You probably never bought any of these games. You might not even remember where you downloaded them from. Yet somehow they ended up on millions of PCs.
That was part of the beauty of freeware gaming in the late 1990s and 2000s. The games were usually tiny, ran on almost anything and could keep you busy for hours without asking for a credit card, an account or a 70 GB update.
Some were genuinely great. Others were incredibly basic. Most importantly, they were free and quite a few of them are still perfectly playable today. You can even get many of them running on a Steam Deck, which makes it a surprisingly decent retro PC.
| Game | Year | Download |
|---|---|---|
| Blobby Volley 2 | 2006 | Download Now |
| Soldat | 2002 | Download Now |
| Armagetron Advanced | 2001 | Download Now |
| Icy Tower | 2001 | Go To Download Page |
| Little Fighter 2 | 1999 | Go To Download Page |
| GeneRally | 2002 | Go To Download Page |
| N | 2004 | Go To Download Page |
| Liero / OpenLiero | 1998 | Go To Download Page |
| DX-Ball | 1996 | Go To Download Page |
| TrackMania Nations Forever | 2008 | Go To Download Page |
Downloads link either directly to the freeware files hosted here or to the game’s current official/download page where available.
Blobby Volley 2
Let’s start with the game that reminded me of this whole category in the first place.
Blobby Volley is volleyball reduced to its absolute minimum. Two blobs, a ball and a net. That’s basically it.
It takes seconds to understand and considerably longer to stop embarrassing yourself. Once you get used to the strange ball physics, simple matches can become surprisingly competitive, especially with another person sitting next to you.
Blobby Volley 2 kept the same basic idea while improving everything around it. It still looks wonderfully cheap, weird and unmistakably like a PC game from another era.
Soldat
Soldat was what happened when somebody looked at Worms, Counter-Strike and Quake and apparently decided they should all become one 2D game.
And somehow it worked.
You controlled a tiny soldier with guns, grenades and a jetpack, flying around equally tiny maps while everything exploded around you. The controls took some getting used to, but once they clicked, Soldat was incredibly fast and satisfying.
Multiplayer was where it really shined, although fighting bots was more than enough to waste an evening too.
Armagetron Advanced
If you ever wanted to play the light-cycle scene from Tron, Armagetron Advanced was basically the answer.
You race around a 3D arena leaving a solid wall behind your bike. Hit a wall and you’re out. Simple enough, until several players start cutting each other off and half the arena turns into a maze.
It was also a perfect LAN game because almost anyone could understand what was happening after watching for thirty seconds.
Icy Tower
Harold the Homeboy jumps up an endless tower. That description shouldn’t produce a particularly addictive game, but Icy Tower somehow managed it.
The real obsession wasn’t simply climbing. It was building momentum, chaining jumps together and watching your score increase while everything moved faster and faster.
It was tiny, loaded almost instantly and could run on the sort of PC that struggled with almost everything else. No surprise that it seemed to appear everywhere in the early 2000s.
Little Fighter 2
Little Fighter 2 looked like a simple 2D fighting game until several players, enemies and special attacks filled the screen at once. Then it became complete chaos.
You could fight alone, play through stages or squeeze several people around the same computer. Different characters had their own attacks and combinations, so there was considerably more to learn than the screenshots suggested.
This is one of those games where seeing a single screenshot is enough to bring back memories you had completely forgotten about.
GeneRally
GeneRally was a top-down racing game that looked like something you could have made in Paint. That is meant as a compliment.
The tracks were small, the cars were tiny and getting into a race took almost no time. But learning how to take corners without throwing away all your speed gave it much more depth than you might expect.
Add several players on the same PC and a quick race could suddenly turn into a tournament.
N
Before N++, there was simply N.
You played a tiny ninja running and jumping through minimalist levels filled with mines, turrets and other things specifically designed to ruin an otherwise perfect run.
Movement was the entire game. Once you understood the momentum and wall jumps, controlling the ninja felt fantastic. And every failed level gave you the same excuse: one more try.
Liero
The easiest way to describe Liero is probably Worms in real time.
Two worms dig through destructible terrain while firing absurd weapons at each other. No turns and very little time to think. Just worms, explosions and panic.
It was especially good with another player on the same machine, where rounds could become personal very quickly. OpenLiero now keeps that original style alive on modern PCs without trying to turn it into something completely different.
DX-Ball
Breakout was already an ancient idea when DX-Ball appeared, but that didn’t stop it from becoming one of the classic Windows time-wasters.
Move the paddle, bounce the ball and destroy the bricks. Then throw in power-ups, exploding blocks, multiple balls and increasingly annoying board layouts.
DX-Ball was the kind of game you could open after not touching it for three years and immediately know exactly what to do.
TrackMania Nations Forever
TrackMania Nations Forever is considerably newer than most of the games here, but it belongs on the list.
It gave away a proper racing game for nothing. The Stadium tracks were less about traditional racing and more about finding the perfect line, shaving a fraction of a second from your time and immediately trying again because you knew you could do better.
There was a full single-player mode, multiplayer and a track editor, and the game is still available for free today.
Free Games Were Different Back Then
Free PC games obviously haven’t disappeared. If anything, there are more of them than ever. But freeware felt different. There usually wasn’t an economy sitting behind the game waiting to sell you something later. Somebody made a small game and simply let people play it. Quite the opposite of today’s marketing, where game studios release classic versions of their games just to squeeze a bit more money out of titles people already love.