Want to play a strategy game but your wallet’s looking a little thin? We’ve got you covered with this list of completely free-to-play strategy games on PC.
Strategy games and the PC are made for each other, the genre taking up quite a few slots on our list of the best PC games. With the precision of a mouse and the power of a good graphics card, the depth and complexity inherent to their design can be fully fleshed out into massive, expansive worlds that offer dozens, even hundreds of hours of entertainment. Best of all, many of our favorite titles are free-to-play games, letting you choose if you want to pay for expansions or content beyond the base game. You can try out any one of our top picks for yourself, without worrying our differing tastes will fool you into spending money on a game that just isn’t for you. These are a few of our favorite strategy games that you can play for free on the PC today. We’re including promising Early Access titles, strategy titles beyond the usual war strategy games, and more. Related Guides: Equal parts devastating frustration and jubilant triumph, Hearthstone takes all the best elements of tabletop CCGs and throws them into a giant number generator to see what comes out the other side. Because the game is digital, many of the card effects can be randomized, meaning no two matches ever play out exactly the same as the last. So strap on your card playing gloves and get ready to pray to RNGesus, because Hearthstone is free to play on your PC, tablets, and phones. Blizzard will encourage you to spend money to buy booster packs so you can catch up to other players with more cool cards than you; however, many players have succeeded for years without spending any real money, gathering cards slowly simply by winning new cards after each match. Check out our Hearthstone strategy guide for tips and tricks in the game. Download Now Born out of a mod for Warcraft 3 back in 2005, the MOBA (short for multiplayer online battle arena) genre has come to dominate the F2P PC gaming scene in the past few years, with titles like Heroes of Newerth, Heroes of the Storm, and DOTA 2 flooding onto our desktops by the handful. At the outset, the premise of League of Legends is simple. Two teams of five players fight each other on a battlefield containing three lanes. Neutral monsters, or “minions” periodically feed down each lane, and players try and kill as many as they can while also trying to kill each other at the same time. As bots die, you’ll gather gold to shop for stat-increasing items and XP to level up and strengthen their core abilities. Lightning-fast reflexes combine with relentless action to provide an adrenaline-fueled ride that entertains from start to finish. The skill curve can be punishing for newbies, but LoL ’s tutorial and co-op system make it easy for players of all ages and backgrounds to ease into things before diving into a full-on 5v5 on Summoner’s Rift. Start with practice modes and bot games to get acquainted with the mechanics and figure out your favorites of the over 140 champions to choose between, watch some LoL ESports championships to get a sense of the pro strategies, and make some friends to team up with and show you the ropes. Download Now Speaking of DOTA 2, DOTA Underlords is a spinoff of the MOBA that takes the popular characters into the growing autobattler genre. Rather than pick a solo hero to play as in a team like in the standard game, this time you hire a set of heroes that will automatically fight against their opponents, either AI or other players. Since battles are automatic, hence the genre name, the strategy becomes all in the management and composition of your heroes. In that way, DOTA Underlords is slightly like an RTS. Different heroes can have synergistic buffs they get from being on a team together, and they all can level up as they survive each round. Each round you place your heroes on an 8×8 grid opposite your opponent’s team. Each match can have up to eight players, with rounds pitting you against one at a time until there’s just one player standing. Just like traditional DOTA 2, you will earn gold and XP during a match that you can spend on upgrading your team and purchasing items to give buffs. Because of the lower technical skill required to play, this is a great entry point into the DOTA universe. Download Now If you ask anyone who’s older than 12 what the quintessential real-time strategy game of our era is, Starcraft is the answer you’ll get. Starcraft wasn’t the first of its kind, with other series like Command and Conquer and Age of Empires preceding it by almost half a decade by the time it came out in 1998. It was, however, the king of the RTS genre for the next 10 years, with perfect mechanics and a deep meta-game that continued to evolve through patches and expansions. Now we have StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, which went free-to-play in late 2017. With a free Battle.net account, you can download Starcraft II today and dive right into the action, though the Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void expansions will still cost you.
