The best free PC games in 2022
The quiet beginning of a new year is always a adept time to look dorsum on games from the yr before, or to spend a few weeks exploring the fun, bite-sized games out there that go swallowed up in the busier months. In other words, information technology's a expert time to play free games.
Get on some short adventures, become overly fastened to some new characters, get hooked on a daily word game—gratuitous games on the PC run the gamut. You can exist a frugal PC gamer and spend years playing complimentary games without buying new ones, or at to the lowest degree fill up in the gaps between those large games with something smaller and quite possibly more satisfying.
Where should you lot spend those rare snippets of gratuitous fourth dimension, though? We have some ideas, including a ton of free PC classics and our favorite gratuitous games of the last few months.
This guide to the best gratuitous games is updated monthly with suggestions from members of the PC Gamer team. Below that we have our favorite free-to-play stuff that we're dipping into right now and a boatload more than recommendations if you're just looking for the verbal right game to play on a lazy Sunday afternoon. It'due south a collection of timeless free PC games organized past genre.
If you lot're looking for more free games to add together to your permanent game library, make sure to bank check in every week on which games you can grab at no cost on the Ballsy Games Store and likewise all the temporary freebies correct at present available on other sites.
The all-time free games: Nov 2021
The all-time complimentary PC games right now
- Worlde - A give-and-take game sensation at the start of the year, this free daily puzzle challenge you with filling a grid with five-letter words, using a few elementary clues to hone in on what you got right and wrong earlier yous run out of guesses. Its sudden explosion in popularity has already spawned countless imitators.
- Townscaper - A delightful town-drawing game, where yous simply place roads and buildings on top of the ocean to create an aesthetically pleasing piffling city. Y'all can get it on Steam or play a free version of it correct in the browser.
- Babble Royale - This is battle royale, but Scrabble. Decimate your enemies by spelling "plankton" or "guts" or "perfidious." Only lookout out for PC Gamer EIC Evan Lahti, who's patiently waiting to snipe you with a perfectly timed Q.
- Blaseball - A massive sports betting simulation that nearly defies caption, but nosotros did attempt. It'due south nonetheless an accented wild mess and we love it.
- NERTS! Online - A competitive solitaire game for up to six players, NERTS! Online is a new version of a long-running multiplayer solitaire from strategy masterminds Zachtronics.
Best free PC games: Free-to-play
Free-to-play games
🔫 Noon Legends - Notwithstanding our favorite battle royale, starting time and foremost because it's a nifty-feeling first-person shooter. Apex has climbed to one of the top spots on the Steam charts for good reason. Information technology's the shooter we continue coming dorsum to.
⛏ Fortnite - It's Fortnite. Y'know, the massive sandbox battle royale, a game that'south hosted concerts, Star Wars characters, Curiosity superheroes, so much more than. Right now is a good fourth dimension to play, every bit Fortnite's Chapter three launch most the end of 2021 made some sweeping changes to the game.
🔮 Path of Exile - This is a crunchy and detailed Diablo-like with remarkably deep character development and progression systems. It'due south not the most cute action-RPG in the world, but information technology is engaging and rewarding in the long run. The microtransactions aren't too intrusive either, which makes this a must-effort for fans of Diablo 2 and its ilk. 2021 is a great time to play, equally Path of Exile has gotten what is probable its last expansion earlier sequel Path of Exile 2 lands sometime this year.
🔫 Valorant - Anarchism'southward tactical shooter takes a direct shot at Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with a hero-driven spin. It's a fantastic competitive shooter that you can play for hours. Most heroes come for free out of the box, and the residuum can exist unlocked for gratis if yous play enough.
Best free PC games: Story & Gamble
Best gratis Story & Adventure games
Deltarune: Chapters ane&two - This sorta sequel to Undertale is packed with memorable characters, catchy tunes, and emotive dialogue. Chapter 2 released in 2021 and was a Large Deal for Undertale fans.
The Doll Shop - Blending horror with romance, The Doll Shop transports y'all to a small-scale village, which is beingness buried nether a relentless snow. It tells a sinister story involving creepy handmade dolls. The art is sublime and the catastrophe is peculiarly memorable.
The Supper - The Supper is a dark story of revenge that brings to heed Sweeney Todd. You play equally a peg-legged tavern owner, who has to serve 3 very special dishes to a trio of horrible pirates, who really should have checked the Food Standards rating first...
Lockheart Indigo - This is a sci-fi detective game that feels a lot like a JRPG. You've arrived at a vast mansion to solve the murder of its former owner, simply locked doors and suspects stand in your way.
Eternal Home Floristry - The tale of a hitman who gets taken in at a flower shop while he recovers from his injuries. The game's ability to tackle tough topics through the human action of gentle flower arrangement is remarkable.
The Herbalist - A wordless adventure well-nigh a traveller searching for a mysterious herb. You lot wander around its foreign world trying to translate symbols, in the hope of discovering the plant you need.
Off-Peak - Stranding you at an otherworldly railroad train station, Off-Top encourages you lot to explore, talk to the locals, and luxuriate in its strange atmosphere. It'due south got an incredible sense of place, despite feeling like nowhere on Earth, and every bit you lot poke around its nooks and crannies, the truthful nature of its world is revealed piece by piece.
Haunted Cities - There are 3 volumes worth of Haunted Cities to savour. Despite the name, these aren't really horror games – they've just inherited much of the atmosphere of games such equally Silent Colina.
Emily is Abroad - Party like it's the early-'00s in this narrative game set in a chat client. You'll get to know fellow high school student Emily through snippets of online conversations about life, love and indie rock music. If you bask this, paid-for sequel Emily is Abroad Too is worth checking out.
Olav and the Lute - An enigmatic adventure game set in a post-apocalyptic earth, with a smashing central mechanic. Rather than combining objects with other objects, yous're affecting the world with a lute by plucking at its colour-coded strings.
All-time free PC games: Horror
Free horror games
No Players Online - In the spooky No Players Online, you lot log onto an old FPS server, but where you lot're the only player in a futile game of Capture the Flag.
Nosotros Are Cleaved - An interactive visual novel where you must talk your way out of being eaten by a vampire. We Are Broken conjures a dark and cruel globe with cutting visuals and music that makes your peel clamber.
Sentient - This one's a little Saw-esque. You lot're stuck in a room and forced to obey instructions given through an one-time speaker. Beingness trapped is horrible enough, simply what cranks up the creepiness gene hither is the dog-flap sized hole looming in the corner of the room, darkness shrouding whatever, or whoever, is within.
Bleakshore - This spooky adventure uses the fuzzy, lo-fi aesthetic of PS1-era 3D graphics to create an impressively eerie atmosphere as a shadowy effigy stalks you beyond the landscape...
Organized religion - Faith lures you into feeling secure—if a little jumpy—with its retro aesthetic, before it transcends its limitations in one shockingly scary moment.
David Lynch Teaches Typing - What begins equally a friendly typing lesson from film director David Lynch slowly descends into a surreal, disorientating nightmare. At 1 point yous take to touch a gross twitching bug. Keen work, kiddo!
House of Abandon - This story of a person playing a text adventure takes a sinister plow. Originally standalone, information technology became the first episode of eerie, atmospheric adventure Stories Untold.
Chyrza - Chyrza's brand of horror is that unsettling strangeness y'all become with ruined alien desertscapes and mentions of a strange and terrible pyramid. Merely it'due south non just Chyrza.
Best gratuitous PC games: Activity & Platformers
Free activeness & platformer games
1Boss1Battle1Button - This challenging rhythm game pits you confronting a scary Picasso-faced monster, and your only hopes of survival lie with a single button. Pressing it in fourth dimension with certain beats lets you jump, crouch, and dodge out of the style of oncoming attacks.
N 2.0 - In this ultra hardcore platformer with simple controls and a minimalist aesthetic, the focus is entirely on quick, precise control. And lots and lots of practice.
The Last Tango - Rhythm espionage survival. You play equally two spies, dancing through a multifariousness of deadly locations. They'll pirouette past traps, dodge under attacks, and accept downward enemies with an elegant twirl. And a gun.
Eggnogg+ - This is Nidhogg, merely free, and with different moves, and a bit more tongue-in-cheek. Expect hyperactive duels in a series of arenas.
Cuckoo Curling - A fun four-player game that combines the rules of curling with Connect Four. An easy game to pick up and play with friends, you tin play Cuckoo Curling in local or online multiplayer.
Starting time Cut - Flashy fighting games are all well and good, but there's something satisfying about the i-on-ane sword duel, as evidenced in Square's archetype Bushido Bract. Beginning Cut is that just in second, substantially, offering feudal Japan-themed duels against some truly beautiful pixel art backdrops.
Best free PC games: Strategy
Best gratis strategy games
Dwarf Fortress - A complex game of colony management that'due south withal in development eighteen years afterward its original inception. The incredible depth of its simulation doesn't just add depth and claiming, information technology allows for emergent stories to arise as you play, giving your dwarves a life of their own.
Tiny Islands - You lot're drawing maps of little islands in the sea here, by placing beaches, houses, even waves as random cards are dealt out to you. Just placement is everything, as every icon has its own set of rules.
Brogue - ASCII roguelikes have a reputation for existence impenetrable. Brogue, despite staying true to the genre, works hard to experience outgoing. The controls brand navigating its dungeons a cakewalk, and the elegant shading makes its symbols atmospheric and readable.
Terra Zero - Terra Zip begins at the ultimate end of civilization, letting y'all breathe life dorsum into a mail-apocalyptic wasteland. In this relaxing, therapeutic anti-architect, you lot construct devices to cleanse the earth, and to regrow light-green plants and copse.
All-time gratis PC games: Chill and relaxing
Best free chill games
Toripon - You lot're stuck inside your apartment, thankfully with company. Instead of friends, your companions here are loads and loads of birds. Don't look a gift parakeet in the mouth. Just sit down back and explore your apartment, examining every nook and every crevice for your feathered friends.
Bernband - You're an conflicting in an alien metropolis, going for a dainty walk. Flying cars BladeRunner past equally you cross a bridge, someone's rapping in the corner of the auto park, and every crowd hubbubs away. Despite the 4-fingered hands and alien aviary, it feels like a real metropolis. A existent chill city.
Lieve Oma - Lieve Oma takes you lot on a relaxing jaunt through an autumnal woods on the chase for mushrooms. As y'all scamper effectually, your granny follows slowly behind, teaching you about which mushrooms are okay to eat and teaching yous her humble life lessons.
Forest Are For Copse - Walking through the forest is something that takes on new meaning in this mind-expanding exploration game, which is small and possibly infinite all at in one case. It's a walking sim, sort of, where you traipse around an eerie woodland. But something funny happens when yous make contact with a tree. Inside every tree there's another wood total of ghostly copse.
Best free PC games: Puzzle
Gratuitous puzzle games
Transmute! - Play every bit a wizard who tin can transform into unlike objects. You might plow into a key to open a lock, or a boat to sail the open sea. And y'all'll do so to unlock a gorgeous, friendly fantasy world.
Mirror Isles - No list of puzzle games is really complete without a PuzzleScript game from Alan Hazelden, and Mirror Isles is one of the very best. Information technology's a top-down, Sokoban-style conundrum where you have to hop between islands, past using magic mirrors to swap places with your reflection.
Cube Escape - There's a foreign temper to developer Rusty Lake's serial of locked room puzzle games. Getting out of each i will test your encephalon, but yous'll be even more taxed trying to figure out what'southward going on in their baroque universe.
Corrypt - What starts as a relatively unproblematic block-pushing game ends as one where you'll reshape the earth, past using magic to reprogram the state of the environment.
Apocryphal Monkey - Words are groovy, aren't they? They hold power over the world—literally, even, in this text-based puzzle game. You come up equipped with a alphabetic character remover, which allows you to alter the items around you lot, by deleting a single alphabetic character from their names.
Naya'southward Quest - Naya'southward Quest was made by VVVVVV and Super Hexagon creator Terry Cavanagh. In instance you were wondering: Yes, it is bastard hard, just less stressful on your reflexes. It's an isometric puzzle-platformer nigh a girl and her pilgrimage to the border of the world.
The Republia Times - You're the editor of a newspaper in a totalitarian state in this game from the creator of Render of the Obra Dinn. Each day you must choose which stories to run and how much space to give them, impacting your paper's popularity and the government'southward approval with the full general populace. Smart and cynical.
Best free PC games: Comedy and Oddity
Best weird and funny games
Everything Is Going To Be Okay - Vividly blithe creatures deal with existential horror and pain—and are alarmingly sanguine almost information technology—in this cathartic drove of minigames, videos, and quizzes. It's overwhelming, just equally life can be overwhelming. Only it's refreshing for a game to bargain with that fact.
Pet the Pup at the Party - You lot've run out of small talk at a rambunctious house party and earlier anyone notices how awkward yous are, you must find a pooch and pet information technology.
Caput Over Hooves: My Heart Bleats For You - An apocalyptic dating sim where you must brand a goat autumn in love with you and so sacrifice information technology to save the world from eternal damnation.
Alfonso'southward Bowling Claiming - This sort-of sports game swerves away from its premise quickly, building on its strange version of bowling until y'all're making breakfast and chopping hair with your bowling ball.
Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, And The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Cyclone Heist - This team-up of The Stanley Parable creator William Pugh and stand-up comedian Simon Amstell takes y'all on a hilarious journey behind the scenes of a game falling apart at the seams.
The Volume Of Beasts and Buddies - An interactive monster manual filled with curious creatures. Each page throws you into a brief Pokémon-inspired meet, and through interacting with them you tin can get together your findings for the bestiary.
Cooldog Teaches Typing - There are plenty of educational game parodies, but only i features a chihuahua-looking matter equally the teacher. If you learned to type past having a instructor shout at you lot, you'll appreciate the gentler methods of Cooldog.
Stick Shift - As creator Robert Yang says, "Stick Shift is an autoerotic night-driving game virtually pleasuring a gay car." It'south office of an anthology with Hurt Me Plenty and Succulent, covering eroticism, politics and more. Stick Shift is funny while also offering nutrient for thought.
Skeal - Recommending Skeal is a tough job because the absolute best experience is to go in with zero idea of what to expect. To that end, it'southward a downhill skiing experience which becomes transcendental the longer yous ski and the more reveals yous trigger as the jape unfurls.
Best free PC games: Classics
Complimentary classic games
StarCraft - These days Blizzard sells a shiny remaster, but if the original'southward good enough for South Korea, it's good enough for usa. There's a reason that fifty-fifty today it'south an esports sensation – this iconic RTS remains a triumph of tight strategy and intense competition, with an incredible corporeality of depth for devotees to get lost in.
The Dark Mod - A tribute to the Thief serial, this standalone game lets you download a massive variety of user-made stealth levels, from tightly contained ones like Thief's Den to the more open up variety of Return to the City, and plenty of spooky ones like The Creeps.
The Operative: No One Lives Forever - The archetype stealth FPS, never re-released cheers to licensing hell. Its clever humour and charming 1960s setting concur up nicely, as do the arsenal of goofy, Bond-esque gadgets at your disposal. That includes lipstick bombs, sleeping gas perfume, and a briefcase rocket launcher.
The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall - 1996'southward Elder Scrolls sequel was huge and ambitious, letting you explore High Rock and Hammerfell. A lot of series staples, like joining the Mages Guild, started here.
Beneath a Steel Heaven - This signal-and-click take a chance features art past Watchmen'due south Dave Gibbons, a twisty sci-fi story, and a really goofy sense of sense of humour. One of its neatest ideas is how yous can stick your AI pal Joey'south electronic encephalon into different mechanical robots to solve puzzles.
The MS-DOS Archive.org library - A collection of thousands of archetype, free PC games playable in your browser. The MS-DOS drove on Archive.org contains more than 4,000 games, all emulated and like shooting fish in a barrel to play in just a few seconds. Wolfenstein 3D, Prince of Persia, Jazz Jackrabbit, Carmen Sandiego... you could spend a lifetime of lunch breaks in here. Merely then y'all might starve.
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