Gaming

You could use system requirements lab website to see what games you can play with your specific computer. Instead of knowing what games you want to play but don't know if they will work you will instead have a list of games you know will likely work and can pick from those.

Minetest is a decent MC clone, open source and whatnot. There's also a few mods out there that tries to replicate it. (inb4 someone says minetest is an engine and not a game)

Guild Wars 2, has free to play tier, and no monthly sub if you buy. Definitely a dank game and I ran it for years and years on a piece of SHIT laptop from 2013-2014

I hate Epic launcher but if you can get weekly free games from epic store.

Have you tried interactive fiction (text adventures)?

There's a yearly competition (https://ifcomp.org), the winners of the last 27 years should keep you busy for a while. They come in various file formats you will need players for, but some have a "play online" function.

Roguelikes:

• Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup (http://crawl.akrasiac.org:8080/)
• DRL (https://drl.chaosforge.org/)

Great roguelike "Shattered Pixel Dungeon"

This is a free (as in freedom) game, I've done dozens of runs, there was enough depth and graphics are pixel art. Available for computers, phones, whatever

Oldschool Runescape

Highly suggest SIGNALIS

It follows the style of slient Hill and the original resident evil 1 and 2 with its own unique storyline if you are into survival horror

Bit of a different genre, but I'll throw HoloCure in here.

Someone else said Vampire Survivors, the game I like a lot recently is 20 Minutes Until Dawn. Lots of guns, upgrades, and characters to have fun with.

Team Fortress 2 is a good choice. I used to play it when I was getting into PC gaming but still only had integrated graphics. I recently got back into it, since it's pretty much the only FPS I really enjoy. The game hasn't had updates in a while, but it still has a dedicated player base.

Stardew Valley is a great farming game with RPG implementations.

The ones that come to my mind right now are CS2 and Dota 2. They will work with your specs easily I guess

I'm very amused by how your low end PC is still better than mine (I have a GTX 750)

I went through some of what I've played and might interest you, as well as some classics.

Counter Strike and its younger, more anime cousin Valorant - They're both 5v5 FPS games, although Valorant has named characters its not quite like Overwatch where they act like classes, everyone is expected to be shooting and most abilities are different ways of using flashbangs or smoke grenades.

Warframe - Ninjas play for free, but they wait 72h for a new frame to be built. This is probably the non-idle game that I've played the most, and I don't regret most of it. The biggest downside is that you'll want to find a good community as the game relies heavily on trading and teaming up for specific grinds after you're done with the basic missions. Still a shitload of fun.

Paladins - A hero shooter with a bit of a moba-ish stink. Aside from having different characters, you also build modifiers for their abilities plus buy items during combat, which makes for a very hectic and somewhat hard to pick up gameplay style.

Goose Goose Duck - A social deduction game with classes. While Among Us made the genre fairly popular, the 'classic' ones like Werewolf or Blood on the Clocktower relied on having special characters with different abilities, and this game leans more towards that style instead of just having 'plain' characters.

Guild Wars 2 - A classic MMO, to the point where its even difficult to describe. I have not played it since it went F2P but it is a very standard fare of the genre. Pick a class, have a little personal story, do quests and jobs for everyone with an exclamation point over their head until you're dead.

PlanetSide 2 - A massive cooperative shooter. Take part in large scale battles against other highly uncoordinated teams, fail to pilot every vehicle you find, blow up your teammates, somehow take over a territory successfuly.

We Were Here - A coop puzzle game that relies heavily on voice communication. Help your partner solve puzzles and survive a deadly environment by exchanging clues that only each of you can see, or die trying.

Helltaker - Brutal puzzle game. Go to hell to find your waifu.

Crusader Kings 2 - The eponymous grand strategy game. Read a dozen walkthroughs on medieval eras and its regions, attempt to take over Europe, father a dozen bastard children and have half of them sent to the oubliette.

Path of Exile - The ur loot game. Behold the most extensive skill tree man has ever created and weep, then kill a million different monsters while building up your perfect murder machine.

Marvel Snap - My current addiction. Have been playing it since october and it might be time to think of what I'm doing with my life. Duel over 3 locations with another opponent, attempt to score the highest amount of points in two of them to win. Learn why Galactus is an asshole or join him.

like most classic F2P games, a lot of these have paid options that 'speed up' your content, be it selling new cards or characters, or having QOL upgrades. Aside from Warframe, I've never paid for any of them and still had enough fun.

I also have this problem so I'll suggest some games I like to play. They're not free unless you're up for piracy.

Disco elysium (visual novel esque, unique and interesting, multiple choices, indie) - incredibly well written game with lots of dialogue and heavy political themes

Morrowind (open world, RPG, multiple choices, retro I guess) - oldest elder Scrolls game but maybe the best in terms of lore and freedom in game mechanics

Oblivion - same as morrowind but imo not as good

Factorio (indie) - if you like this kind of game you'll never need another game suggestion because you'll be too busy playing fsctorio

Rimworld (indie) - as addictive as factorio

I would suggest giving a look at Crosscode, Katana Zero and Hotline Miami 1 and 2. They are some of my favorite games. Katana Zero and the Hotline Miamis are shorter, story focused games, while crosscode is longer, with side quests and puzzles.

A lot of good options in the highest rated free steam games. Helltaker, Grimm's Hollow, Doki Doki Literature Club, The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, Project Kat, the Expendabros, Eternal Senia, and the Supper should all run on low-end systems and vary from "enjoyable" to "fantastic," although most are short. I think the longest are Doki and Senia at 4-5hrs, while stuff like The Supper is only 20 minutes.

You can practically run everything that was launched before 2012~.

guild wars 2, war thunder, world of tanks, team fortress 2, CSGO, random free MMORPGs (you can filter them on steam).

League of Legends runs pretty well.

And super smash bros melee via project slippi at slippi.gg

Game boy emulators work pretty great and with 'open source' versions of some gb game code (old Pokemon games mainly I think) many great hacks to improve the original experience exist. They take up an incredibly tiny amount of space, being old school.

My friends are enjoying mmorpg Trove (steam)

Duelyst II is a fan revival of essentially a Hearthstone clone played on a chess board. It's still in it's early stages, but it's fun and promising.

Muck is a roguelike survival. It's got kind of a silly TWAB vibe. It's fun to play with friends but you don't have to.

TF2 is a casual FPS, as you probably know. It still holds up. I'd recommend playing on custom servers.

Emu🦢lation.

any quake games at this point. (not QC), warfork is just Quake with more crazier movement.

Kingdoms and castles aren't free. However, it is really fun and runs smoothly on low-end hardware. I highly recommend you try it! I love it.

for an mmorpg able to run on low spec pc, i suggest you try Champions of Regnum. This is an RvR open pvp format mmo. Basically the endgame is really fun and last largely, forever. It is based off DAOC and has a similar combat system. 3 realms fight over control of the map.

Check out Prop and Seek

It's a hide and seek game in a FPS / CS-like environment.

While not free, I’d suggest getting Terraria on Steam, play through, then switch to TModLoader. You can expect a 1000+ hours easily. You could pirate it, but the devs really deserve your money on this one.

Open-Morrowind my bro

Factoryo, Rimworld, Oxygen not Included, if you are into building sims. Dyson Sphere Program might be a bit heavier.

On the Open Source side, OpenTTD, Widelands, or generally most OS games.

1. HOLLOW KNIGHT. Very very light, if it could run on my ancient microwave without any problems it'll run just fine on your shit too. It has incredible and deep lore, unique atmosphere, will get rid of any bug phobia you may have and replace it with either pure love or hatred depending on the bug, it's also a metroidvania which means you'll get lost a lot but that's the part of the fun as you'll discover new locations, bosses, items, npcs etc. and then you can always backtrack to an area which you previously couldn't access since you'll achieve upgrades throughout the game.

I cannot recommend this enough. It also feels incredibly rewarding as at first it'll probably be difficult to beat mobs and bosses, but you can feel yourself becoming better and there ain't no other game which gives you such satisfaction when finally beating a boss you've been stuck on, except maybe souls games. It also has a soul mechanic where if you die, your soul is left at the place you died and if you recover it you can also recover your geos (game currency).

It's an indie game, but the effort and depth put into it matches that of AAA games. It's not free, although it's one game I'd say is worth every penny and it's not even expensive. However, it's fine if you can't afford it because...

piracy entered the chat

If you're completely new to it, I'd highly recommend going through FreeMediaHeckYeah's gaming piracy guide, but if you're just looking for a quick way to get the game go to https://gog-games.to/game/hollow_knight and just download it. Note: You don't need a VPN for direct downloads, it's only recommended to use it for torrenting.

2. RLCRAFT. It's a minecraft mod which may seem heavy at first, but as long as you optimize it for performance it should run on 40-60 fps. If you thought mc vanilla was boring, rlcraft is the perfect shit for you. It's hard. You die a lot. But you also discover shitton of buildings, dungeons, creatures, items and game gets easier as you gain more knowledge. It's pretty much challenging from early to late, but it'll always have something to surprise you with and it's one of the best games for exploration, especially mid-late game when you'll have a flying mount.

3. KATANA ZERO. Music is absolute peak. Gameplay is absolute peak. Story is trippy, emotional rollercoaster which will probably leave you confused but it'll all make sense in the end. It has goofy dialogue, great interactions, gameplay is super satisfying especially later on in the game. It's another one of those games you can't believe is just an indie game made by one dude and not a whole fucken studio. Cleanest pixel 2d I've ever played, AND A SEQUEL IS COMING SOON. It's not free, but as explained previously, just go to https://gog-games.to/game/katana_zero and yeh, enjoy.

4. FAR CRY 3. This one has such insane graphics, but it can run just fine on lower end setups because the game was made in fucking 2013. Yeah, it's way ahead of its time. It'll take up a bit more storage than previously recommended games but its only a few gigs. It's the perfect survival game. It has great gameplay, open world, villains you'll remember your whole fucken life, satisfying af mechanics etc. You know the drill, it's not free. I'm not gonna repeat myself because do you know the definition of insanity? Insanity is doing the same fucking thing, over and over again, expecting shit to change. Although this time shit did change and you can't find it on GOG, but just torrenting it from https://fitgirl-repacks.site/ or any other site starred in the FMHY wiki will do the trick.

5. DARKEST DUNGEON 1 AND 2. Dark atmosphere, pain, suffering, but also clarity. It's a strategical game, but it also has a unique charm to it and all the characters you see you'll grow fond of and then be emotionally destroyed when they die because of your skill issues :') 10/10 would recommend solely because of deep ancestor quotes

I could write about 10 more essay but these are my top 5, some of the other games I'd recommend are: Cult of the lamb (rpg + base management), RIMWORLD (war crimes), Hades (satisfying af), Have a nice death (basically life metaphor but actually fun), Don't Starve (survival, 10x harder if you have and play with friends), Postal 2 (when your wife sucks, your job sucks, your neighbors suck and you just wanna set some cops on fire, pee on their corpse and then use a cat as a silencer - pg friendly btw), Rainworld (slug cat), Tomb raider 1 (survival), Dying light 1 (it might look like u can't run it, but I guarantee you'll get at least 30-40 fps if you adjust the settings), dead island 1 (if you can't run dying light but wanna play smth similar, play this - is basically dying light but has 10x more side quests), Hyper Light Drifter (sword go brr).

Whelp I just gave you enough games to get lost in for a year, enjoy! Feel free to ask for help with anything game/piracy related as well.

Space Station 14.

This is a remake of SS13, and it's an open-source labor of love. Sessions are ~45 minutes to 1½ hours. Complexity is daunting, but just don't go in expecting to be useful - expect to be a passenger, drink beers, and possibly get killed or rescued, maybe have some RP or semi-RP chats.

But you'll learn, and slowly, how things work. Maybe you can be an engineer intern and fail horribly while everyone depends on you. Maybe you can be in security and get killed. ..and maybe, just maybe, someday you'll win, and know you helped to make that happen.

I know RTS is not on your list but maybe retro: StarCraft, Brood War, and StarCraft 2 is free on its launcher.

If you’re fine with emulation, and you haven’t played it yet, Xenoblade Chronicles is pretty good. You can get the Wii version and install HD textures and on screen button mappings of your choice and it’s quite good. It’s not quite open world but the maps are very big and it’s a JRPG. It’s also retro if you consider Wii to be retro yet.

A List of Free Games: Realm of the Mad God (2D, MMO)

MiniCraft+ (2D, Sandbox)

Candy Box 2 (ASCII Browser/Puzzle Game)

Widelands (2D, Strategy)

Veloren (Voxel RPG)

0 A.D. (3D, Strategy)

I'm so bored with all the AAA's and big games. So, I would suggest Guacamelee, if you are seeing this then you should know both parts of the game are currently free on epic games.

I like Hades, Vampire Survivors, Fresh Woman (NSFW), Noita, Brotato, Yi Xian, SEUM, Factorio, Rim World, Oxygen Not Included, SNKRX, Blasphemous (if you are patient), Stacklands, Hollow Knight, Card Hog, Slay the Spire, Dorfromantik, Super Mega Zero, Geometry Dash (lol), Terraria (Must Play), Raft, Satisfactory (don't think low end pc's can run it, not really sure).

Everyone of these are chill games except Blasphemous. I'm chill games lover, so so done with all the hyper dopamine AAA titles. I don't like to waste my time on games so I go for the games which give me more in less time. I play valorant sometimes but only one or maybe two matches per day. I play clash mini, vampire survivors, sonic forces, Windows XP Space Cadet (available on github) on android.

There's a lot of great suggests already here, but I'll try to list off a few not mentioned (or mentioned less at least).

Super Tux Kart - open source racing game

Minetest - open source Minecraft style game

Emulators - always fun to play the classics

Android Games - through Waydroid (Linux), Google Play Games Beta (Windows), and Natively on some Chromebooks you can play Android games on a PC

DokiDoki literature club - a phsycological horror parody of visual novels

Unciv - Catan like open source strategy game

Dominaton - Risk like open source strategy game

Also, I would highly recommend against pirated games. Putting aside copyright debates, the idea of running some unknown executables on my device uploaded by an anonymous software pirate sends shivers up my spine. If you were really dead set on doing so, at least run them in a VM with nothing important on it.

Free Roguelike Games for low end pcs? Where do I begin with this one? There is Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Angband, Tales of Majeyal, ADOM, Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, Unreal World, theres a lot more than that but those are the ones that come to mind.

If you really wanted to, you could play Valorant with your setup, specially using competitive settings.

But if instead you want to keep your sanity, games like:

• The Binding of Isaac

• RuneScape (and Old-School RuneScape)

• Tunic

• Cassette Beasts

• Baba is You

• Peglin (huh my phone's autocorrect had a different idea about this word)

• Vampire Survivors

• Brotato

• RetroArch to emulate most GameCube or older titles.

• Kingdoms of Amalur

Should all run and give you lots of fun.

Editing because I remembered more:

• The Ace Attorney Trilogy
• Danganronpa
• Slay The Spire
• Hades
• Celeste

One I never see mentioned anywhere is Transcendence which is a space rogue-lite game where you cross the galaxy fighting numerous different types of enemies and taking down space stations.

It's free to download on the kronosaur site or like £4 on steam

Honestly, a GamePass Ultimate membership for cloud gaming would be a decent idea. I use mine on low-end PCs (with a controller) and it’s been great for the month or so I’ve been using it.