The most popular top down games

A Line in the Sand (1992) is what happens when a board game about modern Middle Eastern warfare gets turned into a DOS strategy title with all the subtlety of a cold war memo. You ...

V for Victory: Gold-Juno-Sword continues the series' detailed treatment of the Normandy campaign, this time concentrating on the British and Canadian sectors of the Allied invasion...

Ah, Dungeons of Kroz, the glorious mess of ASCII characters that somehow became addictive. Created by Apogee in 1989, it’s a fast-paced dungeon adventure where every symbol m...

Astro Dodge (1982) is basically Frogger — in space. You control a tiny spacecraft tasked with dodging endless waves of meteors, space debris, and possibly your own questionab...

Fancy saving a kingdom from impending doom in exactly 100 in-game days? Challenge of the Five Realms (1992) offers just that, blending RPG exploration with a looming deadline and s...

Panzer General 2 builds upon its celebrated predecessor with improved visuals, expanded campaigns, and an even richer collection of strategic possibilities. Released in 1997, it in...

Ascii Sector is what happens when someone takes Privateer, removes the graphics, and replaces them with pure ASCII and sheer willpower. It’s open-world space sim meets roguel...

Saddle up, pardner. Billy The Kid puts you in the dusty boots of the infamous outlaw himself. This is the Wild West, DOS-style — pixel pistols, wanted posters, and dialogue t...

Knights of Legend is a tactical role-playing game (RPG) released by Origin Systems in 1989 for MS-DOS, the Apple II, and the Commodore 64. Known for its complex gameplay and strate...

Pizza Tycoon is a 1994 business simulation that asks a very important question: can you build a pizza empire while dealing with competition, customers, and the occasional questiona...

Dogs of War (1996) drops you into a gritty mercenary’s life where missions mean money, and money means better gear. Set on Windows XP, the game blends strategy and action wit...

Wild West World is a western-themed action game that drops the player into a world of dusty towns, gunslingers, and the sort of problems that cannot be solved by writing a strongly...

Conflict is a turn-based war game where you get to play Commander-in-Chief and yell at your virtual generals when things go wrong (which they often do). It's part military sim, par...

Long before comic-book games became blockbuster spectacles, The Punisher (1990, DOS) delivered gritty vigilante action with a side of pixelated attitude. You step into Frank Castle...

By 1996, Legend of the Silver Talisman delivered a more traditional RPG adventure, though with a decidedly old-school feel. It’s a game that doesn’t bother holding your...

O-Pong is a 1996 DOS game that takes one of the simplest ideas in video game history and gives it another spin. At its heart, it is a variation on Pong, which means two sides, a ba...

Alien Breed: Tower Assault (1994) takes everything you loved about the original - creepy corridors, limited ammo, sudden death - and adds something revolutionary for the time: non-...

V for Victory: Market-Garden tackles Operation Market Garden, the ambitious 1944 Allied attempt to seize a chain of bridges in the Netherlands. The game translates this complicated...

Fantasy General, released in 1996, takes the structure of classic wargames and wraps it in a richly illustrated fantasy skin. Battles are turn-based and highly tactical, emphasizin...

Scavengers of the Mutant World (1988) takes you to a post-apocalyptic wasteland where radiation has turned most life forms into something between a potato and a death machine. Your...

Laxius Power is a traditional Japanese-style role-playing game with a generous helping of exploration, battles, character development, and fantasy melodrama. Its story follows youn...

People's General is a 1998 turn-based strategy game that takes the classic military formula and explores a fictional future conflict. Instead of recreating historical battles, it i...

Lords of the Realm II is a medieval-themed real-time strategy (RTS) and turn-based strategy game developed by Impressions Games and published by Sierra On-Line. Released in 1996, i...

Grand Monster Slam takes tennis, removes anything resembling normal human athletes, and replaces them with creatures that look like they escaped a fever dream. In Grand Monster Sla...

Remember ALF? The sarcastic alien who really had it in for cats? Well, in ALF: The First Adventure, you get to live the dream—or nightmare—of controlling the furry mena...

Azalta: Cult of the Raven is what happens when a lone developer says, “I can make an RPG better than Ultima!” and sort of does. Released in 1996, this DOS dungeon crawl...

Kroz returns, and with it, your CRT monitor’s worst nightmare: ASCII graphics! Return to Kroz takes you back to a time when @ meant “you,” and everything else was...

Moebius is a thoughtful science fiction adventure that combines exploration, mystery, and philosophical ideas in a world shaped by unusual technology and enigmatic events. Players ...

Unnatural Selection is a quirky strategy game from 1993 that asks a simple question: what if evolution had a sense of humor? You’re tasked with guiding creatures through generati...

Traders is a trading and economic strategy game built around the classic pleasure of buying low, selling high, and wondering why the computer somehow always seems to have more mone...