freeware LAN games for 12 players?

May 22, 2007 11:42 AM

I'm looking for free, cooperative games that could be played by 10+ people on a LAN. Ideally the games would allow for a good amount of chat among players.

First Person Shooters are fine, but language or other creative games would be cool too. I am looking at Freeciv, but more casual games are also welcome. It's for a class, and it would be interesting to have them play something cooperative that actually engaged all 12 members of the group. Thanks, I realize this is an odd request and probably unsatisfiable.

posted by craniac to education (13 comments total)

Enemy Territory looks like another possibility.
posted by craniac at 11:54 AM on May 22, 2007

OpenTTD.org will allow cooperative or competitive play between up to 10 players.
posted by SpecialK at 12:10 PM on May 22, 2007

Well, it's not cooperative exactly, but I believe BZFlag has team play. (Enemy Territory, which you mention, is the same way.)

In payware, you look into Garry's Mod for Half Life 2. If you have a fast Internet connection, Puzzle Pirates might be just the thing. I think you can play PP at a basic level for free.
posted by Malor at 12:14 PM on May 22, 2007

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is an awesome, awesome game - but there has to be 2 teams (all 10 players can't play cooperatively)
posted by gnutron at 12:42 PM on May 22, 2007

Seconding BZFlag. It's not as "twitchy" as other FPSs -- so the hyper-caffeinated and/or young won't have (as much) of an advantage, plus it's reasonably easy to pick up and gobs of fun.
posted by the dief at 12:54 PM on May 22, 2007

Americas Army is a brilliant free FPS, if you can get past the fact that it's an advertising tool for the army. Downside is that it's a 2.6GB download and needs a fairly grunty PC to run nicely.

I like it for the realism. It forces teamwork and discussion. When LANning we seem to spend more time debriefing and discussing possible tactics after each mission than actually playing.

The latest version has two co-op maps that are difficult enough to take several rounds of play over several hours to complete. There's no respawning, but dead players can spectate and offer pointless advice: "He's BEHIND you!"
posted by pivotal at 1:09 PM on May 22, 2007

I sure wish I knew of a freeware re-make of "Worms."

That game was incredibly fun, and I'm not really a gamer. The cool thing is, you don't really have to be a "gamer" to enjoy it. "Worms" had everyone in my group at work shouting at each other over our cubicle walls. You can create teams (of course), which always introduces some interesting dynamics within the group. Good times.
posted by blackbeardrrr at 1:17 PM on May 22, 2007

In the lobbing missles at enemies category there's
Scorched Earth 3D and Defcon
posted by clockwork at 1:35 PM on May 22, 2007

Sauerbraten is a freeware FPS game that seems to meet your criteria. According to the site it has at least one team based multiplayer mode, and I'm pretty sure it supports more than 12 players per server. The last time I tried to run it was on my laptop a few years ago, and it worked perfectly, so it doesn't require a powerful machine, or good graphics card. It also allows in game editing of the world, which can be cool to do collaboratively, though the last time I tried doing that there were some problems with different peoples versions of the map getting out of sync. Maybe that's been fixed since I tried it.

While it's not free, I also have to recommend the map Footmen Frenzy for Warcraft III The Frozen Throne. The map supports exactly 12 players, in four teams of three. It's very fast paced, and really rewards cooperation. The wiki gives a good summary of the game here. You would need one copy of Warcraft III, and one copy of the expansion (The Frozen Throne), which you could then install on all 12 machines. This process goes much faster if you can use disc images to do the install on all the machines at the same time. The game is quite old now so chances are it should run well, and you should be able to find it pretty cheap if cost is an issue.

If it's at all possible I encourage you to try Footmen Frenzy. Teams not only have to stick together and communicate to survive but also devise and execute plans (which can sometimes be quite weird/creative) very quickly. It also works well with smaller numbers of players, as long as the teams are even.
posted by benign at 2:26 PM on May 22, 2007

I should clarify, the map is free and there is a download link on this page of the wiki. Warcraft III and its expansion however are not.
posted by benign at 2:31 PM on May 22, 2007

Ooooh, these are tasty, wonderful suggestions. Thank you!!!
posted by craniac at 3:42 PM on May 22, 2007

Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
posted by perpetualstroll at 6:15 PM on May 22, 2007

Bontago
http://www.bontago.com/
posted by PowerCat at 6:45 AM on May 23, 2007