What games would you suggest that have LAN support these days?
What games would you suggest that have LAN support these days?
While PC may be one's first thought here, I'd also be really interested in any mobile games that might leverage one's local wifi network for multiplayer.
Baldur's Gate 3 is the obvious suggestion at the moment. That and Civ 5 are both good if your group wants something at a slower pace. For a FPS, I highly recommend Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. Your players might be surprised at how good it feels even today.
StarCraft is a solid pick if you'll have an audience.
Surprisingly, I don't think Terraria has been mentioned yet. Dedicated server can be downloaded for free and fun on Windows or Linux. I'm relatively sure that even spontaneous hosted games (from inside the game) are LAN accessible directly.
Lethal Company, a PC game, is currently hitting the charts. It's a horror game kinda where you have to find scrap metal. It's got some of the best AI enemies and they make it a challenge. I think it supports LAN but it's not tagged in Steam.
Classics FPSes included Unreal Tournament 2004 and Quake 3. Both scale from 1 on 1 to 16 players well, meaning days of fun. Xonotic the open source clone, which is also very good
Worms is a hoot, can hotseat or LAN, armageddon I think the high point of the series. Hedgewars a more than worthy OS reimagining
RTSes are soo many, Warcraft 3, C&C series, or Total Annihilation all modded, all great. My choice is Balanced Annihilation or OpenRA for 2023 and OS
4X have classics like civ, but Stellaris a worthy choice too. Open source here includes unciv
Racing games are often a hoot too. You can get far too serious here if you want, but I recommend SuperTuxKart for some mariokart like action
Scorched3d another option for artillery fun. But generally Open Source all offer LAN gaming!
With Goldberg Emulator you can play a lot of online games on LAN from Steam:
Steam emulator for GNU/Linux and Windows that emulates steam online features. Lets you play games that use the steam multiplayer apis on a LAN without steam or an internet connection.
Honestly nothing will beat Warcraft 3 (pre reforged refunded) custom games for LAN parties.
Some of my favorite maps: Warlock (any 1.0X version), either teams or FFA, Uther Party, Battle Tanks, Archer Wars Legacy, Survival Chaos, Legion TD, Farmer vs Hunter, Founders of the North, Hungry Hungry Felhounds, The Predator (Version FINAL), etc.
Honestly there's just too many to count and even remember
Heroes of Might and Magic V, aka the best one (go on and fight me, HOMaM III gang). Even better with the unofficial 5.5 patch/mod which adds tons of gameplay.
there's also a mod that makes it so you can have simultaneous turn enabled permanently, although it does allow for some quirks and bug abuse, but it's such a massive time saver when every player can take their turn at the same time that its well worth it.