Production values are overrated

November 12, 2008 12:06 PM

For the past 6-7 years I've owned a mac and therefore paid very little attention to the indie freeware/shareware pc games scene. Recently I got a copy of crossover for my macbook and I'm looking for good places to find small, quality, non resource-intensive games to play.

In the past I've really enjoyed games like Dwarf Fortress or Dominions, games that were built by one or two guys on their off hours as a labor of love.

Now that I've got crossover, I've not only been playing some of great abandonware games of my semi-youth, I've also been having a blast staying up way past my bedtime playing old pc games like Space Empires 4 and Slay. But where can I find more games like these? Especially with 5+ years old games it seems really hard to find the gems out there.

posted by aspo to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

A couple games that I've really enjoyed recently that aren't very resource intensive:
World of Goo
Fantastic Contraption
posted by Grither at 12:24 PM on November 12, 2008

Oh, I missed the point of the question I suppose....Fantastic Contraption is free to play the designer's levels, but to play levels made by players (which is a TON), you have to pay $5 or $15. And World of Goo is also $15. But I think they are both well worth it...
posted by Grither at 12:26 PM on November 12, 2008

Home of the Underdogs is a great place to find both newer indie PC games and older abandonware games.
posted by burnmp3s at 12:27 PM on November 12, 2008

Or at least it was great until a few months ago. According to Wikipedia it went down in September and hasn't fully recovered.
posted by burnmp3s at 12:31 PM on November 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

Best answer: GameTunnel has a bunch of reviews of independent games. The various end-of-year best-of articles are probably the most useful and they go back 4 or 5 years. Some of those older games are really awesome. The two I'd recommend off the top of my head are Oasis and Gish.
posted by pwicks at 1:18 PM on November 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

In case you missed it 6-7 years ago, Snood is a classic favorite.
posted by General Malaise at 1:19 PM on November 12, 2008

Although, come to think of it, it's also available on the Mac.
posted by General Malaise at 1:20 PM on November 12, 2008

Fallout and Fallout 2 should both be available somewhere and don't do any 3d. I think Fallout was ported to the Mac though.
posted by chairface at 1:47 PM on November 12, 2008

TOUHOU!
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:35 PM on November 12, 2008

Is Cave Story the sort of thing you're looking for here? It's available for mac, actually, and an older indie game. I haven't played it -- not the gaming type, really -- but I've heard good things about it. Really good things. Like, large amounts of rabid fans good things.

And also it's free.
posted by mismatched at 8:02 PM on November 12, 2008

As an alternative to Home of the UnderDogs, there's Abandonia which is "Dedicated to classic DOS games". I haven't used Crossover myself, but the games there also work on the Mac using Boxer.
posted by blueberry at 9:10 PM on November 12, 2008

For games more than a couple of years old - though their library goes back to the early 1990s at least - GOG.com offers DRM-free, anytime downloads for a fee (usually $5.99 or $9.99 per game). Their games are, by and large, very good ones, at least, with a few greats (e.g. Fallout and Fallout 2). I've spent quite a bit of money there over the last few months. They have good support as well.
posted by WalterMitty at 2:23 PM on March 29, 2009