Are you looking for an exciting new game to while away the hours on your iMac or MacBook? Choosing from the thousands of options out there can be difficult. Here's Agent Clayton with his selection of the best Mac games available right now – and the best news is, they won't cost you a penny!
Whoever said Macs don't have games? We've got dozens of fantastic selections for you, and they're all entirely free! Just click the links below to browse the last year's selections month by month.
| August 2016 | July 2016 | June 2016 | May 2016 |
| April 2016 | March 2016 | February 2016 | January 2016 |
| December 2015 | November 2015 | October 2015 | September 2015 |
August 2016
That Pokeyman Thing Your Grandkids Are Into
Clayton Chowaniec (@clayzulah)
Browser-based
Built by just one guy for the Big Awful 2016 game jam, the game is a parody of a well-known intellectual property that I'm sure you've heard of before.
It's a light-hearted RPG tale, concering a set-in-his-ways grandpa who must search for his over-excited grandson after he runs off searching for 'Pokeymans'. Fearing a telling off by his daughter, grandpa decides to join in with the search for Pokeymans to help him track down his lost grandson.
The game features charming Pokeymans including 'Peekachorp', 'Charblezorb'", and 'Literally A Ball With A Face On It'– and there are 18 to find in total. Your progress will also be tested along the way by characters including punks, Pokeyman-playing kids and other elders who will stop you in your tracks until you've impressed them by locating elusive rare Pokeymans or leveling up your character.
Personally, I scored 2460/2500 and collected all 18 available Pokeyman species – so let us know in the comments if you manage to beat it!
Splix.io
Jesper the end (@jespertheend)
Browser-based
The latest challenger to the wildly popular Agar.io has the distinct feeling of retro classic Qix and Disney's Tron by bringing together the former's line-drawing, fencing-off gameplay and the latter's battleground game-grid.
The multiplayer game is playable in your browser, and tasks you with scoring points by drawing lines to create rectangular shapes. Each successful shape adds a number of points to your score based on how large an area you were able to capture.
There's an element of risk involved with this, however, as starting a run to capture new territory leaves you vulnerable to other players cutting off your trail – and carving out larger shapes makes you vulnerable for longer.
The map is really large, so at first you'll not notice the other players building their empires – but when you do find them, it gets really tense! It doesn't matter how large your empire is either, you can be taken out of the game by a single mistake.
Vertix.io
Sidney de Vries (@SidneydeVries12)
Browser
Vertix.io is an isometric 'twin-stick' style online multiplayer shooter with an emphasis on fast-paced, immediate respawn deathmatch gameplay.
There are nine classes to choose from – including Rockateer, Arsonist, Run 'N Gun, Detective and Duck – with each class having its own specific loadout. The available gear includes rocket launchers, miniguns, flamethrowers and hand-cannons – and some classes even come with secondary weapons, which can lead to tactical weapon switching in the heat of battle.
Some of the game modes we were able to play included a standard free-for-all, team deathmatch, an end-zone rush game and even a few games of insane 'rockets-only' battles. You can also create an account to let you record your achievements and earn rewards, in the form of cosmetic upgrades, based on how well you play.
Each battleground, though already slightly different in layout, can also be completely overhauled with texture mods to allow you to switch out all the textures and player characters models with new ones – including Minecraft, Mario and Undertale. There's also a very active subreddit if you're keen to join the community.
July 2016
Crash!!
Trasevol Dog (@trasevol_dog)
Browser based
I fondly remember playing games on my Commodore 64 – and Crash!! instantly rekindles those memories thanks to its brilliantly retro asthetic and cool chiptune soundtrack.
The premise is deceptively simple: you must drive your little vehicle to the exit of a maze. Now, the game wouldn't be much of a selection without a special mechanic to shake things up a bit – and Crash!! has just the thing. When you bump into a wall, your vehicle instantly changes direction – and what once turned your vehicle to the right is now flipped, and pulls you to the left!
You steer your vehicle with the arrow keys, but the controls are extremely twitchy and you'll very quickly throw caution to the wind and start smashing your way to victory. Headphone users will find it hard to play with the volume on for very long, as the soundtrack is quickly replaced with the cacophonus din of multiple crashes!
Levels get progressively more difficult, too with the addition of Breakout-like brick walls to smash through, one-way barriers, teleporters and door-opening toggle switches. Crash!! is immensely good fun – and playable immediately in your browser!
Ravenfield
Johan Hassel (@SteelRaven7)
Single player
Ravenfield is a free, experimental single-player title that aims to give the likes of Battlefielda run for their money!
Just like Battlefield, the aim is to win each round by capturing flags and killing enemies to earn 200 tickets. You fight as as blocky blue soldier against a team of blocky red soldiers, assisted by weapons including a pistol, assault rifle, sniper rifle, rocket launcher and shotgun. There are also jeeps and helicopters for you to pilot, letting you support your allies from the ground and the air.
Though it's only single player, you're supported by scores of AI troops, which flood out of the spawn point and fall about with satisfying ragdoll physics. Each flag you capture and hold earns your team a score multiplier, meaning each successful kill earns more tickets. Be sure to play the objective if you want to win!
For a Unity title, the visuals are fantastic, contrasting a detailed battleground with the low-poly soldiers, vehicles and weaponry. It has an undeniable Battlefield feel – especially when your allies all pile into all the available vehicle at the spawn point and drive off without offering you a lift, leaving you to hike it towards the nearest capture point all by yourself. Yep, that's just about my experience of any Battlefield game.
Simply Chess
Blue Line Games (@BlueLineGames)
Multiplayer
It's a game that can be traced back nearly 1,500 years, with the earliest predecessor probably originating in India – and now, the classic game is on Steam for Mac owners to download and play.
Simply Chess is exactly what it says it is. Enthusiasts and occasional players alike will find the game extremely accessible, and the feature list is very impressive!
The game can be played locally against the computer or in a hotseat mode with a friend. The game boasts a world-class 'stockfish' AI, with 100 difficulty levels – which is great for new players looking to improve their skill. If you're looking for a real challenge, however, you can take it online to compete against other players and rank in a global leaderboard. The game also offers asynchronous play, meaning you can make your next move even if your opponent is offline.
Naturally, there's mouse and keyboard support, which can be seamlessly switched to gamepad controls if you want to take it to your living room in Steam's 'Big Picture' mode. Thankfully, you can also switch between 3D and 2D rendering to get the full picture of the board at any time. For the collectors among you, there are also plenty of Steam Stats, Trading Cards, Backgrounds, Emoticons and Achievements to unlock as well!
June 2016
Team Fortress 2
Valve (@steam_games)
Multiplayer
A classic game from 2007, Team Fortress 2 (or TF2) is a team-based first-person shooter with a varied selection of characters to choose from, each with their own unique perks and abilities.
Whether it's the spy, who can take on the guise of enemy players to sneak behind their lines, or the engineer, who can craft turrets in hard-to-reach places, there's undoubtedly a combination of character, weapon and comedy hat to suit your style!
Team Fortress 2 was originally a 'premium' game, costing actual money to play. As the years have passed and newer games have been released, though, TF2 maintained its popularity – and lost its price tag completely, keeping it as popular as it's ever been!
If you want a fast-paced game similar to modern shooters like Overwatch, you'll definitely enjoy playing TF2. As the name implies, this game is heavily geared towards playing as a team – so ideally, you'll find yourself picking a character class based on the other characters in your team rather than simply picking the one most aesthetically pleasing. A team full of snipers won't do too well against a well-balanced team of opponents, so choose wisely!
As with most games of this type, there are collectibles to receive while you play, which generally consist of new weapons or fancy hats. You can trade your items with other players in the TF2 community for more appropriate (or hilarious) equipment – and what you can't trade for gear, you can trade for Steam credit through Valve's Steam Marketplace.
For a free-to-play game, you'll get a lot of value out of playing Team Fortress 2.
GeoGuessr
Anton Wallén and the GeoGuessr team (@geoguessr)
Browser based
We’ve featured this before in our Top Free PC Games article– but since then it’s been updated with new game modes, so we think it’s well worth sharing with the Mac community!
If you’ve ever wanted to travel the world but lack the funds – or are just plain lazy – take a look at GeoGuessr. Using Google Maps, players are transported to the far corners the Earth for a location-based “Where the heck am I?” experience.
Players are dropped into Google Street View, with all the familiar controls available to wander around each new location. A dusty road in the middle of the desert might seem like a daunting start for any intrepid explorer – but vital clues may be just a few clicks away. Road signs, landmarks, wildlife, vehicles and architecture are all helpful to figure out each location.
When they think they've worked it out, players drop a pin on a global map to designate where they think they are – and are then scored based on the distance from the true location.
Games can be customised to only focus on certain cities or countries, and there’s even a mode that focuses on famous places. You can set time limits to increase the difficulty and even challenge friends to beat your score. There’s also a new subscription-based 'Pro' mode, which allows players to create and publish their own maps and remove ads from the game – but most of the game remains free to play.
All told, this is a fantastic way to test your geographic knowledge (or intuition) – and it's certainly cheaper than a round-the-world plane ticket!
Beneath a Steel Sky
Revolution Software (@revbot)
Single Player
First released in 1994, Beneath a Steel Sky is a classic point-and-click adventure game set in a dystopian future.
Developed by the same team behind the legendary Broken Sword series, the game follows the story of Robert Foster – a man raised by indigenous people in the wasteland known as 'The Gap'. After many years, the tribe is attacked by armed security officers and Robert is taken to the corporate-controlled Union City. Robert soon escapes – and begins to uncover the corruption within the city.
Much of the charm comes from the interaction between Robert and his sentient robotic creation, Joey. Joey’s personality is stored on a circuit board that can be moved to different robotic bodies as required. Indeed, a running gag has Joey commenting on the new 'shell' he's been fitted into – the first being a vacuum cleaner that Joey, understandbly, isn’t very happy about.
Hailing from the golden age of PC adventure games, the story, characters and puzzles are universally applauded for their depth and maturity. Years before the internet and its vast library of walkthroughs became popular, puzzles had to be thought out logically – and the exhilaration of solving them made it all worthwhile.
Revolution Software have announced that they're looking into the possibility of developing a sequel due to popular demand, despite it being over 20 years after the original was released. this just goes to show that it’s a game truly loved by adventure fans that has stood the test of time.
Handily, the Mac version is available for free through the excellent GOG.com service – meaning it’s fully optimised for new machines.
May 2016
BlobWall
Sophie Houlden (@S0phieH)
Single player
If you’re no stranger to Saturday night television, you’ll be familiar with the old exclamation of “BRING ON THE WALL!”. That should explain everything you’ll need to do in this game – which features the titular blob morphing into various shapes to safely pass through a gap in several approaching walls.
It might not look completely polished, but the execution is actually expertly crafted – with great attention paid to the camera’s functionality and clever lighting effects that give helpful clues in the form of shadows.
Like the TV show format, if you make a mistake, you can be pushed by the wall into the water hazard – at which point the game is over. Fail to make the correct shape but still pass through the wall safely, and you’ll lose ground between you and the water – meaning your chances of survival get slimmer as the difficulty increases.
Norman’s Sky
Ivan Notaros (@Nothke)
Single player
Submitted as part of 'LowRezJam'– a game jam where the goal was to create a game within 48 hours but restricted to a 64x64 resolution – Norman’s Sky builds on the growing anticipation for Hello Games' forthcoming indie title No Man’s Sky.
According to the game’s creator, @Nothke, every dot in the sky is a planet that can be reached and landed on. It’s all procedurally generated, so no two playthroughs will be the same – and the possible universes are limitless!
Impressively, the game uses real-world Newtonian physics – so piloting a ship from the ground, through the air, into the atmosphere and on to the vastness of space means your ship’s responsiveness and handling will change as you travel.
Moving from planet to planet is all seamless, too: there’s no loading screen in sight as you burn through the atmosphere of the next celestial body. This is an incredible feat for a game that only took 10 hours to make!
If you’re patiently waiting on No Man’s Sky, why not hang out with Norman for a while?
Berlin '82
Beardman Studios (@spalt_er)
Single player
In Berlin ’82, you’ve just robbed a bank – and now need to speed away in your little red car to escape the law! We should point out at this point that the game has nothing to do with Berlin in 1982 – so the title is a bit of a mystery.
The game is viewed from an isometric perspective letting you see the immediate area around your vehicle. You’ll rampage across the city at breakneck speeds while handbraking into powerslides around each bend. The longer you’re able to drive, the more points you’ll earn – and you'll have greater opportunities to find extra loot with which to repair your car or boost your score.
The cops are hot on your heels, forcing you to keep your speed up – but this, of course, is extremely dangerous. Hit a wall, another vehicle or get taken out by the cops and it’s all over. There are no retries here: it’s brutal, old-school fun. But with a bit of practice you’ll get the hang of it sooner or later!
April 2016
Ark: Survival of the Fittest
Studio Wildcard (@survivetheark)
Online multiplayer
A deadly combination of Jurassic Park and The Hunger Games, Ark: Survival of the Fittest is a tense survival game that pits you against not just your fellow humans, but also some of the most savage dinosaurs ever to roam the Earth. From the moment you’re able to take your first steps,m you need to be on the lookout for danger!
Originating from Ark: Survival Evolved, which centres around building a settlement and taming wild dinos to act as farm animals, Survival of the Fittest drops you into a 'Battle Royale' situation, pitting you directly against other players in an effort to be the last person standing.
As you play through a match, the size of the arena decreases, bottlenecking players together in an ever-tightening circle. Should you make it through to the final stages of gameplay, things really start to heat up – and you’ll have to use all the skills you’ve learned and weapons you’ve crafted to become the victor.
This free spin-off is a fantastic introduction to the full game, should you feel like dedicating more time to exploring the island and building up your own collection of rare and dangerous dinosaurs. You can either play this game on your own against other individuals, or band together with some friends and slug it out with teams of enemy players.
Balancing the same kind of building mechanics as Rust, Minecraft and the like with the gruelling difficulty of fighting the deadliest predators in the history of the planet, Ark: Survival of the Fittest will have you almost thankful when you bump into another human on your travels!
Ananias Roguelike
Slashware (@Slashie_)
Single player
Ananias is a dungeon-crawler roguelike in which you battle monsters while traversing the levels of a dark ruin to retrieve an ancient world-saving artefact.
Unlike classic roguelike games, Ananias does away with the overburdened UI and obtuse keyboard controls to navigate the environment, use items and battle monsters. Instead, the entire game can be played using a mouse, as all the necessary controls are built into the visible interface.
There are eight characters to choose from to satisfy everyone’s individual play style – but only four of those are available in the free version. Some focus on physical combat or magic, whereas others must scavenge the dungeon for items. There are also over 40 different monsters, all of which have unique skills to overcome – so using the same strategy throughout is unlikely to end very well!
In true roguelike style, combat is turn-based and every new dungeon is randomly generated –meaning repeat plays are always different. Loot is plentiful and keeps progression feeling fresh, with a less grindy feel than most roguelike games – and there’s even an online mode which lets you set up challenges and compete with your friends' characters.
The Intercept
Inkle Studios (@inkleStudios)
Single player
It’s 1942 and a component from the 'Bombe' decoding machine has gone missing from a hut at Bletchley Park. The component is vital to help decode intercepted German messages – and every passing second puts lives in danger. As one of the cryptographers tasked with operating the machine, you’re suspected of taking the component and are due to be interviewed soon.
The story is expertly crafted: you can choose either to play the game as the traitor and evade the questioning of your commanding officer, or as an innocent suspect trying to plead your case. It’s intense, filled with atmosphere and instantly replayable to see how the story would work out if you tried a different approach.
Written for a game jam by the developers of INK, a powerful open-source scripting language, the game is a technical demo showcasing the features of platform. It has Unity integration as well, so pretty much any budding Unity game developer could give it a try.
March 2016
Shadow Warrior Classic
3D Realms
Single player
This game truly is a classic. Harking back to golden age of gaming, the original Shadow Warrior came out in the same year as Final Fantasy VII, Goldeneye 64 and the original Fallout. If a single year could be credited with the most wildly popular and successful games in history, 1997 would be it!
Created in the same vein as action film-parody Duke Nukem and the spooky horror-influenced Blood, Shadow Warrior puts you in the sandals of legendary martial artist Lo Wang as he fights his way through waves of evil demons and corrupt employees of the Zilla Enterprise.
This mysterious business is headed by Master Zilla, evil mogul and all-round bad guy. After realising Master Zilla is planning to take over the whole of Japan using dark magic, Lo Wang quits his job as Zilla's bodyguard and attempts to take down Zilla before his evil plan come come to fruition.
There's plenty of crude humour and badly animated violence to put a smile on your sadistic face – as well as many cool features like ridable vehicles, turrets and multiple firing modes for your weapons. Shadow Warrior was also the first FPS game to feature sticky bombs, many years before they made an appearance in the Halo franchise.
If you're looking for a blast from the past and loved games like Duke Nukem, try Shadow Warrior Classic for Mac.
Marathon Trilogy
Bungie
Single player/LAN Multiplayer
The spiritual predecessor to the Halo franchise, Marathon was Bungie's first major first-person-shooter title, and was created specifically for the Macintosh computer in 1994.
It introduced many features now common in video games, such as dual-wielding weapons and real time voice chat for multiplayer gaming – and even allowed fans to mod the game in subtle ways, like altering the strength of the gravity. Mods are now commonplace in many games – but at the time this was cutting-edge.
While the graphics may not be as lush as modern titles like Destiny, the Marathon Trilogy contains one of the most in-depth storylines for a game of its time. Fans of Destiny may be confused by all this talk of plot – but trust me, Marathon has one and it's great. Assisting artificial intelligences as they defend against an unknown alien threat is a great premise – especially when those AIs start becoming corrupted!
If you're looking for a great game that will run well on your Mac, look no further. This is truly one of the greatest Mac games ever created – and by a company now synonymous with Microsoft products!
As it's now free to play, you have no excuse not to play this landmark title and engross yourself in some great science fiction. Why not get some friends involved for some multiplayer battle modes and see who comes out victorious? (Answer: everyone who plays Marathon is a winner.)
SpellRazor
Fluttermind Ltd.
Single player
Fans of roguelike games such as NetHack, UnReal World, Brogue or any of the countless similar games we've mentioned on this site should start their excitement engines! SpellRazor is here in all its mysterious glory.
Calling itself a 'conversion' of a possibly non-existent 1980s arcade game of the same name, this neon-fueled dungeon explorer spins the genre on its head by giving you a staggering 27 different attack keys, each with a unique spell equipped. Imagine playing that on an arcade cabinet!
The gameplay itself is quite straightforward: explore the level and destroy all the enemies within the time limit to progress to the next stage. You'll need your wits about you to stay alive, though! Enemies move quickly and your spells are limited, so you'll have to use the right spells for the right occasion.
To make things marginally easier, time slows to a crawl when an enemy gets within striking range of you. This allows for more strategy when it comes to picking your spells, and also gives you an immense feeling of cool when you storm a room in bullet-time and unload your full arsenal of spells at the evil inside!
Even more interestingly, you can access an in-game console at any time and use it for a seemingly endless list of tasks – from unlocking vaults full of power-ups to altering gameplay. There's so much beneath the surface of this game that I haven't reached anywhere near the bottom yet.
But what really makes SpellRazor stand out from the crowd, and makes it one of my top picks, is the mystery surrounding it. Supposedly, SpellRazor was originally created by Duncan Bower: the developer behind Polybius, an urban legend of an arcade game created by the US government that led to intense migraines, prophetic nightmares and even caused some gamers to become anti-gaming activists after playing it.
SpellRazor was allegedly one of his works in progress, and the source code was thought lost for decades – until it resurfaced in this glorious new form. As you progress through SpellRazor, more of the mystery surrounding Duncan Bower comes to light through messages and weird glitches in the game itself.
If you like spooky, neon-themed dungeon crawler games, try SpellRazor for free on your Mac today!
February 2016
Expendabros
Devolver Digital
Local co-op
A spin-off of the popular (and not free) Broforce, Expendabros is a fast-paced platformer that puts you in the boots of one of the Expendables, a team of mercenaries led by Sylvester Stallone from the movie of the same name.
Your task is simply to reach the end of each level in one piece, rescuing hostages and recruiting new mercenaries to your band of bros along the way. The difficulty ramps up quite quickly, and you'll die often!
Each time you respawn you'll take on the role of a different Expendabro, from Trent Broser and Bro Caesar to Broctor Death and Toll Broad. As you can see, there's a lot of humour inherent in Expendabros!
But what is a good joke if no one's around to hear it? Well, grab a bro and play Expendabros in co-op (bro-op?) mode for an even better experience! Perks of playing with your bros include: someone who can revive you when you're downed, an extra weapon against the insane helicopters and monstrous tanks you'll have to fight against, and someone to curse you loudly when you accidentally on purpose blow them up.
Port of Call
Underdog Games
Single player
Port of Call is a narrative-driven adventure following you, the nameless protagonist, as you wake up on a small dock and are recruited to work on a mysterious ferry. Much of the adventure is based around wandering the ferry and talking to the passengers on board, finding out your reasons for being there along the way.
There are quite a few narrative-driven games popping up recently, and the quality of such games can vary wildly. Port of Call is definitely one of the better titles in this genre, with an attractive art style and achievements to earn while you play. The story is engaging and a little bit creepy, and lasts a comfortable 40–60 minutes before you reach the end of the adventure. If you're looking for a casual yet engrossing game and aren't interested in high scores and explosions, this is a game I'd most definitely recommend.
Like any game of this type, you'll miss out on most of the experience if you skip through all the text and cutscenes. It's all too easy to race through a game to the finish and realise you have no idea what's going on at the end – so make sure to speak to everyone and read everything!
Mitos.is
Freakinware Studios
Online multiplayer
This is by far the simplest game I've recommended this month – but that doesn't mean it's the easiest. Mitos.is is the type of game that can make you either bare your teeth in a villainous grin, or grind them into enamel dust!
Any budding biologists among you will know that mitosis is a type of cell division: it's where a cell splits into two identical 'daughter' cells, sharing the same quantity and kind of chromosomes as the parent cell. This should give you some insight in to what the mechanics of this game are – although if you're hoping to learn about biology by playing it, you're in for a bit of a let down!
When each game round starts, you take control of a cell, swimming around in a two-dimensional sea. As you float around the environment you'll encounter other cells – some bigger and some smaller than you.
The aim is to absorb the smaller cells, making your mass larger – but avoid getting hit by the larger cells, lest you be the one who's absorbed! If you make yourself large enough, you can split into two cells and start absorbing at twice the rate – and in some of the other game modes, you can team up with other players to take control of a full squad of identical cells, ready to absorb enemy players en masse.
If you like multiplayer mayhem and fast-paced gameplay, give Mitos.is a try.
January 2016
Radical Rockits
Multiplayer
Prototyped for a game jam – one of our favourite sources for free games – Radical Rockits was simply too good to leave partially finished!
RageSquid have put together a physics-based jetpack sandbox that's incredibly fun to play but almost impossible to fully master: the first time you fluke your way through a score ring or hit the bullseye on your first try is truly a moment to remember!
You control your jetpack engines independently with the Z and X keys, and your orientation with the left and right arrow keys. The game supports up to four-player split-screen as well as a fiendish four-player co-op game where each player controls a single input key! If you thought single player was tough, this is insanely difficult – but four times as much fun.
Seven Weeks of Cat Monarchy
Web-based
While the feline king takes a week-long holiday – a nap in the divine sunbeam – it's up to you, as a visiting noblecat, to wear the crown in his absence! Over the following week, your loyal subjects approach the royal throne to humbly ask for your aid.
Before each week begins, you can speak to your royal advisors to determine the happiness of your kingdom and also to check on the royal vault, which stores your most precious commodity: cheese. Each of your decisions will have an impact on both of these, but which is more important to you: do you lend them your support and improve the lives of your people, or will you rule with an iron claw?
Loss of Fluid
Single-player
Built for the Ludum Dare 34 game jam, Loss of Fluid is (very loosely )based on real life events.
You’re piloting a large commercial airliner when you suddenly lose all hydraulic power. But you can still power the engines independently – and this becomes your only option to attempt to land the plane safely.
Using arrow keys on your keyboard, you control the left and right engines to help you turn the aircraft. To change elevation, you can press both buttons at the same time to power into the skies with the full force of both engines. Let go of the buttons and the plane will slow down to a complete stall.
With the help of air traffic control, you first have to locate the nearest landing strip þ and with a bit of in-flight wiggling, you’ll also need to fix the landing gear too. Points are awarded depending on your approach angle, your aircraft's pitch and your vertical speed.
December 2015
Double Kick Heroes
Blackmagic, Gyhyom and Elmobo
Created for Ludum Dare 34 in just 72 hours, Double Kick Heroes is a gorgeous pixel-art, two-button rhythm game with a rocking soundtrack!
Cruising down a highway to hell in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, your band of rockstars must keep the hordes of zombies at bay with your 'gundillac' - a dual-machine gun-wielding Cadillac powered by heavy metal music.
As the rest of the band plays, you, as the drummer, must keep time with your double-kick bass drum pedals which, coincidentally, is also how you fire your vehicle’s machine guns. To stomp each pedal, you use either the right or left arrow key of your keyboard. Keep the zombies at bay for long enough and you'll speed off into the distance, leaving the walking dead in your dust!
Zunus
Jonathan Whiting
Zunus is a simple 2D wireframe space sim where the basic premise is to navigate your ship between space stations in the hunt for some calamari for your Gran.
Starting with a small amount of pocket money, your Gran explains the controls and sets you out on your space-trading adventure. You can then buy commodities at one space station and transport them to another for profit. Compare this to Freelancer or Elite: Dangerous if you wish – but with only two buttons to play with, the scope of the game is understandably limited.
As a 'two button'-themed Ludum Dare 34 entry, your ship is controlled using the left and right arrow keys to fire your left and right thrusters, and pressing them both at the same time will move your ship forward. You’ll be fighting the inertia of space, too, as you accidentally zip past your destination and weave around floating asteroids and kamikaze space pirates! Just be careful when you dock your ship: the space stations have a tendency to spin wildly to deflect incoming hazards.
November 2015
DoomRL
Kornel Kisielewicz and Derek Yu
DoomRL takes much of its atmosphere, visual design and sound effects from the popular first-person shooter that started it all: it’s essentially a roguelike title that allows you to roleplay as the space marine from Doom as you collect loot and navigate dark rooms where your next step could be your last!
Each room is shrouded in darkness unless you have line of sight, making an enemy ambush incredibly deadly. Each step you take allows the enemy to move and attack you. This means that the game is essentially turn-based, making it a perfect game to run in the background while you’re doing other things – or busy planning your next move.
Being Doom, the game is faster paced and more combat orientated than your average roguelike title, and relies heavily on ranged rather than melee combat. You can equip all the classic Doom weapons and armour, as well as collect ammo, health globes and medkits. There’s limited inventory space to play with, so you’ll want to only carry the weapons you’re able to find ammo for.
In traditional RPG style, each kill also builds your experience and allows your character to level up, with character traits and perks available to customise your character to your liking. This is probably the best Doom spinoff you’re likely to find!
Wonderland Dizzy
The Oliver Twins
Wonderland Dizzy shouldn’t exist: it was a forgotten sequel in the Dizzy series that never saw the light of day.
It was a chance discovery when the developers uncovered a design map of the game, created during its time in development 22 years ago – but the game was never finished. After showcasing the find at a retro games expo, the brothers later found a floppy disc that contained all the source code for the NES game. With help from the gaming community, they decided to complete the game and upload it to the Internet to be played through an emulator.
If you’ve played Dizzy in the past, you’ll know each game follows Dizzy’s adventures in the land of the Yolkfolk. Primarily a tricky platformer, it’s also a puzzle game – with items scattered throughout the world that must be used in specific situations before you can progress further. The new version includes a two-player mode, an infinite lives option, catchy chiptune music and support for different languages.
Here’s the story behind the game’s discovery: a fascinating slice of gaming history!
Endless Sky
Michael Zahniser
If you've played a few space exploration games, there’s a familiar feel to how this one plays out. You can play as a trader, travelling between star systems with a cargo hold full of precious minerals, or an explorer, visiting distant worlds and meeting intelligent life, or even a play as a pirate and raid innocent convoys for all your ill-gotten gains! It has a distinct Escape Velocity flavour, if you’ve ever played that.
At the start, only a few ships are in your price range – although these range from fast fighter ships to slow space trucks. The game adds an extra layer of complexity to the experience in that to afford the ship, you need to take out a mortgage – and like real-world mortgages, regular payments must be made to ensure that you don’t lose it! To keep the money rolling in, you’re able to profit from unrestricted trade routes, carry out lucrative missions from the jobs board or, of course, play as a meany space pirate – if you’re that way inclined.
The main storyline should last anywhere between 8–16 hours, but the galaxy contains hundreds of star systems to explore with several different alien species – so you’re bound to lose a few more hours to it if you’re anything like me! Side quest procrastination is awesome.
Teeworlds
Teeworlds Team
As a fan of the legendary Worms, I was a little apprehensive about Teeworlds being a clone of the popular annelid-based platform game. After playing it for about half an hour, all my worries had been blown up with a few well-placed rocket shots!
Far from being a copy of the well-known game, Teeworlds goes above and beyond, taking the familiar concept of moving your character around a two-dimensional world and firing assorted weaponry to the next level.
The first and most striking difference between Teeworlds and other games of its ilk is that Teeworlds is not turn-based. Yes, that's right – this game lets all players move and attack at once! It's a real free-for-all (no pun intended).
Popular game types like Capture the Flagand Team Deathmatch are available as standard, with plenty of room for players to create their own game types as well as maps and customisations for their playable characters - the "Tees" of the title.
I thoroughly enjoyed playing Teeworlds, even playing with total strangers – and it's not often I find a game where teamwork, well, works. If you have friends who love the antagonistic violence of Worms and are looking to up the ante, give Teeworlds a try on your Mac today.
Echoes+
Binary Zoo
Echoes+ is colourful, chaotic and slightly overwhelming!
Echoes+ is a challenging retro twin-stick shooter in a similar style to the popular Geometry Wars series, written as a tech demo to showcase a simple homebrew game development kit called AppGameKit 2.
You control a small ship and must navigate a 2D game area while shooting and avoiding increasingly difficult waves of enemies of different shapes, sizes and behaviours.You must stay focused and pay attention to what’s happening – because the slightest mistake could mean game over almost instantly.
The more waves of enemies you manage to take down, the stronger your shields become – and the more your score multiplier will increase. There’s a global leaderboard to keep track of your progress, but you’ll need a fair bit of practice before you’ll be anywhere near competitive. Don’t even try to play if you haven’t got a gamepad, though – it’s called a 'twin-stick shooter' for a reason, so expect major hurdles if you’ve only got a keyboard!
No More Kings
Montoya Industries
OK, it's not the most exciting game to look at – but it's fiendishly compulsive
No More Kings is a clever chess-based game... hang on a second, come back! It gets better.
No More Kings is a short chess-based game where the objective is to capture every piece on the board and then finally capturing the king. Each move must result in the capture of a piece – which means that if you can’t make a legal move that captures a piece, the game is over.
Each time a piece is taken, you take control of that piece – and your next move must be carried using the new piece’s moveset. Each level should be completed as quickly as possible to achieve a full three-star rating. There’s usually only one way to complete each level, too – and there are 50 levels in total. Should you get hooked, there are other sets of levels to unlock – but there is a fee for those.
September 2015
Fistful of Frags
FoF Team
“When a man with a .45 meets a man with a rifle, you said, the man with a pistol's a dead man. Let's see if that's true. Go ahead, load up and shoot.” - The Man With No Name, Fistful of Dollars
Fistful of Frags is a free standalone Wild West mod based on the Half Life 2 Source engine which arrived on Steam over a year ago, with a huge community enjoying it to date. It’s much older than that though! The game consists of classic deathmatch and team deathmatch modes with an emphasis on historically accurate black powder weaponry. There are also objective game modes such as capture the flag and push the cart.
Speaking of weaponry, there are pistols (dual wielding available), shotguns, rifles, dynamite, brass knuckles, bows and knives available at your disposal. Weapons of the Wild West were slow, inaccurate but powerful and these facts are present in Fistful of Frags, which is a nice departure from the norm of modern shooters. Maps are suitably themed and range from classic dusty towns to mines dug out of canyon walls and even a paddle steamboat.
The Source engine means that gameplay is pretty solid with the visuals, physics and sound effects presented with relatively few bugs. If you’ve played Team Fortress or Half Life 2 Deathmatch before, you’ll know what to expect. The mod is definitely worth a try if you’re looking for something where the weaponry takes centre stage.
Brogue
Brian Walker
Brogue might use ASCII graphics – but packs a surprising amount of colour and animation
Brogue is a direct descendant of the 35-year-old genre-defining title Rogueand uses ASCII text characters to populate a randomly generated world with monsters, traps, loot and other surprises. Your quest is to descend down to the 26th floor of the Dungeons of Doom, retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, and return to the surface alive.
If you've never played a 'roguelike' title before, you may be completely lost at first – but there are helpful guides online to assist with the identification of game objects. For example, ‘#’ characters normally denote impassable walls, alphanumeric characters indicate enemies, such as ‘r’ for rat, and your playable character is an ‘@’ symbol.
You can also hover your mouse cursor over anything in visible range to see a description of what it is – this is usually your best ally when navigating into unknown areas, because a single critical mistake will end with game over and the dungeon being reset!
There are loads of weapons to wield, armour to equip, potions to drink, curious scrolls to read, allies to encounter, enemies to conquer and much more. Traps are plentiful and dangerous, with some that can flood rooms with poisonous gases or passageways with torrents of water. There are stealth mechanics in play too – so even if you don’t have the best gear, there’s still a way of getting past that high level Ogre just waiting to crush your bones into dust.
Mobs, Inc.
Ferrantelli, Loaec, Grassien and McFly
Mobs, Inc. is a game that was developed in three days for the Ludum Dare 33 development competition – where the theme of the contest was simply “You are the monster”.
Set in a dark dungeon, you are cast as an employee of Mobs, Inc. – an evil company set up to maintain the dungeon and defend it against the hordes of annoying adventuring types who arrive to vanquish your evil presence. You’ve got a job to do, a quota to achieve and an angry boss waiting for an opportunity to fire you.
You control your minion with your mouse, attacking with a left mouse click in the direction of your cursor. Each hero you kill will add to your quota and increase your level. Keep the boss happy and he’ll promote you to an even more powerful minion, with new special attacks which can be triggered with the Q, W and E keys. Meet your demise before meeting your quota and your demonic boss won’t be pleased. 4 strikes and you’re out!
That's our list of the best free Mac games – but if there's anything we've missed out, make sure you let us know in the comments below! And for more great articles straight to your inbox each month, get your name down below for our Geek Squad newsletter.