The best abandonware puzzle games

7 Colors is one of those puzzle games that sounds simple on paper but ends up consuming your entire afternoon before you even realize it. Released in 1991 for DOS, it throws you into a digital turf war where the weapon of choice is… color. You pick a hue, spread it across the board like a rapidly multiplying fungus, and try to outmaneuver yo...

Imagine Tetris went on a sugar binge and had an identity crisis. That’s Zyconix (1992, DOS) in a nutshell. It’s a tile-matching puzzle game where nothing quite behaves how you expect it to, and that’s half the fun. Blocks come in weird shapes, fall in strange ways, and the rules are just shy of being written in invisible ink. But ...

Released in 1994, All New World of Lemmings gives our suicidal little friends a new lease on life... and new outfits! The puzzles are tougher, the graphics are cleaner, and the frustration level? Sky high. But it’s all part of the charm. Watching dozens of tiny lemmings either succeed brilliantly or walk blindly into doom is still weirdly sat...

Bolo Ball is a DOS game from the mid-1990s. It features a physics-based gameplay where the objective is to knock opponent balls out of an arena. When you start the game, you find yourself in a 2D arena set against a starry, space-like background. You control a colorful ball, which, despite being a 2D sprite, appears somewhat three-dimensional due t...

Boulder Dash II is the sequel to the original Boulder Dash game. It was released in 1985 and follows the same basic gameplay mechanics as its predecessor while introducing new levels and features.In Boulder Dash II, players once again control the character Rockford as he explores caves, collects diamonds, and avoids various hazards such as falling ...

This game is either a delightful brain teaser or a slow descent into madness, depending on how patient you are. 15x15 Picture Puzzle gives you a scrambled mess of tiny square tiles and challenges you to rearrange them into a beautiful image that you’ll spend hours trying to recognize. It’s like doing a jigsaw puzzle with gloves on and a...