Sometimes, you have an empty wallet and a Steam library full of games you could be playing, but don’t want to, for some reason. Usually, when this happens, it’s time to turn to the multitude of time-wasting free-to-play games that can fill that void.
These games are usually online-only and filled with microtransactions, and when you’re spending nothing on them, the quality can vary wildly. That said, there are always going to be a few gems out there that can make your time spent feel worthwhile.
Of course, all of these still have optional purchases, but the keyword there is “optional”. These games don’t force you to buy things to get a reasonable amount of content; instead, they feel like normal video games.
I’ve picked out eight great examples of this, all in pretty different genres, as a list of games I personally consider hopping on whenever I’m bored. These things give you pretty much endless enjoyment, to a reasonable extent, of course.
8 Clicker Heroes
Level With Me
I wanted an idle game on this list, and while Cookie Clicker is easily the best of the best and is technically free on the browser version, the Steam one is better and makes me not feel like recommending it over Clicker Heroes, which isn’t my favorite.
That said, I have still clocked a hundred hours into it over the span of a few years, and I think it’s absolutely the kind of game you check in on every once in a while. You can only really make fast progress by paying up, so I prefer taking it slow.
It feels better that way, checking in every couple of weeks, maybe every few days if I’m feeling like it, and occasionally spending a couple of hours maximizing my setup, rebirthing, and doing everything again to go even faster next time.
I feel like most idle games have the potential to outlive you if you don’t know how to game the system, and Clicker Heroes is definitely one of those. It can keep you busy forever, and it’s just satisfying enough to leave running in the background for a quick dopamine hit.
7 TrackMania
Hot Wheels
I didn’t really believe myself when I was watching a GDQ run of Trackmania once, then looked into it for myself, and found out that you can play the game for free. If you want everything, it’s $20, but you get a surprisingly good amount of stuff for free.
You can play quite a decent selection of tracks that rotate out every so often, hop on the Arcade playlist, and experience what it would be like to drive a Hot Wheels car around plastic orange tracks, but on a rather large scale.
Basically, any time I have felt the urge to hop on this game, I have been more than satisfied with the stuff on offer and never once wanted to cough up the money for it, but it is hard to argue that this isn’t one of the greedier games on the whole list.
It’s just a damn good racing game, and one that’s worth checking out since you lose nothing by doing so. Optimizing your time to get a better rank here is more satisfying than the time trials in any other racing game I’ve played, that’s for sure.
6 VRChat
Social Civilization
While it’s an online-only experience, VRChat is a game that you can and probably will play forever, given it’s more of a social platform than a normal game. There are tons of games and worlds in VRChat, and it feels like a perfected hodgepodge.
It’s something I’ll see my friends hop on randomly, just because there is always something new to do. There is always a new environment to hang out in, a new game to play, and new conversations to have with the game itself serving as a backdrop.
Contrary to the name, you don’t even need to drop $1k on a headset or give the lizard man your money, as it doesn’t require a VR setup to play. That said, getting to see myself as Niko from Oneshot in a game is surreal and makes it worth experiencing.
You could make the argument that VRChat is similar to Roblox, and is more of a platform than a game in itself. But unlike Roblox, I can launch this one from Steam, and frankly, that’s all I need to be convinced that this is a free video game.
5 Super Auto Pets
Go, My Scarab
You might see the title of Super Auto Pets and assume it’s something lame and boring, but it’s actually one of the best strategy games I’ve ever played, and it’s crazy that it’s free. You just set up animals and watch them do their thing, and it manages to be super engaging.
The new community-made packs every week give you a reason to keep on coming back, and creating a combination that self-damages your team and simultaneously creates the tankiest, highest damaging whale you can make is an awesome feeling.
Games that are different every run and incentivize you to go as far as possible with wildly different builds each time are my favorite, and Super Auto Pets lets you build your team in a damn near limitless way, making every run feel unique.
That said, there are plenty of times when you just get screwed over by luck, but when you manage to push through that and take out an enemy team in only a couple of turns, you feel god-like and unstoppable – until you randomly get completely washed by the next team.
4 Destiny 2
Limitless Limitations
While the free version of Destiny 2 does limit you quite a bit in what you can do, the game is built for you to constantly replay the same content over and over anyway, so you are, in a way, still getting the full, endless Destiny experience without paying a dime.
You can play multiple campaigns, raids, and dungeons, and get everything that PVP has to offer, alongside quite a massive chunk of content. All of this is infinitely replayable and not time-limited at all, so it all feels quite generous, all things considered.
I’ve seen people start this game and never really stop playing this game, and it’s a huge timesink for that reason alone. You can play the same raid over and over and still somehow not feel tired, especially when you take multiplayer into account.
Generally, you’ll find that multiplayer games have far more longevity just because hopping on anything with some good friends can improve an experience tenfold, and Destiny is no exception to this. If only it didn’t cost 129 GB and a damn good PC to play it.
3 Old School Runescape
Buying GF
If you’re looking for a time investment on the severe end of the scale, booting up an MMO is probably the best way to distract yourself for a few months or a couple of years, and none do it quite as well as the original, Old School Runescape.
This game brings back nostalgia for something I never played when I was younger, and that’s impressive. It’s emblematic of the long-gone era of internet games that were grindy as hell, but you didn’t really care, because you were always having a good time.
While it takes a decade to cross the entire map for whatever quest has suddenly decided they need an oddly specific material, that can be a relaxing ordeal in itself, and sometimes it’s worth it to just take a step back and enjoy the 20 polygons on screen at any time.
Some people grew up with the original that still play Runescape to this day, if you needed an indicator that this game is truly one that lasts forever. If you’re only going to play one of these games for a year, it’s probably going to be this one.
2 Tetr.io
Literally Just Tetris
I’ll be real with you, Tetr.io isn’t anything even slightly unique. It’s a browser version of Tetris you can play for free, but it runs far better than any other browser game I’ve ever played, and it’s a really damn good version of Tetris, especially for $0.
I personally consider Tetris, with the modern rules and mandates that govern it, with the Holding and bag system that modern versions are known for, to be a perfectly designed game. I don’t know how many hundreds of hours I’ve spent playing it, I just know I’ll spend hundreds more.
It’s addicting once you learn a bit of it, it’s one of the lowest skill floors and highest skill ceilings in any game ever, and Tetr.io is one of the best ways to play it. It has a custom mode that lets you tune it to be pretty much any game mode you want, and the online multiplayer works wonderfully.
In particular, I’m a huge fan of Zen mode, as it lets you relax, work on your stacking, and just get as many quads in a row as you can manage, all while being a more soothing experience than any game explicitly dedicated to being relaxing.
1 Fortnite
Booted Up My PC
For all the flak Fortnite tends to get — and granted, they did make AI Darth Vader, that flak is completely deserved — the game is really the best popular game in terms of handling microtransactions. It is nowhere near pay-to-win, and that deserves some credit.
Paying for skins or the battlepass gives you purely cosmetic things, and the songs in Festival are pretty much as far as it goes in terms of paying to unlock new content, unless you’re one of the ten people who actually still play Save the World on the regular.
You can play all the main modes, hop on whatever custom content is available, and get a victory royale by never playing with the sweatiest players of all time in build mode. There’s a massive amount of stuff to do here, and you’re never forced to pay a single penny.
Sure, I still decided that buying Raven Team Leader was a completely necessary purchase, and most people end up being suckered into getting a skin or two eventually, but you’re never forced to. This is one of the easiest games to get into, and that’s something really quite commendable.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
