Any recommendations for free games on Steam?

[StrandedonEarth]

So I finally bit the bullet and installed Steam. Can anyone recommend some decent free Steam games? Marvel Heroes looks interesting. Not sure if I can get into Star Trek Online. I'd probably like some sort of flight sim or space fighter game, in the vein of Rogue Squadron.

Any suggestions?

[Special Agent Sigvan]

Not a lot of free games on steam sadly.

[Dispatcher]

Not Steam, but free:

My favorite old game is Bungie's Marathon series (which consists of the official trilogy and many third party scenarios, maps and levels [they were fun to create and play]).

You are a security officer aboard the UESC Marathon colony ship. Are you the 10th Mjolnir Mark IV cyborg? You may well get answers to that question as you battle your way through the Marathon; alien ships, planet and moon. This FPS works on current Windows, Mac and Linux machines by using the Aleph One engine. The open source engine and the games are free, thanks to Bungie. You may get them here:

http://marathon.sourceforge.net

The site has a few pics.

Here's one from Bungie:

The graphics (resolution, etc.) have been improved in Aleph One over this old pic.

[UmbralRaptor]

Steam has relatively few good free games, but lots of good cheap games.

In the mean time, signing up for Good Old Games will start you with a few free games, and quite a few dos games are now free

[Hunter3081]

If you like arcade racing games, TrackMania Nations Forever is a free game you can get on Steam.

[T-Bouw]

One free game on Steam I know of is, Gear Up!

A multi-player "tank"-battle game.

The free-version of the game has the rather serious restriction of having only 8 slots to store spare parts.

That makes it hard to play around with the tinkering on your tank part.

Other than that I must recommend getting Spellunky.

Get the original classic free edition.

[Xacktar]

So I finally bit the bullet and installed Steam. Can anyone recommend some decent free Steam games? Marvel Heroes looks interesting. Not sure if I can get into Star Trek Online. I'd probably like some sort of flight sim or space fighter game, in the vein of Rogue Squadron.

Any suggestions?

I've played MH and STO. MH is a good relaxing game with a huge variety of heroes and lots of smashy smash. STO is more involved, but they are running an event right now that is giving a lot of bonus stuff to new players.

Other good free-on-steam games are Planetside 2, Warframe and War Thunder.

War thunder might be a good pick since it has some awesome pilot-sim stuff for WWII era fighters and bombers.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Xacktar

[gmiddlemass]

+1 for War Thunder.

Very good game. So much so that I even ended up spending some money buying an additional plane to fly. Its the first free game I've played that I considered good enough to spend money on.

I only really play the aircraft side of it though, the tank combat is a little slow by comparison.

[RainDreamer]

There is AlienSwarm - pretty decent free top down shooter for tactical squad play. And it seems like there are always some people playing it at some point.

[mordin86]

I would not recommend War Thunder simply because it's grindy, pay to win and if you want to get anywhere you will have to fly/drive Russian stuff because game favors soviet equipment.

I have a few f2p games, mostly mmo`s like Firefall, Defiance and EverQuest II - lots of fun.

[megatiger78]

planetside 2, 8bit MMO, and Star Trek Online. most of the MMOs are free.

[segaprophet]

I would not recommend War Thunder simply because it's grindy, pay to win and if you want to get anywhere you will have to fly/drive Russian stuff because game favors soviet equipment.

I have a few f2p games, mostly mmo`s like Firefall, Defiance and EverQuest II - lots of fun.

I've been having a lot of fun with German armor in WT. I agree that the game noticably favors Russian armor, but it's nothing that sufficient skill and tactical prowess can't overcome.

It's all the more fun to outplay the tough Russian tanks with my "inferior" Panzers. It kind of mirrors real tank action in WWII, when German tank crews often came up against Russian heavies with comparatively lightly armored Pz. IIIs and IVs and had to use their skill and experience to come out on top.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh and as far as the OP, I would recommend War Thunder and Path of Exile too.

[michaelsteele3]

Team Fortress 2 is for you.

[pincushionman]

There is AlienSwarm - pretty decent free top down shooter for tactical squad play. And it seems like there are always some people playing it at some point.

Love it! But I haven't had good luck with finding many other players in quite a while.

Maybe some of us could grt together and coordinate a session or two. I'd be willing to host, but I can't guarantee my hardware/connection is ideal.

[Goddess Bhavani]

I've been having a lot of fun with German armor in WT. I agree that the game noticably favors Russian armor, but it's nothing that sufficient skill and tactical prowess can't overcome.

It's all the more fun to outplay the tough Russian tanks with my "inferior" Panzers. It kind of mirrors real tank action in WWII, when German tank crews often came up against Russian heavies with comparatively lightly armored Pz. IIIs and IVs and had to use their skill and experience to come out on top.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh and as far as the OP, I would recommend War Thunder and Path of Exile too.

Hmm with all the talk of Russian bias, I don't particularly find Russian armor interesting or noteworthy. Sure the light tanks and T-34s do have sloped armor but that can be defeated with the right cannon and positioning. Historically the Russian tanks did have the advantage, on paper, but due to poor training and communications were inferior to the Panzers. And heavy tanks like KV-1 were nearly immune to early war Panzers and KV-1s should be OP defensively anyway!

In-game, good gunnery and observation skills on the part of the player make Russian tanks easy to knock out.. and I dislike that KV-1s are matched up with Tigers early in the mid game. Instead of complaining the Tiger is OP I just devised tactics against it like disabling the gun which is quite easy to hit, then let teammates deal with it.

I play American steel mostly, for the extremely fun AAMGs and certain US tanks seem to be incredibly durable and some early war ones are so weird they are fun to brawl around with. Later on, Shermans are sweet tanks, despite their well known weaknesses, and good Sherman drivers are a force to reckon with in both WT and World of Tanks. I prefer the pace of War Thunder, yes, it's slow, but that's how tank battles play out - play smart and stay hull down. WoT is way too quick and arcadey.

Edited April 11, 2015 by pandoras kitten

[Rainbowtrout]

I'm a fan of Team Fortress 2.

[dryer_lint]

Just download a bunch of demos

No, seriously though. I forget to check if the "download demo" button is there half the time (they seem to make it blend in)... but every once in a while, the demo isn't that bad at all. Take the KSP demo, it was nothing but an older version of the game and I still had fun with it.

And every once in a while, Steam seems to glitch and give you the full version of the game (!?!?)

This totally didn't happen with the DEFCON demo. wink wink

[Beowolf]

Googling "Free Steam Games" will give you lots of lists, of wildly-varying usefulness. The last one I tried is "How do you do it?", which only took seconds to download, and minutes to play. Warning: deadly cute and pointless...

http://store.steampowered.com/app/353360/

[Slam_Jones]

DC Universe (I'm pretty sure it's still free) was a nice one IMO... took up plenty of my time.

Typical MMO-style, but with real-time strikes, combos, etc. It was actually a pretty good game.

Except max-level PVP... that can turn into a nightmare quick.

[Goddess Bhavani]

I've been poking fun at Velvet Sundown which is a roleplaying 'dramagame'. Basically the whole point of it is to talk to people to progress the plot. No NPCs, all other scenario participants are people. It used to have problems with people abusing the game but these days there seems to be serious people around. Just cross fingers you don't appear as a character destined to get ignored after the initial round of chats because he/she doesn't have a natural looking plot assigned.

I've also been poking around with Moonbase Alpha which is a hilarious demonstration of what can go wrong when you send people to the Moon without training. Or knowing how to use the English language to communicate in a coherent and constructive fashion.

The last game I am trying this weekend is "Unturned" which seems like the best of the bunch and is free in Early Access - It's minecraft with zombies. I repeat, minecraft with zombies!