Hey guys,

I teach HS IT & sometimes we have some down time & I need to demonstrate basic network set ups. So I am looking for more appropriate LAN games to play as a class. One of the old teachers had a copy of CS:GO but we were called out on it by parents, admins, & IT dept. Understandable. So I am looking for 10-16 player LAN games that aren't shooter, or if they are, more like Splatoon. Maybe RTS like AoE:III? I am mostly a solo gamer or FPS's so I am not sure what other multiplayer games are out there. We have Minecraft edu but that's not everyone's cup of tea & I have had problems with roles on the edu version.

Thanks!

Rick

Hard to get RTS with 10 - 16 players. Dose it need to be that many?

https://www.teeworlds.com/ https://play0ad.com/

Just do a search for "open source LAN party games" and you will find tons of them. Granted a fair amount of them might not be as visually appealing for the students but you get what you paid for.

Op Warzone 2100 has Lan up to 10 players and it's free.

https://wz2100.net/

Unreal and it's sequels are currently hypothetical freeware, there's a reproduction of the original CS, [url=https://libregamewiki.org/Category:Games_by_genre]other titles exist.[/url]

I don't fully know what you exactly need, but I assume you don't have funds to buy 16 games, so perhaps this:
OpenTTD - multiplayer allows for up to 15 players I think.

If you're looking for a FPS shooter game that's not very violent with LAN support. TRON 2.0 is a good FPS for a 16 player LAN game with no blood.

I guess 2 "HS" means "high school" here? What is the expected age of students in your classes?

--- While 0 A.D. is a great game and can be really fun in multiplayer, I don’t think it would provide a good experience with that many players as it would be very likely to have poor performances.

I see, that makes sense.

Then my teeworlds suggestion would be better since wouldn't have much performance overhead. I have played it before, it was pretty fun.

Still I think the TRON 2.0 suggestion nailed it for what the OP initially wants because of CS:GO not being acceptable in a high school environment.

A racing game might be fun. Maybe SuperTuxKart?

You can also get some ideas from this list:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_with_LAN_multiplayer_for_8_or_more_players

Maybe, but Hedgewars is free, compared.

What about an old classic, SuperTuxKart? :-)

https://supertuxkart.net/Discover

Nerf Arena Blast.
Is (was) a FPS with no blood and nerf guns instead of real ones.
The catch is that is no longer available for purchase so it could be get used or downloaded from an abandonware site since it was released in 1999, the upside is that runs on anything.
There are still, as today, a few communithy sites with resources and help on how to run the game.

Armagetron Advanced

It's free. It's very customizable.
The genre is something most will/would trouble though.

It has also been released on vaporware under a different name. Here be screenshots and trailer.