whats the best shareware game you've ever played? As for me, I forgot the name of it, Bug Wars or something like that. It's a real time strategy game where you battle each other out to the death by using ants, spiders, bees, shelled bugs, and a few more.

Doom.

Well I had a lot of fun with "Mummy Maze" by popcap these days ;)

I 2nd the vote for doom... I can't think of another shareware game that had nearly the same effect on me.

- S

i 3rd the vote for doom :)
back in those days i also had great fun with Warcraft1, altough the demo version was very limited.
hmm, it's really hard to pick a favourite from nowadays games.

I've always thought Doom was over rated as a game. Sure, it broke tons of ground and certainly has a honored place in history, but as a game I thought it got dull pretty quickly.

As far as favorite "shareware" game of all time it's a tough call. Combat Mission is pretty high up there. Lasersquad Nemesis on the list as well as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, I don't think i've played enough shareware to really have a well formed opinion.

Originally posted by Gmicek
I've always thought Doom was over rated as a game. Sure, it broke tons of ground and certainly has a honored place in history, but as a game I thought it got dull pretty quickly.

As far as favorite "shareware" game of all time it's a tough call. Combat Mission is pretty high up there. Lasersquad Nemesis on the list as well as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, I don't think i've played enough shareware to really have a well formed opinion.

Doom was a staple at the office where I worked. Every day after work the network would fire up and we'd play till 9 or so at night. I played it for months and months and months...

My vote goes to doom as well, the best part was the multiplayer..

I remember when I bought my modem...it was amazing not only because I could connect to text-based internet...but...

"wait a minute Theo.... I have a modem..... you have a modem....oh my gosh we can play doom!!!!"

Then comes years of fun fun deathmatch.

Doom, baby :)

Doom was one of the first games I modded, back when all the files were stored in a 'wad' file :p Remember that! The level editors were all so complex and took ages to learn. Remember the chook cannon?!

Raptor was also great

The original Duke Nukem's and Commander Keens!

Lol not much sense asking what was best shareware game ever... :D
Doom is the SURE winner.
I personally don't like FPS, indeed I've played only some of them. I haven't played Doom a lot either. But I really cannot imagine a game which changed the point of view of the "general media" (tv, magazines, internet) about shareware games more than that one.

I've always been a fan of Commander Keen 4-6,
one of the platformer classics, never gets old.
so i'll have to vote for that.

Doom, without a doubt.

It's telling that none of the later FPS games made the "shortlist".
Wait until some younger folk join the board ;)

Cas :)

How young is younger? :)

I've never played Doom and I don't intend to. But I'm pretty strange. LSN was a good game, although also not my style (my other half raved about it for a while, then got fed up with the rate of content addition. He felt he'd been promised more for his subscription. *shrug*.)

Shareware games that made the biggest impressions on *me* would be Snood and a mac Galaga/SI/spaceshooter that I can't remember the name of that had, for the time (1995-1996?) the most impressive sound/graphics/experience of any such game I could find. (I *think* it was called Swoop but I may be getting confused by seeing the name Dweep here all the time. All I'm certain of was being in awe, because I did not then expect that I could download something for free and have more than 16 colors.)

I'm a desperate retro gamer, see, and the first thing I do with a new computer is fill up my basic genres - find a shooting game, find a breakout game, find a mahjong game, etc.

My vote goes to....

Dweep.

Gali

For me, it's quake...

I spent more time playing quakeworld than any game ever :)

I'll be different.

I personally don't enjoy FPS...they make me sea-sick.

How about Samurai. Certainly the replay value is way above anything I've played in the last year.

Definitely Clonk Planet. (http://www.clonk.de/)

What does everyone see in that game? (no insult intended), but its a simple "puzzle bobble" (i think) style game that has far and away more downloads (approaching 1M) at download.com than any near rivals in its category... some ppl would kill for those kinda stats.. i think there's a lesson here somewhere...

I wonder... is Snood really that popular or did someone just write a script to hit that file from a bunch of proxy servers... I have a suspicious mind.. but I too don't really get it. Maybe it was just out a long while back when that market wasn't crowded like nowdays.

Originally posted by cyrus_zuo
I'll be different.

I personally don't enjoy FPS...they make me sea-sick.
[...]

Your brain simply isn't used to compensate the motion. It's much easier if you disable mouse acceleration (I'm asuming that you have it enabled).

Well I get sea-sick too but only if I watch others play... but it depends on their style - eg "rat" is ok but "lsv" makes me (and almost everyone else) damn sick in about 2 minutes.

Pretty much. We had this convo before (but it may have been wiped out in the board crash). :)

Basically, it was (1997-8?) and I was at college and bored. I had to use the school Macs because the telnet software on the school PCs was crap. So I was doing all kinds of searches for new games I could put on the machines. ISTR happypuppy being my main source... it was so much smaller and friendlier then.

They had to be small (so I didn't feel too guilty about installing them on lab machines - A few years later they fixed it so you couldn't do this anymore anyway.) and not require certain security features in the install process (because the lab machines were already supposed to be secure, so some things just wouldn't install). They needed to be windowed so I could get out of them quickly, and they needed to NOT change my volume settings and mute button and blare high-volume music the minute you tried to open the game. You would be surprised how many stupid games did this - just what I absolutely couldn't have happening when playing in a public lab (and macs, at least those macs, did not have any external volume control, so there was nothing I could do but forcibly reset them to shut them up fast before someone came over to see what was happening).

And I'd never actually heard of puzzle bobble / bustamove / whatever. Snood was a completely new experience to me, and it was addictive - and with that name, it was easy to find the site again when I'd go to a new computer and have to reinstall the game. Most of the other games i'd found were pretty unimpressive - eventually I stopped searching for new mac games and just put Snood on any machine I happened to be at.

It was a mac-only game at the time, too. The webpage kept swearing there would never be a windows version... Tune eventually changed, of course. :)


re: seasickness - YES. I have serious trouble with any sort of 3d game, especially 1st person. Actually getting sick is rare - except when my other half would play really old versions of GTA and spin the screen wildly just to make me dizzy - but I get hopelessly lost and can't figure out where I am. I have terrible spatial orientation. 2d games only for me, please. (Some exceptions, but in general.)

Originally posted by svero
I wonder... is Snood really that popular or did someone just write a script to hit that file from a bunch of proxy servers... I have a suspicious mind.. but I too don't really get it. Maybe it was just out a long while back when that market wasn't crowded like nowdays.

I think it really IS that popular (or once was) because I didnt know one person at college that hadn't played it and sometimes still play it.

As for my personal favorite, I used to love Lemmings (this probably wasn't officially considered shareware, but I did purchase the demo through a shareware magizine when I was younger). Anyone ever play 4D boxing? that used to give me lots of hours of fun too...

If we switch from shareware to retrogames, then I have to mention Darklands, probably the best CRPG ever released! :D
I sometimes play it even today, and it is a game of 1992...

Escape Velocity by Ambrosia

What made me buy it?
-The MOD ability

Yea, EV Nova is probably one of the best shareware games I've ever seen.

Snood is just a lame ripoff of Puzzle Bobble / Bust-A-Move, if it were possible to sue for stealing game ideas Taito would have sued them to hell and back :D It's a real shame that it's more known than the original among many "ordinary" people :/

I'd have to agree that Doom is easily the #1 shareware game of all time.. it was just so ahead of its time. I remember getting it of some computer magazine CD (CD:s with mags were rare at the time) and me and my brother staring in awe at the incredible graphics :) Was REALLY scary to play in the dark.. (but then again i was maybe 10 years old or so :) )

Originally posted by svero
I wonder... is Snood really that popular or did someone just write a script to hit that file from a bunch of proxy servers... I have a suspicious mind.. but I too don't really get it. Maybe it was just out a long while back when that market wasn't crowded like nowdays.


I believe no one wrote the script, Snood is a game that appeases to many people. As much as that game is a derivative of bust-a-move, it has some unique winning features which makes it the 9th most common shareware game on the desktop (Window's solitare being #1)

Originally posted by Steve Z
I believe no one wrote the script, Snood is a game that appeases to many people. As much as that game is a derivative of bust-a-move, it has some unique winning features which makes it the 9th most common shareware game on the desktop (Window's solitare being #1)

Sure.. I didn't actually believe anyone cheated it. I'm just a little puzzled by it. There are lots of superior bubble games (to my mind) that haven't done nearly as well. Why this game?

Originally posted by svero
Sure.. I didn't actually believe anyone cheated it. I'm just a little puzzled by it. There are lots of superior bubble games (to my mind) that haven't done nearly as well. Why this game?

Just to name one feature: Grandmothers and Grandpas can play Snood =).

Originally posted by Steve Z
Just to name one feature: Grandmothers and Grandpas can play Snood =).

They could also play the other bubble games I mentioned. I was asking why this bubble game as opposed to the others?

I have fond memories of Commander Keen... but Sopwith is a close competitor... although Sopwith is odler than Keen, it really "did it" for me at the time.

Originally posted by mtaber
Yea, EV Nova is probably one of the best shareware games I've ever seen.

Ambrosia have a Windows version out now. Its a great game. Mathew Burch is a great shareware programmer and ATMOS have done some great graphics for Nova. If you havent played Nova and love 2d space games, go to Ambrosia's site and get it now (mac and pc) http://www.ambrosiasw.com

I would sgo so far as to say that Ambrosia is one of the most successful Indie shareware devs for the mac platform.

Originally posted by svero
They could also play the other bubble games I mentioned. I was asking why this bubble game as opposed to the others?

A few things I noticed, Snood has:

1. Simple Graphics and special effects - appeal to the older generations.

2. A game with characters that appeases to both genders.

3. No reflex involved (again, good for older generations) - Move based rather than time based (as comparing to bubble games that are time based)

4. Very very easy to navigate - A large Start button, high score is on front page. (This interface lets users play the game again with just one click)

... and other features

I must admit to being puzzled too. I'd never come across snood myself; until recently, when it was cited as being "one of the most successful shareware games ever" - so I checked it out, expecting something revolutionary. Was I ever surprised to see a fairly rough-looking puzzle bobble clone! Although the fact that there is no timer does mean that it should appeal to the solitaire fans I guess. But come on! It's puzzle bobble! And it doesn't even look very nice!

As for the best shareware game - it's unoriginal I know, but I'm going to have to say Doom as well. The game was just class, and I was riveted by it when it came out. And what a huge amount of gameplay you got in the shareware version! They must have been really confident that people would get well and truly hooked - and they did.

I agree with the whole Snood thing, I wasn't all that impressed with it. Although, I was browsing for the weekly game updates on my Verizon Wireless cell phone and notice that Snood got added a couple weeks back. Whoo, can't stop playing it now! All I do at work as I'm taking calls is play Snood and Lemonade Stand.

My vote goes to VGA Planets (actually I'd vote it as the best game I've played all around too).

Anyone remember the Catacomb Abyss? That game had a profound effect on me way before Doom.

There are a ton of great games over at the Underdogs site: http://www.the-underdogs.org

Apogee's Commander Keen. Also Sam secret agent is a nice one. I love side scrollers!

As a developer I'd have say Doom too, but I never thought Doom was a great game to play.

I'd have to say gameplay-wise and for sheer jaw-dropping fun it would have to Duke Nuke 'Em 3D.

Actually, that game was a technical achievement in itself with the player's ability to interact with the environment and scripted sequences.