Recommend freeware games for my nieces

[Pxtl]

I'm rebuilding an old PC for my nieces (2ghz Intel 768 Mib RAM ATI 9600 AIW) and I'm looking for freeware/OSS games to load on there. Already got the obvious ones (Wesnoth, Pingus, Tuxmath, Tuxpaint, Platinum Arts Sandbox, Hedgewars, Cave Story, Neverball, Celestia, Ur Quan Masters, GLTron). Also bought them World of Goo while it was on sale (thanks for the tip, Caydr).

Girls are 10 and 8, and both pretty damned clever but also pretty noobish - their old machine is an old Duron I built for them that has never seen the internet.

Looking for games (and creative toys) that are brain-challenging and user-friendly, and no gore allowed.

Any recommendations? OSS preferred, but trustworthy freeware is good too.

[Neddie]

I would put Kernel Panic on there. No, seriously.

[bobthedinosaur]

`

[[TS]Lollocide]

Man, neddie is such a prude.

KRS is the best gaem eva. But I guess spring would be good if you removed the ingame chat. Or one of those flash farm games where you've got to feed them food or they turn malnorised and die.

[Pxtl]

I would put Kernel Panic on there. No, seriously.

I'm seriously considering it. This used to be my machine though, and KP would crawl once the bots had flooded the maps with bits... but maybe that was just because their aggression was too low in old versions.

My only problem is that there is no Free RTS that's both kid-friendly and has enough single-player content. These girls don't have an internet connection, and I wouldn't think they'd get anything out of the Spring community anyways, so they'd be stuck with the KP Easy/Medium/Hard games - figuring out the SpringLobby SP launcher for more games would probably be too nasty.

Globulation2 has a full tutorial and an easy skirmish-making system, so I might go with that. Still has no real Single Player campaign.

I keep going back and forth on whether to hoist the Jolly Roger on this one. There's so much good free stuff out there that piracy just doesn't seem necessary anymore.... but all the classics I know haven't got free versions.

[knorke]

bridge builder:
http://www.bridgebuilder-game.com/
a game about train wrecks.


gene rally:
http://generally.cjb.net/
there is a little blood if you run into the pit crew but is cartoony.
they never die and will still happily repair you.

Globulation 2:
http://globulation2.org/wiki/Main_Page
non-brutal rts with blobs. last time i tested was a little unstable in lan and only skirmish, no campgains. some maps were really strange/unplayable.

Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe
www.openttd.org
build a transportnetwork, make the trains crash the busses.
quite complicated if you get into the details.

Stay away from "the Sims" games, its like WoW but gayer.
Seriously.

[SpliFF]

I went through this search some time ago, I don't have all the links but I'll go one better and put them up on http://warriorhut.org/free_games for you to download. I may take them down in about a month so suck it now while you can. I've started uploading at the time I posted this so it will take a few hours for all uploads to complete. I recommend waiting at least this long or you may end up downloading partial archives.

I went to a lot of trouble to get these from sites and developers I trusted, many are open-source, so you shouldn't have any problems with viruses or spyware. On the other hand I got them about a year ago so some games may have updated versions online.

Recommendations (for young kids, in order of difficulty):
Tasty Planet (Mouse game)
Icy Tower (Jump up ledges)
Bub N' Bros (Bubble Bobble remake)
Super Tux Kart (Mario Kart clone)
Gish Demo (Weird Physics Platform Game)
Maelstrom (Asteroids remake)
Neverball

For older kids:
Tm Nations Forever (Racing)
FS2_Open (Freespace 2 open source)
Warzone 2100 (Complete RTS)
Urquan Masters (Abandonware Space Game)

UPDATE: Upload got stuck on BioShock demo (1.5 G). Removing it and trying again. Should have all the games up in about 6 hours. I'll update this post when the upload is complete.

UPDATE: Taking hours to upload. Will be all done in about 6 - 10 hours I guess. Oh well. Will upload anyway, though you can probably get them elsewhere much quicker.

[KaiserJ]

i know its not free, but lil' girls LOVE the sims. you could probably get the original game for 5 bucks.

also, i think you'd do well to put some emulators and NES games on there.

one that i always break out for kids is "the incredible machine" which also is not free, but old as hell and would probably be dirt cheap if you could find it.

edit : agree with knorke, sims is quite lame for you or me; but really its a virtual dollhouse. girls go apeshit for it.

[Gertkane]

The Incredible Machine / Sid & Al's Incredible Toons are two awesome series. I used to play those when i was really really young and loved every minute, even when i was failing horribly. Incredible Toons is just a whacky realization of The Incredible Machine concept.

Just look at it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-7LgrEU ... r_embedded
Just download it:
http://www.myabandonware.com/game/sid-a ... d#download (1st. installment)
http://rapidshare.com/files/119893209/T ... achine.rar(2nd. installment)
The Incredible Machine series is a bit more serious but that is perhaps one of the reasons i still enjoy playing this very old game.
Download link:
http://www.dosgamesonline.com/index/gam ... e_3.0.html

Both of the series aren't exactly freeware, but they sure are abandonware. If you like them and your conscious won't let you be then good luck finding a retail copy.

[diggz2k]

osmos, but it's $10.

[smoth]

icey tower.

[Master-Athmos]

Freeciv
Domination
Widelands
Cities 3D
Fish Fillets

And maybe Antiwar...

[knorke]

Civ for 8 years old? Probally too complicated although I never played it.
Railroad Tycoon 2

The Incredible Machine / Sid & Al's Incredible Toons are two awesome series. I used to play those when i was really really young and loved every minute, even when i was failing horribly.

TIM is awesome. The best were the small dudes if you made them catapult each other into the air with a seesaw.

Also, there were was a math learning game that did not suck.
Operation Neptun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_ ... eo_game%29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRaEcDUj ... re=related
Seriously, make them play this or something similiar (if it exists) before some minddulling shit.

Not sure if stuff like this still exists, but I had a CD called "Raumfahrt erleben und verstehen" ("experience and understand space travel") that was quite cool, with videos and pictures of funny looking moon rovers. Maybe there is something like this with uhm horses or whatever they like? Its like internet without the pr0n.

[Nemo]

The Incredible Machine is indeed excellent - I spent ages and ages playing with it when I was young. If they like Legos/k'nex/anything similar to those, TIM is a great game.

[zwzsg]

so they'd be stuck with the KP Easy/Medium/Hard games

Now, there's more choices, the launcher let you choose the factions, the map, and if you play 1v1, team vs team, or 1 vs many, while difficulty level change the AI used, give you or your enemies ONS, or even give you SoS (ONS and SoS can be team specific team now).

Proper missions might even come "soon", since KP3.6 already has some exemple missions.

[Sertse]

World of Goo?

You could of got it for 1 cent if you bought it a few days ago. heh

[JohannesH]

World of Goo?

You could of got it for 1 cent if you bought it a few days ago. heh

Read the posts you reply to, maybe

[Forboding Angel]

hexxagon

[Argh]

One idea: grab all of the Flash games you like that are reasonably age-appropriate (just download the SWF files, link in HTML, make homepage, done).

And I like the idea of SNES emu, etc., there are bazillions of kid-friendly roms for that system, and it won't tax a low-end system (whereas MAME can, and is a lot less kid-friendly to operate, imo, even with a decent frontend).