The best science fiction games

Yes, it’s called Fish!, and yes, it’s as quirky as the exclamation mark suggests. This is a puzzle-platformer with personality, placing you in surreal environments that...

Based loosely on Jules Verne’s famous tale, this game lets you live your steampunk submarine dreams with all the elegance of a DOS interface. You command the Nautilus, explor...

Hard Nova blends space exploration with role-playing elements, creating an experience that feels like a tabletop campaign decided to go digital and slightly unpredictable. You mana...

Ever wondered what would happen if a roguelike and a B-movie had a radioactive baby? AlphaMan is the answer. Set in a post-apocalyptic world where mutant banana slugs might be your...

Sci-Mutant Priestess (1989) is French, weird, and proud of it. You play as a rebellious mutant in a post-apocalyptic, sci-fi world ruled by bio-psychic cults. Obviously. It’s...

Released in 1990, Imperium offers strategy fans a chance to rule, conquer, and inevitably mismanage resources on a grand scale. It combines empire-building with military planning, ...

No, not that Battlestar. Battlestar (1996) is more obscure than a reboot that never happened. Set in deep space with a top-down view and UI only a Windows 3.x user could love, it m...

B.A.T. is a cyberpunk-themed adventure game released in 1989 by UBI Soft for various platforms, including Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, and later the Commodore 64. It blends adventure, ...

Armour-Geddon is what you get when someone combines Wargames with a midlife crisis. Set in a post-nuke world where you pilot tanks, helicopters, and laser cannons to stop a doomsda...

If Doom and Laser Tag had a baby raised by dial-up modems, it would be 3D Cyber Blaster. Released in 1992, this shooter has you blasting neon enemies in a world that looks like a T...

MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients is the sequel to MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy. It is a science fiction role-playing game (RPG) released in 1991, developed by Par...

Xenocide is an early example of space combat that leans heavily on atmosphere and tension, even if its technical limitations occasionally get in the way. It tries to create a sense...

Adapting movies into games is always tricky, but Predator 2 gives it a shot with mixed results. You play as a cop cleaning up the mean streets while occasionally being stalked by t...

Released in 1990, Day of the Viper is a first-person shooter before shooters really found their footing. Imagine a blend of Doom and a bargain-bin puzzle game, but with robots. You...

As the name suggests, EGA-Roids is a colorful take on the classic Asteroids formula, adapted for the EGA era. You pilot a ship through space, blasting rocks and dodging debris in f...

Independence War takes space combat seriously, almost stubbornly so. Instead of arcade-style dogfights, it presents a Newtonian flight model where momentum, inertia, and positionin...

With a name like Blort!, you'd expect a fart joke or a kids’ cartoon gone wrong, but no—it’s a 1987 arcade-style blaster for DOS. You play as a cosmic defender sh...