The best science fiction games

In Core War Plus, programming isn’t just for making spreadsheets—it’s for virtual combat. You write tiny programs that battle for control of computer memory, turning coding into a gladiator sport. It’s part...

In Cosmic Soldier: Psychic War, you’re not just fighting enemies—you’re reading their minds while doing it. This RPG mixes sci-fi exploration with telepathic abilities, creating battles where knowing what your op...

Welcome to the future, where space empires are managed entirely via text and colored dots. Anacreon puts you in charge of an interstellar civilization and lets you conquer galaxies with the graphical intensity of an Excel spreadsh...

Tunnels of Armageddon is a video game developed by Logical Design Works and released in 1989 by California Dreams for various home computer systems, including DOS, the Commodore 64 and Amiga.In Tunnels of Armageddon, players contr...

In this 1986 DOS game, you're piloting a spacecraft in the year 2123, defending the United Planets from the Andromedan Hegemony. It's like being the captain of a starship, but with fewer crew members and more pixelated enemies. En...

A remake of the arcade classic, CHAMP Asteroids lets you relive the joy of spinning wildly in space and smashing rocks with a tiny triangle-shaped ship. It’s like cosmic road rage, but with fewer traffic laws and more flying...

Omega is an abandoned science fiction themed strategy game developed and released by Origin Systems in 1989 for DOS, Amiga, Apple II, Atari ST, C64. Omega is a rare example of a programming game about robots.

Side Arms: Hyper Dyne is a side-scrolling shoot-'em-up arcade game developed and published by Capcom in 1986 and later ported on various platforms. Players control a "mobilsuit," a futuristic combat robot, in a war against al...

The sequel to Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch, Return to Ringworld throws you back into Larry Niven’s vast sci-fi universe—except this time, the puzzles are tougher, the stakes are higher, and your space suit still...

Alien Legacy (1994) is like SimCity crashed into Star Trek and nobody called the insurance company. It’s a real-time strategy/simulation game that has you managing a colony in deep space while solving the mystery of what hap...

Blood Money (1990) answers the question: what if every level in a shoot-'em-up was a different kind of sci-fi fever dream? You fly through alien-infested caverns, collect cash, and try not to get obliterated by things that look li...

Cybercon III drops you into a cyberpunk nightmare of claustrophobic corridors, hostile robots, and oppressive AI control. You’ll navigate a massive 3D complex, solving puzzles and blasting enemies as you work to dismantle th...

If Lorna were a comic book, it would be the kind your parents warned you about. Based on the Spanish sci-fi heroine by Alfonso Azpiri, this 1990 action-platformer on DOS is a cocktail of lasers, leather, and late-’80s pixel ...

Released in 1988, Alien Fires 2199 AD looks and plays like someone tried to translate a fever dream into a sci-fi RPG. You control some dude with a chin of steel and a crew that seems perpetually confused. The interface is clunky,...

Tank controls + polar bears + Cold War vibes = Arctic Fox. In this early vehicular combat sim, you're piloting a futuristic snow tank across an icy wasteland to stop some aliens or Russians or alien Russians. The plot is thin, the...

CyClones is a first-person shooter where you take on the role of a bio-engineered super-soldier fighting alien invaders. The controls are smooth, the weapons varied, and the level design encourages exploration as much as combat. T...

Blasteroids is a video game developed and released by Atari, Inc. in 1987. It's a sequel to the classic arcade game Asteroids, which was released in 1979. In Blasteroids, players control a spaceship tasked with destroying asteroid...

Ranx is a 1990 action-adventure video game based on the Italian cyberpunk comic RanXerox, created by artist Tanino Liberatore. The game was developed by Ubisoft and released for the Amiga, Atari ST, and MS-DOS platforms. The ...