What can I do to stop my HP Laptop from overheating?

I have an HP Laptop, and whenever I play games like Minecraft and TF2, it suddenly overheats at a point when the screen is black and I press down the power button to turn it off. I hear it will cause damage to the computer, but I need to know how to fix the problem by myself. I could buy myself a cooling pad, but is there anything else I could check out so this doesn't happen again. Cause it happened a lot.

Buying a laptop cooling pad is a fantastic idea. Or, IF you could place the laptop on a hard surface.
In either case you are allowing 'cool' air from the bottom to circulate & cool the hardware.
Happy computing!

I put my laptop on top of a grill with a very small electric fan under
it and it no longer over heats.

I have an HP Pavilion dv6 with good specifications. I'm also facing the similar problem while playing games such as Call of Duty, Battlefield. It's really annoying me. I can't play a game more than 30 min continuously, it's overheating at stuck. While my brother's Dell Inspiron laptop work way better than my HP.

I have never used a cooling pad, but I have heard they are helpful for cool down your laptop. HP is the worst laptop that I have ever used. I'm going to sell this sh! T and assemble a good gaming PC.