abandonware games sorted by popularity

Forgotten Worlds is what happens when gravity politely excuses itself and lets you spin in circles while shooting absolutely everything. Originally an arcade spectacle, this DOS ve...

Independence War 2: Edge Of Chaos refines its predecessor’s ideas into a more open-ended and player-driven experience. Trading, piracy, and exploration play a much larger rol...

The Fool's Errand is a puzzle-adventure computer game created by Cliff Johnson and released in 1987 for Macintosh and later for MS-DOS. The game follows the journey of a namel...

Infiltrator drops you into the boots of a helicopter pilot who also happens to be a stealth operative—because the ’80s had no patience for specialization. Between air m...

There’s a certain audacity in naming a sequel Oh no! More Lemmings, as if the developers knew exactly what they were unleashing upon your already overworked brain. This 1991 ...

Van Buren was a science fiction post-apocalyptic RPG being developed by Black Isle Studios and never published. Van Buren was the direct sequel to Fallout 2, part of the Fallout fr...

Color Buster (1992, DOS) is Sokoban’s rebellious cousin. You push colored blocks across labyrinthine floors like an underpaid warehouse worker in a pastel fever dream. Simple...

Acrobat Reader was the first of a family of application software developed by Adobe Inc. to view, create, manipulate, print and manage Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Acrobat...

With Zork Zero, Infocom decided to throw everything into the cauldron: graphics, mouse support, and a jester who won’t shut up. A prequel to the original trilogy, it’s ...

Wizardry 4: The Return of Werdna flips the script by letting you play the villain, which is as delightful as it is diabolical. You control Werdna, an evil wizard with a knack for c...

In 1991, Les Manley in: Lost in L.A. continued the misadventures of its perpetually unlucky protagonist with another humorous point-and-click adventure. This time, Les navigates th...

In Infidel, you play a not-so-noble adventurer whose moral compass is spinning like a broken ceiling fan. As a treasure-hungry explorer poking around an ancient Egyptian tomb, you ...

Creatures Village trades explosions for adorable AI pets in a colorful sandbox world. You raise, teach, and care for Norns—genetically simulated cuties with personalities as ...

Starquake is a weird DOS science fiction platform game developed by Bubble Bus Software in 1988 and designed by Stephen Crow and Dave Collins. The Commodore 64 version bo...

Before realistic fighting games, there was Boxer Rebellion—a 1982 title so primitive, it makes Pong look flashy. It’s boxing with fewer rules and more pixels per punch....

Questron II is a role-playing game (RPG) developed by Westwood Associates and published by Strategic Simulations Inc. (SSI) in 1988. It serves as the sequel to the original Questro...

Prophecy of the Shadow is a 1992 role-playing game that takes players on a traditional fantasy adventure filled with exploration, combat, and magical mysteries. Players create a ch...

Jumping forward to 2004, Dark Horizons Lore: Invasion ditches swords and sorcery for giant mechs stomping across futuristic battlefields. It’s a squad-based online multiplaye...

Hole in One is golf distilled into its purest, slightly pixelated essence, where patience is key and frustration lurks behind every poorly judged swing. Released in 1995, it captur...

Mortville Manor is a classic adventure game built around a mysterious mansion, strange events, and the sort of atmosphere that makes exploring abandoned buildings seem like a terri...

Take to the skies in Dawn Patrol (1994), a flight sim that remembers when aerial combat meant fabric wings and machine guns bolted onto wooden planes. Set in World War I, it’...

Great Naval Battles vol. 2: Guadalcanal 1942-43 puts you in charge of naval warfare where every decision feels heavy and every mistake echoes across the ocean. In Great Naval Battl...