abandonware games sorted by popularity

Beyond Columns is what happens when someone looks at Tetris and says, “What if we made it... slightly fancier?” This match-three puzzle game involves dropping shiny col...

Little-known but oddly captivating, Kurtan (1990, DOS) feels like someone’s ambitious homebrew fantasy experiment gone right. You play a wandering warrior exploring a pixelat...

NCSA Mosaic was one of the earliest web browsers to appear on the market. It was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illino...

By 1989, SSI doubled down with Vol. 2, offering more battles, more maps, and the same demanding mechanics. If you enjoyed the first, you’ll feel right at home; if you didn&rs...

The Third Courier is an abandoned (atypical) adventure / role playing game set in Berlin during the cold war era and, of course, it's a spy game. The Third Courier was developed by...

The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Presto Studios, released in 1995 as a sequel to The Journeyman Project. The Journeyma...

Post-apocalyptic survival meets real estate management in Burntime, where the world is ruined, but you still need to hire employees and secure water rights. It’s like Mad Max...

Karnov is a classic side-scrolling action arcade game developed by Data East in 1987. The game features a unique protagonist named Jinborov Karnovski, or "Karnov", a fire-breathing...

Released in 1995 for DOS, Zorlim's Arcade Volleyball is what happens when someone decides regular volleyball isn’t chaotic enough. Picture stick figures with the agility of c...

Wizball is a  shoot 'em up video game developed by Sensible Software and originally released for various home computer platforms in 1987. The game was published by Ocean ...

Front Lines, released in 1994, is a straightforward DOS action game that wears its inspiration proudly. You’re thrown into military combat scenarios with minimal narrative fr...

If Dungeons of Kairn were a person, it’d be that quiet D&D player who never smiles and always plays lawful evil. Released in 1989, this obscure DOS crawler delivers all t...

Based on the French comic series, The Quest for the Time-bird (1989, DOS) offers a fantasy adventure full of personality, odd creatures, and enough lore to fill a small library. Th...

In Cutthroats, you’re a diver hired for a treasure-hunting expedition that’s about to go very wrong. This text adventure from Infocom mixes underwater exploration with ...

In Escape from Dr. Colosso, you find yourself trapped in the lair of a mad scientist whose idea of interior design seems to be “danger first, safety never.” It’s ...