Consider Chess. LiChess, the site I linked, is free with no ads. You can play on the website or in their mobile app. They will match you against players of comparable skill, so you shouldn't get annihilated too often. Or you can play against the computer to practice.
Ok, I'll bite... Why don't you want to install Steam? Just curious.
Super Auto Pets is simple and can be played for free in a browser. It’s a team building game that puts you against other players’ teams, so it’s competitive in that regard.
If you like Pokémon and consider that simple enough, Pokemon Showdown is a free online battle simulator for competitive battles against other players. You can even do “random battles” that just instantly throw you into a match without requiring you to make your own team
Thanks . I will try the first suggestion, I never played Pokemon and don't know much about its lore.
I really like Super Auto Pets for the purposes you describe in the OP. There is a small community for it on Lemmy, even. !superautopets@lemmy.world
Are random battles with random generated pokemon and random moves and abilities? Sounds fun!
I love pokemon battles but making teams is sometimes a p in the a
Yeah it gives you and your opponent 6 random Pokémon each, but the moves and abilities are pulled from a small list of potential “competitive” move sets for that Pokémon. Then the levels of Pokémon are adjusted so that stronger Pokémon are a slightly lower level to balance things out.
It’s very fun to sit down and be in a battle within 10 seconds, but it can take a little bit of practice to get used to quickly reviewing your available moves for your whole team.
You can even play without even making an account and then you can create the account later if you want to save your progress
You like card games? I used to play Magic in High School, but I ain't got time for two hour matches anymore.
I've been playing Hearthstone pretty consistently for the past 6-7 years. It's similar to Magic, but much more simple and fast paced.
The more you play, the more cards you unlock and the more competitive of a deck you can play. You CAN spend real money, but I rarely do. I can usually get 50-60 "free" packs by saving up my gold between expansion releases.
There are many similar games out there. This one's my favorite, but feel free to check out some of its relatives! Good luck!
Thanks, never played card games, but I am open to trying new things, as long as it doesn't take too much time.
Some matches are over in 5-10 minutes, but some decks try to drag you along until you run out of steam, and those can take a while. If you give it a go, I'd recommend giving yourself plenty of time to go through the tutorial and learn the game. Especially if you've never played a collectable card game before.
Rocket League. It's fun as long as you don't get sweaty over it.
Board Game Arena! It's free and lots of great turned-based games you can play at your leisure, all through the web. Its wonderful!
Crawl stone soup is a classic style rogue like you can play in the browser. It has depths (that's a pun you'll see if you get far in it), but a minotaur berserker is pretty straight forward.
There are tournaments every so often where you can compete with the community for high scores and winning different combinations. You can also play offline if you prefer. It's single player aside from this aspect, and meeting computer controlled ghosts of other players.
krunker.io is a fast based shooter game with alot of jumping that can be played in the browser.
also have you considered mmorpgs? ill list some that are light? realm of the mad god. runescape/old school runescape. albion online tibia
yeah those are the only lightweight ones i know about that dont take up too much space...
Thanks. I played krunker.io loved the low poly style of the game and the fact that I could just play and forget about it, no leveling up to do. I just suck at FPS games !
I will be looking at the other games you mentioned 👍
i also stink at fps games, and i wound have suggested roblox but it updates just like steam, so i guess i wish you luck, also there is this site called itch.io which has a bunch of free and paid games and many other things.
thanks will check that aswell.
Old school RuneScape
thanks. I have taken a fast look into it, but wasn't sure if it is a game I can play whenever I have time or I should keep at it to level up. still is a very solid suggestion.
It's a little bit of both. There are thousands of different ways to train your skills, but once you reach mid-late game (a few hundred hours most likely) then you'll have a lot of long grinds ahead of you. Not to take away from the game, I love osrs. You can also always switch between what you want to do whenever you want.
I like playing Tetris. You could either play 1v1 or battle royale style. It’s pretty frustrating at first but when you get a little good it’s basically second nature
Best ones I know are Jstris or Tetr.io. Jstris is more minimal and good if you don’t like flashy graphics and Tetr.io is basically the opposite of that.
jstris is cool thanks
If you're open to playing games on your phone, I have a couple competitive games that I can reccomend. All these games have micro transactions and battlepasses, as is tradition for monetizing mobile games these days, but they do not provide an edge over opponents, with the exception of possibly Brawl Stars. Most are cosmetic or pay to progress. None of them have any external ads you must watch:
Wild Rift - very action oriented and team based. It can be quite intense at times, so I'm not sure I would call it relaxing for most. But it's fairly competitive.
Legends of Runeterra - From the same company, has the same characters as Wildrift, but is a card game that sits somewhere between hearthstone and Magic in its complexity.
Brawl Stars - very bright, colorful and cartoony. Team based action, with many different game modes. Similar idea and control scheme to Wildrift, but with much simpler objectives. In turn it feels much more casual. Has maybe the most aggressive minimization of the three in terms of it being in your face, but you can still play it for free.
King of Dragon Pass i think just got a release on mobile, and if not it's on GOG.com
Age of empires 2: definitive edition Not free but often discounted for a couple of dollars
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