With the festive season drawing to a close, a lot of people are feeling the strain on their pockets. The gift-giving season is great fun, but it can leave people a little light money-wise in the month following. It might feel like new games are out of reach for a while. 

Fortunately, that might not be true, as the last couple of months has been a great time for free-to-play titles. There is a wide variety of different titles out now that players don’t need to spend a penny to get started with, and might hold off the January blues a little. 

PROJECT: PLAYTIME 

Fans of MOB Games’ Poppy Playtime franchise get an opportunity to explore more of the world of the horror series, and potentially do some of the scaring in PROJECT: PLAYTIME. The game takes the form of a 6v1 asymmetrical multiplayer experience. 

Six players take on the roles of Playtime Co. employees trying to retrieve special parts from locked-off areas of the factory. One player takes the role of a monster, whose job is to take the employees off the clock permanently. 

PROJECT: PLAYTIME is available now for PC via Steam.

Stalcraft

For those who’ve played S.T.A.L.K.E.R and wished it was online, there is Stalcraft, a standalone version of a Minecraft mod that has created a blocky version of the exclusion zone. The game, developed and published by EXBO, is an FPS/MMO hybrid that lets players pick one of two factions, the Stalkers, or the Bandits. These two sides won’t hesitate to engage with each other, so players need to be careful when out in the wilderness.

Along with PVP, there are other dangers. Mutant creatures are everywhere, paranormal anomalies can wipe unwary players out without warning, and everyone has to watch for Emissions, bursts of energy that will kill anyone not in a shelter on their detonation. 

Stalcraft is available now for PC via Steam.

SCP: Labrat

While actually wanting to get close to the horrors of the SCP Foundation is an acquired taste, horror fans may love Bezbro Games’ creation, SCP: Labrat. The game is an upgraded recreation of the 2012 horror game, SCP Containment Breach, with the addition of new assets, multiplayer, and VR support. 

The game is based around the internet horror phenomenon the SCP Foundation, a fictional organisation founded to contain harmful supernatural entities. The player takes the role of a Class-D, a criminal on death row who has been brought into the SCP Foundation’s facility to participate in probably-unethical tests. One of these goes awry, however, and the player, along with any other Class-Ds, is forced to try and survive in the halls of the facility as it fills up with paranormal nightmares. 

SCP: Labrat is available now for PC via Steam.

The Sims 4

The base game of the fourth in Maxis’ famous series was made free-to-play by publisher Electronic Arts in October, and the player base has skyrocketed since. For any uninformed, The Sims 4 gives players the opportunity to create people, called Sims, and determine the paths of their lives. Sims have needs and wants, and also a mind of their own. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re smart, and without supervision they’re quite capable of burning the house down, letting trash pile up, or even dying of embarrassment. 

The expansion packs still require money, but there’s a lot of fun to be had with just the base content. 

The Sims 4 is available now for PC via Steam or the EA app.

Buriedbornes

Buriedbornes is a roguelike dungeon crawler that has made its way over to PC after release on mobile platforms. Developed and published by NussyGame, Buriedbornes is easy to pick up but has a surprising amount of depth to enjoy. Players select a class of hero and venture into dungeons, advancing room by room and taking part in turn-based battles. 

The game is utterly merciless in terms of difficulty, and early characters will likely reach battles that utterly wipe them out. In player death comes the game’s gimmick, corpses may appear in the games of other players, along with their items and messages from other players. They may also be encountered as wandering undead, which is a nightmare for low-level characters.

Buriedbornes is available now for iOS, Android, and PC via Steam.