Where to Play Free Online Games, Internet Games, and Free Games Right Now

Racing games don’t have to be intense, Tokyo Drift-style ultra-realistic course racers. Free ones, especially, are typically not. Box Racing is a good example of this, and unless you’re looking for a hardcore street-racing feel, it’s worth a play.

Don’t get me wrong, free flash racing games can be very hit-or-miss. Especially simple, lo-fi ones like Box Racing. The controls can be shaky, the AI unbalanced and the graphics uninspired. Box Racing avoids most of these online game pitfalls, even poking fun at its own simple graphics with its name — the racers are, after all, vaguely colorful boxes.

One of the stranger aspects of the game is a series of “skill bars” that allow you to adjust your racer’s relative levels of health, top speed and “skill”. Top speed and health — the ability to stay alive while your racer hits walls, signs and other objects — is pretty straightforward. I could never quite figure out what “skill” was supposed to do — do let me know in the comments if you can figure it out.

The “health” aspect is a bit annoying, especially with respect to Box Racing’s controls. It’s tough to avoid hitting the sides of the track, and the “health” aspect seems to be a bit of a crutch to avoid building in a more complex damage system. It’s understandable, though — after all, the game is free, and has a fairly well-balanced AI.

If you’re looking to play a free online racing game, this is a simple and well-designed option. Check it out below to play.

As most of you know, Play Free Game Now will occasionally take a break from standard programming to post things that may be of interest to those of you who play a lot of games.

We’ve gotten many questions about where to find others who like to play online games or free games. It’s a tough question, especially for people who don’t work or go to school with others who like to play online games. Free flash games, especially, aren’t something that there is a large real-world community around playing.

I suggest that you try finding gaming-related meetups, such as the New York Gaming Meetup for people in New York who are interested in meeting other game fans.

Outside of that, it can be tricky for people who are living in rural areas or other places without a real community around games, specifically free online flash games. I’d welcome suggestions in the comments.

Iron Serpent Screenshot

One of the largest and most specific genres in the free game world is the tower defense game. I’m generally a big fan of the tower defense genre, and there are some great examples of classic tower defense games available online to play for free. For some reason, most of the great examples of tower defense games are free and online. I’ll be sharing many of them with you. And also, obviously, are the bad examples. I’ll be sharing some of those with you too.

Iron Serpent Defense is not so much “bad” as it is “mediocre” or “vanilla”. The graphics are decent, and it adheres fairly well to the tower defense genre’s standards. The concept of buying upgrades and close integration with virtual currency is also cool. If you’d like to play it, just check out the SWF below.

However, the game is still somewhat uninspired. There’s nothing that strongly differentiates this game from other free online tower defense games — except perhaps for the concept that towers can be damaged by creeps, which I consider to be a major flaw and completely unexplainable by the minimal storyline. I haven’t quite figured out how to prevent towers from being damaged by creeps, which I believe obviates the need for it to happen at all. It also greatly discourages investment in upgrades, which is a fairly important part of any TD game.

Finally, the differentiation of creeps — into Toxic, Air, Earth and Fire — is somewhat interesting, but still not incredibly inspired as far as tower defense games go. Why don’t “Air” creeps, for example, completely fly over the maze, as do “flying” creeps in Paul Preece’s Tower Defense? All the creeps just kind of clunk along at the same rate, waiting to be shot by cookie-cutter, quasi-futuristic towers.

In our second vaguely off-topic post of the day, I wanted to make sure all of you had a chance to check out this blog on a game design class with a lot of interesting information about the art and science of game design. There seems to be a lot of helpful information there, especially some of the later classes, including several posts on game testing in different environments and under different play patterns.

While we mostly focus on free games that our readers can play, I thought it would be worthwhile to link to some resources for readers who may want to take the next step from consumer to creator. There are a lot of skills that come into play for indie game development, including game design, art, programming and marketing. The latter can be one of the most tricky, but if you shoot us an email at hello@playfreegamenow.com, we will absolutely review your game and include a link to what you’ve created.

Hope you enjoy the posts above! If you want more, you should definitely also check out some fascinating thoughts on Facebook games here.

We are normally into the “shoot-em-up-and-forget-it” sort of games, but if you want something a bit more intellectual, definitely check out some of the games written up over on Educational Games Research. They have a cool review of a math-focused game, Bidmas Blaster, here.

You can also see a cool list of the top educational games here. Not all of them are free or flash games (our typical sweet spot when writing), but they’re all definitely worth playing and may add a bit something extra to your gaming experience.