thriftmac

No ads, no trackers, no strings attached — just awesome free stuff for your Mac

Check out the free Mac apps we use at thriftmac

Alpine Crawler

Prove your skills as you take a cross country vehicle on the mountainsides of the Alps. Your car can be damaged and your driver hurt if you are not careful. Control speed and brakes; move forward or backward.

Download site Games

Amoebax

Amoebas drop in colour-combination pairs. Guide them so you get four of a colour at the bottom to make them disappear. A lot like Puyo Pop from Sega.

Download site Games

Angband

Take the role of an adventurer, exploring a deep dungeon, fighting monsters, and acquiring the best weaponry you can, in preparation for a final battle with Morgoth, the Lord of Darkness.

Download site Games

Boxer

DOS game simulator brings back old favourites such as Commander Keen, Epic Pinball, Ultima Underworld and X-COM UFO Defence. The website provides links for plenty more. You can drag-and-drop CDs, floppies and bootleg game copies onto Boxer, and start playing. Wrap games in app-style game boxes, and decorate games with icons.

Download site Games

BZFlag

A free multiplayer, multiplatform 3D tank battle game. The name stands for Battle Zone capture Flag. Aside from Mac OS X, it also runs on Irix, Linux, *BSD, Windows and other platforms.

Download site Games

Cave Story

This Japanese side-scroller has you trying to make your way through a series of caves, avoiding obstacles and enemies along the way. You’ll have to download both the game and a separate English-language patch to make it work — unless, of course, you speak Japanese.

Download site Games

Chitarrella

Play Italian card games against the computer. The games are easy to learn, but always a challenge involving a combination of luck, memory, logic and ingenuity.

Download site Games

Coblyn

Avoid obstacles and race against time to collect enough diamonds so you can make it to the next level. A classic from the 1980s.

Download site Games

Crossword Puzzle Helper

Type in the word you can’t figure out, with wild cards in place of the missing letters. Crossword Puzzle Helper comes up with a list of suggestions. It contains a list of 48,000 words that you can edit.

Download site Games

Deliantra

Co-operative multiplayer RPG and adventure game that is fully graphical and runs in realtime. It is set in a classical medieval environment with ubiquitious weapons and magic.

Download site Games

Dwarf Fortress

Run a dwarven outpost or play an adventurer in a persistent, randomly generated world with distinct civilizations spanning over 1000 years of detailed history, dozens of towns, hundreds of caves and regions with various wildlife

Download site Games

Enigma

A puzzle game the object of which is to uncover pairs of identically colored Oxyd stones. It features hidden traps, vast mazes, laser beams and countless hairy puzzles.

Download site Games

Foldit

Solve protein-folding puzzles and help scientists working on cures for AIDS, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. “We’re collecting data to find out if humans’ pattern-recognition and puzzle-solving abilities make them more efficient than existing computer programs at pattern-folding tasks. If this turns out to be true, we can then teach human strategies to computers and fold proteins faster than ever!”

Download site Games

Freecell

A Mac OS X version of the classic solitaire game. The download link below takes you to Github. Scroll down to find a link to Dropbox.

Download site Games

FreeCol

In this turn-based strategy game your objective is to create an independent nation, starting with only a few colonists in search of new land. Based on the old Colonization game and similar to Civilization.

Download site Games

Full Deck Solitaire

Perennial favourite in the Mac App Store features a slick interface, plenty of features and developers with a love for the game. It’s become the best card solitaire game available for the Mac, and is genuinely free.

Download site Games

GLTron

Inspired by the movie TRON, you steer a futuristic bike through a rectangular arena, leaving a trail behind, which you hope to force other players to drive into.

Download site Games

Gold Strike

Tetris and Same Game combine in this game that’s been around for years as a Web-based Flash game. You have to be quick, but otherwise it’s mindless time-killer.

Download site Games

Hot Spot X

Work your way to the middle of four concentric rings using 32 game tiles with various colours and symbols. The rules make it tricky, though. Maybe even darned near impossible.

Download site Games

King's Quest I, II and III

Classic adventure game from the 1980s is remade and redrawn with retro pixelated graphics. Kings Quest I: Quest for the Crown, Kings Quest II: Romancing the Stones, and Kings Quest III: To Heir is Human are now available free with deep story lines and plenty of game play. Hard to believe this great stuff is free — grab it while you can.

Download site Games

Klondike Forever

A fast, smooth, and beautiful version of the perennial solitaire favourite with an option for full-screen mode. Will there ever be a time in the future when people become tired of solitaire?

Download site Games

Krank

Create strings of balls by nudging them together with your cursor. Beautiful graphics and soundtrack combine with challenging game play.

Download site Games

Marble Arena

Fans of Marble Blast will be happy to know that a similar freeware game called Marble Arena is now available. Both involve rolling your marble through intricate and challenging 3D landscapes. Another freeware game along this vein is neverball.

Download site Games

MusicRacer

Choose a song from your collection and let the game analyze it. Then race along a colourful track, picking up beats — and points — from the song as you go. But watch out for dead beats.

Download site Games

MySokoban

Push the boxes around a maze to their final destination without getting stuck. You’ll like the cute Nintendo-style graphics. If you don’t, have a look at SYASokoban, which is basically the same game.

Download site Games

Neuronyx

Match cards as quickly as possible in this memory game. There are several levels of difficulty, and you can create your own cards.

Download site Games

NinjaQuestX

You play a ninja in a dungeon, exploring the many passages and fighting many fearsome monsters. It’s built to have the feel of a text adventure but with full graphics and a complete ninja-style look. Requires Java.

Download site Games

Oops!

Race your pieces around the board, sending your opponents back to the start, in this version of the popular board game Sorry. Play against the computer or go up against opponents on a network, leaving messages as you go.

Download site Games

OpenArena

Completely free game based on the Q3A engine and gamecode with fully working bots, net play and a vast sellection of maps and player models. You do not need Quake III Arena to play this game.

Download site Games

OpenLieroX

An addictive realtime worms shoot-em-up backed by an active gamers community. Players choose their weapons, grab a ninja rope and face off for a deathmatch in a closed level.

Download site Games

Pax Britannica

Up to four players can control underwater vessels, each with their own key on the keyboard. Hold down the button and release when ready to fire various types of weapons. Artificial intelligence does the rest.

Download site Games

Peg Solitaire

A board game played with pegs: in the classic mode, there 33 positions and 32 tokens. The object is to remove the pegs but only with horizontal and vertical movements. To solve the game, leave only one piece on the board in the center position (which was initially empty). In reverse mode, there is initially only one piece on the board. With movements, tokens are added so that only one position is vacant on the board.

Download site Games

Polly-B-Gone

A plucky wheeled robot named Polly has been imprisoned by the nefarious Dr. Nurbs in his laboratory and must overcome a series of increasingly elaborate obstacles to regain her freedom.

Download site Games

Pool

Simple implementation of eight-ball lets you line up your shots with fine-tuning, then choose how hard to hit the balls. You can change the look of the table, but some of the designs might hurt your eyes. Full-screen mode is a nice touch.

Download site Games

PySolFC

Play more than 1,000 solitaire games in categories that include popular, French, mahjongg, oriental, matrix, poker and puzzle. Yes, Klondike is available — but even it has dozens of variations. PySolFC (FC as in fan club) is a fork of PySol Solitaire, which no longer works with the latest versions of Mac OS.

Download site Games

Scorched3D

Tanks battle it out in this modern version of the old DOS game, Scorched Earth. Up to 24 players can play at the same time in a variety of changing environmental conditions and terrains.

Download site Games

Scrabbalize

Input the letters from your Scrabble hand, click the button, and see all the word possibilities — for those times when you’re really stuck.

Download site Games

Simutrans

Establish a successful company that transports passengers, mail and goods by land, air and water through interconnected cities, districts, public buildings, industries and tourist attractions. Lots of graphics packages to choose from.

Download site Games

Six

Interactive fiction features the adventures of six-year-old sisters playing hide-and-seek at the park on their birthday. “There are adventures to be had, friends to chase, people and animals to meet and tricks to play.” The game promises a fun introduction to the genre for young and old. (Needs Gargoyle app to run. Follow instructions at the download site.)

Download site Games

snake3d

A three-dimensional version of the old snake game. Guide your snakes as they grow ever longer, ensuring they don’t meet their tails.

Download site Games

Solitaire Greatest Hits

A dozen high-quality solitaire card games rolled into one, including the classic Klondike, Free Cell, Spider, Pyramid, Canfield, Aces Up, Golf, Scorpian, Yukon, Baker’s Game and Forty Thieves.

Download site Games

Stella

Multi-platform Atari 2600 VCS emulator lets you enjoy favourite games from the 1980s on your Mac such as Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Missile Command and Pac-Man. Download ROMs needed to play the games from AtariAge.

Download site Games

Sudoku Daily

The only limitation with Sudoku Daily is that you only get one free puzzle a day. If you’re OK with that, you’ll like the features — hints and solutions, give up or start over, bookmarks and rotations. And lots more.

Download site Games

Sudoku Susser

Here’s a sudoku app that goes out of its way to help you solve the puzzle with tons of hints and shortcuts. It comes with several puzzles, but you’ll want to find more and import them. One method — amazingly enough — is to take a screenshot from a website such as this one and drag it onto the app. It actually analyzes the numbers and creates a puzzle based on it. Very impressive. Sudoku Susser is freeware, but the developer makes a strong plea for donations.

Download site Games

Super Foul Egg

This is a MacOSX port of Super Foul Egg, itself a clone of Puyo Puyo released for the Commodore Amiga in 1995. It is a re-write of Really Bad Eggs, a port of Super Foul Egg to the Nintendo DS.

Download site Games

Swarm Racer

Take your swarm of bees through a maze, collecting gems along the way. Control swarm formations to get the job done faster. Speed is of the essence.

Download site Games

Tiny Tumblers

Side-scrolling action has you pitted against friends in one of three modes: deathmatch, king of tumblers, or last man standing. Violent, but in a fun kind of way.

Download site Games

Twine

Create text-based, interactive, non-linear stories without writing code. Add images, CSS and JavaScript, then publish anywhere with HTML.

Download site Games

Ultrastar Deluxe

Karaoke game similar to SingStar by Sony, but allows users to create their own songs. Source code allows you to customize all aspects of the game. Create your own themes or download content, such as plugins, free songs or extended features. Party mode allows up to 12 players to sing along and score points.

Download site Games

VDrift

There’s a whole lotta drift in this racing simulation. Features include: tracks based on famous real-world tracks, cars based on real-world vehicles, competition against AI players, and support for mice, joysticks, gamepads, wheels and keyboards.

Download site Games

Warsow

Standalone first-person shooter based on the Qfusion 3D engine (a modification of the Quake 2 GPL engine), aimed at competition. Developed “by gamers for gamers” with a focus on movement, speed and tricks when playing.

Download site Games

Warzone 2100

Command the forces of The Project in a battle to rebuild the world after mankind has almost been destroyed by nuclear missiles. The game offers campaign, multi-player, and single-player skirmish modes. An extensive tech tree with over 400 different technologies, combined with the unit design system, allows for a wide variety of possible units and tactics.

Download site Games

WolfQuest

3D wildlife simulation game challenges players to learn about wolf ecology by living the life of a wild wolf in Yellowstone National Park. Explore the wilderness, hunt elk, and encounter stranger wolves. Establish a territory, raise pups and defend them from predators. Online multiplayer games let up to five players form a pack.

Download site Games

X-Moto

Physics play an important role in this 2D motocross platform game. You’ll be pushed to the limit in an effort to control your bike as challenges become increasingly difficult.

Download site Games

Twine

Create text-based, interactive, non-linear stories without writing code. Add images, CSS and JavaScript, then publish anywhere with HTML.

Download site Games

Simutrans

Establish a successful company that transports passengers, mail and goods by land, air and water through interconnected cities, districts, public buildings, industries and tourist attractions. Lots of graphics packages to choose from.

Download site Games

Ultrastar Deluxe

Karaoke game similar to SingStar by Sony, but allows users to create their own songs. Source code allows you to customize all aspects of the game. Create your own themes or download content, such as plugins, free songs or extended features. Party mode allows up to 12 players to sing along and score points.

Download site Games

Alpine Crawler

Prove your skills as you take a cross country vehicle on the mountainsides of the Alps. Your car can be damaged and your driver hurt if you are not careful. Control speed and brakes; move forward or backward.

Download site Games

Peg Solitaire

A board game played with pegs: in the classic mode, there 33 positions and 32 tokens. The object is to remove the pegs but only with horizontal and vertical movements. To solve the game, leave only one piece on the board in the center position (which was initially empty). In reverse mode, there is initially only one piece on the board. With movements, tokens are added so that only one position is vacant on the board.

Download site Games

Super Foul Egg

This is a MacOSX port of Super Foul Egg, itself a clone of Puyo Puyo released for the Commodore Amiga in 1995. It is a re-write of Really Bad Eggs, a port of Super Foul Egg to the Nintendo DS.

Download site Games

Crossword Puzzle Helper

Type in the word you can’t figure out, with wild cards in place of the missing letters. Crossword Puzzle Helper comes up with a list of suggestions. It contains a list of 48,000 words that you can edit.

Download site Games

Chitarrella

Play Italian card games against the computer. The games are easy to learn, but always a challenge involving a combination of luck, memory, logic and ingenuity.

Download site Games

Warzone 2100

Command the forces of The Project in a battle to rebuild the world after mankind has almost been destroyed by nuclear missiles. The game offers campaign, multi-player, and single-player skirmish modes. An extensive tech tree with over 400 different technologies, combined with the unit design system, allows for a wide variety of possible units and tactics.

Download site Games

Pool

Simple implementation of eight-ball lets you line up your shots with fine-tuning, then choose how hard to hit the balls. You can change the look of the table, but some of the designs might hurt your eyes. Full-screen mode is a nice touch.

Download site Games

Full Deck Solitaire

Perennial favourite in the Mac App Store features a slick interface, plenty of features and developers with a love for the game. It’s become the best card solitaire game available for the Mac, and is genuinely free.

Download site Games

Six

Interactive fiction features the adventures of six-year-old sisters playing hide-and-seek at the park on their birthday. “There are adventures to be had, friends to chase, people and animals to meet and tricks to play.” The game promises a fun introduction to the genre for young and old. (Needs Gargoyle app to run. Follow instructions at the download site.)

Download site Games

Sudoku Susser

Here’s a sudoku app that goes out of its way to help you solve the puzzle with tons of hints and shortcuts. It comes with several puzzles, but you’ll want to find more and import them. One method — amazingly enough — is to take a screenshot from a website such as this one and drag it onto the app. It actually analyzes the numbers and creates a puzzle based on it. Very impressive. Sudoku Susser is freeware, but the developer makes a strong plea for donations.

Download site Games

Sudoku Daily

The only limitation with Sudoku Daily is that you only get one free puzzle a day. If you’re OK with that, you’ll like the features — hints and solutions, give up or start over, bookmarks and rotations. And lots more.

Download site Games

King's Quest I, II and III

Classic adventure game from the 1980s is remade and redrawn with retro pixelated graphics. Kings Quest I: Quest for the Crown, Kings Quest II: Romancing the Stones, and Kings Quest III: To Heir is Human are now available free with deep story lines and plenty of game play. Hard to believe this great stuff is free — grab it while you can.

Download site Games

Klondike Forever

A fast, smooth, and beautiful version of the perennial solitaire favourite with an option for full-screen mode. Will there ever be a time in the future when people become tired of solitaire?

Download site Games

Boxer

DOS game simulator brings back old favourites such as Commander Keen, Epic Pinball, Ultima Underworld and X-COM UFO Defence. The website provides links for plenty more. You can drag-and-drop CDs, floppies and bootleg game copies onto Boxer, and start playing. Wrap games in app-style game boxes, and decorate games with icons.

Download site Games

Gold Strike

Tetris and Same Game combine in this game that’s been around for years as a Web-based Flash game. You have to be quick, but otherwise it’s mindless time-killer.

Download site Games

Foldit

Solve protein-folding puzzles and help scientists working on cures for AIDS, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. “We’re collecting data to find out if humans’ pattern-recognition and puzzle-solving abilities make them more efficient than existing computer programs at pattern-folding tasks. If this turns out to be true, we can then teach human strategies to computers and fold proteins faster than ever!”

Download site Games

WolfQuest

3D wildlife simulation game challenges players to learn about wolf ecology by living the life of a wild wolf in Yellowstone National Park. Explore the wilderness, hunt elk, and encounter stranger wolves. Establish a territory, raise pups and defend them from predators. Online multiplayer games let up to five players form a pack.

Download site Games

Pax Britannica

Up to four players can control underwater vessels, each with their own key on the keyboard. Hold down the button and release when ready to fire various types of weapons. Artificial intelligence does the rest.

Download site Games

Tiny Tumblers

Side-scrolling action has you pitted against friends in one of three modes: deathmatch, king of tumblers, or last man standing. Violent, but in a fun kind of way.

Download site Games

MusicRacer

Choose a song from your collection and let the game analyze it. Then race along a colourful track, picking up beats — and points — from the song as you go. But watch out for dead beats.

Download site Games

VDrift

There’s a whole lotta drift in this racing simulation. Features include: tracks based on famous real-world tracks, cars based on real-world vehicles, competition against AI players, and support for mice, joysticks, gamepads, wheels and keyboards.

Download site Games

PySolFC

Play more than 1,000 solitaire games in categories that include popular, French, mahjongg, oriental, matrix, poker and puzzle. Yes, Klondike is available — but even it has dozens of variations. PySolFC (FC as in fan club) is a fork of PySol Solitaire, which no longer works with the latest versions of Mac OS.

Download site Games

Swarm Racer

Take your swarm of bees through a maze, collecting gems along the way. Control swarm formations to get the job done faster. Speed is of the essence.

Download site Games

Amoebax

Amoebas drop in colour-combination pairs. Guide them so you get four of a colour at the bottom to make them disappear. A lot like Puyo Pop from Sega.

Download site Games

Stella

Multi-platform Atari 2600 VCS emulator lets you enjoy favourite games from the 1980s on your Mac such as Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Missile Command and Pac-Man. Download ROMs needed to play the games from AtariAge.

Download site Games

Dwarf Fortress

Run a dwarven outpost or play an adventurer in a persistent, randomly generated world with distinct civilizations spanning over 1000 years of detailed history, dozens of towns, hundreds of caves and regions with various wildlife

Download site Games

X-Moto

Physics play an important role in this 2D motocross platform game. You’ll be pushed to the limit in an effort to control your bike as challenges become increasingly difficult.

Download site Games

FreeCol

In this turn-based strategy game your objective is to create an independent nation, starting with only a few colonists in search of new land. Based on the old Colonization game and similar to Civilization.

Download site Games

Solitaire Greatest Hits

A dozen high-quality solitaire card games rolled into one, including the classic Klondike, Free Cell, Spider, Pyramid, Canfield, Aces Up, Golf, Scorpian, Yukon, Baker’s Game and Forty Thieves.

Download site Games

Warsow

Standalone first-person shooter based on the Qfusion 3D engine (a modification of the Quake 2 GPL engine), aimed at competition. Developed “by gamers for gamers” with a focus on movement, speed and tricks when playing.

Download site Games

Polly-B-Gone

A plucky wheeled robot named Polly has been imprisoned by the nefarious Dr. Nurbs in his laboratory and must overcome a series of increasingly elaborate obstacles to regain her freedom.

Download site Games

Cave Story

This Japanese side-scroller has you trying to make your way through a series of caves, avoiding obstacles and enemies along the way. You’ll have to download both the game and a separate English-language patch to make it work — unless, of course, you speak Japanese.

Download site Games

Coblyn

Avoid obstacles and race against time to collect enough diamonds so you can make it to the next level. A classic from the 1980s.

Download site Games

Deliantra

Co-operative multiplayer RPG and adventure game that is fully graphical and runs in realtime. It is set in a classical medieval environment with ubiquitious weapons and magic.

Download site Games

Neuronyx

Match cards as quickly as possible in this memory game. There are several levels of difficulty, and you can create your own cards.

Download site Games

OpenLieroX

An addictive realtime worms shoot-em-up backed by an active gamers community. Players choose their weapons, grab a ninja rope and face off for a deathmatch in a closed level.

Download site Games

Angband

Take the role of an adventurer, exploring a deep dungeon, fighting monsters, and acquiring the best weaponry you can, in preparation for a final battle with Morgoth, the Lord of Darkness.

Download site Games

Oops!

Race your pieces around the board, sending your opponents back to the start, in this version of the popular board game Sorry. Play against the computer or go up against opponents on a network, leaving messages as you go.

Download site Games

Krank

Create strings of balls by nudging them together with your cursor. Beautiful graphics and soundtrack combine with challenging game play.

Download site Games

Scrabbalize

Input the letters from your Scrabble hand, click the button, and see all the word possibilities — for those times when you’re really stuck.

Download site Games

NinjaQuestX

You play a ninja in a dungeon, exploring the many passages and fighting many fearsome monsters. It’s built to have the feel of a text adventure but with full graphics and a complete ninja-style look. Requires Java.

Download site Games

Marble Arena

Fans of Marble Blast will be happy to know that a similar freeware game called Marble Arena is now available. Both involve rolling your marble through intricate and challenging 3D landscapes. Another freeware game along this vein is neverball.

Download site Games

Scorched3D

Tanks battle it out in this modern version of the old DOS game, Scorched Earth. Up to 24 players can play at the same time in a variety of changing environmental conditions and terrains.

Download site Games

OpenArena

Completely free game based on the Q3A engine and gamecode with fully working bots, net play and a vast sellection of maps and player models. You do not need Quake III Arena to play this game.

Download site Games

GLTron

Inspired by the movie TRON, you steer a futuristic bike through a rectangular arena, leaving a trail behind, which you hope to force other players to drive into.

Download site Games

Enigma

A puzzle game the object of which is to uncover pairs of identically colored Oxyd stones. It features hidden traps, vast mazes, laser beams and countless hairy puzzles.

Download site Games

BZFlag

A free multiplayer, multiplatform 3D tank battle game. The name stands for Battle Zone capture Flag. Aside from Mac OS X, it also runs on Irix, Linux, *BSD, Windows and other platforms.

Download site Games

Hot Spot X

Work your way to the middle of four concentric rings using 32 game tiles with various colours and symbols. The rules make it tricky, though. Maybe even darned near impossible.

Download site Games

MySokoban

Push the boxes around a maze to their final destination without getting stuck. You’ll like the cute Nintendo-style graphics. If you don’t, have a look at SYASokoban, which is basically the same game.

Download site Games

Freecell

A Mac OS X version of the classic solitaire game. The download link below takes you to Github. Scroll down to find a link to Dropbox.

Download site Games

snake3d

A three-dimensional version of the old snake game. Guide your snakes as they grow ever longer, ensuring they don’t meet their tails.

Download site Games

Action

Bug Defender

Buy weapons and ammo and set them up along a path to kill bugs before they get in your house. More kills means more cash for weapons upgrades.

Download site Games

OpenArena

Completely free game based on the Q3A engine and gamecode with fully working bots, net play and a vast sellection of maps and player models. You do not need Quake III Arena to play this game.

Download site Games

OpenLieroX

An addictive realtime worms shoot-em-up backed by an active gamers community. Players choose their weapons, grab a ninja rope and face off for a deathmatch in a closed level.

Download site Games

Pax Britannica

Up to four players can control underwater vessels, each with their own key on the keyboard. Hold down the button and release when ready to fire various types of weapons. Artificial intelligence does the rest.

Download site Games

Scorched3D

Tanks battle it out in this modern version of the old DOS game, Scorched Earth. Up to 24 players can play at the same time in a variety of changing environmental conditions and terrains.

Download site Games

Tiny Tumblers

Side-scrolling action has you pitted against friends in one of three modes: deathmatch, king of tumblers, or last man standing. Violent, but in a fun kind of way.

Download site Games

Warsow

Standalone first-person shooter based on the Qfusion 3D engine (a modification of the Quake 2 GPL engine), aimed at competition. Developed “by gamers for gamers” with a focus on movement, speed and tricks when playing.

Download site Games

Adventure

Angband

Take the role of an adventurer, exploring a deep dungeon, fighting monsters, and acquiring the best weaponry you can, in preparation for a final battle with Morgoth, the Lord of Darkness.

Download site Games

BZFlag

A free multiplayer, multiplatform 3D tank battle game. The name stands for Battle Zone capture Flag. Aside from Mac OS X, it also runs on Irix, Linux, *BSD, Windows and other platforms.

Download site Games

Cave Story

This Japanese side-scroller has you trying to make your way through a series of caves, avoiding obstacles and enemies along the way. You’ll have to download both the game and a separate English-language patch to make it work — unless, of course, you speak Japanese.

Download site Games

Deliantra

Co-operative multiplayer RPG and adventure game that is fully graphical and runs in realtime. It is set in a classical medieval environment with ubiquitious weapons and magic.

Download site Games

Dwarf Fortress

Run a dwarven outpost or play an adventurer in a persistent, randomly generated world with distinct civilizations spanning over 1000 years of detailed history, dozens of towns, hundreds of caves and regions with various wildlife

Download site Games

King's Quest I, II and III

Classic adventure game from the 1980s is remade and redrawn with retro pixelated graphics. Kings Quest I: Quest for the Crown, Kings Quest II: Romancing the Stones, and Kings Quest III: To Heir is Human are now available free with deep story lines and plenty of game play. Hard to believe this great stuff is free — grab it while you can.

Download site Games

Marble Arena

Fans of Marble Blast will be happy to know that a similar freeware game called Marble Arena is now available. Both involve rolling your marble through intricate and challenging 3D landscapes. Another freeware game along this vein is neverball.

Download site Games

NinjaQuestX

You play a ninja in a dungeon, exploring the many passages and fighting many fearsome monsters. It’s built to have the feel of a text adventure but with full graphics and a complete ninja-style look. Requires Java.

Download site Games

Polly-B-Gone

A plucky wheeled robot named Polly has been imprisoned by the nefarious Dr. Nurbs in his laboratory and must overcome a series of increasingly elaborate obstacles to regain her freedom.

Download site Games

Six

Interactive fiction features the adventures of six-year-old sisters playing hide-and-seek at the park on their birthday. “There are adventures to be had, friends to chase, people and animals to meet and tricks to play.” The game promises a fun introduction to the genre for young and old. (Needs Gargoyle app to run. Follow instructions at the download site.)

Download site Games

Twine

Create text-based, interactive, non-linear stories without writing code. Add images, CSS and JavaScript, then publish anywhere with HTML.

Download site Games

Arcade

Amoebax

Amoebas drop in colour-combination pairs. Guide them so you get four of a colour at the bottom to make them disappear. A lot like Puyo Pop from Sega.

Download site Games

GLTron

Inspired by the movie TRON, you steer a futuristic bike through a rectangular arena, leaving a trail behind, which you hope to force other players to drive into.

Download site Games

Gold Strike

Tetris and Same Game combine in this game that’s been around for years as a Web-based Flash game. You have to be quick, but otherwise it’s mindless time-killer.

Download site Games

Marble World Desktop

Roll a marble through some tricky levels without falling off the edge. Jump with the spacebar and ram your way through obstacles. Kinda retro, but still fun. At the Mac App Store.

Download site Games

MusicRacer

Choose a song from your collection and let the game analyze it. Then race along a colourful track, picking up beats — and points — from the song as you go. But watch out for dead beats.

Download site Games

Stella

Multi-platform Atari 2600 VCS emulator lets you enjoy favourite games from the 1980s on your Mac such as Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Missile Command and Pac-Man. Download ROMs needed to play the games from AtariAge.

Download site Games

Super Foul Egg

This is a MacOSX port of Super Foul Egg, itself a clone of Puyo Puyo released for the Commodore Amiga in 1995. It is a re-write of Really Bad Eggs, a port of Super Foul Egg to the Nintendo DS.

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Swarm Racer

Take your swarm of bees through a maze, collecting gems along the way. Control swarm formations to get the job done faster. Speed is of the essence.

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X-Moto

Physics play an important role in this 2D motocross platform game. You’ll be pushed to the limit in an effort to control your bike as challenges become increasingly difficult.

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Board

Latrunculi

An ancient Roman board game has your pieces arrayed for battle against the enemy, which in this case uses artificial intelligence.

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MacIago

An Othello/Reversi style strategic board game, where you have to enclose the oppo­nent’s pieces between your own.

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Oops!

Race your pieces around the board, sending your opponents back to the start, in this version of the popular board game Sorry. Play against the computer or go up against opponents on a network, leaving messages as you go.

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Peg Solitaire

A board game played with pegs: in the classic mode, there 33 positions and 32 tokens. The object is to remove the pegs but only with horizontal and vertical movements. To solve the game, leave only one piece on the board in the center position (which was initially empty). In reverse mode, there is initially only one piece on the board. With movements, tokens are added so that only one position is vacant on the board.

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SuperBrain

Get this Mastermind clone in a version similar to the original, a more advanced version involving shapes, and of course a widget.

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Card

Chitarrella

Play Italian card games against the computer. The games are easy to learn, but always a challenge involving a combination of luck, memory, logic and ingenuity.

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Freecell

A Mac OS X version of the classic solitaire game. The download link below takes you to Github. Scroll down to find a link to Dropbox.

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Full Deck Solitaire

Perennial favourite in the Mac App Store features a slick interface, plenty of features and developers with a love for the game. It’s become the best card solitaire game available for the Mac, and is genuinely free.

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Klondike Forever

A fast, smooth, and beautiful version of the perennial solitaire favourite with an option for full-screen mode. Will there ever be a time in the future when people become tired of solitaire?

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Neuronyx

Match cards as quickly as possible in this memory game. There are several levels of difficulty, and you can create your own cards.

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PySolFC

Play more than 1,000 solitaire games in categories that include popular, French, mahjongg, oriental, matrix, poker and puzzle. Yes, Klondike is available — but even it has dozens of variations. PySolFC (FC as in fan club) is a fork of PySol Solitaire, which no longer works with the latest versions of Mac OS.

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Solitaire Greatest Hits

A dozen high-quality solitaire card games rolled into one, including the classic Klondike, Free Cell, Spider, Pyramid, Canfield, Aces Up, Golf, Scorpian, Yukon, Baker’s Game and Forty Thieves.

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Classic

Argonaut 2149

Navigate through asteroid fields, battle pirates and scavengers, and gather wealth to buy powerful weapons and power-ups in this arcade style asteroids game.

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Boxer

DOS game simulator brings back old favourites such as Commander Keen, Epic Pinball, Ultima Underworld and X-COM UFO Defence. The website provides links for plenty more. You can drag-and-drop CDs, floppies and bootleg game copies onto Boxer, and start playing. Wrap games in app-style game boxes, and decorate games with icons.

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Coblyn

Avoid obstacles and race against time to collect enough diamonds so you can make it to the next level. A classic from the 1980s.

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snake3d

A three-dimensional version of the old snake game. Guide your snakes as they grow ever longer, ensuring they don’t meet their tails.

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Puzzle

Crossword Puzzle Helper

Type in the word you can’t figure out, with wild cards in place of the missing letters. Crossword Puzzle Helper comes up with a list of suggestions. It contains a list of 48,000 words that you can edit.

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Enigma

A puzzle game the object of which is to uncover pairs of identically colored Oxyd stones. It features hidden traps, vast mazes, laser beams and countless hairy puzzles.

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Foldit

Solve protein-folding puzzles and help scientists working on cures for AIDS, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. “We’re collecting data to find out if humans’ pattern-recognition and puzzle-solving abilities make them more efficient than existing computer programs at pattern-folding tasks. If this turns out to be true, we can then teach human strategies to computers and fold proteins faster than ever!”

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Hot Spot X

Work your way to the middle of four concentric rings using 32 game tiles with various colours and symbols. The rules make it tricky, though. Maybe even darned near impossible.

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Krank

Create strings of balls by nudging them together with your cursor. Beautiful graphics and soundtrack combine with challenging game play.

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MySokoban

Push the boxes around a maze to their final destination without getting stuck. You’ll like the cute Nintendo-style graphics. If you don’t, have a look at SYASokoban, which is basically the same game.

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Sudoku Daily

The only limitation with Sudoku Daily is that you only get one free puzzle a day. If you’re OK with that, you’ll like the features — hints and solutions, give up or start over, bookmarks and rotations. And lots more.

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Sudoku Susser

Here’s a sudoku app that goes out of its way to help you solve the puzzle with tons of hints and shortcuts. It comes with several puzzles, but you’ll want to find more and import them. One method — amazingly enough — is to take a screenshot from a website such as this one and drag it onto the app. It actually analyzes the numbers and creates a puzzle based on it. Very impressive. Sudoku Susser is freeware, but the developer makes a strong plea for donations.

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Simulation

Alpine Crawler

Prove your skills as you take a cross country vehicle on the mountainsides of the Alps. Your car can be damaged and your driver hurt if you are not careful. Control speed and brakes; move forward or backward.

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FreeCol

In this turn-based strategy game your objective is to create an independent nation, starting with only a few colonists in search of new land. Based on the old Colonization game and similar to Civilization.

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Pool

Simple implementation of eight-ball lets you line up your shots with fine-tuning, then choose how hard to hit the balls. You can change the look of the table, but some of the designs might hurt your eyes. Full-screen mode is a nice touch.

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Simutrans

Establish a successful company that transports passengers, mail and goods by land, air and water through interconnected cities, districts, public buildings, industries and tourist attractions. Lots of graphics packages to choose from.

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Ultrastar Deluxe

Karaoke game similar to SingStar by Sony, but allows users to create their own songs. Source code allows you to customize all aspects of the game. Create your own themes or download content, such as plugins, free songs or extended features. Party mode allows up to 12 players to sing along and score points.

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VDrift

There’s a whole lotta drift in this racing simulation. Features include: tracks based on famous real-world tracks, cars based on real-world vehicles, competition against AI players, and support for mice, joysticks, gamepads, wheels and keyboards.

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Warzone 2100

Command the forces of The Project in a battle to rebuild the world after mankind has almost been destroyed by nuclear missiles. The game offers campaign, multi-player, and single-player skirmish modes. An extensive tech tree with over 400 different technologies, combined with the unit design system, allows for a wide variety of possible units and tactics.

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WolfQuest

3D wildlife simulation game challenges players to learn about wolf ecology by living the life of a wild wolf in Yellowstone National Park. Explore the wilderness, hunt elk, and encounter stranger wolves. Establish a territory, raise pups and defend them from predators. Online multiplayer games let up to five players form a pack.

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Word

Scrabbalize

Input the letters from your Scrabble hand, click the button, and see all the word possibilities — for those times when you’re really stuck.

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