I'm a sucker for any game that features 3D graphics (it goes back to the days of Stunt Car Racer on the Amiga) and especially those that are free.

Marble Arena ticks both boxes and while it's not exactly the most spectacular or exciting game around (certainly not a patch on Stunt Car Racer) Marble Arena is a lot of fun. Basically, Marble Arena requires you to roll your marble around a 3D obstacle course going up and down slippery slopes, mastering air vents, jump-zones and even vortexes.

The more obstacles you successfully navigate in Marble Arena, the further you get and the more points you score. You can face a variety of surfaces such as sand, water, glass, ice and tarmac and if you get through them all, you're rewarded with upgrade points which you can use to improve your marble or change your skin.

It can be a bit boring on your own after a while although you do quite attached to the ball's plight. However, I imagine the real fun starts when you add more balls and more players who can roll against each other at the same time.

Marble Arena will either make you roll over and go to sleep after a few levels or lose your marbles trying to navigate it's many challenges.

Download Marble Arena 1.4 in Softonic

The nightmare before Christmas? Almost. In Christmas Crisis you need to help out Santa delivering presents by guiding his sleigh and dropping presents over houses, whilst avoiding jets and airplanes. The game is certainly a good idea for the holidays and an original adaptation of the Space Invaders style, yet Christmas Crisis is on the whole rather disappointing.

First of all, and this may sound cheesy, but I quite like when there's a little introduction to the game, or at least some sort of setting. Christmas Crisis drops you right in without any explanation as to why you need to replace Santa. There's only a small window to explain the controls.

Movements in Christmas Crisis are simple. Use your arrow keys to navigate your sleigh and the space bar to shoot the presents onto houses. On the whole though, they feel a bit clunky, and there's a little delay every time you move the sleigh. Christmas Crisis is a bit difficult and I couldn't manage to hit all the houses in the first level. Getting used to it doesn't take much though, but the increase of planes flying around as you pass levels does make it challenging.

Even though the game lacks an introduction, and controls are clunky, Christmas Crisis is an OK time waster for the holidays.

Download Christmas Crisis 1.2.3 in Softonic

Super Frog is a classic arcade game where you have to guide a frog across a busy highway to safety. This Christmas alternative to the popular game adds a bit of twist to it, with not only cars and trucks, but also candy canes and stockings coming into your way. After crossing the road successfully you'll have to make your way on a path and grab the present on the other side.

Christmas Super Frog is a fun timewaster but doesn't offer much more. First of all the graphics are really weak and the music itself gets annoying after a while. Even though the game is fairly easy to get used to, all you need is your arrow keys, it lacks any guidance for new users. We also thought the game got too difficult too early, as level 2 is already very challenging, with much more faster cars than the first level.

Christmas Super Frog is a basic time waster, fun for the holidays but nothing more.

Download Christmas Super Frog 1.9.1 in Softonic

Lemmings is one of those classic video games that everyone has played at least once. If you haven't (shame on you) then here is a quick recap of what it's about. Your goal is to guide a group of lemmings through highly dangerous levels without getting any of them killed. Unfortunately, lemmings tend to be a little dumb and unaware of dangers surrounding them. However, you can give each of them a specific task so that the whole group manages it through levels.

The graphics in Lemmings are the same as 10 years ago, however you will probably overlook them if you are a true Lemmings fan. The gameplay is very easy to get accustomed to, and you can easily handle Lemmings with your keyboard.

One of the things Lemmings is truly infamous for is its difficulty level. As you progress through the game, and particularly near the end, you will be confronted with very very difficult obstacles. Either this will have put you off or you will rejoice at the complexity. In the end, Lemmings is really a puzzle game, which requires patience, planning and a whole lot of luck.

Get those Lemmings past the obstacles, whatever it takes!

Download Lemmings 1.4.2a in Softonic

WordOMatic is puzzle style word search game. Rearrange the letters by sliding rows to form words across or down. The words created are removed and replaced with fresh letters. As letters grow old, they change color; The object of the game is to use all available letters before they become void.

WordOMatic is an original game belonging to the Word Search genre which includes games like Scrabble®, Boggle® and Jumble as well as modern PC games like Bookworm and Text Twist.

This is one of the easiest games to learn and play. The game knows over forty thousand words from three to six letters. Players are encouraged to use words that contain a wide variety of letters. Bonus points are given for using longer words, and for avoiding repeated words. WordOMatic knows more than eight hundred words containing 'X'; How many do you know? Maybe it is time to learn some more!

Download WordOMatic 1.3.4 in Softonic

Arkanoid is still as fun now as it ever was. Whether on a big old arcade box or on your Mac, the game always manages to keep its fun and excitement.

Arkanoid: Space Ball puts you in control of a little spaceship, with your goal being to destroy as many colored tiles as you can by hitting a ball back and forth. Arkanoid: Space Ball comes with plenty of bonuses and varying difficulty levels.

The quality of the graphics and sound isn't amazing, and I have to admit I expected something a little better, at least to separate Arkanoid: Space Ball from other games of the same genre.

Arkanoid: Space Ball comes with a level generator and editor, good for coming up with your own challenges, but most players will probably not matter with it.

Arkanoid: Space Ball is a good adaptation of the classic arcade game on Mac.

Download Arkanoid: Space Ball 1.1.9 in Softonic

A little game of pool is always good fun and MacPool makes it possible.

We liked the sleek graphics, the way the balls roll, the semi transparent interface window and the colors used in the game. Hitting balls is all done by dragging your mouse to add force to your shot and calculate the angle. You use the arrow arrow keys to adjust the hitting point on the ball and add effects like top spin.

The game offers detailed instructions for anybody who might not know the rules of pool and the advanced settings, available from the top menu, allow you to set table cloth color or table quality (traction and cushions). You can supposedly play online against competitors from anywhere in the world, but we never managed to connect with anyone when we tried out MacPool. There's more than a dozen narrator voices to comment your play, some of them rather annoying and others amusing.

MacPool is an entertaining pool game for Mac. Although the controls are a bit tricky at first, once you get used to it it should prove loads of fun.

Download MacPool 10.5 in Softonic

When Softonic programmers are tired of working and need a break, they usually play a quick game at the table-football the company has installed in the coffee room. But now that I've found this game, they won't have to leave their desks to play their favorite pastime!

Master Kick is a fun arcade football game that's already been available for a while on different portable devices (Palm, Pocket PC). It's not exactly like other football sims you may have seen before: actually, it's a table-football (or foosball) game, meaning you play with football players attached to bar that you can move up and down to play the ball around the game field.

I don't know if it was because I'm hopeless at table-football, or because the game's AI is too high, but I found scoring goals quite difficult even in the easiest playing mode. On the upside, the game in itself is quite elaborate, with a varied selection of fields and even some crowd cheering sound effects in the background. You can play either a quick match or a complete league, and also try different team layouts. The only thing I missed was the possibility to play against another human opponent.

Master Kick is a fun table-football game, more like an arcade than a simulator. Pity it doesn't have a multiplayer option!

Download Master Kick 1.4.1 in Softonic

BoXiKoN is fast becoming a ‘must have’ classic action puzzler game! The game is very easy to learn; it will be love at first play! Simply rotate and place shapes into the grid to form solid connecting lines across or down. The solid lines are cleared from the board allowing you to continue placing more shapes! Use your skills of organization and planning to ensure you never run out of space! Sounds too easy? Give it a go!

BoXiKoN is an extremely addictive arcade puzzle game; a fresh addition to the classic puzzle game family which includes games like Tetris, Bejeweled, Puyo Puyo, Zoop, Rumble Cube and Columns!

Download BoXiKoN 1.6.7 in Softonic

If you liked Tetris then you'll probably enjoy LinkLines which is a classic remake of the Tetris arcade puzzle game.

The aim of LinkLines is simple - link five balls of the same colour to form a line in any direction. The ultimate objective of LinkLines is to stop lines on the board from filling up too quickly otherwise you've failed. The graphics in LinkLines are nothing special but it's the playability that keeps you hooked for a while. At first, it seems an impossible task to move and link blocks in LinkLines but as you get used to it, it becomes quite fun.

There's nothing fancy about LinkLines - no bonuses or obstacles to avoid but there are different levels which mainly differ in the awkwardness of sticking them together. The time it gives you to fit the blocks is very generous however and makes the game a little bit too easy in general. If there was some way of speeding them up, it would give the game's playability much more longevity.

Easy to play and challenging for a while, LinkLines will provide a certain level of fun although it's appeal may wear off a bit too quickly.

Download LinkLines 1.4.3 in Softonic

Imagine Poker is a configurable Texas Hold 'Em game that allows you to play in a poker tournament against 16 iconic characters from history, fantasy, legend, and fairy tales: the Abominable Snowman, Abraham Lincoln, Blackbeard, Cleopatra, Dracula, Joseph Stalin, Julius Caesar, Little Red Riding Hood, Merlin the Wizard, the Mona Lisa, Napoleon, Neptune, Rendlesham the Alien, Robin Hood, the Tooth Fairy, and the Wicked Witch.

Characters blink, smile, get angry, and even cry. By using over a dozen attributes unique to each character, it was possible to bring these figures to life and build each with his/her own poker playing styles. The fun begins when you sit down and try to win the tournament. To succeed, you will have to defeat them all!

In Imagine Poker you can choose your Texas Hold 'Em tournament among Limit, Pot Limit, and No Limit, and also manipulate the blind bets as you like. Other options at your command include sound effects, speech commentary, the style of deck, game speed, and more. If you want to focus on your own game and not on the other characters, or if you just want to speed things up, simply turn on the "Fast-Forward" option and the game will jump to the next hand every time you fold.

Download Imagine Poker 3.6 in Softonic

I've spent many an hour beating my brains over a beastly crossword in a newspaper and have often thought it would be nice to construct my own in order to exact revenge on some of my enemies. Well, as the name suggests, Crossword Forge gives you the power to do just that. Creating a crossword is a very easy task in the program and is simply a matter of writing the question of the clue and entering the correct answer. Of course, the tricky part is to make all the letters and words match up, but with some practice it becomes easy to juggle the words around to fit.

There are some neat ways you can customise your puzzles with Crossword Forge, such as changing the font and colours, adding foreign characters and applying a picture in the background of the crossword. What's more, the grid can be as big as you like, meaning you make the puzzle really easy or really difficult depending on the intellegence of the person you're making the crossword for (or on how much you hate them!) This makes Crossword Forge a perfect way to entertain your buddies or for use a teaching aid.

Download Crossword Forge 5.3.5 in Softonic

Before you get confused - Downfall has nothing to do with that film about Hitler which documents his final days.

Downfall is actually a lot lighter than that - a fun arcade puzzle game, that pretty much rips off Tetris and the Columns game by Sega. If nothing else, Downfall is remarkably easy to learn - you simply have to drop stacks of colored blocks to form lines that then "connect" and disappear. Downfall has 30 different formats and playing boards to play on and the 3D graphics and animations are very smooth if not particularly impressive.

Each different playing board is littered with potential stumbling blocks such as sticks of dynamite, snow shovels and wrecking balls etc. Each Downfall board therefore requires a particular level of skill and presents a different challenge if you get bored with one or the other. You can also import and export high scores from Downfall which is handy for comparing with friends and family although it would be much easier if these were just stored online under a profile or something. It does maintain the highest score however even after it's closed down meaning you've always got something to aim for.

Downfall is not particularly original or blessed with great graphics but it's a decent time waster that will provide at least a few hours of fun.

Download Downfall 2.7.3 in Softonic

Have you ever wanted to take charge of a commercial airliner and fly around the world? Well X-Plane is about as close to the real thing as you’re ever going to get on your PC. Claiming to be the world’s “most comprehensive, powerful simulator” it’s so accurate that the US and Canadian aviation authorities have given it official approval to train pilots towards their commercial licence.

Of course, those guys are not sat behind a PC in their bedroom - their training is done in a $150,000 simulator - but what they see is exactly what you get on your PC. What’s more, you’re not limited to Earth – you can even fly around Mars!

Firstly, be warned. This is one MASSIVE program. Don’t be fooled by the 1.8MB file size in the game description – that’s just the installer. Once you’ve installed that, a very swanky download dialogue opens to download the other 1.3 gigabytes of the game. All those scenarios, vectored graphics and flight controls take up a lot of hardrive space. Depending on your bandwidth, you will be looking at hours, if not days to download the whole thing.

In this demo, you are limited to just one aircraft and five minutes of flight but in the full version, you can take control of props, jets, single- and multi-engine airplanes, as well as gliders, helicopters and VTOLs such as the V-22 Osprey and AV8-B Harrier. It also offers subsonic and supersonic flight dynamics, sporting aircraft from the Bell 206 Jet-Ranger helicopter and Cessna 172 light plane to the supersonic Concorde and Mach-3 XB-70 Valkyrie. In all, about 40 aircraft spanning the aviation industry (and history) with several hundred more which can be freely downloaded from the internet. There’s even a plane builder option which allows you to build your own model.

You can pretty much fly to any location around the world and choose from over 18,000 airports to test your landing and take-off skills. You can even test your mettle on aircraft carriers, helipads, frigates that pitch and roll in the waves, and oil rigs. It naturally features the whole range of weather conditions you might face and the plane reacts realistically to them. The graphics are vector based so they’re not exactly brilliant but they’re what you’d expect from a simulator .

The biggest problem you’ll have is working out how on earth to get started. The controls are incredibly complex to mirror a real commercial airliner. I spent the best part of 10 minutes just sat on the runway trying to work out how to start the engines whilst Air Traffic Control went crazy at me. You are prompted with a few guidelines at how to get rolling (such as “hit spacebar to release the breaks”) although you’re not told how to start the engines.

There are so many switches and dials in the cockpit that there’s no knowing what to hit without studying the huge flight manual in detail. In the end, the best I managed was to race around the airport before crashing into and destroying a control tower, killing all on board. For those that do have more patience, they need merely move the mouse cursor to the top of the screen where a drop down menu will present access to preferences, instructions, control configuration and many other options.

For those that just want to fly free as a bird and admire the scenery, X-Plane is not for you. For those that want the challenge of mastering a real airliner or are training for a professional licence, it’s the best programme out there and will have you absorbed for hours.

Download X-Plane 9.2 b6 in Softonic

Vendetta Online is a massively multiplayer game, shipping now, which permits thousands of players to interact as the pilots of spaceships in a vast universe. Users may build their characters in any direction they desire, becoming rich captains of industry, military heroes, or outlaws. A fast-paced, realtime "twitch" style combat model gives intense action, coupled with the backdrop of RPG gameplay in a massive online galaxy. Three major player factions form a delicate balance of power, with several NPC sub-factions creating situations of economic struggle, political intrigue and conflict. The completely persistent universe and detailed storyline add to the depth of immersion, resulting in a unique online experience.

Download Vendetta Online 1.8.21 in Softonic

Mystery Island II is fun game that combines elements of puzzle games, adventure games and science fiction.

The plot is thus - you are a Navy Seal currently serving aboard the USS Volarus when your submarine is destroyed by an unidentified vessel, probably a Russian nuclear warship. You escape the final blast and wash up on a tropical island. That's where your adventure begins. It turns out that the world has been invaded by aliens and it's your job to find clues and save the world from an alien takeover.

The island is littered with clues that eventually guide you towards the final defeat of the aliens. The games can be anything from puzzles to codes you must crack and locations you must find. In this way, the game is very similar to 'Escape From Monkey Island' except with less detail and worse graphics. In fact, the graphics are probably one of the biggest letdowns although considering this is a pretty cheap adventure game, you can't expect miracles anyway.

Likewise, the sound effects are passable and you can choose from a gently paced one to one that's a bit more racy. Everything is controlled by the mouse with left and right movements indicating the direction you want the character to go and you wave the cursor over an object to see if it can be picked up and used or not.

All in all, this is a decent attempt at an original adventure game (especially on a Mac) and if only the developers had had a bit more money to invest in it, you can't help feeling that it would be so much better.

Download Mystery Island II 1.8 in Softonic

Urban Terror brings a very welcome dose of 'realism' to the Quake 3 engine. Taking place in realistic, urban settings, the mod pits SWAT or marines against terrorists in a blur of hi-octane cordite-reeking action.

Featuring actual weapons (with recoil!) and more realistic environments, Urban Terror combines the best of Quake 3 Arena with what was, for me, a much more enjoyable setting. The speed of play is impressively fast and the graphics held up fairly well. the quality of sound effects leaves something to be desired (every shot sounds exactly like the last, never mind who fired it) but I found that the music added a welcome theatricality to events.

The download includes a number of default maps including Abbey, which is the one you can see in our screenshots. On this particular map, newcomers and rusty oldies alike can try out their skills by adding bots to the game for a sort of single player mode. It's also worth noting that the game no longer requires Quake 3 Arena to be installed (see the requirements section below for details).

Urban Terror is one of the best Quake 3 Arena mods available - highly recommended.

Download Urban Terror Quake 3 Mod 4.1 in Softonic

There are many games inspired by Tetris and they vary in quality from plain awful and unoriginal to sometimes, even better than the original.

Chock-A-Block probably comes somewhere in between that range providing a decent challenge although lacking the fast and furious pace that made Tetris so compelling. The object of Chock-A-Block is to fit shapes into the game grid, creating solid horizontal or vertical lines. However, rather than falling from the sky like in Tetris, the shapes drop into a small box on the left hand side the game from where you use a virtual hand to drag them into the playing areas.

From here, you can rotate the block to fit in the best possible way but you have to be quick because the frequency of the blocks does not slow down. The key is to ensure that you can fill a line from end to end vertically or horizontally when it will magically disappear into thin air and you win points. This isn't as easy as it sounds although the pace is quite slow compared to Tetris meaning that you have quite a bit of time to think out your moves.

A fun game that can be played during breaks and easy to play, Chock-A-Block will provide at least a few hours entertainment although it's certainly no Tetris.

Download Chock-A-Block 1.0.5 in Softonic

Similar to the other Pedia titles created by the same developer, Gamepedia allows you to store and organize all your items, in this case your video games. Perfect if you own different game systems and your game collection is getting a bit out of hand. You'll be able to enter titles by searching for them directly on six different Amazon sites or scanning the UPC on the game with your Mac iSight camera. Once again here, you'll have to make sure the UPC is clean and your room is well lighted for the iSight camera to work well.

The games pages look great with the game covers, and you can browse them in a Cover Flow style interface. Gamepedia also allows you to create smart collections to manage games any way you want, say by theme, character or alphabetical order. You can also create your own wishlist from Amazon and keep tabs on who's borrowed what from your collection. Statistics are also fun to check out, to get an idea what your games library is composed of. The only downside to Gamepedia is that it's pretty much the same as the other pedia titles, except with games. It would have been great for the developer to create only one application instead of four.

Download Gamepedia 4.3.0 in Softonic

Enigmo is a fairly original and quite challenging puzzle game where you aim to move streams of liquid across different spaces filled with obstacles. You're give different sorts of tools at every level, such as a sponge, platform or slider to send the fluids from one dropper to another.

This game provides quite a challenge, as you really need to think through the best way to move the water. You often need to adjust angles and arrange where the different tools are placed to be successful. This game does require a good amount of patience but feels oddly gratifying once you manage to move fluids from one space to another.

I was a little disappointed not to find some sort of tutorial at start up, as you're left wondering how to play and make use of the tools. However a bit of testing around and trying and you quickly understand how Enigmo works. The graphics aren't the best you could find, but they're acceptable for a puzzle game.

If you're looking for a different sort of puzzle game then you'll enjoy Enigmo.

Download Enigmo 2.0.8 in Softonic