Once upon a time, keeping up with the latest and greatest games was an incredibly expensive hobby. If you wanted to play the most anticipated video games, you’d be spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars to purchase them all. In 2024, your budget is not nearly as important, as many of the most popular games on the planet are free to play. To that point, we rounded up 10 of the best free games you can download right now.
Apex Legends
Apex Legends is technically set in the same universe as the Titanfall franchise, but that’s where the similarities end. This first-person battle royale shooter is one of the few that can give Fortnite a run for its money. It sets itself apart with a diverse roster of exciting characters to choose from, all of which have their own unique abilities. It’s also faster-paced than Fortnite, with a focus on mobility that few other games in the genre can match.
Fall Guys
If you’re looking for a fun party game to play with friends that doesn’t require hours of practice and lightning-fast reflexes, Fall Guys is your game. Take control of a bean-shaped character as up to 40 players compete against each other in a series of randomly selected games, including obstacle courses, survival matches, and team-based challenges. Along the way, you’ll acquire dozens of cosmetics to make your Fall Guy look unique.
Fortnite
For the past several years, Fortnite has been the undisputed king of free-to-play gaming. This battle royale shooter was big from the jump, but it has since become an unstoppable force, with more than 200 million players logging in monthly to check out the latest weapons, the updates to the map, the in-game concerts, and, of course, the skins. If you ever wanted to see Peter Griffin duke it out with Goku, Fortnite is the game for you.
Genshin Impact
Despite being free to download, Genshin Impact is one of the most impressive open-world action RPGs of the last few generations. You choose your team of four characters, each with control of one of seven elements and a variety of unique skills. You can switch between them on the fly in battle, and their elemental attacks can react with one another.
In order to unlock new characters on the game’s rotating banners, you’ll need to spend an in-game currency called Primogems, which can be acquired by playing the game or by spending money. You can gather a sizable roster for free, but if you want all the latest characters as soon as they’re added, you might have to throw down a credit card. That said, there is a wild amount of content available free of charge that will keep you busy for months.
Guild Wars 2
You’d have a hard time finding a massively multiplayer online game with more content on offer for free than Guild Wars 2.
Players can choose from five races and nine professions when creating a character, and as they progress, they unlock new skills they can use to fight enemies. Rather than force players to grind for levels, the game revolves around its story-driven campaign and cooperative world events that require players to work together to complete missions and take down bosses. There are also two fully-featured competitive modes: a large-scale World vs. World mode, where three teams battle over objectives, and a PvP mode, where two small teams fight in an arena.
If you’re still invested after playing through everything the free base game has to offer, there are four paid expansion packs available that expand the game significantly.
Marvel Snap
I’m a huge fan of collectible card games, but when I’m short on time, it’s hard to fit in a round of Magic the Gathering or Hearthstone. That’s why Second Dinner’s Marvel Snap has been my go-to card game ever since it launched in 2022. Your deck consists of 12 cards, each representing a different Marvel hero or villain. You’re constantly unlocking new cards for your collection, and the variety of decks you can build is almost overwhelming.
But the best part is that even the longest games of Marvel Snap only last a few minutes.
League of Legends
Released in 2009, League of Legends is the oldest game on this list by quite a few years, but it’s as exciting today as it was fifteen years ago.
This multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) PC game pits two teams of five players against one another, each in control of a unique champion. You’ll destroy towers and defeat enemies to gain XP and gold, which you can use to enhance your champion over the course of the battle. In the end, whichever team can destroy the Nexus in the other team’s base first wins.
There are now nearly 170 playable champions in League of Legends, each with their own skills, strengths, and weaknesses. The learning curve is steep, but it’s a rewarding experience to learn how to play a champion effectively and help your team win.
If you want to play on the go, there’s a mobile version called League of Legends: Wild Rift.
Path of Exile
If you’re looking for a top-down action RPG in the style of Diablo, your best bet is Path of Exile. Much like Blizzard’s legendary franchise, Path of Exile lets you choose between one of seven character classes — Marauder, Duelist, Ranger, Shadow, Witch, Templar, and Scion — and explore a hostile world full of enemies (who are full of loot for you to collect).
Rocket League
Soccer… but with cars. I’m not sure why it works as well as it does, but there’s no better feeling than nailing a shot from across the field by boosting at just the right time and flipping your trunk into an oversized soccer ball at top speed.
Rocket League has a pretty simple premise: Teams of up to four drivers of rocket-powered cars try to score more goals than the other team before time runs out. The reason that the game has had such longevity and has gained so many fans is because of its sky-high skill ceiling. Rocket League isn’t too hard to pick up and play (unlike League of Legends, for instance), but watch a match of professionals in a tournament, and you’ll see what’s actually possible.
Even if you aren’t a future pro, there is a ton of fun to be had in the game’s competitive modes, as well as its more casual modes like Hoops and Snow Day.
Warframe
Typically, the phrase jack of all trades is a backhanded compliment about someone doing many things but not doing any of them especially well. Warframe is a third-person shooter, an action RPG, an open-world adventure, and a cooperative multiplayer game. That might sound like too many spinning plates, but Warframe somehow nails all those genres.
You take on the role of a biomechanical combat unit called a Warframe. Each Warframe has a set of special skills and abilities and also comes equipped with primary, secondary, and melee weapons. From your ship, you’ll choose missions to embark upon throughout the solar system, where you’ll engage in combat with enemies and complete objectives. Along the way, you’ll level up, which will give you access to new skills and weapons.
Warframe is another game that’s fairly easy to pick up and play, but you can spend countless hours getting lost in its many systems and game modes.