Comments on: Freeware Games For My Injured Mum.

Question: Freeware Games For My Injured Mum.

taita_cakes — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:30:02 -0800

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.

By: JamesToast

JamesToast — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:38:15 -0800

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.

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:42:03 -0800

Check out PopCap. They want you to buy the full games, but you can play the slightly limited demo versions in your browser endlessly.

By: tastybrains

tastybrains — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:45:01 -0800

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.

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:45:16 -0800

Dicewars

Virus2

By: robocop is bleeding

robocop is bleeding — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:59:51 -0800

Hexic. It's from the dude who cursed us with Tetris, so you know it's good.

By: DU

DU — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 08:04:14 -0800

jayisgames has trillions of games in the archive. The UI sucks, but at least you can save your faves.

By: carmen

carmen — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 08:11:04 -0800

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.

By: saladin

saladin — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 08:26:38 -0800

Good Experience Games has a nice list of good online games.

By: anaelith

anaelith — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 09:12:39 -0800

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.

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 09:19:10 -0800

Snood.

By: benign

benign — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 09:38:30 -0800

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).

By: matildaben

matildaben — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 09:49:25 -0800

Bear and Cat

By: inigo2

inigo2 — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 10:17:48 -0800

Seconding Jay Is Games (and I suppose by extension, Good Experience Games, since a lot of their links are straight from Jay).

By: fishfucker

fishfucker — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 11:08:52 -0800

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.

By: Sprout the Vulgarian

Sprout the Vulgarian — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:04:10 -0800

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.

By: zackola

zackola — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:31:29 -0800

N Way of the ninja.

Aggressive alpine skiing.

By: Paragon

Paragon — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:04:30 -0800

While it's not graphically exciting, she may find Websudoku engaging.

By: cobaltnine

cobaltnine — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:22:44 -0800

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.)

By: growabrain

growabrain — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:25:53 -0800

Maybe something here

By: hades

hades — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 23:59:29 -0800

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.

By: fishfucker

fishfucker — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:10:32 -0800

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).