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[EuchreJack]

I was about to mention the demo of Dragon Throne: Battle of Red Cliffs, a game that I *cough* ...acquired later, and lament that GOG never picked it up. I just looked it up and saw it might be getting a re-release on Steam soon.

That reminded me of King of Dragon Pass.  You could play the first year with basic settings, and possibly "win", if I recall the demo's limitations correctly.  It was enough to get you into the gameplay, I played A LOT of it, and I eventually did spurge for the retail version.

EDIT: Well, the current demo is the original version for 1 year.  Dunno if it was always one year (probably).  But still enough to give the idea of the game, and it had enough variety that it could keep you going for a bit. The developer calls it a downloadable tour, which I find hilarious.

[Culise]

I recall Cyberstorm, which allowed you to play the entire first system.  Otherwise, my first encounter with and the genesis of my abiding love for roguelikes wasn't with Rogue or Nethack: it was with the shareware version of Castle of the Winds, where you could play the entire first half of the game for free.  I do agree that shareware was indeed amazing.  Stars!, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and especially Commander Keen (episodes 1 and 4 free). 

[Mephansteras]

This thread has reminded me of an old shareware game my friends and I got a lot of fun out of called Bob's Dragon Hunt.

Kind of a dungeon crawler where you get magic items and fight dragons. Graphics were pretty terribly 3D even then, but it was fun anyway.

I actually found it online! Though I have not tried downloading it or anything, so I'm not sure if this link is safe or works or anything. But I was amused by the screenshots.

Edit: Right, no sharing download links for abandonware.

[Frumple]

Yeah, care with links like that: The boss toad has mentioned they prefer we don't link to abandonware sites, as they tend to, well... not actually be abandonware in anything approaching a legal sense. Most stuff labeled that isn't genuinely copyright free, and most sites distributing it is just kinda' idly breaking copyright law and only getting away with it because they're distributing stuff not too many companies care much about anymore. Still technically illegal material, though, which is a fairly clean violation of forum ToS.

[Mephansteras]

Good catch, thanks for the reminder.

[Astral]

My favorite demo in the past was Netstorm, which came with actual online multi capability. I couldn't remember what was the limiter but it worked surprisingly well.

Wow, I think I had this game on a flash drive a long time ago - played the hell out of it, as it was a pretty unique spin on RTS's for the time. Thanks for unlocking memories I forgot I had.

[kulik]

I´ve played to death a 7DRL game "The Aurora Wager".