I know older titles are usually the topic in this community but a lot of the popular f2p games are getting pretty old now too, and if you’re like me you’ve been curious about some of them and even pleasantly surprised now and again.
There are many examples like League of Legends, Apex Legends, Raid: Shadow Legends etc and I usually get hooked on one and play it for some months or more. I’m not really trying to get into the “business” side of things, I personally very rarely purchase anything but if you do that’s absolutely fine too.
The current ones I play regularly:
- PC - Enlisted - A WW2 shooter with vehicles like the Battlefield games. Same publisher and game engine as War Thunder and has been in open beta for over 2 years now. Kinda janky still but regularly updated and enjoyable.
- Android - CUE cards universe everything (I forget exactly lol) - Fun deck builder but very grindy if you don’t buy shit. Pretty unique concept for a deck builder what I’ve come across. Short games too so good for a smoke break or the bus or whatever.
So, what do you play?
I play League of Legends and a couple gacha games all F2P. Genshin, Snowbreak, and Aether Gazer. Wuthering Waves just came out so time will tell if it stays in my rotation or not.
Jesus how do today keep up with the FOMO live service high engagement driven model that each of them ask for you
Right I’m actually kinda addicted so I like make time for my “dailies”. Usually like an hour a day -ish. Don’t think I’ve missed a day for around 250 days now. I know I’d probably enjoy it more if I played story games or something but it is nice to just turn off my brain for an hour. Kinda feels like how my parents would brain-off watch TV for hours.
Also I have an Google sheet with checkmarks to make sure I do everything every day so I spend the least amount of time on each game rather than thinking.
Holy shit. I was not expecting this answer … got more commitment than me
I’ve been playing Palia. It’s a chill MMO focused on resource gathering, NPC quests, and crafting.
Pikmin Bloom. It helps me get up and walking and has guided me to cool local public art.
Thinking about getting back into Crossfire. That was a super fun time during high school with a good friend about 15 years ago. Maybe it’s just the nostalgia but I remember some quite fun modes like Ghosts.
I recently picked up Crossout again when browsing free games on xbox. The Battle Bots x Lego kinda thing works for me, sadly it’s very pay to win so you hit a certain level and then the fun is gone.
I have put some 1400 hours into Rocket League, even though I’ve been playing it since it wasn’t free. Easy to learn, impossible to master. Sadly the community is super super toxic, so it’s more fun if you have a friend or two to play with.
Warframe and Warthunder. Lot of war happening, now that I think about it.
I’m starting to get a bit burnt out on Warthunder, though.
Is warframe fun?
I think, so yeah. Warframe tends to polarize people- a lot of the time people either enjoy it a lot or hate it a lot and it just depends on your preferences. I think it’s because of how grindy it is while it simultaneously has a very ridiculous amount of depth. That’s a downside to a lot of people, but it’s kinda entirely why I play the game.
The most important thing I can suggest is that when you have questions, ask someone. Either a friend that’s knowledgeable, youtube, or hell just ask in Q&A chat. Don’t just try to figure it out- that’s probably not going to end well. The new player experience is miles better than when I started, but it’s still kinda rocky. Things aren’t explained incredibly well.
If you try it and end up having questions feel free to toss me a DM- I’m happy to help a new player out however I can.
https://www.kartkrew.org/index.html
Dr. Robotnik’s Ring Racers. A Sonic fan game that’s similar to Mario Kart. It’s kinda drawn me in and it’s very technical.
In terms of multiplayer games to play with friends on Discord; been playing a lot of Apex Legends recently. Sadly I suck at aiming.
Rocket League!
I’m glad I still have this on my Steam account, from before the buyout from Epic.
If you mean free-to-play in the sense of a commercial game that one can play without payment, but where it is supported by data-mining or in-app-purchases or ads, I can only off-the-cuff recall playing a few games in that category:
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World of Warships. I played one round against humans.
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Defense of the Ancients 2. I played one round against human players and some time against the computer.
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Fallout Shelter. I didn’t like it much, though I do like the mainline Fallout series.
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I remember some gamebook game on Android that showed ads at the bottom.
I’m not playing any of those currently. Broadly-speaking, I don’t like the model. I’d rather just pay up front.
If you’re talking about free-to-play-with-the-aim-of-selling-you-on-a-larger-game, I’ve played plenty of those – in the 1990s, shareware and demos were a common way to promote a game. But they’ve kind of fallen out of favor in terms of DLC. I don’t think I’ve played any of those for a while.
If you’re talking about entirely free games, then I’ve played plenty of those. I think the two that I’m currently playing off-and-on, both open-source, would be:
- Shattered Pixel Dungeon, an Android roguelike. !pixeldungeon@lemmy.world
- Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, a (mostly PC; there’s an Android build and you can play it on a touchscreen, but it’s really better-suited to a keyboard) open-world roguelike. There’s a not-very-active Threadiverse community at !cataclysmdda@lemmy.ml; the subreddit is much more active.
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Xonotic, tf2
Warframe
Good old Space Ninjas.
Really more space wizards these days, but I do like to sneak around in a spy mission from time to time…
Its not a perfect game but its a great power fantasy
A great power fantasy for the Grineer when I hit Steel Path lmao.
Risk.
Not sure why though. I dislike Hasbro, the game isn’t particularly exciting, and I don’t like the monetization, but it’s relaxing for me. I haven’t spent a dime and I only play for 15-20 min/day, but I like it for some reason.
Likewise with Magic: The Gathering Arena. I don’t play as much recently, but I do like it.
Most of my time is spent playing older AAAs and indie games though.
Gumballs and Dungeons is a fun roguelike gacha. The main game loop is picking a Gumball which have different stats and mechanics and diving a Dungeon which has different enemies and mechanics. So you want to synergize your gumball with your strategy for a particular dungeon. Each floor of a dungeon is a 6x5 tile map and you flip the tiles looking for the down exit. There’s a boss every so many floors and just try to go a deep as you can. At the end of the run you keep some of the stuff you collected to unlock new dungeons and gumballs.
Another Eden is a gacha RPG from the writer and composer of sony enix dream team; chrono series, xeno series, final fantasy. There is so much content there and a ton of crossovers with other franchises. The map movement is done really well here for a mobile targeted rpg, it’s slightly elevated from a side scroll perspective and you mostly move horizontally in lanes with vertical connections here and there to switch between lanes. The writing is great, the music is great, the battle mechanics can get really deep.
I don’t remember when Alto’s Odyssey became free to play on Android, but it’s honestly such an amazing game. Its prequel is pretty nice too, but I like this one better.
I used to be addicted to Super Starfish too. I’m even pretty close to completing it, but just never had my chance to do so because… reasons. I would love to see this game on the Nintendo DS.
I played the original Sonic trilogy. It was fine, I guess.
The Dadish series was super annoying and very infuriating despite looking like something a child could complete in one sitting.
Bean Dreams was absolutely phenomenal, though. I loved every second of it. Why on earth did they have to take it down from app stores???
I played Okay. It was okay.
Bart Bonte’s “color” series of games are also pretty fun to play through. You actually can finish all of them in one sitting if you’re brainy enough to do so. I did. “Black” was my favorite, since you get a glimpse of the Belgian flag at the end (Bart is Belgian after all).
I even played Goat Simulator on mobile (not the sequel, the original). For some reason I enjoyed that one the most despite how very obviously limited the mobile version is.
Conclusion: I like very niche categories of mobile games.
Bart Bonte’s games are really satisfying. The only one I didn’t personally care for as much is Sugar Game, but all of the colors are fun little puzzle games.
I especially remember playing the Flash version of Sugar Game a while back, it was my earliest memory of that guy. But yeah, that game specifically wasn’t my favorite, but it was still pretty nice especially with the calm soundtrack that plays in the levels.
World of Tanks was the last I was hooked on but burnt out and haven’t played it in forever.
I never could get into World of Tanks. It always seemed interesting but didn’t grab me.
I gotta get back into World Of Warships tho that game is neat.