower to even dent it! We've played some tough titles in our search for the best free Mac games, but we think we may have found the hardest yet! It's not exactly fair from the beginning, because it joins two pretty challenging games into a single powerhouse of perplexity. If either your Pong or Chess talents are lacking, you're going to have a bad time. You must move your chess pieces to attack the Pong ball that your opponent is firing your way with a paddle. Fail to successfully 'take' the ball with your move and it will sail past your defences and end the game.
You're unlikely to last for more than a few turns, but it does allow for a good amount of strategy if you're up to the task. Move your pawns forward and you can start to move out your back row, including the Queen and Rooks. Move your pawns out to the board edge and you'll spawn an extra high-scoring ball – but obviously, the difficulty spikes through the roof. There are even greater difficulty levels which remove some of your more valuable pieces! What do you get if you take a pinch of Super Mario Galaxy, a dash of Devil Daggers and squeeze them into a tiny Game Boy-sized package? You get YISAEWYD, that's what.
Made by a single developer for, the retro-looking game takes place across several small planets and tasks you with surviving for as long as possible while being pursued by malevolent eyeballs. The GBJam has rules that the devs must follow, including only using four colours and the Game Boy's resolution of just 160 x 144 pixels. You're not completely defenseless, because you'll find objects to pickup and throw at the relentless swarm: sometimes it's a crate which you can lob at the nearest threat, but you'll also find bombs which can take three or four enemies out at the same time. There are also collectables to boost your score, but the longer you survive, the higher your score will climb.
The biggest thrill in the game has to be the way you're able to traverse from planet to planet with the help of low gravity. You jump and double-jump off the surface of a planet, and if you're close enough to another planet when you reach the apogee of your jump, you'll be pulled to the surface with its gravitational pull. You can pull some impressive escapes using this technique when all hope is lost and you're running out of bombs! The humble text adventure has made somewhat of a heroic comeback thanks to the rise of indie development. For the Ludum Dare 36 game jam, a designer behind the Bafta-winning Alien: Isolation has created one of the most immersive text adventure games we've ever played. A House Abandon begins, like many other text adventures before it, with your character in front of a foreboding house – but quickly becomes something entirely unique. Every detail of the game – from the loud tapping of the retro keyboard as you type to the flicker of the CRT television you're playing the game on – oozes a delightful retro 80s feel.
The soundtrack is exceptional – and after watching Netflix's Stranger Things recently, we're instantly reminded of why we enjoyed that so much. The game has a meta twist, which we won't spoil here, that frankly had us desperate to only continue playing this with the lights on and our backs to the wall. Taking inspiration from iOS and Android titles Super Stickman Golf and Desert Golfing, this fun browser-based game takes 2D golf gameplay and packs it with frenzied multiplayer action. The moment you join a game, you'll be assigned a random username, and must battle it out with other players from around the world across multiple courses. The aim, of course, is to sink your ball in the lowest number of strokes – with tie-breaks being decided based on how quickly you're able to score. Gameplay is straightforward, with your arrow keys and space bar determining direction and power of your shots respectively. There are some quirks with the game's physics that only add to the fun, as you're never quite sure where your ball will end up – which makes sinking a hole-in-one all the sweeter.
On one occasion, our ball sailed to an easy hole-in-one, only to catapult into the air as it reached the edge of the hole. The group of players we played with all used the built-in reaction emotes to express their amusement. While keenly competitive, it's immensely fun – and the reactions of other players certainly add to the game's appeal. Hey Dave, we don't mean to brag or anything, but. We beat your best time! TwoTap is a deceptively simple two-button reaction-based browser challenge, tasking you with tapping either the left or right arrow key to coincide with a pattern of blocks.
The faster you're able to tap out each pattern, the more levels you'll be able to skip, with each subsequent level having a much tighter time limit. What starts as a relatively straightforward game very quickly becomes impossibly difficult! We had to stop before we burned through the keys on our keyboard, but challenge anyone to beat our score of 9.47 actions per second! It was probably a mixture of fluking it and an easier random pattern but we certainly felt like we'd achieved a decent score with this one! Anything faster than that gets a big hi-five from us – let us know in the comments. Built by just one guy for the game jam, the game is a parody of a well-known intellectual property that I'm sure you've heard of before.
It's a light-hearted RPG tale, concering a set-in-his-ways grandpa who must search for his over-excited grandson after he runs off. Fearing a telling off by his daughter, grandpa decides to join in with the search for Pokeymans to help him track down his lost grandson. The game features charming Pokeymans including 'Peekachorp', 'Charblezorb', and 'Literally A Ball With A Face On It' – and there are 18 to find in total. Your progress will also be tested along the way by characters including punks, Pokeyman-playing kids and other elders who will stop you in your tracks until you've impressed them by locating elusive rare Pokeymans or leveling up your character.
The latest challenger to has the distinct feeling of retro classic Qix and Disney's Tron by bringing together the former's line-drawing, fencing-off gameplay and the latter's battleground game-grid. The multiplayer game is playable in your browser, and tasks you with scoring points by drawing lines to create rectangular shapes. Each successful shape adds a number of points to your score based on how large an area you were able to capture. There's an element of risk involved with this, however, as starting a run to capture new territory leaves you vulnerable to other players cutting off your trail – and carving out larger shapes makes you vulnerable for longer.
The map is really large, so at first you'll not notice the other players building their empires – but when you do find them, it gets really tense! It doesn't matter how large your empire is either, you can be taken out of the game by a single mistake.
Vertix.io is an isometric 'twin-stick' style online multiplayer shooter with an emphasis on fast-paced, immediate respawn deathmatch gameplay. There are nine classes to choose from – including Rockateer, Arsonist, Run 'N Gun, Detective and Duck – with each class having its own specific loadout. The available gear includes rocket launchers, miniguns, flamethrowers and hand-cannons – and some classes even come with secondary weapons, which can lead to tactical weapon switching in the heat of battle. Some of the game modes we were able to play included a standard free-for-all, team deathmatch, an end-zone rush game and even a few games of insane 'rockets-only' battles. You can also create an account to let you record your achievements and earn rewards, in the form of cosmetic upgrades, based on how well you play. Each battleground, though already slightly different in layout, can also be completely overhauled with texture mods to allow you to switch out all the textures and player characters models with new ones – including Minecraft, Mario and Undertale.
There's also a very active if you're keen to join the community. The premise is deceptively simple: you must drive your little vehicle to the exit of a maze. Now, the game wouldn't be much of a selection without a special mechanic to shake things up a bit – and Crash!! has just the thing. When you bump into a wall, your vehicle instantly changes direction – and what once turned your vehicle to the right is now flipped, and pulls you to the left!
You steer your vehicle with the arrow keys, but the controls are extremely twitchy and you'll very quickly throw caution to the wind and start smashing your way to victory. Headphone users will find it hard to play with the volume on for very long, as the soundtrack is quickly replaced with the cacophonus din of multiple crashes! Levels get progressively more difficult, too with the addition of -like brick walls to smash through, one-way barriers, teleporters and door-opening toggle switches. Crash!! is immensely good fun – and playable immediately in your browser!
Ravenfield is a free, experimental single-player title that aims to give the likes of a run for their money! Just like Battlefield, the aim is to win each round by capturing flags and killing enemies to earn 200 tickets. You fight as as blocky blue soldier against a team of blocky red soldiers, assisted by weapons including a pistol, assault rifle, sniper rifle, rocket launcher and shotgun. There are also jeeps and helicopters for you to pilot, letting you support your allies from the ground and the air.
Though it's only single player, you're supported by scores of AI troops, which flood out of the spawn point and fall about with satisfying ragdoll physics. Each flag you capture and hold earns your team a score multiplier, meaning each successful kill earns more tickets. Be sure to play the objective if you want to win! For a title, the visuals are fantastic, contrasting a detailed battleground with the low-poly soldiers, vehicles and weaponry.
It has an undeniable Battlefield feel – especially when your allies all pile into all the available vehicle at the spawn point and drive off without offering you a lift, leaving you to hike it towards the nearest capture point all by yourself. Yep, that's just about my experience of any Battlefield game. It's a game that can be traced back nearly 1,500 years, with the earliest predecessor probably originating in India – and now, the classic game is on Steam for Mac owners to download and play.
Simply Chess is exactly what it says it is. Enthusiasts and occasional players alike will find the game extremely accessible, and the feature list is very impressive! The game can be played locally against the computer or in a hotseat mode with a friend. The game boasts a world-class ' AI, with 100 difficulty levels – which is great for new players looking to improve their skill. If you're looking for a real challenge, however, you can take it online to compete against other players and rank in a global leaderboard.
The game also offers asynchronous play, meaning you can make your next move even if your opponent is offline. Naturally, there's mouse and keyboard support, which can be seamlessly switched to gamepad controls if you want to take it to your living room in Steam's 'Big Picture' mode. Thankfully, you can also switch between 3D and 2D rendering to get the full picture of the board at any time. For the collectors among you, there are also plenty of Steam Stats, Trading Cards, Backgrounds, Emoticons and Achievements to unlock as well!
With that in mind, we played through and evaluated a slew of free Mac games, and we’ve put together this updated list of the best free games for Mac. We made sure there is enough variety here to please most gamers, but this is also a perfect opportunity for you to try something new. Also, to help you decide, we’ve designated each game as Free (start to finish) or F2P (free to play, but purchases are possible). Of course, if you’re happy to just buy your games, feel free to check out our comprehensive list of the available today.
For the freebies, read on. Free-to-Play / Battle Royale Shooter Consider this your free invitation to one of the biggest gaming parties going on right now. You’ll play, you’ll have a great time, you’ll die, and you can always come back for more Fortnite Battle Royale is simply the free PvP mode of Fortnite. You and up to 99 opponents are dropped on a giant map where you must find randomly placed weapons, shields, and resources to help you remain the last player (or squad) standing. With the multitude of weapon types and shelter options available, Fortnite Battle Royale accommodates pretty much all survival strategies. You can’t just hide and hope for the best, however; the longer you survive, the tighter the playing area, forcing you to engage in combat instead of finding some remote area in which to camp. As you’d expect from one of the finest, the competition can become pretty caustic.
But there are a lot of friendly players, tooand some pretty good dancing. The games does lag a bit at times, and those who want to pay will be able to level up more quickly. But when it comes to third-person multiplayer combat action, Fortnite Battle Royal is a game you simply have to try. Free-to-Play / Real-time Strategy Here’s another game that gives you dozens of hours of content to play for free.
In fact, it was recently updated to be even freer! If you want more (and you likely will), just pay for some new campaign chapters. Developed and published by, Starcraft II is a real-time strategy game that allows you to participate as one of three races: Protoss, Terran, or Zerg.
Although a sequel (it’s set four years after the events of 1998’s StarCraft: Brood War, and uses characters and settings from that game), Starcraft 2 stands on its own. If you’ve played a previous Starcraft game, you know just how deep the gameplay and strategies can go. There’s a lot to do and manage, which is why fans have remained so loyal over the years. If you haven’t played one, Blizzard gives you a lot to do here before they start asking for money. Starcraft 2 gives you the complete Wings of Liberty story campaign, unranked and versus AI for multiplayer (along with the ability to unlocked Ranked), and three-story commanders before implementing any restrictions or microtransactions.
You can then pay to get the full story mode, individual commanders for co-op games, announcers, and skins. You won’t need all of it, but if you love what the free version offered, you’ll have plenty of options to keep the fun going.
100% Free / Adventure Spelunky—an indie action-adventure game created by Derek Yu—has you controlling an unnamed adventurer/explorer, known as the Spelunker. Your aim is to explore the underground tunnels and gather as much treasure as possible while avoiding the traps and enemies filling the tunnels. Gameplay is straightforward: whip or jump on enemies; pick up items; or use bombs and ropes to further explore the caves. Levels are randomly generated, and you only get one life (if you die, you have to start from the beginning). Although this sounds like it’d make the game frustrating, it actually gives each run a unique feeling. There are two important reasons you’ll want to consider giving Spelunky a go. First, it’s an extremely light game that can run great on older Macs, including MacBooks.
Second, it’s completely free from start to finish. A good match for fans of 2D platformers who want to reminisce and remember the good old days of Castlevania, Spelunky offers plenty of great, free entertainment. Open-source / Real-time Strategy Here’s another game that’s completely free from start to finish. This open-source, historical, real-time strategy game comes from Wildfire Games, a group of volunteer game developers from around the globe who are obviously big fans of Age of Empires 2. For a group that scattered and diverse, they’ve given us a surprisingly tight game of ancient warfare. In 0 A.D, you will begin development of your city, raise a mighty army, and contend with rivals to take over the world.
Those rivals can be on Windows, Linux, and Mac. As you’d expect from an RTS game, you’ll spend time gathering resources, developing and advancing technologies, and defending yourself from attacks while launching campaigns on others. Although 0 A.D. Is set in a fictional time, the game is rooted in reality.
The randomly generated battle maps are based upon real geography of the ancient world, as are the detailed units, buildings and technologies. If you’re a developer, you’re invited to contribute to the game’s growth. If you’re not, you can still get creative with the game’s map editor. It’s all free no matter how you get involved with 0 A.D., so dig in and get history started off right.
And if you really like it, consider contributing to the game’s development. Free-to-Play / MOBA Which storm, you ask? Wrong question. Which developer? So you know this multiplayer online battle arena game is worth your time.
Consider it a League of Legends challenger with a greater focus on team play. Fans of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft and other Blizzard titles will be happy to see their favorite heroes show up here. These Heroes of the Storm fight in 5 vs 5 battle arenas, engaging in versus AI, unranked and ranked fights. The ranked fights are split into hero (solo) leagues and team leagues, both of which pit you against stronger competition as you rack up wins.
In addition, Blizzard rolled out the Heroes Brawl game mode in 2016, expanding the gameplay styles with Arena, Mutator and Single-Lane rules. There are around 80 heroes to rotate through, and if you find one you really like you can purchase permanent access to him/her/it through in-game currency or microtransactions. Speaking of that, microtransactions are otherwise relegated to hero customizations and mount purchases (horses, lizards, etc.).
In other words, you won’t need to pay anything to fully enjoy the game. Still not convinced? Heroes of the Storm also happens to be one of our editor-in-chief’s favorite games. Check it out and maybe you can take him on. Free-to-Play / First-person Shooter It was originally released as a standalone game in 2008 and we still cannot talk about the best free games for Mac without mentioning Team Fortress 2.
TF2 is a team-based first-person shooter developed. Players choose a character from the multiple classes available, then join one of two teams and battle in a variety of game modes such as capture the flag and king of the hill. Its fan base remains faithful due to its art direction, gameplay, and humor, making Team Fortress 2 one of the top rated games of all time. Plus, find the right team and Team Fortress 2 becomes an excellent cooperative. Fans of online first-person shooters will get into this one quickly, and remain active thanks to the game’s strong sense of community and the high production values typical of Valve. Purchases are relegated to unique weapons, outfits, and such, so they’re certainly not necessary to stay involved, yet another reason for the game’s enthusiastic fan base.
Free-to-Play / MMO There are so many good F2P MMOs out there that it can be hard to figure out where to start. If you’re in that situation, why not begin your adventure in the amazing universe of Middle-Earth with Lord of the Rings online? Developed by, LotRO follows the story from the books and movies and gives free access to almost everything the game has to offer. The only differences with the paid version are the two character slots (as opposed to five), the fact you cannot send money through the in-game system, and the lack of destiny points (high-end points you have to be a VIP member to use).
The small details are easy to forget considering LotRO is one of the higher-quality MMOs available. Lord of the Rings Online isn’t just for fans of Tolkien’s work, it’s for anyone who loves the classic MMO formula (such as World of Warcraft’s) but prefers to not have to pay for it.
The amount of fun you can have with this game without paying a dime is outrageous, making it one of the finest free online Mac games available. Free-to-Play / MOBA League of Legends from developer remains one the most popular and successful Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (MOBA) available. It’s so popular it has its own League of Legends Friends mobile app just to help you keep track of everyone. In League of Legends, you assume the role of a “champion” with unique abilities, weaknesses, and strengths. Your objective is to fight alongside your team against other player or computer-controlled champions. In the most popular game modes (there are many), you have to destroy the opposing team’s nexus which lies at the heart of a guarded base. Battles last around 20 to 60 minutes, with your Champions starting out at a very low level.
They gain experience throughout the match and—equally important—they earn gold that can be used to buy in-game items to increase their powers and abilities. These disappear at the end of the match and you start the next round fresh. You have over 100 champions at your disposal, and you can spend money to purchase them (as well as multi-game boosts) straight-away.
Beyond that, microtransactions are relegated largely to cosmetic items. Oh, and be warned that League of Legends is a complex and highly competitive game, and the community is known for being particularly harsh towards newbies. 100% Free / Adventure You’ve certainly heard of Cave Story—and you’ve maybe even played one of its console or Steam iterations—but did you know this Metroidvania style 2D platformer started as a “free time” project for developer Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya? It took him five years to develop the game, and it became one of the first Indie gaming successes. Cave Story quickly gained traction because of its great story and solid gameplay. You start as an amnesiac who wakes up in (you got it) a cave, and as per usual when you find yourself alone and without memories in a cave, you quickly learn you’ll have to fight a crazy doctor who plans to conquer the world.
The enhanced version called Cave Story+ is available pretty much everywhere, but the original Cave Story is still available for free. Free-to-Play / Collectible Card Game There aren’t many companies that can deliver the same high quality of free games as Valve, but one that certainly can is Blizzard. We already talked about Starcraft II, and here we are again with Hearthstone—a digital collectible card game based on the popular Warcraft universe. If you don’t get into card games, don’t skip ahead just yetthis one is widely praised by players no matter previous feelings towards the genre. Hearthstone is much simpler than you would imagine.
In every match, you pull three or four cards (depending on who goes first) out of your customized deck of 30 cards. There are different card types (weapons, spells and minions), but the objective is clear: empty your opponent’s health before he does the same to you. Hearthstone is a great game—free or paid—that’s a good match for pretty much any kind of gamer. It’s easy for new players to get into but offers enough depth to keep you hooked.
It also benefits from frequent, free expansions to refresh the available cards, and its light system requirements make it one of the top free games you can easily play on your MacBook. Free-to-Play / First-person Shooter Upset that Overwatch is still sorely missing on the Mac? This may be the answer. Hi-Rez Studios’ Paladins focuses more on teamwork than most of the other free-to-play games we’ve included here. Players choose a champion from four possible categories: front line, damage, support and flank.
You’ll need to pay to get access to all of the available champions, but the free options are more than enough to get you started. There are a wide variety of game modes to battle through in Paladins, including popular options such as siege, team deathmatch, survival, and co-op. Your champion’s abilities can be enhanced via cards which provide cooldown reductions, health bonuses, etc. In addition, in-game currency obtained by killing enemies and winning battles can be used to purchase even greater bonuses. The team behind Paladins have stated that they drew inspiration from Team Fortress 2, but this game stands up quite well on its own, quietly becoming one of the hottest. 100% Free / Strategy No, this isn’t a Gimli-only mod for Lord of the Rings Online. Dwarf Fortress is its own unique entity—part construction and management, part roguelike, and text-based.
Yes, text-based. A typical Dwarf Fortress game involves a randomly generated world in which you indirectly control a group of dwarves in an attempt to build an underground fortress. Without much direction (the game has no objectives) and text-based graphics, this game is hard. But that’s also Dwarf Fortress’ charm.
Once you figure out how everything works, building that fortress becomes an addiction. Also, part of Dwarf Fortress’s fame comes from the fact it’s a two-member project that survives solely on donations.
Dwarf Fortress is a good option for folks who appreciate a good challenge (it’s famous for its difficulty and complexity) and who don’t need high-end graphics to enjoy a good gaming session. You can also feel good about yourself for supporting the indie movement. Free-to-Play / Fighting Here’s another game that promises “No Pay to Win. No Pay to Play. No hidden fees. No monthly costs. And it’s going to stay that way forever.” Sound good?
It’ll sound even better once we get into the specifics. Brawlhalla is a 2D platformer fighting game along the lines of Super Smash Bros., only with many more gameplay options (you have to have something to compensate for the loss of Ike, I guess). There are online ranked 1v1 and 2v2, online 4 player free-for-all, online 8 player free-for-all and 4v4. Locally, you’ve got free-for-all, custom teams, and a single player tournament. And if the gameplay options don’t keep things fresh, the multitude of weapons and power-ups available during the brawls will certainly keep things moving along. If you do want to pay, you can unlock all of the characters or you can get different outfits for them.
But if you decide to keep your money to yourself, it won’t stop you from winning. Free-to-Play / Visual Novel Terrified by the concept of joining a book club? Then this game’s for you. A visual novel by Team Salvato, Doki Doki Literature Club is actually a psychological horror game in disguise.
It starts out innocently enough, with your character joining a high school literary club. There’s a poem writing mechanic you can use to flirt with the various girls in the club, and there’s a lot of dialogue to click through. But things turn dark very quickly and you’ll soon find that Doki Doki Literature Club is more about keeping the girls alive than it is about finding your one true love through books. The game breaks the fourth wall quite a bit, creating a wholly meta experience that’s effective even if you’ve never played a dating sim before. Be prepared for the disturbing contentand plenty of restarts. You’ll need to play through the game a few times to get the ending that won’t put you off high school clubs forever.
Open-source / Simulation Remember Transport Tycoon Deluxe? It was a business simulation game released back in 1995, so if you were too young or just missed it, its spirit lives on with this open source remake.
Like its inspiration, the point of Open TTD is to make money by transporting people and cargo via planes, trains and automobilesand boats. Each time you successfully move an object from point A to point B you’ll get income that can be used to build better methods of transportation. All this takes place between 1950 and 2050, giving you plenty of different technologies to develop and utilize (although mods and online content can take that even further). Of course, technology has changed quite a bit since 1995, and Open TTD has taken advantage of that by expanding the game with larger maps, an enhanced UI, multi-language support, custom AI, and plenty more. Even better, Open TTD features online and local multiplayer with up to 255 players! And although updated, the game does retain its original visual charm.
Open-source / Racing We gave you a Super Smash Bros.-style game earlier, so why not include some Super Mario Kart love as well? SuperTuxKart is a kart racer with several racing modes for single and multiplayer action, as well as plenty of characters to obtain and use.
Of course, what really matters in games such as this are the tracks. There are 21 to unlock within the game’s story (it involves a kidnapping and a race-to-save-your-friend element if you must know), but with the open source model, there are plenty more to download via add-ons. SuperTuxKart has some pretty impressive, colorful racing environments that are fun to drive through.
Fans of open source gaming will also get a kick out of seeing the mascots from other titles making their appearance here. Overall, SuperTuxKart offers a great deal of arcade racing fun. 100% Free / First-person Shooter Born as a wild west-themed mod for the Source engine, Fistful of Frags is a deathmatch game set in the Wild West. It has your basic options such as teamplay, versus and elimination modes, but separates itself with some unique mechanics.
For example, it has a dual wield weapon system with double dynamic crosshairs, and you can even throw your weapons as projectiles when all else fails. And speaking of weapons, the historical guns available to you are slower to use than modern first-person deathmatch games, but they’re still quite powerful.
It also forces you to play things a little more realistically than when you’re using tasers, bazookas and flak cannons. The more skilled you become with your guns, the more you’ll be rewarded. You won’t have to pay a dime to play Fistful of Frags; no microtransactions exist within the game. Use the money to buy some whiskey if you’re of age, as the game seems to focus on that quite heavily.
100% Free / Turn-based Strategy With a name like Wesnoth, you just know it’s a place you’re going to have to battle for. Thankfully, the battles are turn-based on a hex grid that will take you back to the ‘90s visually, which was a tremendously colorful and detailed place to be. So, what will you do during The Battle for Wesnoth? As described on the project’s website, “Embark on a desperate quest to reclaim your rightful throne Flee the Lich Lords to a new home across the sea Delve into the darkest depths of the earth to craft a jewel of fire itself Defend your kingdom against the ravaging hordes of a foul necromancer Or lead a straggly band of survivors across the blazing sands to confront an unseen evil.” That enough for you? The Battle for Wesnoth features 16 single-player campaigns and 46 multiplayer maps (online and hot seat) over which more than 200 units will battle.
The game has developed a large, dedicated fanbase due to the quality and quantity of content, the engaging gameplay, and the fact that it’s free (not to mention its Tolkienesque setting). That community has, in turn, contributed a ton of user-made content ranging from new campaigns and factions to artwork. 100% Free / Endless Runner Sometimes you want to play a game with just one button. We get that, and that’s why we offer up Canabalt. This endless runner has been released on everything from iOS to the Commodore 64 (waitwhat?), and it offers plenty of frenetic fun on the Mac. Basically, you’re a dude running from some sort of threat.
We’ve all been there, right? In Canabalt, this involves running/jumping across rooftops as you dodge various obstacles along the way. Unlike in real life, you get faster as you progress, increasing the challenge. And unlike many endless runners available, the environments in Canabalt are procedurally generated. This means the game is more about skill than memorization, and it greatly increases the replay value. If you’re looking for a free way to kill some time on your Mac, Canabalt is it. 100% Free / First-person shooter We close our top 20 with Unreal Tournament from Epic Games, but I expect it’ll be much higher up the next time we look at this list.
A new iteration of one of the all-time classic multiplayer first-person shooters, Unreal Tournament fills old-time gamers like me with nostalgia while pointing all players directly towards the future. If you’re too young to know, Unreal Tournament was initially developed in 1999 as an expansion for the single-player FPS Unreal, but quickly took on a life of its own. The game drops combatants on wonderfully designed (and quite memorable) maps in which they can engage in the usual multiplayer matches: assault, capture the flag, deathmatch, etc. Loaded with unique weapons, armor, and amplifiers, Unreal Tournament gives gamers of all types a way to win. This new version is still in alpha, so there’s plenty of work to be done (as evidenced by multiple reports that it’s still quite buggy). That means you’ll be helping the developers along by playing it, but it’s also your chance to improve your skills ahead of launchfor free. For the record though, it is unclear what will happen with this game as no updates nor a word from the developers have occurred in almost a year.
Games Games Our take Genre Demand Level MMORPG Guild Wars 2 Because you can’t have a guild without having wars. If you tend to prefer story-driven games, this MMORPG actually builds a storyline around your actions. It’s a great way to stay involved when you get tired of fighting for fighting’s sake. Developed by ArenaNet and published by NCSOFT, Guild Wars 2 uses a dynamics event system as opposed to traditional quests to create the story within its persistent world. Select your race choose your profession, pick your skills and join the fight. 74 Metascore MMORPG MMORPG Trove This sandbox MMORPG allows you to play as a pirate, a dinosaur tamer, a headless knight, and more. Developed and published by Trion Worlds, Trove invites players to build a world, explore others, fight, and go home (it’s the only place you’ll be safe, after all).
The game is visually reminiscent of Minecraft, but offers plenty more dungeons to explore, abilities to master and bosses to defeat. And because everyone’s competing with Fortnite these days, there’s a battle royal mode to keep the kids happy. NA Metascore MMORPG MMORPG EVE Online Surprisingly, this is only one of the few MMORPGs set in space as opposed to a fantasy world.
EVE Online features over 7,800 star systems to explore and conquer, and its unscripted setup means you can do so at your discretion. Its persistent world of mining, piracy, manufacturing, trading, exploration, and combat will keep you entertained for a very long time, and there’s now a limited free-to-play to help you get started. EVE Online has even been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, for crying out loud! NA Metascore MMORPG MOBA SMITE This free to play third-person MOBA from the developers of Paladins allows players to control a god and get into the thick of the team-based combat with the game’s third-person perspective. You get five free gods (from the available 80-plus) when you sign up, and new content is released every two weeks. Start off in the newbie-friendly arena mode and build up your skills until you’re ready to become a Grandmaster in the SMITE World Championship (or just have fun with the numerous promotions events). NA Metascore MOBA Shooter Xonotic Totally free and totally open-source, this first-person shooter runs on a modified Quake engine and is inspired by Unreal Tournament and Quake (but with enhanced player movement).
This means you can play classic modes such as deathmatch and capture the flag, but you can unlock 14 more for a wide variety of intense combat options. And as you’d expect when hearing the names Quake and Unreal Tournament, Xonotic, is a rare first-person shooter action amongst the other games on our list. NA Metascore Shooter Collectible Cards The Elder Scrolls: Legends A collectible card game featuring two-player turn-based combat (against a human or computer opponent). The cards are based on characters and creatures from The Elder Scrolls, pitting the player character against a High Elf named Naarifin who intends to fulfill the Culling with the help of an army of demons. The game is free-to-play, with expansion sets available for purchase (including one that features elements from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim). The latest—Houses of Morrowind—was just released in April of this year.
NA Metascore Collectible Cards Action Super Crate Box This is certainly one of the more unique freeware games on our list. Super Crate Box provides old-school arcade action mixed with the intense excitement of modern survival games. The enemies won’t quit coming, and the only thing you have to stop them is one of 14 weapons provided at random by the crate box. Pick up your weapon, kill as many as you can, then hit up the crate box for a new, different weapon. If you don’t stop the enemies before they reach the firepit they’ll return even faster.
May the odds be ever in your favor, or something like that. NA Metascore Action Shooter Marathon Oh, Marathon, glorious Marathon. One of the all-time great first-person shooters for the Mac is still available, and it’s available for free. You can’t call yourself a Mac gamer without having played this.
Marathon broke new ground in the first-person shooter genre across all platforms, which is quite an achievement as it was only available for Mac OS. Developed before microtransactions were even a thing, it’s totally free to play from start to finish. Still a blast to play despite its age. NA Metascore Shooter Experimental The Plan “A fly ascends to the skies, pondering the pointlessness of its brief existence.” They say a fly’s life is only three days, but it’s not like it knows that, right? A fly doesn’t know death from Shinola. But we do, and that makes this “experiment” from the developers of Among the Sleep a beautiful bit of relaxing freeware. It doesn’t last much more than five minutes, but isn’t that kind of perfect?
Gorgeous visuals and simple gameplay to share with others. NA Metascore Experimental Adventure Unturned Work with friends to survive a zombie-infested land (because that always turns out so well). This F2P game comes from the creator of the Battlefield and Deadzone games in Roblox, bringing with it similarly blocky graphics that make the proceedings a bit more lighthearted than your usual zombie fare. You’ll be up against nature and other players—not just zombies—as you attempt to fortify your stronghold in the Yukon, Hawaii, Russia and other official and community created maps. Also, you have access to jet skis and helicopters.
As you should. NA Metascore Adventure Action The Expendabros Video games have thankfully become quite diverse over the past decade, but every now and again you just want to help some old-school arcade burly men go on an old-school action mission of intense side-scrolling mayhem. The Expandabros may be nothing more than a short but free way to try out Broforce, but we see nothing wrong with that when you get to control guys like Broney Ross, Bronar Jenson and Toll Borad. Take down a ruthless arms dealer and his army of soldiers, artillery and circular saws exactly as ‘80s action heroes would want you to. NA Metascore Action Role-Playing Realm Grinder In this “clicker” from Divine Games you’re a monarch out to expand your realm. You’ll start with nothing more than a meager farm and a strong desire to explore, build, upgrade, and attack. Are you good?
Are you evil? Let the other players decide. Your concern should be solely with clicking to get rich. Whether you get there by dealing with elves, demons or any of the other dozen factions is up to.
How much you spend it also up to you; Realm Grinder is free-to-play, but microtransactions are available if you tire of clicking. NA Metascore Role-Playing Action Iron Snout Not content to hide in his house of straw, this little pig would rather defend himself with cleavers, athletic equipment, and whatever else he can find.including the body parts of his enemies. This free brawler is bloody and violent, but its colorfully cartoonish and often humorous presentation help to keep the proceedings light. The fast-paced action is enhanced by simple controls that helps you get started quickly, but you’re going to need some practice to unlock all of the game’s achievements.
NA Metascore Action Strategy OpenRA This is your chance to play one of the earliest (and finest) real-time strategy games for free, as OpenRA is pretty much just Command and Conquer. The classic real-time strategy game from Westwood Studios has been made available through and maintained by the open-source community, and has been updated to run natively on modern operating systems and screen resolutions. So, although it retains the visual style of the 1995 original, it plays just fine on your iMac or MacBook.
OpenRA offers many “modern features” as well, including dual-button mouse input, fog or war, and streaming support. NA Metascore Strategy Shooter Shadow Warrior Classic From the creators of Duke Nukem 3D comes his Asian counterpart. This throwback first-person shooter is equally juvenile, equally over-the-top, and equally fun.provided your mindset is rooted firmly in the 1990s. The lead character’s name is Lo Wang, and that should tell you everything you need to know. The bad jokes, gore and stereotypes are almost as prevalent as the repeated environment textures, but that’s just what we played in the ‘90s. It was either this or Mario Teaches Typing. At least now it’s free.
NA Metascore Shooter. We know that game fandom is subjective. We all have our own filters that lead us to a specific genre or title, but there’s a lot of commonality in those filters. Here’s what we used to determine which games should be included here and where they should rank. Native support: You’d be surprised how many Top Games for macOS lists feature Windows-only games. Each and every one of the games mentioned here is officially supported on MacOS and does not require Bootcamp or Wine.
MacOS performance: Having said that, we haven’t specifically tested each game on multiple Mac systems. Because all of these games can be freely downloaded and tested, we didn’t feel the need to benchmark. Check our comments on each game, however, to see which of them are prone to lags or will work well on older Mac systems. Critical acclaim: We know that our opinions are not the only ones that matter. To keep this guide as relevant as possible, we only considered proven games with positive reviews from both professional reviewers and average gamers. 100% Free VS. Free-to-Play: As we mentioned before, there’s a distinction between free and free-to-play (F2P).
Both are included here, but check our designations to see which are really free and which require microtransactions of various sorts. Great games are available at any cost. And although there are features and options in $60 titles that you’ll rarely find for free, we continue to be amazed by how much entertainment you can get out of a game that won’t cost you a dime to play. We had a lot of fun learning about and playing these games, and we hope you will, too.
As you check them out, we only have two requests for you. First, be sure to tell us about any great Mac free games we missed. And second, if you can, send some financial love to the developers. Game development is a hard road to travel, and these people deserve to be rewarded. Kirk's love for Apple and Mac gaming lead him to Applelinks.com in 1997, where he would eventually become editor.
He was then hired to become editor of AppleTell.com before it was bought out and shut down eight years later. During this time, he also contributed to GamerTell, Inside Mac Games, Mac Gamer’s Ledge, and Dealerscope. Kirk is now vice president of client services at Dynamics Online, Inc, and is also co-founder and managing editor of BESTAppleTV.com, a website dedicated to viewing, gaming, and browsing on the Apple TV device. With the recent high sierra and the ability to connect egpu boxes via thunderbold there is a whole new world that opens for game players. Imagine playing with one of these top cards from Nvidia or AMD. Maybe we should open a page or forum thread for those who are interested in this option.
As always, there is much more on the horizon than Apple pretends to publish. But as always, users will have to help each other out, even go into the grey zone to discover al the posibilities. Let the games future begin! I can also highly recommend the Mac version of World of Warships.
Initially there was only a semi-official Wine based port, that did work flawlessly most of the time. But Wargaming have worked with Codeweavers to create an official port that works really well, even though it’s still largely a Wine bottle based solution.
I can even run it in 4K on my 2010 Mac Pro, with a MacVidCards GTX980, quite a few macs should be able to run it at 1080p on medium settings. Make sure you have a SSD.
My 2011 MBP can also run it, and my Read more ».
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