Freeware Games For My Injured Mum.

March 12, 2007 7:30 AM

Games-Filter: I need graphically pleasing, puzzle and arcade games for my stay-at-home mum with a back injury.

My mother is on a couch with a laptop most of the day, but she's constantly restricted to shareware crap that expires just when she gets the hang of them. Her laptop came preinstalled with all this stuff, and now she wants more. She enjoys the Bejewled game I just reinstalled and wants more like it, anything with bright colours, blocks and shapes that takes a bit of skill to solve is perfect.

Graphically pleasing is important, because there are some real shitty flash games out there. And she's a real thinker so she needs a challenge.

posted by taita_cakes to computers & internet (21 comments total)

Orisinal.com has some very well designed games- very pleasing to look at. I don't know if they're considered 'puzzle' games. Zuma is good and somewhat addictive.
posted by JamesToast at 7:38 AM on March 12, 2007

Check out PopCap. They want you to buy the full games, but you can play the slightly limited demo versions in your browser endlessly.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:42 AM on March 12, 2007

Puzzle Pirates is so much fun and is full of various puzzle games (some are similar to Snood, Tetris, etc, and there is also a Poker game).

It's totally free to play - you can buy a subscription for $10/month that just lets you get up higher in the pirate "ranks" and get cuter clothes, but it's totally unnecessary. You can play the games forever for free.
posted by tastybrains at 7:45 AM on March 12, 2007

Dicewars

Virus2
posted by srboisvert at 7:45 AM on March 12, 2007

Hexic. It's from the dude who cursed us with Tetris, so you know it's good.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:59 AM on March 12, 2007

jayisgames has trillions of games in the archive. The UI sucks, but at least you can save your faves.
posted by DU at 8:04 AM on March 12, 2007

Skunk Studios has lots of neat games that fit the bill, although they are mostly for pay, they offer some limited versions online. Basically, the online play (I recommend Qbz and Sveertz) restricts the levels and the options, but you can play the restricted versions forever.

Also, Little Fluffy is no longer updating, but the archives remain an excellent resource for some great flash games. I found Eyezmaze from their top 20 list, and it's consistently one of my favourite places on the internet. Strange, creative, puzzles with no instruction: they will definitely keep your mom occupied (and the tontie wack-a-mole game is adorable).

Hope she feels better.
posted by carmen at 8:11 AM on March 12, 2007

Good Experience Games has a nice list of good online games.
posted by saladin at 8:26 AM on March 12, 2007

You can get most of the PopCap games and a lot of others at Shockwave (in your browser for free, download if you want to pay for it--the Unlimited subscription is a good bang for your buck for someone who likes to try lots of different games and wants to download them). The Daily Jigsaw is fun, Big Kahuna Reef is similar to Bejeweled, and Alchemy is another old classic.

And a game that isn't as "pretty" (not ugly, but more about thinking then shiny colours): Planarity.
posted by anaelith at 9:12 AM on March 12, 2007

Snood.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:19 AM on March 12, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Seconding Eyezmaze. I really enjoyed Grow and Grow Cube from that site. They're not fast paced, but they are satisfying puzzle games, and really well done (nice art and animations).
posted by benign at 9:38 AM on March 12, 2007

Bear and Cat
posted by matildaben at 9:49 AM on March 12, 2007

Seconding Jay Is Games (and I suppose by extension, Good Experience Games, since a lot of their links are straight from Jay).
posted by inigo2 at 10:17 AM on March 12, 2007

what you are looking for are called "casual games" (specifically, downloadable casual games -- as you don't seem to mention whether or not she has an internet connection).*

As already cited, Jayisgames is a good (if not the best) source for this information. Here is a post by one of the authors that sums up a couple of 'top ten lists' which may help you out.

* unfortunately, it looks like there is already a lot of SEO cruft around casual games, so that's a pretty worthless observation, i suppose.
posted by fishfucker at 11:08 AM on March 12, 2007

Yahoo! Games has a bunch of nice little puzzle games that you can play in flash without downloading anything - you just need an internet connection.
Some of my favorites are Alchemy, Rocket Mania, and Jewel Quest, or the word games TextTwist and Bookworm.

MSN Games, which robocop is bleeding linked to above, has very similar style games. Those two sites should keep your mum busy.
posted by Sprout the Vulgarian at 12:04 PM on March 12, 2007

N Way of the ninja.

Aggressive alpine skiing.
posted by zackola at 1:31 PM on March 12, 2007

While it's not graphically exciting, she may find Websudoku engaging.
posted by Paragon at 2:04 PM on March 12, 2007

I use the Lazy Laces blog entries labelled 'point and click' as my Little Fluffy replacement. It gives descriptions of each one before the link, too, so you're not just guessing which ones might be okay. Also, when one is stuck, people in the comments for each post tend to post solutions (under spoiler hiding script.)
posted by cobaltnine at 8:22 PM on March 12, 2007

Maybe something here
posted by growabrain at 8:25 PM on March 12, 2007

It's about as far away from graphically pleasing as you're going to get (as there are no graphics other than those you imagine while reading), but for the thinker who wants a challenge and is confined to bed rest, it's hard to go wrong with good interactive fiction. The 5-star rated games at Baf's Guide are a good place to start.
posted by hades at 11:59 PM on March 12, 2007

You also might try: http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/ -- they give away licenses to a different shareware game each day (as a promotional effort, I'm assuming).
posted by fishfucker at 3:10 PM on March 13, 2007