abandonware games sorted by popularity

In Tau Ceti, you’re the lone pilot of a heavily armed hoverbike trying to reboot a dying colony under an alien sun. It’s slow, moody, and brilliantly atmospheric. The v...

Omnicron Conspiracy (1989, DOS) is a detective adventure wrapped in a cozy sci-fi blanket. You play as a Galactic Patrol agent solving crimes across alien worlds, all rendered in c...

Mech Brigade (1987) is a strategy game that lets you live out your dream of commanding an army of giant robots. Set in a futuristic battlefield, you’re in charge of deploying...

Black Friday (1983) isn’t about shopping mayhem—though you might wish it were after trying to figure out what’s going on. This early DOS title is part stock marke...

Follow the Reader (1992, DOS) is an educational oddity that feels like a kindly librarian discovered the power of DOS and decided to make literacy a competitive sport. You guide wo...

Released in 1984 for DOS, Felony! is a strange and ambitious early action game that puts you in the role of a criminal on the run. Instead of focusing on a single mechanic, it thro...

Knights of the Sky (1990, DOS) throws you into the cockpit of a biplane during WWI, where every dogfight is a dance of death and machine oil. With dynamic campaigns and customizabl...

Back in 1989, David Wolf: Secret Agent tried really hard to make you feel like James Bond. You get car chases, fistfights, and enough cheesy dialogue to fill an action movie marath...

Released in 1990, Dawn Raider is one of those obscure DOS shooters that probably spent more time in floppy disk boxes than in actual computers. It’s a vertical shoot-’e...

If Krazy Ivan (1996, Windows XP) had a motto, it’d be “Blow it up first, ask later.” You pilot a massive mech across post-apocalyptic battlefields, obliterating a...

Dungeons & Dragons meets Disney on a sugar rush. Tangled Tales is a bright, humorous RPG that cheerfully pokes fun at fantasy clichés while still serving a solid adventu...

With Battle Isle 2200 (1994), the series goes full 3D cinematic—with cutscenes so dramatic you’d think they were auditioning for a soap opera in space. The gameplay is ...

Infocom really went off the rails with Nord and Bert, and bless them for it. This is a text adventure not about dragons or spaceships, but about puns. Yes, literal wordplay puzzles...

Dragonflight (1991) was a German RPG that dared to think big—party-based adventuring, sprawling maps, and a proper fantasy plot. It played like a love letter to Ultima with i...