The Best Free Online (in-browser or downloadable) Games

so this is interesting (it has an Emily Short story already) tho it seems kinda limited:

http://varytale.com/books/

Yeah, I'm playing the Emily Short one, which is quite nicely written, though I'm not entirely sure what my aims will bring (I'm attempting to become more worldly while simultaneously practising my spelling) or if I honestly care, and I'm confused about whether the progress of months means anything... and the limit on actions is just frustrating here - while I can understand larger game worlds using it to stop someone burning through the content too quickly, if these are individual stories then why are they limited so tightly?

to entice you to spend money i guess

Well, yep. But there are ways of making that happen that don't seem so cynical and artificial, surely? I bloody hate the 'freemium' model, I must say - the loosening up of Echo Bazaar's turn count has definitely improved play to the extent that I don't really mind the limitations, but this strikes me as something that should either be sold as a game in itself (and I'm sure it'd do fine on the iphone app/kindle/reader market) or done entirely for free, not forced into shitty freemium that is likely to make me hate everything to do with it in the end.

applying the time-unlock pay model to a choose your own adventure... wonders never cease

not really a game, but still pretty damn awesome. chrome required. basically a synchronized synth jam session

http://labs.dinahmoe.com/plink/

Is anyone else playing I Wanna Be the Guy Gaiden? I'm at the buzzsaw shaft on 1-2.

I got past that part, but I need a break.

oh jesus he made another one?

Yeah, it's kind of fun. I barely played the first one, but I can already say this one is better. It's less unfair, anyway.

I just got pile drived by Zangief.

pretty nice: http://games.adultswim.com/super-house-of-dead-ninjas-action-online-game.html

Hmmm....nice idea, seems like I'd be into some of the gameplay mechanics, but ughhh are those some slippery controls. Everything feels just a shade too <i>fast</i> if you know what I mean.

http://ncannasse.fr/file/ld24/ld24.html

Cute!

tedious!

Nice idea, but I hate how one touch from a monster kills you and sends you right back to the beginning. Although I suppose 'save points' appears as an upgrade somewhere further along.

sorta free, sorta pay-what-you-want. the demo was amusing. in association with piratebay?

http://mcpixel.net/

http://www.pica-pic.com

terrible retro handheld games collection

the port is great, actually. the games tho are as bad as you remember them!

Great site. They don't have the dual screen Mario Bros set in the factory, but that was a good game.
http://gamez-gear.com/ds/images/uploads/console_pic/game&watch/mariobrosgw.gif

http://www.kongregate.com/games/YoeriStaal/cloud-wars

pretty simple idea, but i like it. you take control of neutral or enemy clouds on the map. clouds gradually grow larger until they hit capacity. you can wait for them to "charge up" or just send them out to attack when they're not yet full. there are also bonus stars that you can collect that allow you to upgrade your cloud (capacity, speed of attack, recharge rate).

nothing mindblowing but well executed and a good way to kill 20 minutes.

Ha, yeah, that's nice. Virtually content-free but basically satisfying and I like the scenarios the levels set up.

Weird though - the hard mode apparently takes away the numbers on the clouds, which is kind of the basis of the game! "Hard" as in more mysterious and less winnable but not really a fair upping of challenge IMO...

http://twinbeardstudios.com/frog-fractions
lol

aaaaahahahaha that was awesome

i accidentally closed the tab right after i discovered the dragon let you swim down and acquire infinite fruit, but everything had gone so batshit crazy by then that i don't know if i could ever finish "wave 1" and do anything with it

this game gets very strange eventually

oh my god, that was insane. i had to stop when i got to the text adventure section, couldn't take anymore

I gave up when i dove underwater on the first Mars wave and the underwater tunnel just never ended

haha great thing is i can't tell if you're just making stuff up

the tunnel ends! I also got stuck on the text adventure section

Okay, wtf is going on here?

The text adventure was fairly simple. I'm bug president!

ok, i'm gonna have to try this thing again

daaahahahaa the rhythm game

I assumed the tunnel ended eventually, but I must've gone through like 20 screens of it, and couldn't tell if the end was going to be on screen 21 or 121, so I bailed.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Ironhidegames/kingdom-rush

Kingdom Rush - tower defense game with a Warcraft-esque aesthetic/units/etc. Difficulty curve might be too much for me. Which is good because I can get really addicted to these kinds of things. Kinda don't "get it" on a certain level - like there are all these way far-out advanced things you can upgrade the towers to (and little one-shot "blow some money for a special attack" thingies) but that's never going to happen because you always desperately need the money for other things. But fun.

There's an iOS version of Kingdom Rush too. It's definitely one of the best tower defense games.

I don't like Kingdom Rush. I think it is basically because you don't get anything for simply trying and trying again - you have to actually work at and understand your strategy instead of upgrading. I think it's fine for certain sorts of players, but not for me.

I can dig that - there's something about this type of game that does make me want it to be a kind of mindless, brain-washing churn where I should be able to advance just by clicking enough. It's soothing and hypnotic like that. At the same time, there's a satisfaction in setting up a strategy and watching it succeed...I think this one has a nice enough balance through, for example, the device of letting you get through a level by the skin of your teeth and dumb luck, but you only get one star for it; if you come back later (maybe having done some upgrades) you can shoot for a better win etc. But basically I've hit a point where I actually have to be good at it to advance, and I'm definitely NOT good at it, and so now it's just frustrating.

btw, if anybody else is playing this...any idea what it means when you click on the level and get the little dialogue box establishing the "plot"...to the right of your stars are two other blanks, one sort of crown-shaped and the other looking like a chesspiece or something... what the heck are those? They're blank in all my levels, not sure if I'm missing something important and it doesn't jump out in any of the skimpy documentation...

oh n/m just figured it out! has to do with beating it in non-Normal mode, once you've unlocked the other modes....duhhhh

I assumed the tunnel ended eventually, but I must've gone through like 20 screens of it, and couldn't tell if the end was going to be on screen 21 or 121, so I bailed.

― Panaïs Pnin (The Yellow Kid), Friday, 26 October 2012 20:44 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

were the people who had this response playing with the sound off, i wonder

I definitely had the sound off, I guess that would've told me?

There's an irrelevant narration of an imaginary, weird history of the sport of boxing, which adds another sentences or so every few screens that you're going in the right direction; this is the only real cue that it's not just a completely infinite journey in the deep.

this game was great. totally disappointed when i made it to the end.

http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light/

^ would love to try, have downloaded, but i cannot find it when i unzip it. have tried three or four times, i swear i'm going nuts here.

Antivirus being overzealous maybe? Unpacked fine for me (though tbf haven't actually played it yet, was just excited by their youtube).

Looks good, but runs like a slideshow on my PC.

Ha, yeah, finally played it and the thing this game taught me is that the dudes at MIT must have a pretty warped perception of how powerful ordinary people's pcs are.

not down with OPPCs then.