Free PC Game Downloads

The hardest part of finding free games to download for your Windows PC is not finding sites that promise games, it's finding trustworthy sites that have really free games, not just a teaser. "Free download" often means it's a free trial download of a commercial game for PCs, and the flashy sites loaded with free games are often using them as bait and spreading adware and spyware with the downloads. Here are three reliable sites with free games for PCs. Download all you want.

Abandonia Reloaded has remakes and re-issues of classic games. Often the vintage game is refreshed with better graphics and "engine" (the part that controls the on-screen action). My three favorites here are the King's Quest I, II, and III games. I played them when they were first released in the mid 1980s, and it's great to see Graham and his buddies again. Reloaded.org also has the classic escape adventure, Castle Wolfenstein. Yes, it has crude graphics, but great story and game play. And The Legend of Zelda lives again at Abandonia.

NoNags.com is my usual source of free tools and utilities for Windows, because they have a strict policy of not accepting adware, but they have a good selection of games too. The yellow rubber duckies will let you know the game's ratings. 6 of 6 duckies is superb, 5 of 6 is really good. I don't download software with lower than a 4/6 rating. The games are for various versions of the Windows systems, so read the specifications before you download. Most of them will also run on Linux, with WINE.

Some free games to search for on NoNags:
Big Solitaires 3D 1.4 (a collection of 40 solitaire games with OpenGL rendering)
Wegabyte Reversy 1.9 (a variant on Othello or Reversi)
Babble Deluxe 1.1 (a word finder game)
NaaC 1.0 (single-person shooter, killing smelly aliens)
Sokoban++ 1.5 (puzzle maze)
Samegame v. 2.0 (matching game, easy but addictive)

You may also find some interesting educational software games in the NoNags education section. I saw software to learn typing tutors and music reading.

Download games from NoNags by clicking the "More Details & Downloads" link from the game listing, and then click the download icon on the next page. After the software has downloaded, double click on the downloaded file and follow the instructions on your screen to install it.

SourceForge is the site for thousands of open source projects, for all operating systems. It's better known as a place to find free database software than PC games to download, but as of this writing, the Games section had over 24,000 listings. You have to use filters to clear out the unfinished software, but there are some gems.

How to filter software on SourceForge: At the top of the games listing click the "Filter" link. A place to build filters will open, showing "Require" in one box and "Files" in the next. Leave "Require" in place, and scroll the second box to "Production Status" and scroll the third box that appears to "5 - Production/Stable". Click "Apply" to ignore all the projects that are still in development. Then, leave the "Require" in place, and scroll the second box to "Operating System" and the third box to "All 32-bit MS Windows (95/98/NT/2000/XP)", then click "Apply" to select just Windows-compatible software.

What is on SourceForge? My favorite game, the one and only NetHack, Falcon's Eye, a multi-level dungeon adventure game. It's addictive, it's hard to beat and will take you months to complete the quest. A slightly different version, called "Vulture's Eye" is Nethack with upgrades to graphics and game play.

If you like first-person shooters, you'll like Marathon Aleph One, based on Bungie's Marathon 2. Bungie released the source code in 2000, and

Also on SourceForge:
RISK is a java version of the classic RISK board game.
jSudoku is Sudoku for Java.
Free Civ is a complex, empire-building strategy game.