The best science fiction games

Fountain of Dreams is a post-apocalyptic RPG that feels like a distant, slightly sunburned cousin of more famous wasteland adventures. Set in a radioactive Florida, it sends you sc...

Star Saga: One - Beyond the Boundary is a 1987 science-fiction role-playing adventure that sends players beyond familiar territory and into a large galaxy filled with planets, char...

Van Buren is the codename for the ambitious Fallout 3 project that Black Isle Studios was developing before Interplay cancelled it, leaving behind one of gaming's great “what if?...

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 c...

A gloriously grimy cyberpunk romp, Ranx: The Video Game drops you in a future where technology, attitude, and questionable hygiene coexist in uneasy harmony. Based on the French co...

Based on the film that made air guitar cool (briefly), Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is a time-traveling puzzler where history class meets stoner logic. Gather historical figu...

No relation to Dune (except for being a total rip-off), Arrakis is a homebrew strategy game that feels like a tribute to the sandiest planet in sci-fi. You mine spice, fight vaguel...

Battlecruiser 3000AD (1996) is less a game and more a test of faith. Ambitious beyond reason, it promised total control of a massive starship—crew management, planetary landi...

In 1989, Deathtrack tried to answer a question nobody asked: “What if NASCAR had machine guns?” The result is a futuristic racer where speed and firepower go hand in ha...

Dino Crisis takes the survival-horror formula and makes one very important adjustment: instead of zombies, you get dinosaurs. Because apparently undead people were not terrifying e...

Skyfox II: The Cygnus Conflict is a 1988 space combat game that combines strategic decisions with direct piloting. Players command forces involved in a large-scale conflict while a...

Space Quest 1: Roger Wilco in the Sarien Encounter is the adventure that introduced Roger Wilco, a janitor who somehow manages to become one of science fiction gaming's most lovabl...

The Island of Dr. Brain combines adventure-game exploration with a generous collection of educational puzzles, all wrapped in a colorful setting inspired by the classic mad-scienti...

Xenophage: Alien BloodSport is a fighting game that leans heavily into its bizarre premise, featuring grotesque alien combatants battling it out in brutal arenas. It is unapologeti...

Metal & Lace combines giant robots, futuristic combat, and adult-oriented visual novel elements into an unusual package that certainly does not suffer from a lack of ambition. Play...

Back in 1984, Zaxxon was the future. Isometric graphics? Whoa. Shadow effects? Mind blown. But mostly, it was a game about flying a chunky spaceship through a heavily fortified spa...

Archipelagos is like a fever dream after watching too much Myst. You’re dropped onto strange, floating islands inhabited by stone monoliths and evil terrain-infecting sludge....

X-COM: Alliance is one of those legendary “what could have been” titles, a fascinating ghost in gaming history rather than a fully realized experience. Originally envisioned as...

Outpost is a 1994 science-fiction strategy and management game that asks players to establish a human colony far from Earth, which immediately raises several questions about transp...

Mission Critical delivers a tense science fiction adventure centered on survival, exploration, and a desperate struggle aboard a damaged spacecraft. Players must investigate their ...

1990’s Back to the Future Part 2 for DOS is a game that tries very hard to be as confusing as time travel itself. You’re Marty McFly, zipping between timelines, avoidin...

Forbidden Quest (1983, DOS) belongs to that early era when imagination did most of the heavy lifting. Sparse visuals and text-driven cues invite you to picture grand dangers lurkin...

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...

Omikron: The Nomad Soul (1999, Windows XP) is the kind of game that leans across the table and says, “What if we mashed every genre together and asked David Bowie to help?&rd...

Vynil Goddess from Mars is a bright, cheeky platform adventure with a heroine, a bizarre science-fiction setting, and enough cartoon eccentricity to make subtlety pack its bags and...

Released in 1994, Iron Seed is a DOS space sim that tried to be both philosophical and technical. You’re leading a fledgling human colony across the stars, tinkering with dip...

Released in 2003 for Windows XP, Babylon 5: I've Found Her is the kind of fan-made game that makes you question whether it’s actually fan-made or secretly a pilot for a new s...

Released in 1989, Ghostbusters 2 gives you another shot at wrangling ectoplasm with the world’s most overqualified exterminators. Inspired by the movie sequel, it’s equ...

Andromeda Conquest is an early space strategy game that gives players a galaxy to explore, planets to colonize and rival civilizations to worry about. Long before enormous modern 4...

D-Zone is what you’d get if someone blended city-building with military strategy and sprinkled in a dash of chaos. You’re tasked with running a base while fending off a...