Teeworlds

Teeworlds looks like a game you would dismiss immediately. Two-dimensional, cartoon blob characters, about 20MB installed. Then someone starts a CTF match and you realise the grappling hook movement has more depth than it has any right to, and forty minutes have passed. I have seen it work at LAN nights where nothing else would run, including on hardware that would struggle to load a browser with more than three tabs. Quick rounds, instant readability, and a server browser that works without fuss. It is not the headliner of any LAN party, but it might be the game you fall back on more than you expect.

At a LAN where half the group is running older laptops, the first question is always: will this actually run? Teeworlds answers that before anyone even finishes asking. The install is a few megabytes. The server setup takes minutes. The rounds are over before anyone gets bored. I keep it in my mental toolkit specifically for those evenings when someone shows up with a machine that sweats through anything post-2015. What keeps it at the top of this list is that it earns its place on suitability, not nostalgia. You host locally, everyone connects, and within five minutes people are already arguing about who camped the respawn.