You could use system requirements lab website to see what games you can play with your specific computer. Instead of knowing what games you want to play but don't know if they will work you will instead have a list of games you know will likely work and can pick from those.
Gaming
gamin'
Minetest is a decent MC clone, open source and whatnot. There's also a few mods out there that tries to replicate it. (inb4 someone says minetest is an engine and not a game)
Guild Wars 2, has free to play tier, and no monthly sub if you buy. Definitely a dank game and I ran it for years and years on a piece of SHIT laptop from 2013-2014
I hate Epic launcher but if you can get weekly free games from epic store.
Roguelikes:
- Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup (http://crawl.akrasiac.org:8080/)
- DRL (https://drl.chaosforge.org/)
Have you tried interactive fiction (text adventures)?
There's a yearly competition (https://ifcomp.org), the winners of the last 27 years should keep you busy for a while. They come in various file formats you will need players for, but some have a "play online" function.
Oldschool Runescape
I also have this problem so I'll suggest some games I like to play. They're not free unless you're up for piracy.
Disco elysium (visual novel esque, unique and interesting, multiple choices, indie) - incredibly well written game with lots of dialogue and heavy political themes
Morrowind (open world, RPG, multiple choices, retro I guess) - oldest elder Scrolls game but maybe the best in terms of lore and freedom in game mechanics
Oblivion - same as morrowind but imo not as good
Factorio (indie) - if you like this kind of game you'll never need another game suggestion because you'll be too busy playing fsctorio
Rimworld (indie) - as addictive as factorio
Great roguelike "Shattered Pixel Dungeon"
This is a free (as in freedom) game, I've done dozens of runs, there was enough depth and graphics are pixel art. Available for computers, phones, whatever
Someone else said Vampire Survivors, the game I like a lot recently is 20 Minutes Until Dawn. Lots of guns, upgrades, and characters to have fun with.
I would suggest giving a look at Crosscode, Katana Zero and Hotline Miami 1 and 2. They are some of my favorite games. Katana Zero and the Hotline Miamis are shorter, story focused games, while crosscode is longer, with side quests and puzzles.
Crosscode
Hi! Lea!
(also they requested free games)
Oh shit I forgot how to read
Highly suggest SIGNALIS
It follows the style of slient Hill and the original resident evil 1 and 2 with its own unique storyline if you are into survival horror
The ones that come to my mind right now are CS2 and Dota 2. They will work with your specs easily I guess
Team Fortress 2 is a good choice. I used to play it when I was getting into PC gaming but still only had integrated graphics. I recently got back into it, since it's pretty much the only FPS I really enjoy. The game hasn't had updates in a while, but it still has a dedicated player base.
Stardew Valley is a great farming game with RPG implementations.
If you really wanted to, you could play Valorant with your setup, specially using competitive settings.
But if instead you want to keep your sanity, games like:
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The Binding of Isaac
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RuneScape (and Old-School RuneScape)
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Tunic
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Cassette Beasts
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Baba is You
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Peglin (huh my phone's autocorrect had a different idea about this word)
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Vampire Survivors
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Brotato
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RetroArch to emulate most GameCube or older titles.
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Kingdoms of Amalur
Should all run and give you lots of fun.
Editing because I remembered more:
- The Ace Attorney Trilogy
- Danganronpa
- Slay The Spire
- Hades
- Celeste
Ill look into them but im wondering which one to start with.
What are you feeling like currently? Do you want a game to casually open up, play a round, leave... Or do you want to me immersed in a world with beginning and an ending?
Just mess around and have fun maybe something with a beginning or some sort of end goal, something that isint ragey to say you know somehting i can play casually for fun at random times.
Personally I highly recommend Old School RuneScape for that
League of Legends runs pretty well.
And super smash bros melee via project slippi at slippi.gg
Factoryo, Rimworld, Oxygen not Included, if you are into building sims. Dyson Sphere Program might be a bit heavier.
On the Open Source side, OpenTTD, Widelands, or generally most OS games.
A lot of good options in the highest rated free steam games. Helltaker, Grimm's Hollow, Doki Doki Literature Club, The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, Project Kat, the Expendabros, Eternal Senia, and the Supper should all run on low-end systems and vary from "enjoyable" to "fantastic," although most are short. I think the longest are Doki and Senia at 4-5hrs, while stuff like The Supper is only 20 minutes.
If you're looking for something a little spicy in the visual novels/adventure/multi-choices/text based/indie/rpg genres, a great NSFW resource is F95zone. They have all of those genres and more.
NSFW LINK
F95zone
You can practically run everything that was launched before 2012~.
guild wars 2, war thunder, world of tanks, team fortress 2, CSGO, random free MMORPGs (you can filter them on steam).
Game boy emulators work pretty great and with 'open source' versions of some gb game code (old Pokemon games mainly I think) many great hacks to improve the original experience exist. They take up an incredibly tiny amount of space, being old school.
Kingdoms and castles aren't free. However, it is really fun and runs smoothly on low-end hardware. I highly recommend you try it! I love it.
One I never see mentioned anywhere is Transcendence which is a space rogue-lite game where you cross the galaxy fighting numerous different types of enemies and taking down space stations.
It's free to download on the kronosaur site or like £4 on steam
for an mmorpg able to run on low spec pc, i suggest you try Champions of Regnum. This is an RvR open pvp format mmo. Basically the endgame is really fun and last largely, forever. It is based off DAOC and has a similar combat system. 3 realms fight over control of the map.
any quake games at this point. (not QC), warfork is just Quake with more crazier movement.
There's a lot of great suggests already here, but I'll try to list off a few not mentioned (or mentioned less at least).
Super Tux Kart - open source racing game
Minetest - open source Minecraft style game
Emulators - always fun to play the classics
Android Games - through Waydroid (Linux), Google Play Games Beta (Windows), and Natively on some Chromebooks you can play Android games on a PC
DokiDoki literature club - a phsycological horror parody of visual novels
Unciv - Catan like open source strategy game
Dominaton - Risk like open source strategy game
Also, I would highly recommend against pirated games. Putting aside copyright debates, the idea of running some unknown executables on my device uploaded by an anonymous software pirate sends shivers up my spine. If you were really dead set on doing so, at least run them in a VM with nothing important on it.
Duelyst II is a fan revival of essentially a Hearthstone clone played on a chess board. It's still in it's early stages, but it's fun and promising.
Muck is a roguelike survival. It's got kind of a silly TWAB vibe. It's fun to play with friends but you don't have to.
TF2 is a casual FPS, as you probably know. It still holds up. I'd recommend playing on custom servers.
Brawlhalla is a fun fighting game.
Tibia is a german old school mmorpg that just refuses to die. I had loads of fun with it back in the day.
A List of Free Games: Realm of the Mad God (2D, MMO)
MiniCraft+ (2D, Sandbox)
Candy Box 2 (ASCII Browser/Puzzle Game)
Widelands (2D, Strategy)
Veloren (Voxel RPG)
0 A.D. (3D, Strategy)
While not free, I’d suggest getting Terraria on Steam, play through, then switch to TModLoader. You can expect a 1000+ hours easily. You could pirate it, but the devs really deserve your money on this one.
Honestly, a GamePass Ultimate membership for cloud gaming would be a decent idea. I use mine on low-end PCs (with a controller) and it’s been great for the month or so I’ve been using it.
- HOLLOW KNIGHT. Very very light, if it could run on my ancient microwave without any problems it'll run just fine on your shit too. It has incredible and deep lore, unique atmosphere, will get rid of any bug phobia you may have and replace it with either pure love or hatred depending on the bug, it's also a metroidvania which means you'll get lost a lot but that's the part of the fun as you'll discover new locations, bosses, items, npcs etc. and then you can always backtrack to an area which you previously couldn't access since you'll achieve upgrades throughout the game.
I cannot recommend this enough. It also feels incredibly rewarding as at first it'll probably be difficult to beat mobs and bosses, but you can feel yourself becoming better and there ain't no other game which gives you such satisfaction when finally beating a boss you've been stuck on, except maybe souls games. It also has a soul mechanic where if you die, your soul is left at the place you died and if you recover it you can also recover your geos (game currency).
It's an indie game, but the effort and depth put into it matches that of AAA games. It's not free, although it's one game I'd say is worth every penny and it's not even expensive. However, it's fine if you can't afford it because...
piracy entered the chat
If you're completely new to it, I'd highly recommend going through FreeMediaHeckYeah's gaming piracy guide, but if you're just looking for a quick way to get the game go to https://gog-games.to/game/hollow_knight and just download it. Note: You don't need a VPN for direct downloads, it's only recommended to use it for torrenting.
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RLCRAFT. It's a minecraft mod which may seem heavy at first, but as long as you optimize it for performance it should run on 40-60 fps. If you thought mc vanilla was boring, rlcraft is the perfect shit for you. It's hard. You die a lot. But you also discover shitton of buildings, dungeons, creatures, items and game gets easier as you gain more knowledge. It's pretty much challenging from early to late, but it'll always have something to surprise you with and it's one of the best games for exploration, especially mid-late game when you'll have a flying mount.
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KATANA ZERO. Music is absolute peak. Gameplay is absolute peak. Story is trippy, emotional rollercoaster which will probably leave you confused but it'll all make sense in the end. It has goofy dialogue, great interactions, gameplay is super satisfying especially later on in the game. It's another one of those games you can't believe is just an indie game made by one dude and not a whole fucken studio. Cleanest pixel 2d I've ever played, AND A SEQUEL IS COMING SOON. It's not free, but as explained previously, just go to https://gog-games.to/game/katana_zero and yeh, enjoy.
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FAR CRY 3. This one has such insane graphics, but it can run just fine on lower end setups because the game was made in fucking 2013. Yeah, it's way ahead of its time. It'll take up a bit more storage than previously recommended games but its only a few gigs. It's the perfect survival game. It has great gameplay, open world, villains you'll remember your whole fucken life, satisfying af mechanics etc. You know the drill, it's not free. I'm not gonna repeat myself because do you know the definition of insanity? Insanity is doing the same fucking thing, over and over again, expecting shit to change. Although this time shit did change and you can't find it on GOG, but just torrenting it from https://fitgirl-repacks.site/ or any other site starred in the FMHY wiki will do the trick.
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DARKEST DUNGEON 1 AND 2. Dark atmosphere, pain, suffering, but also clarity. It's a strategical game, but it also has a unique charm to it and all the characters you see you'll grow fond of and then be emotionally destroyed when they die because of your skill issues :') 10/10 would recommend solely because of deep ancestor quotes
I could write about 10 more essay but these are my top 5, some of the other games I'd recommend are: Cult of the lamb (rpg + base management), RIMWORLD (war crimes), Hades (satisfying af), Have a nice death (basically life metaphor but actually fun), Don't Starve (survival, 10x harder if you have and play with friends), Postal 2 (when your wife sucks, your job sucks, your neighbors suck and you just wanna set some cops on fire, pee on their corpse and then use a cat as a silencer - pg friendly btw), Rainworld (slug cat), Tomb raider 1 (survival), Dying light 1 (it might look like u can't run it, but I guarantee you'll get at least 30-40 fps if you adjust the settings), dead island 1 (if you can't run dying light but wanna play smth similar, play this - is basically dying light but has 10x more side quests), Hyper Light Drifter (sword go brr).
Whelp I just gave you enough games to get lost in for a year, enjoy! Feel free to ask for help with anything game/piracy related as well.
I know RTS is not on your list but maybe retro: StarCraft, Brood War, and StarCraft 2 is free on its launcher.
Space Station 14.
This is a remake of SS13, and it's an open-source labor of love. Sessions are ~45 minutes to 1½ hours. Complexity is daunting, but just don't go in expecting to be useful - expect to be a passenger, drink beers, and possibly get killed or rescued, maybe have some RP or semi-RP chats.
But you'll learn, and slowly, how things work. Maybe you can be an engineer intern and fail horribly while everyone depends on you. Maybe you can be in security and get killed. ..and maybe, just maybe, someday you'll win, and know you helped to make that happen.
If you’re fine with emulation, and you haven’t played it yet, Xenoblade Chronicles is pretty good. You can get the Wii version and install HD textures and on screen button mappings of your choice and it’s quite good. It’s not quite open world but the maps are very big and it’s a JRPG. It’s also retro if you consider Wii to be retro yet.
I'm so bored with all the AAA's and big games. So, I would suggest Guacamelee, if you are seeing this then you should know both parts of the game are currently free on epic games.
I like Hades, Vampire Survivors, Fresh Woman (NSFW), Noita, Brotato, Yi Xian, SEUM, Factorio, Rim World, Oxygen Not Included, SNKRX, Blasphemous (if you are patient), Stacklands, Hollow Knight, Card Hog, Slay the Spire, Dorfromantik, Super Mega Zero, Geometry Dash (lol), Terraria (Must Play), Raft, Satisfactory (don't think low end pc's can run it, not really sure).
Everyone of these are chill games except Blasphemous. I'm chill games lover, so so done with all the hyper dopamine AAA titles. I don't like to waste my time on games so I go for the games which give me more in less time. I play valorant sometimes but only one or maybe two matches per day. I play clash mini, vampire survivors, sonic forces, Windows XP Space Cadet (available on github) on android.