The best abandonware adventure games

In Kobayashi Naru (1987, DOS), you’re not saving the world—you’re solving it. This sci-fi puzzle adventure drops you in a mysterious facility filled with logic te...

In Infidel, you play a not-so-noble adventurer whose moral compass is spinning like a broken ceiling fan. As a treasure-hungry explorer poking around an ancient Egyptian tomb, you ...

If Shakespeare wrote video games and then decided, “You know what this needs? A parser and some pixelated drama,” you'd get Avon. In this interactive fiction gem from 1...

Transylvania 3: Vanquish the Night continues the gothic adventure tradition with another journey into a world of supernatural danger, strange locations, and things that are conside...

In Cutthroats, you’re a diver hired for a treasure-hunting expedition that’s about to go very wrong. This text adventure from Infocom mixes underwater exploration with ...

Don’t let the cartoony name fool you: Skullduggery: Adventures in Horror wants to unsettle you, and it’s surprisingly good at it. This early horror adventure mixes clas...

A Dudley Dilemma (1988) sounds like the title of a children’s book, but it’s actually a very British text adventure for DOS where the stakes are politely quirky and mil...

Countdown to Doom is an early interactive fiction adventure in which the player must explore a dangerous environment, solve puzzles, collect useful objects, and stay alive long eno...

Crash Garrett is a pulp-inspired adventure that puts the player in the role of a tough, wisecracking hero caught up in a mystery filled with danger, suspicious characters, and old-...

Crime Time blends point-and-click adventure with a murder mystery that’s as much about wit as it is about clues. You play an innocent man framed for murder, scrambling to gat...

Released in 1989, this game has you exploring a tomb filled with ancient evils. Navigate through dark corridors, solve puzzles, and confront the awakening demons. It's like playing...

Space Quest: The Lost Chapter is a curious artifact released in 2001 by dedicated fans who decided Roger Wilco deserved one more misadventure. Essentially a remake and expansion of...

Varicella is a particularly unusual adventure game built around social interaction, exploration, and the sort of eccentric premise that makes you wonder what the designers were dri...

Borderworld (1996, DOS) is a sci-fi RPG with big ideas, a tiny budget, and enough ambition to fuel a space shuttle. You’re thrown into a galaxy of politics, smuggling, and st...

Hollywood Hijinx feels like stepping into a puzzle-filled mansion where logic occasionally takes a coffee break. Released in 1986, this text adventure blends humor with brain-teasi...

Top Secret is an old-school adventure built around mystery, investigation, and the wonderfully dangerous habit of poking your nose into places where it probably should not be. The ...

Alice in Wonderland is a whimsical adventure inspired by Lewis Carroll's famous journey down the rabbit hole. Rather than offering a conventional heroic quest, it places the player...

In this 1987 DOS game, you delve into a dungeon filled with traps and monsters. Solve puzzles, defeat enemies, and uncover the secrets of the forge. It's like playing Dungeons &...

Amy's Fantasies is an adult-oriented adventure from the mid-1990s, built around exploration, conversations and mature themes rather than conventional action gameplay. The focus is ...

Mindwheel is a distinctive science fiction adventure that combines interactive storytelling with a strange, dreamlike atmosphere and a focus on exploration. Players encounter unusu...

The Adventures of Maddog Williams in the Dungeons of Duridian is a title that feels like it was generated by rolling dice on a fantasy word table, and somehow that’s part of its ...

Guy Spy and the Crystals of Armageddon is gloriously over-the-top, starring a hero who looks like he walked out of a Saturday morning cartoon and into a global conspiracy. The digi...

Italian noir meets circus mystery in Yellow Kid: Giallo al Circo, where you play a journalist with a yellow trench coat and more curiosity than self-preservation. The game’s ...

Welcome to 2112, a game that predicted a grim techno-future back when floppy disks still ruled. This DOS-era oddity throws you into a world that’s part cyberpunk, part fever ...

Despite the ominous title, Caverns of Chaos (1992) plays like the lovechild of rogue-like masochism and old-school dungeon crawling. There’s loot, traps, monsters, and more w...

Chewy: Esc from F5 is a point-and-click adventure starring Chewy, an unlikely hero caught up in a strange science-fiction comedy. Exploration, conversations, inventory puzzles, and...

Demoniak is a dark fantasy adventure that combines exploration, combat, and the sort of atmosphere that suggests nobody in this world has ever heard of adequate lighting. You trave...

King's Quest 7: The Princeless Bride is one of the most colorful and playful entries in Sierra's long-running adventure series. The game follows Princess Rosella and her mother, Qu...

Released in 1987, Kingdom of Hamil delivers an old-school fantasy role-playing experience where exploration and perseverance matter far more than flashy graphics. Players venture t...

Kingdom Without End offers a surprisingly ambitious fantasy role-playing adventure created long after DOS had faded from the spotlight. Featuring an expansive world, engaging quest...