The best abandonware adventure games

Noctropolis feels like stepping into a fever dream of a comic book you read when you were twelve and maybe shouldn’t have. A surreal noir adventure with gothic heroes, femme ...

Profezia is a 1991 DOS adventure game that combines fantasy themes, exploration, and puzzle-solving into a mysterious journey. Players enter a world filled with secrets, strange ch...

Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch is a 1992 adventure game inspired by Larry Niven's famous Ringworld universe. Players explore a richly imagined science-fiction setting, interac...

Seastalker is a 1984 DOS interactive adventure from the early era of computer storytelling, placing players aboard an advanced submarine as they investigate an underwater mystery. ...

Sherlock Holmes: The Vatican Cameos is a 1986 DOS adventure built around a Sherlock Holmes mystery and the detective's trademark combination of observation, deduction, and careful ...

By the time Space Quest 3: The Pirates of Pestulon arrived in 1989, Roger Wilco had become something of a professional survivor. This time he starts the game stranded in a garbage ...

Spellcasting 201: The Sorcerer's Appliance is an adventure game released in 1991, developed by Steve Meretzky and published by Legend Entertainment. It’s the second installme...

Released in 1989 for DOS and Mac, The Transinium Challenge is a classic TNG-era adventure game with a wholesome dose of techno-babble. You guide Picard and the crew through an inve...

Stationfall is the follow-up to Infocom’s classic sci-fi adventure, dropping you aboard a deserted space station that is about as welcoming as a hotel with no staff, no electrici...

The Golden Fleece is a fantasy adventure inspired by the classic myth of Jason and the Argonauts, sending the player on a quest filled with exploration, danger, puzzles, and the oc...

The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time is a science-fiction adventure built around time travel, investigation, and the slightly alarming realization that history can be ruined by...

From 1987’s text adventure golden age, The Lurking Horror proves you don’t need graphics to be terrified. You’re a student trapped on a snowy university campus du...

The Summoning is a fantasy adventure that throws the player into a world of magic, monsters and rather unhealthy amounts of dungeon exploration. Built around an isometric viewpoint...

Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer is a comic adventure set in a swashbuckling version of seventeenth-century France, where swords, schemes, and bad decisions tend to a...

The Legend of Kyrandia: Book One is the first installment in The Legend of Kyrandia series of point-and-click adventure games developed by Westwood Studios and released in 1992 for...

Beneath a Steel Sky is a classic point-and-click adventure game released in 1994, developed by Revolution Software. Set in a dystopian, cyberpunk future, the game is renowned for i...

If you ever wanted to play a point-and-click adventure where the protagonists have the combined IQ of a slice of cheese, Beavis and Butt-Head in Virtual Stupidity is your masterpie...

Neuromancer is a 1989 adventure game inspired by William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel, and it takes players into a world of hackers, corporations, artificial intelligence, cyberspace...

The Hobbit is an early computer adaptation of Tolkien's famous novel, transforming Bilbo Baggins' journey from comfortable hobbit hole to dangerous adventure into an interactive te...

Quest for Glory 1: So You Want to Be a Hero is a 1989 adventure RPG that asks a deceptively simple question: what happens when an inexperienced adventurer decides to become a hero?...

If you ever wanted to roleplay in a text adventure where a coconut is of utmost importance, Beyond Zork has your back. This is Infocom at its most delightfully weird: part RPG, par...

Shannara (1995, DOS) adapts the beloved fantasy world into a point-and-click adventure steeped in prophecy, magic, and earnest heroism. Drawing from the novels by Terry Brooks, it ...

In 1989, Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals expanded the series by allowing players to control both Larry and the capable Passionate Patti...

Superhero League of Hoboken is a wonderfully odd role-playing adventure that imagines a superhero team defending the world from threats while operating out of Hoboken. The humor is...

Mean Streets (1989) throws you into a gritty sci-fi detective story where neon lights, flying cars, and criminal conspiracies are just part of a normal workday. You play as a priva...

A text adventure with just enough graphics to remind you what year it is, The Pawn (1986, DOS) wraps you in a fantasy world where the puzzles are clever and the parser occasionally...

Imagine Cheers met Quantum Leap and got weirdly philosophical. That’s Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, a narrative adventure based on Spider Robinson’s sci-fi stories...

Voyeur is an unusual interactive thriller built around spying, investigation, and the uncomfortable realization that being nosy is apparently a legitimate career choice. Released i...

The Mist is an atmospheric adventure built around mystery, exploration, and the unsettling idea that something is very wrong just beyond the visible horizon. The game asks the play...

Udoiana Raunes is one of those late-DOS curiosities that feels like it escaped from a developer’s hard drive by accident. It presents itself as a fantasy adventure, but quick...