OP: Asks what will run well on a 2017 mid-range business laptop.
ITT: Idle games! Text adventures! Literally games from the 1990s that would run fine on a 486.
๐คฆโโ๏ธ
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
150 points (95.2% liked)
Games
44143 readers
1070 users here now
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
Authorized Regular Threads
Related communities
PM a mod to add your own
Video games
Generic
- !gaming@Lemmy.world: Our sister community, focused on PC and console gaming. Meme are allowed.
- !photomode@feddit.uk: For all your screenshots needs, to share your love for games graphics.
- !vgmusic@lemmy.world: A community to share your love for video games music
Help and suggestions
By platform
By type
- !AutomationGames@lemmy.zip
- !Incremental_Games@incremental.social
- !LifeSimulation@lemmy.world
- !CityBuilders@sh.itjust.works
- !CozyGames@Lemmy.world
- !CRPG@lemmy.world
- !OtomeGames@ani.social
- !Shmups@lemmus.org
- !VisualNovels@ani.social
By games
- !Baldurs_Gate_3@lemmy.world
- !Cities_Skylines@lemmy.world
- !CassetteBeasts@Lemmy.world
- !Fallout@lemmy.world
- !FinalFantasyXIV@lemmy.world
- !Minecraft@Lemmy.world
- !NoMansSky@lemmy.world
- !Palia@Lemmy.world
- !Pokemon@lemm.ee
- !Skyrim@lemmy.world
- !StardewValley@lemm.ee
- !Subnautica2@Lemmy.world
- !WorkersAndResources@lemmy.world
Language specific
- !JeuxVideo@jlai.lu: French
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The free part is actually the harder thing to deliver on here. Free to play games are more recent than this hardware can handle since it's a newer trend.
I assembled a rather large list of free Linux games a few years ago, and most of them are low-spec friendly. Hopefully you find something interesting from it :)
Holy hell dude asks for a title or 2 and gets a whole damn database! What an answer.
I guess I do sorta have the equivalent of a tactical nuke in my back pocket when it comes to low-spec Linux game recommendations ๐
Tumbleweed, there are dozens of us!! <3
The trusty twinkpad will play a lot of 'good old games', just to name a few:
Doom(s), Quake(s), Unreal, Deus Ex, Elder Scrolls (Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim), Thief(s), Dungeon Keeper(s), Carmageddon, Fallout(s), Resident Evil(s), Vampire: The Masquerade, Hitman(s), Clive Barker's Undying, Gothic(s), Half-Life, Tomb Raider(s), Myst(s), Monkey Island(s), Baldur's Gate(s), Icewind Dale(s), Diablo(s), GTA(s), KotOR, Outcast, Serious Sam(s), Cave Story, Dark Souls (1 & 2, bcs 30fps, but only barely/unpleasanty?), ...
Maybe some newer retro ones, like Dusk?
Or not that visually important games, like 2D platformers and management games, etx - like Stardew Valley, Terraria, Dead Cells, Disco Elysium, Hollow Knight, Celeste, Momodora(s?), Spelunky(s), ...
All of the mentioned are excellent.
SuperTuxCart
Any game is free to play if you're willing to sail the high seas :3
Xonotic
Cataclysm DDA
Luanti
Empires Mod
Mindustry
OpenHV
Transcendence
Zeus/Poseidon 3
OpenRA
Panzer Marshal/Open General
HOM3 and similar
Rigs Of Rods
FlightGear
Remnants Of The Precursors
Widelands
Battle For Wesnoth
OpenSpades/ZeroSpades
Unturned
Warfork
Unvanquished
0 AD
Warzone 2100
Beyond All Reason
Zero-K
Shattered Pixel Dungeon
Stunt Rally 3
Slayers For Hire
Gene Shift Auto
Cortex Command Community Project
Omega Strikers
Mindustry is great and will keep you occupied for a long time
Truly a massive game that gets overshadowed by people talking about Factorio, which Factorio is of course a classic undoubtedly but Mindustry has been in pretty consistent development for years now and is a great game with a lot of good content, it deserves more attention!
I just wish the game was better set up for joysticks/gamepad control out of the box, last time I tried to set it up on my Steam Deck I got frustrated.
Also Mindustry is on Android too!
Unturned was where i spent so many of my hours growing up just because all the small maps ran okayish on my shitty laptop
Unturned is still in development too which is pretty cool, I think it occupies a unique niche and is underrated for sure.
My only complaint is that (at least last time i checked) for version 3, there's no option for multiplayer that isn't a dedicated server or LAN, which sucks when you want to play with friends
Running the server at the same time as your client (separate steam library entry) isn't very taxing, fortunately.
Is it a separate library entry now? Last i checked you had to do some weird stuff with the launch options. If it's that easy i might look into setting up a server to play with some friends
I'm enjoying OpenTTD right now. Free and has native Linux support. Think Sim City 2000 mixed with Factorio.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1536610/OpenTTD/
The original XCOM is good and even palatable for a modern audience with mods.
https://www.gog.com/en/game/xcom_ufo_defense
The original Deus Ex is good and even palatable for a modern audience with mods.
https://www.gog.com/en/game/deus_ex
Space Station 14. Funny online space roleplay game. Also free. Steep learning curve, but not as bad as the original SS13.
Any Gameboy game with an emulator.
Nintendo doesn't care about making their old games, nay, works of art like Golden Sun still playable, so I consider them free to play at this point.
load more comments
(4 replies)
I would take a look at Warframe.
https://www.protondb.com/app/230410?device=steamDeck
I like the gameplay and it ran on every hardware.
Emulate GBA and PS1.
Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, Dwarf Fortress, Space Station 13 (online), Simutrans, OpenTTD, Battle for Wesnoth
All the cool kids play the Cataclysm: The Last Generation fork these days ๐
Old school runescape free to play isnt not worth it. You WILL get addicted and end up paying $100s of dollars a year to waste your life. Try TF2
not an online game but Moonring is an amazing and underrated retro RPG that will run on anything! itch page with the Linux executable
Even Warframe will run on that puppy (with low settings and without all the particles, other than that they've got the whole efficiency thing down pat)
any games made before your laptop should work. any of the Myst games or Ultima games...
Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart - A super fun and challenging Mario Kart style game made in the original Doom engine.
CatsEyeXI - An unofficial, custom Final Fantasy XI MMO server with fast leveling, solo play and many quality of life features. (Following guides is still recommended, because it's a complicated and vague game at the best of times!)
ETLegacy - A free to play version of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, a fun and fast team-based first person shooter.
Shattered pixel dungeon!
Do emulated games count? I bet you could run most consoles.
Should run Wurm online just fine, which isn't that demanding but is still a 3D games. Sandbox MMO that I got back into playing lately, casual game to most people.
2D games are great too like most people are suggesting, got a 2011 Pentium laptop running Drox Operative 2 at a smooth 60FPS.
Battle for Wesnoth. Really fun turn based strategy game - https://www.wesnoth.org/
Its free and open source. They have it on steam now as well.
-Free Stars on steam, used to be called Star Control 2. Old school space adventure. And it is literally free as well.
-Imperialism 2 on GOG, 4x game set in the age of exploration and industrialization.
-Civilization 4, the best of the series in my opinion, I've played them since the 90s.
-Beyond Good and Evil, comes to mind, don't remember much about it, except that it's good.
-To the Moon, indie adventure / puzzle game. Has great reviews by the developers aunt, among other things.
-Banner Saga 1-3, holy Nordic inspired epic tactical strategy, batman.
-Jagged Alliance 2, another tactical combat game, modern time, funny, realistic and really difficult.
Eh, realized that only the first one is free to play. But the other ones are old (or very old), so you can snatch them on sale on steam, GOG or Epic for less than a chocolate bar and get dozens of hours of enjoyment from them.
Gog has a small list of free games. Some can even be modded further, like Daggerfall.
Those specs seems decent at first glance, but my bet is that the bottleneck will be the storage, if you are using a hard drive still. If you use an ssd, or change to one, then your performance may be greatly improved
I think you could run Steam on that build, I used to play Supertux cart, and have not played 0AD in ages
What? Intel HD is easily the weakest part. HDD will only cause longer loading times.
load more comments
(1 replies)
do u fw old minecraft? i like the beta version, its free if you use betacraft launcher >:)
Ss14 and cdda
view more: next โบ