Best Freeware Game - Round Two

[This Old Neon]

Round Two of the "Best Freeware Game" side-event includes 2 polls of 7 games each.

• You can vote for UP TO THREE (3) games per poll, or skip a poll entirely.
• The top 3 games in each poll will advance to the category finals.
• You can't change your votes once they've been submitted, so click carefully. Voting closes on Saturday at midnight ADT.

VOTE HERE

Poll 1 of 2
Cave Story (2004, PC)
Fortnite Battle Royale (2017, PC)
La-Mulana (2005, PC)
NetHack (1987, PC)
Scorched Earth (1991, PC)
Wacky Wheels (1994, PC)
Wolfenstein 3D (1992, PC)

Poll 2 of 2
The Battle for Wesnoth (2003, PC)
Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons (1990, PC)
Deltarune (2018, PC)
Duke Nukem 3D (1996, PC)
Dwarf Fortress (2006, PC)
Knytt Stories (2007, PC)
Spelunky (2008, PC)

[SkyPikachu]

Easy vote for cave story. Masterpiece of a game.

[VictorViper]

Making a case here, none of the games listed which became freeware got my vote, and that seriously limited my votes. Interesting note though: all my votes started free and went to a paid version.

[Sharecrow]

La-Mulana and Spelunky. That’s where my votes went. I love both of those games and can’t believe they’d been free once.

[Kong Wen]

La-Mulana and Spelunky. That’s where my votes went. I love both of those games and can’t believe they’d been free once.

To be fair, they were different games with the same name. More or less.

[Kong Wen]

Poll 1 of 2
Cave Story (2004, PC)
Fortnite Battle Royale (2017, PC)
La-Mulana (2005, PC)
NetHack (1987, PC)
Scorched Earth (1991, PC)
Wacky Wheels (1994, PC)
Wolfenstein 3D (1992, PC)

Cave Story is a colossus. NetHack seems to get a lot less attention/praise these days—getting old? Scorched Earth is just a super-fun execution of a great concept. I remember playing it on the computers at school with my friends over lunch hour.

Poll 2 of 2
The Battle for Wesnoth (2003, PC)
Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons (1990, PC)
Deltarune (2018, PC)
Duke Nukem 3D (1996, PC)
Dwarf Fortress (2006, PC)
Knytt Stories (2007, PC)
Spelunky (2008, PC)

Wesnoth is a genre-preference vote at this point. Dwarf Fortress gets kudos for its scope and ambition. I can't decide whether to cast my third vote for Spelunky or Knytt—they're both excellent work in their respective genres. I think I'm leaning towards Spelunky just because the marriage of Roguelike and platformer hadn't really been explored as much at that time.

[SkyPikachu]

How many votes did Fortnite get to make it past round 1? Does not seem like a ToNe style game.

[This Old Neon]

Poll 1 of 2
Cave Story (2004, PC)
La-Mulana (2005, PC)
Wolfenstein 3D (1992, PC)

Poll 2 of 2
Deltarune (2018, PC)
Dwarf Fortress (2006, PC)
Spelunky (2008, PC)

Winners.