Also known as local multi-device games. Are games that you can play by connecting to the same network and play with family. examples:
- BombSquad
- Juicy Realm
- Rusted Warfare
- Mindustry
- UFO99
- Krafteers
- Mini Militia
- ReCharge RC
Please tell me about any LAN game that you know of. Appreciate it.
Well I’m not sure exactly where this may fall, but I play a very wide library of games over LAN on my KVM. Emulators from the NES era all the way up to PS3 and nintendo switch. I also can play my whole steam library, all from a convenient launcher called EmulationStation (desktop edition)
The KVM is connected to my Linux PC over its own individual Ethernet wire to the living room TV. It works great and can do 4K and has zero latency problems (at least none that I can notice)
The older Tribes titles if you’re into classic arena shooters. Tribes 2 had some maps and modes that were more Battlefield-esque too. The old Age of series were excellent LAN games as well (empires/mythology). These are PC titles and I’m not sure of your target platform.
Co-Optimus is a great resource for this.
Here’s their database with a filter showing all PC games that support LAN play:
This list is the way to go. My last Lan party was about 17 years back but there is one golden rule, which is still more important than anything else: pick a game no one has played or one that everybody is familiar with! The biggest fun killers are unbalanced teams and matches. Despite that, we liked the first flat out game which now should be wreckfest and strangely enough a soccer mod for CS:S back then.
Skill issue.
Thank you so much!
- SuperTuxKart (open source super mario cart alternative)
- Luanti (open source minecraft alternative)
Stardew Valley!
Most multiplayer PC games before 2010ish.
Can you name them from your memory please?
Warcraft 2/3, Starcraft, Halo 1, Command and Conquer 1/2/3. Red Alert 1/2. Battlefield 1942, 1943, 2, Vietnam, 2142. Joint Ops. Doom 1,2, Quake 1/2,3, Unreal Tournament 1/2004. Farcry 1/2, Crysis 1, Burnout, Half-Life 1/2, Couterstrike 1.6/Source/GO. TeamFortress 1/2. Worms Armageddon. Soldat 1/2. Armegetron. Any Source Mods. Minecraft. Age of Empires 1/2/3. Age of Mythology. Neverwinter Nights. GTA 2. OpenTTD, Factorio, Terraria, ARMA 1/2/3. Left 4 Dead 1/2. Killing Floor 1. Call of Duty 1/2/4. Viscera Cleanup Detail, Magicka 1. etc etc
Holy shit, I had forgotten about SOLDAT. My friends and I used to play that on the library computers in middle school.
IIRC it had a portable version that you could boot from a flash drive. Or at least the installation happened on your local user account, so it didn’t require admin rights from the school IT team.
Also, the old Dungeon Siege games. IIRC, 1 and 2 both had LAN multiplayer, where each person took control of a different character. It was basically the groundwork for the gameplay that Dragon Age Origins built upon.
Worth mentioning that some of these earlier titles were built for IPX networking, which is no longer supported by modern operated systems. I get the impression OP is asking for games with LAN gaming supporting to get recommendations, so I feel it’s important to make sure they or others checking lists like this one understand they may need to go through some hoops to get some of these titles to work with a modern machine.
Diablo and Diablo 2 (not Resurrected)
I think Diablo 2 even came with an extra disc specifically so you could give it to your friend to play via LAN. Then these fuckers removed the option in Resurrected even though they promised they wouldn’t.
StarCraft and the old Warcraft games work via LAN as well.
Quake, Doom, Unreal (Tournament), Half Life
StarCraft you could use the same disk to “spawn install” to play with your friends. I think they could only play as Terran though.
I self host satisfactory. It’s going swimmingly.
Four player co op PvE tactical shooter.
Have all players install this mod which completely revamps the game to add a ton of more modern features
Oh, I’ll add on to this one that Rainbow Six 1 and 3 have been some of the best co-op games I’ve ever played, and both have LAN. The second game isn’t readily available for sale anymore. Even that first game involved editing a lot of level config files in order to circumvent bugs, but it was a great time.
Anything with a server software you can host can be played on LAN (okay probably not some things because they’re being weird but in general this is true).
That means counter strike, Minecraft, supertuxkart, xonotic, enshrouded, pal world, etc
Factorio doesn’t give a fuck and will let you play with up to 254 other people on the same server. Most survival crafting games have LAN, as a matter of fact. Somehow this is the only genre that will hold developers accountable on a regular basis and make them hurt for not having LAN and player-controlled servers. Not all of them will, but most will offer LAN.
All of Larian’s recent RPG efforts have LAN and direct IP connections: Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2, and Baldur’s Gate 3.
Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, and the entire Borderlands series (outside of the GOTY edition of Borderlands 1) support LAN, surprisingly, if you want to get your loot game on.
Is Recharge RC the same as the upcoming Unreal engine racing game Recharge? If they don’t have the same lineage, they’ve at least got similar inspirations.
Warside is an upcoming turn-based strategy game inspired by (or ripping off wholesale?) Advance Wars, and it’s got LAN in its features list.
Streets of Rogue is an all-timer in the co-op roguelike department, and it too supports LAN.
A game that I download and install on a regular basis in the freeware realm is Armagetron. It’s the light cycles from Tron but in an open source LAN game. It doesn’t exactly have a ton of depth, but it’s good fun for about an hour every couple of years.
I imagine Minecraft played a large part in popularizing the concept of a player hosted server for survival games. It’s possible that the reason this genre in specific has so many titles where you can do this is because players coming from or otherwise largely influenced by Minecraft see this as a requirement if not just the standard, so devs wanting to appeal to these players may also see it as a standard/requirement.
Sure, but first person shooters always had LAN until they didn’t. Console games always had split screen until they didn’t. Those audiences largely let those features fall off in a way survival audiences didn’t.
Thank you! this is the RechargeRC I was pointing at.
Age of Empires 2 is awesome.
Also try 0ad for the people who like age of empires games. It’s free and open source.
Planetary Annihilation, Warcraft 3 (at least pre-reforged if you can get a hold of an old copy), Unreal Tournament, Killing Floor, Battle for Middle Earth (1 & 2), OpenTTD, Simutrans, Settlers: Heritage of Kings, some of the older Wolfenstien games, Battle for Wesnoth, Warzone 2100, Teeworlds, Widelands
Doom 2
Lethal Company is another example.
And R.E.P.O.
