The best turn based games

In Ancients 1: Deathwatch, you gather your pixelated party and set off to cleanse a city of evil, or at least try not to get mugged by slimes. It's a dungeon crawler in classic DOS...

Civil War buffs, rejoice. Battle of Antietam (1985) lets you relive one of the bloodiest days in American history... via pixelated dots and turn-based tension. There’s no fla...

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...

Don’t let the title fool you — Blitz Draughts isn’t a military simulation but rather a gloriously intense checkers game from 1992. This DOS brain-bender turns the...

EGA Bomb is a small, colorful arcade-style game that knows exactly what it is: fast, simple, and slightly mischievous. Built around classic bomb-dropping mechanics, it challenges p...

Great Napoleonic Battles is the kind of game that assumes you are ready to command armies and possibly rewrite history before breakfast. In Great Napoleonic Battles, strategy is ev...

Released in 1987, Lords of Conquest is strategy in its most distilled, no-nonsense form. This is a game that drops you onto a map, hands you control of armies, and essentially says...

Magic: The Gathering Interactive Encyclopedia is an abandoned "educational" application and turn-based strategy game based on he Magic: The Gathering collectible card game. MT...

Bigger, deeper, and just as punishing, Gengis Khan 2: Clan of the Gray Wolf (1992) expands the formula with more maps, more rulers, and more ways to fail spectacularly. Want to uni...

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...

Mines of Titan (also known as Mars Saga for other platforms) is an abandoned single-player RPG with a sci-fi setting (you're going to Mars!). Mines of Titan was developed by Westwo...

Ah, Chessmaster 3000. The title alone sounds like it should have lasers and robot arms, but what you get is a thoughtful, elegant chess sim that finally brings charisma to the game...

TV Sports: Boxing takes the sweet science and wraps it in a layer of showmanship that feels straight out of a late-night sports broadcast. Released in 1991, it emphasizes spectacle...

Do you enjoy betrayal, backstabbing, and pretending to be a global power while actually being terrible at geography? Computer Diplomacy is the digital version of the classic board ...

Armada 2525 is what happens when a spreadsheet decides it wants to conquer the galaxy. This is classic 4X strategy with all the bells, whistles, and menus your early '90s heart cou...

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...

Miniature golf is already a whimsical sport, but Fuzzy's World of Miniature Space Golf decides Earth simply isn’t strange enough. Released in 1995, this quirky DOS game sends...