You know, unlike what AAA publishers may have you believe, some of the best games don’t necessarily have to come with a $60 price tag. In fact, there are tons of really awesome and great games you can download and play for free.
These games can range from free-to-play multiplayer games with microtransactions, to 8-hour long passion projects, or even short point and click games that make you think.
What’s even better is that most of these titles don’t boast high hardware requirements. If you’re on a mission to save money and focusing on F2P titles, you’ll be glad to know that most of the games on this list can be run using high settings using a quality $800 gaming laptop or a PC of comparable hardware potential.
Whichever game fits your fancy, there’s quite a few to pick from, so let’s dig in.
Related: Epic Games Free Games List
#1 Dota 2
It’s pretty much impossible to talk about the free games on Steam without mentioning Valve’s own incredibly popular free game: Dota 2.
Second, only to League of Legends, Dota 2 is a MOBA that looks rather simple at face value but is actually incredibly complex and nuanced. With ten players, three lanes and tons of items, there’s actually quite a lot to master here, and you can jump straight into it without paying a single penny.
You even have over 100 heroes to choose from, with new heroes constantly being added to the roster (in-fact, they’ve probably already added one between the time this article gets published).
As for the freemium model and Microtransactions, they’re thankfully quite good. There’s no pay to win aspect in Dota 2 and all the MTs are in the form of cosmetic items that have zero impact on gameplay.
In fact, somebody who just started today, and somebody who has been playing for thousands of hours, have the exact same heroes, items, and everything else available to them, with the only differentiator being skill/experience.
Of course, that’s not to say that experience and skill don’t play a big part in it, and having a few hundred hours in the game will certainly help.
In fact, that’s probably one of the few sticking points when it comes to Dota 2 since the learning curve is so incredibly steep, you’ll probably need 100 hours in the game to actually get the basics down and start gaining better/more experience. Don’t let that put you off though, it’s still lots of fun playing through those first 100 hours, and if you’re the kind of person who appreciates the challenge, then this game is for you.
As for the actual gameplay, it’s your standard MOBA with lanes, heroes and spawns to kill, with the deciding factors being the items and heroes you pick, as well as your skill level. I’m not going to go into it with much detail since you probably know what MOBA is inside out by now, it’s popular enough!
Dota 2 is an excellent game and one of the best MOBAs out there, and thankfully there’s no pay to win elements here, with most of the monetization of the game coming from cosmetic microtransactions. If you’ve been thinking of jumping into a MOBA, this is a great first pick.
#2 Team Fortress 2
Of course, since we’re talking about Steam, free games and Dota 2, we can’t really leave out Team Fortress 2, the original class-based arena shooter that spawned dozens of similar games in the genre.
Surprisingly, TF2 is still a pretty active game, with lots of ranked and unranked players still playing, although the real ‘pro’ ranked games tend to happen on 3rd party sites, much like CS: GO.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t tons of players, servers, and communities still running. In fact, you could probably log in now and find dozens of different weird game modes and servers for you to try out, from the trade-only servers to the weird Super Mario Bros servers.
Also, since the game is quite old but still so popular, this might be the perfect title for you to get lost in if you own a cheap gaming PC and aren’t looking to replace it.
In terms of gameplay, if you’ve ever played a game like this before then you’re probably familiar. What makes TF2 different though, is that unlike games like Overwatch which have dozens of heroes, TF2 only has nine of them, broken up into three different categories.
With such a small roster, balance is easy to maintain, and all classes are equally useful, and there’s no real specific meta that you need to follow to be ‘good’.
That being said, if you’re just entering TF2, you’re going to be coming up against hundreds, if not thousands, of other players who have thousands of hours of gaming themselves. As such, even though the learning curve isn’t too big, the mastery curve certainly is, if only because other players have set the bar up really high.
Don’t let that put you off though, because there’s still lots of fun to be had, and even though you might die a lot at the beginning, you’re still going to be enjoying it.
Speaking of enjoyment, one thing that I and many others certainly love is the dark sense of humor that the game has, which just treads the line between ‘just perfect’ and ‘too much’. This is especially bourne out in the “meet the team” short videos that Valve created, which are super-fun to watch.
Really, every class is their own character that makes them feel real, even after hearing their excellent voice lines hundreds of times.
TF2 is the quintessential class-based shooter, and if you’re looking for that kind of game to pick up, then this is almost certainly a great option. The gameplay mechanics are not so difficult that you need hundreds of hours just to start learning, and the classes are balanced well enough that you never feel as if it’s the mechanic’s fault for you dying.
Finally, while the game is free, you should be aware of the whole loot boxes thing, something that TF2 actually ‘pioneered’. So be prepared to play a bit of that game at some point.
#3 Path of Exile
It’s not often you find good ARPGs, let alone ones that are free to play, so Path of Exile is certainly a nice refresher from the norm.
Funnily enough, knowing where to start this entry is just as difficult as knowing where to start in Path of Exile. Unlike other western RPGs, like Diablo, there’s very little hand-holding by the devs, and even the ‘tutorial’ is very bare-bones and minimal, mostly being a basic guide on how to play. This can be daunting for a lot of new players, but it does get better as you go forward.
While there is a 10-part story campaign, the main game lies outside of it, with the campaign acting as an extended tutorial that teaches you by practice. The story itself, and the lore built around it is pretty much typical to these style of games, with the universe-altering forces of good and evil battling it out for dominance.
The story is actually really well crafted and the storytelling is equally as good, but again, the focus isn’t so much on the campaign as it is on the rest of the game.
Where the game really shines is in the endgame called Atlas of Worlds, and that’s where the majority of the game is played. These worlds are procedurally generated maps that you access through magical portals and give you access to the grinding you might be familiar with in other dungeon-crawling games.
Even though that might not sound like a lot of fun on the face of it, it’s actually an incredibly deep and complex system.
That complexity mostly comes in the form of the skill tree, although it might be more accurate to call it a skilled web. There’s over a hundred different skills, passives, bonuses and other things to pick from, so you have a very micro-level of control over how you want to build your character.
Attached to that is the complex gear system, which works in tandem with the skills where you can slot them into different stuff you have equipped.
The best part about PoE though is the massive amount of continuous work put into it by the devs. Even though the game was released in 2013, there’s been a ton of extra content added to it, evidenced by the fact that the campaign only started out with 3 acts.
In fact, over the course of a year, PoE gets quarterly updates, interchanging between small and big ones, culminating in roughly 2 big changes every year, including an economy wipe.
Of course, this is a free-to-play game and it does have microtransactions, although thankfully they aren’t paid to win. Mostly they revolve around skins and gear sets, as well as extra inventory space which you might need at some point.
Thankfully, they do run a lot of discounts on the quality of life stuff, and ultimately it’s geared towards spending the same amount of money as if you had just bought the game outright.
That being said, it’s not a bad thing, with PoE being free to play, you can certainly get loads of hours into it before you decide you want to put money into it. So really, if you’re looking for a diablo-like game with tons of dungeon crawling and gear grinding, this is the perfect game for you.
#4 Alien Swarm
Alien Swarm is a bit of a forgotten game that’s actually made by Valve and released as a free to play.
For the most part, Alien Swarm is very similar to Left 4 Dead, in that it’s a co-op Steam shooter, with the main difference here being that Alien Swarm is top-down.
There’s also a difference in that there are four different classes for you to pick from, each adding their own value and importance to the game. For example, there’s a tech who can weld doors open or closed, which helps a lot with avoiding being overwhelmed.
Speaking of being overwhelmed, that’s where the main ‘shooter’ part of the game comes in, with, as you’d expect, a large swarm of aliens constantly being thrown at you while you try and survive.
The main story is actually relatively simple, and is essentially just Aliens 2; you are a marine detachment that’s sent to check on a colony that you’ve lost contact with. The game also has a lot of similar visual cues to the Aliens franchise, with drab greys and blue or yellow lighting, it can feel a little bit stifling and that definitely adds to the atmosphere.
As I mentioned earlier, this is a co-op in the same vein as Left 4 Dead, and so you have up to four players you can play with, although you can certainly play it single-player if you want.
Surprisingly, there is a bit of organization that needs to be had, since the game has friendly fire, so you can’t just run out in front of guns blazing, as well as the overall handling of the swarm that you need to do.
The only thing that’s really a let down in terms of the game is that it was never really picked up so much by the community, even though there’s modding support. The majority of the game encompasses a few of the same levels and that’s pretty much it, so it can get old and stale quickly.
That being said, the game is free, so I can’t fault it too much, aside from saying that Valve should have really put more effort into marketing this game since it has a lot of potential.
All in all, Alien Swarm is a nice game to pick-up if you enjoy exciting co-op titles, and especially so if you want to play with a group of friends. The game will get boring quickly, although you should get at least 10 or 20 hours of fun out of it before you might consider moving on.
#5 Planetside 2
Planetside 2 stands out a bit from your typical MMO, since it’s not a traditional RPG, but instead is an MMOFPS. It’s not even in the same vein as similar multiplayer games, such as PUBG or Fortnite, but instead takes place on an open-world map with rolling battles and points of control. In that way, it’s much more similar to something like the Guild War’s server vs server PvP.
To start off with, when you first play the game you can choose from three different human factions, each with their own ideology and style. As you’d expect, each faction has its own set of gear from weapons to vehicles and each style tends to focus on a different playstyle.
For example, one faction really excels at close-quarter combat, whereas another is more focused on range combat.
What’s really interesting here, is that while Planetside 2 is a pretty old game, first released in 2013, it has one of the strongest communities you’ll see around. This isn’t surprising in a shooter game where logistics and organization play a very large part in success.
You can’t just go out on your own to try and fight the enemy, since most likely than not, they’re grouped up and ready to take on any random stragglers.
In a large part, the game mostly revolves around point defense, with each regional point or hub acting as the main control for that region. The maps themselves, of which there are four, are divided into dozens of regions that you can vie for control, and so it truly becomes a massive endeavor to control the whole map.
That doesn’t happen often though, and you’ll likely be spending a large portion of the game fighting it out over certain central points.
Compound this issue is logistical support vehicles, which allow you to spawn in different kinds of weapons and heavy vehicles like tanks. These tend to travel along known supply lines, and so they become quite the juicy target to attack. By defending and deploying said vehicles, it can help one side land a pretty strong punch on the other.
As you’d expect in a free to play game, there are quite a lot of microtransactions, and while they aren’t necessarily paid to win, they are pay to play. For example, some really cool guns and gear is locked behind a paywall, whether it’s a fancy sniper or a powerful assault rifle. The same applies to some skills you can purchase which can give you better ammo generation.
Of course, you can grind out most of these and purchase them purely from playing, but the game is heavily geared towards making that a very long process.
Planetside 2 is an interesting game on several levels and I was a bit hesitant to include it in this list at first. It’s a bit old and the microtransactions are pretty heavy, but for the most part, it’s very unique and incredibly fun to play.
On top of that, there’s an incredibly strong community, even 6 years on, and if you really enjoy that aspect of online play, then Planetside 2 is a great option.
#6 Smite
Another game that takes an established genre and somewhat turns it on its head, Smite is a MOBA, but a 3rd person one, rather than a top-down one like LoL or Dota 2.
This 3rd person perspective is . . . rather interesting to say the least, and makes the game more reminiscent of a traditional RPG game, rather than a MOBA. It’s this change to the perspective which makes the game a little bit more friendly to new players, as you get a more down-to-earth idea of what’s going on.
Since you are taking this perspective, that means that abilities and attacks rely a lot on your aim and general placement in the game map.
The lore and heroes themselves are actually a ton of fun, taken from a variety of mythical religions and pantheons from across the world.
For example, you can play as the Ancient Egyptian sun god Ra, hovering around the field in holy justice, or you can play as the Ancient Greek god Zeus, reigning down bolts of lightning from above. This theming also translates to the map themselves, and you’ll see a variety of different and cool environments.
When you first start playing and finish the tutorial, you’re put into an arena mode where you battle it out with other players and heroes.
Once you hit level three though, you get access to jousting, which is a bit more similar to a traditional MOBA, being a 3 v 3 match on a one-lane map. Hitting level 5 gives you access to Conquest mode, which is what you’ll probably be most familiar with if you’re a player of MOBA, where it’s a 5 v 5 match on a three-lane map.
The game itself though has an absolute ton to discover and do, and with over 90 heroes to pick from, you have a lot of variety in terms of playstyle.
Of course, this is a free to play game, so microtransactions exist, but thankfully they’re not paid to win and rather reasonable.
Quite a lot of the microtransactions revolve around things such as voice packs, loading screens and other UI elements in the game, so they’ve really taken the cosmetics approach to heart. Of course, you can also unlock heroes with micro-transactions if you like, although you can absolutely grind it out and unlock them with the in-game currency.
Smite isn’t your traditional MOBA, with its 3rd person perspective and more user-friendly attitude, it’s certainly much easier to get into as a new player.
That’s not to say that the game isn’t deep, and you’ll easily spend hundreds of hours mastering the skills required to be the top of the pack. The best thing is that the game features crossplay between Xbox, Windows and the Switch, so you get to play against people you might not have otherwise.
#7 Sigils of Elohim
So this game is a bit more of a companion mini-game rather than anything else. If you’ve ever played Talos Principle, or better yet, if you haven’t, Sigils of Elohim ties into it and allows you to unlock additional items that could potentially help you in the main game.
Sigils of Elohim is actually a pretty simple game in and of itself, consisting mostly of trying to fit Tetris-like pieces on a checkered board until you fill out space completely. This might sound simple on the surface, but as you progress through the game, the puzzles become more and more complex, and you could easily spend hours figuring things out before you reach the end.
Thankfully, you are majorly motivated by the fact that you unlock stuff for the main game as you finish each section, and the tie-ins are pretty cool.
Now, you actually don’t have to play The Talos Principle to also enjoy this game, as it’s actually a pretty fun puzzler on its own. Granted, you might not really understand or get the story or lore, as there basically isn’t any, but you will enjoy the mental challenge that comes with trying to fit the different pieces together.
The game itself is broken up into three different parts, A, B, and C, with each part having 4 different sections, and you can easily spend an hour or two on each part, so this is quite a beefy game, even without The Talos Principle tie-in.
For the most part, you should approach Sigils of Elohim as a high-quality puzzle game that also happens to be free, and that’s really the best perspective you can have going in.
#8 Iron Snout
Iron Snout is another simple yet super-fun game to play that doesn’t really ask you to do much except standing there.
Yep, you read that right. The whole game essentially revolves around a little piggy who wants to really give it to a bunch of wolves.
As such, this arcadey button masher has you standing in place while wave after wave of increasingly difficult and numbered wolves come at you. It’s never that simple though, as there are 9 different types of wolves thrown at you, each with their own unique take on attacking you.
Combat is super-smooth and very button mashy, so it’s a lot of fun to play, even though it’s relatively shallow. There’s also a variety of weapons you can catch and throwback at the wolves as you play, although you don’t have any weapons you can purchase for yourself, which is a shame.
The game is broken down into two modes which are pretty similar: the normal mode which gives you 10 health to play around with, and the single-health mode, which is a bit dicier.
The majority of the fun comes from trying to beat your own high-score, as well as the high-score on the leaderboards within the game. Aside from that, there’s really not much that will have you playing over and over again.
That being said, Iron Snout is still a pretty fun game, especially since it’s free, you can at least get a few hours of enjoyment out of it before it runs its course. The button-mashing is pretty satisfying though, and if you’re the kind of person who likes to chase leaderboards, this is probably the perfect game for you.
#9 Cry of Fear
Originally, Cry of Fear was a total conversion mod for Half-Life, before it was released as a standalone game. Before going forward, I will say that the game’s graphics are very . . . dated, as it was originally built off the first Half-Life’s engine.
Much like the game itself, it’s pretty hard to know where to start with this one. While on the surface it seems rather simplistic, Cry of Fear is actually a pretty good horror game with a reasonably big open world for you to explore.
It also mixes in shooting and inventory elements that are similar to something like Resident Evil, so it’s overall just a mix of a variety of different genres.
That being said, it actually does have a deep and disturbing story to explore, and the enemy designs are both disturbing and surprisingly well done. Even though the game is somewhat hamstrung by its own engine, the animations are really kinda spooky, and not familiar at all when compared to modern horror games.
In a major sense, the art direction of the game is really spot on and is very reminiscent of games like Silent Hill.
In terms of gameplay and game design, it can be both amazing and incredibly frustrating. For example, since loot doesn’t actually respawn, you might find yourself in a bit of a pickle when retreading old ground when you play through a later chapter.
So the game really isn’t that forgiving, at least not in the same way that modern games are when it comes to enticing people to keep on playing.
In a big way, Cry of Fear can be a mixed bag, not because it’s necessarily bad, but because it’s a really great concept and execution that’s hampered by an aging engine. If you want to relive the olden days of Resident Evil and Silent Hill, this is a great game to pick up, especially since it’s completely free, and has a story-campaign that can easily last 8-10 hours.
Of course, the real question is are you willing to deal with the bugs and issues that come with such an old engine?
#10 Sisyphus Reborn
If you’ve never heard of Sisyphus, he was a king in Ancient Greek mythology who was condemned to roll a boulder up a hill, only to roll it back down and back up again for the rest of eternity. This punishment was handed down to him because of his massive egomania and arrogance.
In the same sense, Sisyphus reborn is a 30-minute point and click ‘adventure’ that deals with the concept of the pointlessness of life. Or maybe it doesn’t.
I don’t want to spoil the game for you since it is really short, so I’ll just tell you that it’s an interesting philosophical jaunt and well worth the download.
Conclusion
And there you have it, folks, a veritable bevy of great free games to play on Steam. I should mention at this point that this is really only an abridged list, and there’s still tons and tons of exceptional free games on Steam, so you should absolutely do your own diving and try to find your own gems (maybe even put it in the comments below).
If you’re having trouble installing any of these titles (or trouble with Steam in general) check out these guides we made for you:
- Steam ‘not enough disk space‘
- Steam ‘download stopping‘
Either way, enjoy yourself and try not to fall too far down the rabbit hole!