BEST FREE MAC GAMES

THE TRANSITION TO APPLE SILICON HAS THROWN THE MAC GAME SCENE INTO FLUX, BUT THERE ARE STILL SOME GREAT FREE GAMES AVAILABLE FOR MAC USERS.

- CLIFF JOSEPH & CRAIG GRANNELL

The Mac games scene is-not to put too fine a point on it-a bit of a mess these days. Apple has never been very interested in games on the Mac, and this has meant that Macs have never enjoyed the same range of A-list game titles as owners of Windows PCs or games consoles like the Sony PlayStation or Microsoft's Xbox. And, just to make things worse, the arrival of macOS Catalina (10.15) a few years ago-which moved the macOS to 64-bit software and no longer supported older 32-bit software-killed off a lot of popular Mac games too. There are, sadly, many games still available on the Steam store that will only run on pre-Catalina versions of the macOS, and we recently had to delete dozens of old games from our list of the best Mac games (fave.co/3Kqn7jJ).

It's not all bad news, though. In recent years, there's been a trend of F2P games free to play-which can be downloaded and played for free, and then try to make their money by selling in-app purchases (IAPs) that let you buy new weapons or armor, fancy clothes, pets, and other accessories. Quite a few of these F2P games will run on the Mac-the selection on the Mac App Store isn't very good, but there are dozens of free Mac games on Steam and a few scattered around other games stores such as Epic and Gog.com.

You do have to be careful here, though, as many F2P games are more interested in selling expensive in-app purchases than in providing a fun game experience that you can enjoy without handing over loads of cash (this is particularly the case with card games, which constantly release new packs of cards for people to buy and collect).