The best abandonware strategy games

Before WWII games flooded the market, Knights of the Desert (1983, DOS) was already reenacting the North African campaign in pixels. You command Rommel’s Afrika Korps—o...

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...

Dungeon Keeper 3: War for the Overworld is the ghost of a game that never was. Announced, teased, and then buried alive by shifting studio priorities, it exists only in the fever d...

Released in 1983, Battle for Normandy plays less like a game and more like a history book that came alive, donned a helmet, and asked for a coffee. This is wargaming at its purest:...

No, not that Battlestar. Battlestar (1996) is more obscure than a reboot that never happened. Set in deep space with a top-down view and UI only a Windows 3.x user could love, it m...

Turns out war is a lot tidier when it’s turn-based. Battle Isle (1991) gives you neat little hexagons to move your units on, like a very angry board game. It’s got stra...

Released in 1983, this is your grandpa’s Battleship—minus the plastic pegs, but with all the tension of blind naval warfare. There are no fancy graphics, no Hollywood e...

Iron Lord (1990, DOS) is the medieval fantasy game that tried to be everything at once—and somehow pulled it off. It’s part RPG, part action, part strategy, and part &l...

The 1989 Scrabble release feels a bit like playing the board game on an old typewriter. It’s clunky, monochrome, and oddly charming. The computer AI is less of a challenge an...

In Battle Chess 2: Chinese Chess (1990), the classic formula gets an eastern makeover—complete with new rules, a new board, and a fresh batch of animated fatalities. If you t...

Archon Ultra is what happens when you smash chess into an arcade cabinet and call it a day. This updated version of the original Archon throws in jazzed-up graphics and faster game...