The best turn based games

Released in 1988, Dracula in London was part strategy, part board game, and all atmosphere. You weren’t just staking vampires; you were managing resources, characters, and ti...

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...

Ready to guess wildly about the cost of household objects from the comfort of a DOS screen? The Price is Right (1990, DOS) brings the TV game show to your keyboard with a mixture o...

D-Day: The Beginning of the End is not your average “storm the beach” simulator—it’s a grand strategy title that drops you into the nerve-wracking planning ...

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...

ShadowForce (1994, DOS) is what happens when someone decides subtlety is overrated and replaces it with explosions. This tactical action romp drops you into a near-future mess of m...

Color Buster (1992, DOS) is Sokoban’s rebellious cousin. You push colored blocks across labyrinthine floors like an underpaid warehouse worker in a pastel fever dream. Simple...

Arnhem is the kind of wargame where you spend more time reading hex maps than shooting anything. It’s all about recreating Operation Market Garden — you know, that WWII...

Incursion is a modern love letter to classic tactical RPGs, clearly inspired by tabletop rulesets and games like early Fallout. It throws you into a turn-based world where position...

If you’ve ever stared at a Monopoly board and thought, “This needs more spreadsheets,” then Oligopoly is basically your spiritual home. Released in 1987 for DOS, ...

Wizardry 4: The Return of Werdna flips the script by letting you play the villain, which is as delightful as it is diabolical. You control Werdna, an evil wizard with a knack for c...

Black Monday (1987) combines economic panic with the thrill of—wait for it—spreadsheet navigation. It's like Wolf of Wall Street without the fun, drugs, or DiCaprio. Yo...

There’s something oddly poetic about 8088 Othello, a 1985 take on the classic board game that feels like it was programmed by someone who had a personal vendetta against flas...

Welcome to Aspetra, a 1996 DOS game that tried to cram an epic sci-fi RPG into your beige box PC — and mostly succeeded! Think “Star Trek meets budget constraints.&rdqu...

It’s Boggle (1990, DOS), the digital version of everyone’s favorite game where you try to spell long words while your friend keeps shouting “DOG” over and o...

Chaos Overlords is a cyberpunk-themed strategy game developed by Stick Man Games and published by New World Computing in 1996. Set in a dystopian future, the game focuses on contro...

Back in 1986, when most PC users were still figuring out floppy disks, along came Dr. Ruth Computer Game of Good Sex, a title that promised to educate while entertaining. Imagine t...

In 1990, strategy games were still figuring out how serious they wanted to be, and Frontline sits comfortably in that experimental phase. This DOS title drops players into a tactic...

Released in 1988, Journey to the Center of the Earth draws inspiration from Jules Verne's famous novel and invites players into a subterranean world filled with mysteries and dange...

Laserwars, released in 1994, throws players into futuristic battles where quick reflexes and steady aim matter far more than lengthy speeches about peace. The action is straightfor...

Nerm of Bemer is a 1984 DOS game whose wonderfully mysterious title immediately suggests that the player is about to encounter something unusual. The game belongs to the experiment...

Power Struggle is the kind of strategy game that quietly asks, “Would you like to control the world?” and then immediately throws you into a geopolitical mess. It&rsquo...

Reach for the Stars is a 4X strategy game from before the term “4X” even existed. It’s pure, stripped-down galactic conquest: research tech, colonize worlds, and ...