1UP.com has a nice list of free games you can find on the web, compiled by Computer Gaming World.
You don’t care how you get your fix. You just want to play a new game right now and you don’t want to pay a lot for the privilege. Thank God for the Internet, where everything (and its mom) is available for free. So, taking a break from downloading patches and porn, we set upon a journey to gaming-freebie Mecca.
This is a fantastic and hilarious comic set in the Half-Life universe and rendered using the Half-Life 2 engine along with Garry’s Mod.
Concerned is the story of Gordon Frohman, former Black Mesa entry-level employee, survivor of the Portal Storms and the Seven Hour War, and now earnest and hard-working citizen of City 17. Frohman is a simple guy trying to earn an honest buck in a post-apocalyptic world ruled mercilessly by hordes of heavily armed alien hybrid soldiers (called Combine) bent on draining the Earth of its last natural resource and exterminating the human race. He also enjoys playing backgammon.
Gordon Frohman arrives on the scene a few weeks before Doctor Gordon Freeman — scientist, hero, anti-citizen, and star of Half-Life and Half-Life 2 — first appears in City 17. Due to the similarity in their names, Frohman is often initially mistaken for the crowbar-wielding Freeman, though due to Frohman’s chatty nature and general incompetence the error is usually sorted out fairly quickly.
Very funny and incredibly well done.
This is an amusing spoof of all those MMORPGs that have degenerated into little more than the constant need to level up and to farm gold. It eliminates all of that tedious work and lets your character level up without you having to expend valuable free time.
Progress Quest is a next generation computer role-playing game. Gamers who have played modern online role-playing games, or almost any computer role-playing game, or who have at any time installed or upgraded their operating system, will find themselves incredibly comfortable with Progress Quest’s very familiar gameplay. Progress Quest follows reverently in the footsteps of recent smash hit online worlds, but is careful to streamline the more tedious aspects of those offerings. Players will still have the satisfaction of building their character from a ninety-pound level 1 teenager, to an incredibly puissant, magically imbued warrior, well able to snuff out the lives of a barnload of bugbears without need of so much as a lunch break. Yet, gone are the tedious micromanagement and other frustrations common to that older generation of RPG’s.
This section of the FAQ cracked me up:
Q: I’ve been running PQ for years now, and my character is eighty-somethingth level, and now the game crashes or I’ve been thrown into the Hall of Infamy or some other random badness is going on. What can I do?
A: You are witnessing a form of senility and/or corruption and/or loss of bladder control brought on by the decrepit age of so ancient a character. (Equivalently, this is a limitation of the program which has no remedy.) It’s time to make way for a new generation of adventurers!
This is another web-based riddle, similar in concept to Python Challenge. But, this one doesn’t require any programming. You will, however, need to be proficient at figuring out subtle clues, lateral thinking and searching for information on the web.
There are a total of 138 levels. Good luck!
This incredible album is a collection of mp3 remixes based on the soundtrack for the original DooM game (not the movie!). Hangarmageddon, Industrial Strength and Mystery Meat are some of my favorites. But Darkness Dawning just blows me away. Wicked stuff.
Here is another programming challenge site. This one is specifically geared towards mathematical problems. You can use any programming language you like.
The problems are rated according to how many people have already solved a particular problem. The more people that have solved a problem, the less points that problem is worth. The scores are calculated dynamically, so your overall score can change depending on what the problems are currently worth.
I’m currently using Ruby for these problems. I still prefer Python, but Ruby does have some nice features.
Python Challenge is “the first programming riddle on the net”. There are currently 33 levels, and for each level you need to figure out the clues that lead you to the next level. Usually, you need to do a bit of data crunching to get the answer.
You can use whatever programming language you like, but some levels are easier with Python, or with an available library you can download for Python.
If you get stuck there is a hints forum that can help steer you in the right direction. Once you solve each level you can view the solutions page for that level and see some of the clever solutions that other solvers have come up with.
This is a great way to hone your Python skills and pick up some new tricks along the way. I am currently stuck on level 20.