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Victoria, BC crew · list rebuilt July 2026

Four free Steam games we actually keep booting up.

One co-op looter shooter, one MOBA, two fighting games that barely resemble each other. Different genres, same restless competitive itch after work. No trials, no subscriptions gating the fun part.

See the four games Meet the crew

meet the crew

Three people, one Steam library between shifts.

We're Dara, Priya and Cole: a marine-electronics tech, a support engineer and a warehouse lead who live about twenty minutes apart around Victoria, BC. We started swapping one free game a week in October 2021 and never really stopped.

Some weeks it's a two-hour raid on a Saturday morning. Some weeks it's ten minutes of Toribash before someone has to go pick up a kid from soccer practice. Both count toward the list.

We're not chasing the meta, we play what's fun after a long day. If you want tier lists and win-rate spreadsheets, this isn't that site.

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Dara — Destiny 2 lead Priya — Predecessor laner Cole — fighting games

our top four right now

Loot, fights and lanes.

Three different genres, one shared mood: something worth queuing for after work. Destiny 2 is a co-op looter shooter, Predecessor is a lane-based MOBA, Brawlhalla and Toribash are both fighting games built almost nothing alike. We're not pretending these are one genre: the thing that ties them together is that we keep coming back.

Fireteam of three Guardians firing on enemies in a snowy cavern in Destiny 2

Destiny 2

Co-op looter shooter

Three-person fireteams, weekly loot tables, a decade of story most of us only half-remember.

Developer: Bungie · Released: 2017, free-to-play (New Light) since 2019 · Monetization: direct Silver purchases for cosmetics. Bright Engrams stopped being sellable for real money in 2020, earned in-game only since.

How to play

Pick a class, run the New Light intro missions, and Destiny 2 hands you a fireteam-ready loadout inside an hour. The loop is simple: run an activity, open loot, chase the roll of a gun you actually want, repeat with slightly better gear.

Tips & tricks

  • Finish the Guardian Ranks tutorial track first: it unlocks half the UI the game otherwise hides.
  • Match subclass fragments to your exotic armour piece before queuing anything above patrol difficulty.
  • Vanguard bounties are the fastest XP-to-effort ratio in the free tier, so clear those before raid-adjacent content.
  • A weapon perk called Rewind or Voltshot is worth keeping. We dismantled two God rolls in 2022 before we knew that.

Why we keep playing

Dara runs the weekly reset solo before the rest of us are awake, then drags everyone into whatever's left on Saturday. The gunplay still feels better than most shooters we've paid for.

Honest caveat: the free New Light tier locks out the last few expansion campaigns unless you buy them; free means free access to the core loop, not the whole story.

Get it on Steam
In-match HUD of a third-person MOBA fight in Predecessor, showing a double-kill notification

Predecessor

Third-person MOBA

Lane, jungle, objective, repeat, but you're aiming with a reticle, not a click.

Developer: Omeda Studios · Free-to-play since: 2024 full release · Monetization: direct shop cosmetics + battle pass, explicitly no lootboxes.

How to play

Five versus five, three lanes, a jungle in between. Last-hit for gold, buy items at base, group up once towers start falling. If you've played any MOBA the shape is familiar; the third-person camera and reticle aiming are what's different.

Tips & tricks

  • Run the tutorial bot match twice before anything ranked-adjacent: the camera throws off anyone coming from a top-down MOBA.
  • Buy boots before damage items early on; low mobility gets punished harder here than in most of the genre.
  • Ping the jungle path: this community reads pings, unlike some ten-year-old MOBAs we won't name.
  • Check patch notes before every session. Omeda ships balance changes almost weekly.

Why we keep playing

Priya was the only one of us who'd touched a MOBA before 2024. She's since converted the rest of the crew, mostly by refusing to queue for anything else on Wednesdays.

Honest caveat: queue times outside roughly 6-10pm Pacific can run long; this is a smaller population than the genre's giants.

Get it on Steam
Brawlhalla key art showing three legends clashing with axe and fire effects on a platform stage

Brawlhalla

Platform fighter

Smash-style knockouts with a cast that's gained a new legend almost every month for a decade.

Developer: Blue Mammoth Games / Ubisoft · Free-to-play since: 2017 · Monetization: direct purchase of legends and skins + battle pass.

How to play

Two to four players, one stage, launch each other off the edge until someone's out of stocks. Legends rotate through a free weekly pool, so you can try most of the roster before deciding who's worth unlocking permanently.

Tips & tricks

  • Learn one weapon type, not one legend: most legends share two weapons, so combos transfer between them.
  • Turn on damage-percent display in settings; the default HUD hides it and it changes how you play defense.
  • Ranked 1v1 and free-for-all reward completely different habits. Don't judge the game by one mode.
  • Use the weekly rotation to find a main before spending anything on unlocks.

Why we keep playing

Cole treats this as the warm-up before Toribash, but it's turned into its own Tuesday-night ritual with whoever's online.

Honest caveat: the roster is large enough that unlocking favourites outside the free rotation adds up if you're impatient.

Get it on Steam
Two ragdoll fighters clashing mid-air in a physics-based Toribash match

Toribash

Physics fighting

Turn-based ragdoll combat where you set joint tension instead of pressing "punch."

Developer: Nabi Studios · Original release: 2006, current build 2014 · Monetization: direct shop (ToriCredits) + battle pass.

How to play

Forget reflexes. Each turn you set every joint on your ragdoll to relax, hold, extend or contract, then watch both fighters resolve the move in slow-motion physics. It plays closer to a puzzle than a fighting game for the first few matches.

Tips & tricks

  • Start in the dojo against the training bot. Real matches move fast once both players know what they're doing.
  • Save a handful of joint presets before your first online match; building a kick from scratch mid-fight loses you the round.
  • Replays are the best teacher here: watch your own losses back frame by frame.

Why we keep playing

It's the one none of us is actually good at, which somehow makes it the funniest game night on the list.

Honest caveat: the learning curve is real. Expect to lose badly for your first several matches before the joint system clicks.

Get it on Steam

if we could only keep one

A werewolf legend and a winged legend fighting on a rope bridge in Brawlhalla, with a castle in the background

The crew's #1: Brawlhalla

Ask any of the three of us which game on this list to install first and we all say the same thing. Brawlhalla has the lowest bar to a fun first match, the free legend rotation means you're never locked out of trying someone new, and it's the one game here that works exactly as well for a focused ranked session as it does for four people yelling at a couch.

— Dara, Priya and Cole, unanimous for once

Get it on Steam

the disclosure part

Why we don't make a cent off this

Every game above is free forever, on Steam, and none of these links make us anything. No affiliate program, no referral code, no cut of anything anyone buys after clicking through. We link to the official store page because that's the address, not because someone's paying for the click.

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honest questions

FAQ

Are these games actually free, or is that a free trial?+

Free forever, confirmed against Steam's own store data for each title before we published this list, not a limited demo or a timed free weekend. Optional purchases exist in all four (cosmetics, a battle pass, a subscription-style boost in one case), but none of them are required to play.

Do you earn from these links?+

No. We don't earn from these links: no affiliate deals, no promo codes, no revenue share with Valve or the developers. Every "Get it on Steam" button goes to the plain official store page, nothing routed through us.

Why is there no advertising on this site?+

Because we didn't want to build something we'd resent visiting ourselves. Four static pages don't cost much to host, and none of us needed a side income from a hobby list.

How often do you update the list?+

We re-check monetization and store status before every refresh, roughly every few months, sooner if a game we've recommended adds something we'd flag under How We Play. Last check: July 2026.

Is it safe to download from Steam?+

Yes. Every button on this site links to the official Steam store page for that title. We don't host installers, share third-party keys, or link anywhere except store.steampowered.com.