Freeware Games

Free games for your PC, try all of them at least once! There's absolutely no reason not to.

This list is not for shareware or "abandonware" titles, but for games that are genuinely free so you can be both a cheapass and a righteous snob about it.

As more MMO Games go free-to-play, they are technically "freeware," but they're pretty specific, and you can't play them anymore if the company servers go away. These recommendations are for games that are free and are for single-player or LAN parties.

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Download links for each can be found in the Description. The type column will be one of the following:
 * .exe : available as an executable for Windows (or windows emulator)
 * .dmg : available as a package for Mac OSX
 * .tgz : available as source or package for Linux
 * .swf : Shockwave flash; play in a webpage, or download it and play off your harddrive
 * .jar : You need a Java virtual machine, might run on your smartphone too
 * DOS: Runs on DOS and anything that has DOSBox (BeOS, Linux, Mac OS X, OS/2, and Windows)
 * steam : freebie from Valve via the Steam online store
 * online : can only be played with a net connection (probably because it's multiplayer only)
 * .zblorb, .z1, .z2, .z3, .z4, .z5, .z6, .z7, or .z8 - Z-machine files used for text adventures

Links

 * Abandonia The absolute motherload of PC games with expired/unused copyrights, a.k.a. Abandonware (not all will contain the original music though)
 * How to download online flash games for playing offline
 * Something Awful thread full of flash games, most of which range from good to excellent.
 * Something Awful thread that picks up where previous left off
 * Smashing Magazine list of flash games
 * Indie Game Database.
 * 235 free indie games in 10 minutes A showcase video with a full list of links to each and game
 * http://experimentalgameplay.com/
 * http://dev-fire-gd.sourceforge.net/about.html A free program that lets you view a list of 100+ freeware games, updated weekly, with info on each aswell as their relevant site and youtube videos. Games range from 500kb to 500mb aswell as quality but within the mess of clones and guff are some real gems.
 * Chanarchive.org.Though an archive site for all of 4chan there are sometimes a few pages were /v/ talks about freeware, the newest of which can be found here; http://chanarchive.org/4chan/v/37096/lets-talk-about-freeware though using the search tool on the site can result in a few more pages.