Top 20 Free Mac Games
February 23, 08 by Daniel Foster
Though gaming on the Mac has grown significantly over the years, it is still dominated by Windows. The few games that do exist for the Mac are often expensive, and not every wants to or can install BootCamp to play Windows games. With that in mind, we compiled a list of the top 20 free Mac games. The list is by no means comprehensive, but it’s a great start to an awesome gaming experience on one of the best operating systems at no cost. See the games after the jump. Enjoy the Mac gaming!
1. PlaneShift
3-D fantasy MMORPG with great graphics and many features.
2. Freeciv
Open source strategy game very much like the popular Civilization game series.
3. Glest
3D RTS with decent graphics. The game is easy to modify, and though the game is designed for Windows, an OS X port is available.
4. Quinn
Tetris clone with stunning graphics and a great UI. Network play supported.
5. Neverball
Tilt and twist a ball through an obstacle course in this game that is part puzzle and part action. More than 140 levels and great graphics quality. Find the latest builds here.
6. FreeDoom
Open source version of Doom.
7. Sauerbraten
Multiplayer/single player FPS game based on Cube.
8. Chopper
Helicopter action game with 60 levels. Features a variety of weapons and good graphics.
9. Scorched 3D
Clone of the old Scorched Earth DOS game.
10. Battle for Wesnoth
Turn-based strategy game featuring a number of adventures. Fight to take back the throne of Wesnoth.
11. MineSwept
Mine Sweeper clone for the Mac.
12. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
Multiplayer World War II FPS game originally designed commercially, but released for free by Activision.
13. Solitare XL
Solitare game with 3D effects. A classic free Mac game.
14. Lugaroo
Third-person action game in which you play the role of a rabbit. After your village is destroyed, you must go and find the culprits, doing much more than that along the way.
15. Racer
Racing simulator with accurate physics and high-quality graphics.
16. BZFlag
Online multiplayer 3-D tank battle game.
17. OGame
Awesome Internet space simulation game with thousands of players.
18. Tux Racer
The Linux favorite can be had on the Mac, too.
19. Foobillard
Realistic-looking billards game. Originally designed for Linux but ported to OS X.
20. Primate Plunge
Help poor Monkey get through treacherous terrain in this 2-D game that reminiscent of Donkey Kong.
I hope you liked this list of free Mac games. Check back in the future for an updated list of games.
rschellenberg Says: 04.04.08 at 2:20 pm
Nice little list, Just moved to mac, and have been looking for something like this.
-ryan
http://www.theschellenbergs.com
Allison Hannigan Says: 13.04.08 at 7:28 pm
Allison Hannigan
Great work. I am going to pass this along.
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Jessie
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Nadia
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tomik Says: 16.05.09 at 7:40 pm
This is a great list but still misses some free gaming pearls I’ve found out since I bought a mac.
The #1 game besides those mentioned is UFO AI – UFO Alien Invasion – an opensource game inspired by the original X-COM series. It was programmed from scratch using great 3D graphics (OpenGL) and the gameplay is simply awesome – developers really payed attention to the details. You can build your bases, do research on various projects and let your engineers build any equipment you can imagine. The 3D tactic missions are really challenging as enemies became more though and volatile – your soldiers have to work really hard to win the mission and gain experience. The game looks very professional and it’s natively localized into many languages. See http://ufoai.sourceforge.net (Runs on MacOS X and all other UNIX’s including LINUX and is ported on MS Windows as well)
#2 A free racing simulator called Racer (http://www.racer.nl/). It’s great – with stunning graphics (looks better that NFS 3-5 years ago did) and real physics model you will really need to better watch your speed and break precisely. It comes with innovative analog driving and without a steering wheel the driving is best experienced on a big trackpad of a mac. This game however has big cons: the initial package comes only with one track and one car (Lamborghini) and other cars and tracks are ‘available’ to download at numerous sites. But it seems to me that the community is slowly disappearing and some cars I’ve found are not fully working in the current release of the game (mostly the sound of the car is missing). The game at it’s current release lacks working multiplayer support – but it’s listed in author’s TODO list. The game is fully customizable through configuration files – the basics can be easily understood and are covered in README.
If you’re willing to accept those cons and get through them I really encourage you to try this game out – it’s the best free racing game I’ve ever imagined to be done. Email the author of the game for troubleshooting or me if you simply want to get some cars and tracks (they’re free).
(Runs on MacOS X and all other UNIX’s including LINUX and is ported on MS Windows as well)
#3 Free Colonization (http://www.freecol.org/). Well I find it less enjoyable as the original DOS game, but on the contrary I think it’s at least comparable to the Free Civilization.
#4-6
- Pac the Man X – a great pacman clone for Mac OS X with additional levels (http://www.mcsebi.com/ptmx.php)
- the old Jazz & Jackrabbit 2. I’ve found it on some torrent and do only believe it’s free cause it’s just so old. (http://www.torrentz.com/d14cc74c25e19589df5947be3f6052fc2f0c93da)
- there are some Lemmings ports somewhere on the web.
There are some other great games that were born at the uDevGames developer contest (http://udevgames.com) including already mentioned Chopper. Besides that my favourite one is a logical-strategy game named Constellation (http://www.paperdragongames.com); the winner of the uDevGames2009 contest is a game called Laserface Jones vs. Doomsday Odious – a 2D shooter. If you’re interested see the community site http://idevgames.com.
Other free Mac games are listed on http://guides.macrumors.com/Free_Mac_Games but this article was the best I saw in several months. Thank you a lot.
Best Regards,
Tomas
Gwyneth Llewelyn Says: 31.07.09 at 5:39 pm
Mmh what about Second Life?
It’s definitely free and available for all platforms 
Of course, if social networking virtual worlds is not the kind of things you enjoy, but shooting space ships is, you could try VegaStrike