Having a computer awaiting parts and my laptop cd drive appears to have stopped working I am getting severe game withdrawal. I see a whole bunch of free games listed here, but which ones are good. The only one I tryed so far was the Mystery of Time and Space. Any suggestions from anyone out there. Nothing too hard, nothing gruesome. Thanks!!

You might like to try my free game, Sigma. It's listed on the free games page and is available from my site at http://www.alanthorn.net

It's a first person point and click with 360 panorama. It's not gruesome, is suitable for all ages, but does contain some difficult puzzles. However, there is a walkthrough on my site if you get stuck.

Hope you give it a try and hope you enjoy.
Alan.

Thanks for the info, but my laptop is not up to the requirements, it is only a PII, and too slow. But I will look at it when the computer is fixed

I suggest saving up flash games like Samarost and Crimson Room. You can always download them and set the settings to open swf files with a web browser.

http://justadventure.com/IndependentDevs/MichaelZerbo/MichaelZerboGames.shtm

I also recommend "The Murderer".

I was able to download The Murderer without any problems, but not to be dense or anything, what do I open it with?

I suggest Alzip.

http://www.alzip.com/

The most common tool for this task is Winzip but I found the program inconvenient.

You would have to extract the installation files on a separate folder. ex)c:\temp\ Then go to that folder and click install. Then you can erase the separate folder. This sequence is common for freeware games.

There are a lot of freeware adventure games created with AGS (Adventure Game Studio).

Descriptions and downloads of these games are available here .

--Erwin

AGS games like the King's Quest 1/2 remake are great! Strongly recommended. But I have a hunch that a PII laptop can't meet requirements of those games (probably would run too slow).

I downloaded Art's game (took almost 2 hours) and tried to play it today - and I get to the first room and try to play one of those 4 puzzles to unlock doors and it locks up my computer - no way out except to turn it off and then when I turn it back on it not only has to reboot the computer scans for errors and this takes time. What's up with that? Have tried to play this game several times but can't. Too bad, guess I have to just delete it from my hard drive and won't get to play it at all. Looked like it would be fun, too.
Love, Betty Lou

Betty,

Sorry to hear about your technical difficulty. I am not aware of a bug at this location in the game. If you could provide some more details regarding the error, I will do my best to assist.

Thanks for trying,
Alan.

Hi Art, I am not sure that what happens is a "bug" and I do not get any error message, the computer just freezes-up and I cannot get my cursor back nor can I go thru regular shut-down procedures, have to turn computer off and go thru reboot & scan just to get back to my desktop. Have tried several times to go back into the game and play one of those 4 puzzles on that turn-table thingy and get hung up again next time I am making moves in the puzzle or switching the lever and 'which puzzle to try thing' - sorry I can't give more information than that. It must have something to do with my computer's hardware, ya think?
Love, Betty Lou

If you haven't deleted the game, I would recommend removing all .WAV files from the Sigma program folder and then playing the game.

If you try this, please let me know whether it works.

Thanks,
Alan.

Hi Art, I did remove all the WAV files as you suggest and it did not work either. Have deleted the game from this harddrive. Sorry. It looked like it would be fun!
Love, Betty Lou

Art, I've also downloaded the game and when I try to play I get a message that there's a missing file: D3D9.DLL. I downloaded this dll file and tried putting it in the game files, but still get the same message. Can you advise what I do next?

Bristol,

Sorry to hear about your problem. You receive this error because you do not have the latest version of DirectX installed on your machine. Sigma requires DirectX 9.0b

DirectX can be freely downloaded from Microsoft's DirectX web site at:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/

Once installed, you should restart your computer and then try running Sigma.

Thanks, if you have further problems I will be happy to help.

Hope it works, and enjoy.
Alan.