Y’all know about these huge lists of free, open-source game clones, right?

There are lots of classic favorites out there in free games land.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

It might surprise you to learn that there are very many free games that don’t fit the modern free-to-play model. I say that because every time somebody posts a link to some impressive, public, open-source game project that minutely recreates some abandoned classic people seemshocked.

So here’s some of the best, the big fat lists of open source games and open source game clones. What do I mean when I say that?

I mean these are free public projects that produce games inspired by and using the mechanics of old classics, games like Rollercoaster or Transport Tycoon, Doom, XCOM, Red Alert, Civilization, and Sim City—not to mention the classic roguelikes like NetHack and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

First off I’ll point you at the Open Source Game List, orOSGL, a lovely list of these games. Specifically theirTop 50 Open Source Gamesis an invaluable resource for people getting started on the cool old stuff. It’ll point you at classics like OpenRCT2 and GZDoom, as well as impressively unique masterworks like Mindustry and Citybound.

My other go-to isosgameclones, which is a frankly overwhelming and vastly tagged list of games. It’s a bit tricky to get the hang of, but has tags you can click on to understand what’s going on: Tags like Clone, Official, and Remake help differentiate what’s going on. For those who want to really wade in, I suggest thecompleteandplayabletags as strong starting points.

Finally, you might enjoylibregamewiki, which is exactly what it sounds like: A big ol wiki of open source games.

These resources are not only cool adventures in programming, they’re also lovely work that helps people gaming on low-end and low-spec systems. Lots of them are also workable on or have a Linux distribution, for all you newly-minted Linux users who’ve come to the OS via Steam Deck. I’ve got a real hankering to grabFreecivandOpenXCOMnow, frankly.

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals

Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.

I’ll see you later. Probably.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he’s not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.

‘They have left us no choice’: New York Times' tech staff asks players to boycott Wordle and Connections in solidarity

Apparently George Lucas originally wanted Liam Neeson to be the ‘real’ Obi-Wan Kenobi, with Ewan McGregor taking up the name after he died

How to get the best ending to Dragon Age: The Veilguard—or the worst, if you’re curious