The best top down games

Cosmic Crusader is proof that sometimes simple is perfect. You’re a lone pilot defending space against endless waves of enemies, in a game that’s basically a love lette...

Released in 1984, Frogger Jr. takes the familiar Frogger concept and gives it a slightly friendlier, more educational twist. Levels are themed around letters, numbers, and simple l...

Crossfire is what happens when you throw a tank into a maze, give it infinite ammo, and tell it to go wild. Released in 1982, it’s all about twitch reflexes and precise shoot...

Released in 1994 (long after it originally debuted on other platforms), Ant Attack! is what you get when you mix isometric graphics, giant ants, and questionable urban planning. Yo...

Bigger, deeper, and just as punishing, Gengis Khan 2: Clan of the Gray Wolf (1992) expands the formula with more maps, more rulers, and more ways to fail spectacularly. Want to uni...

Pinball Magic is a 1990 DOS pinball game that brings classic arcade action to the computer screen with colorful tables and straightforward gameplay. Players control the flippers, l...

Pinball World is a 1995 pinball collection that offers players a variety of themed tables, each with different layouts, challenges, and visual styles. Instead of focusing on a sing...

Spiritual Warfare is a 1993 action-adventure that replaces the usual fantasy arsenal with something considerably more unusual: biblical themes and religious symbolism. The player t...

Epic Pinball is what happens when a small team says, “Sure, let’s make a pinball game,” and accidentally creates one of the most addictive shareware hits of the d...

Civil War buffs, rejoice. Battle of Antietam (1985) lets you relive one of the bloodiest days in American history... via pixelated dots and turn-based tension. There’s no fla...

Battlestar is a science-fiction game that puts the player in command of a starship facing the usual collection of cosmic problems: hostile forces, dangerous situations and a univer...

Don’t let the title fool you — Blitz Draughts isn’t a military simulation but rather a gloriously intense checkers game from 1992. This DOS brain-bender turns the...

Diabolika is a dark, atmospheric adventure with a taste for supernatural trouble and gloomy surroundings. The game places you in a world where strange events are normal and apparen...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Feud is a wonderfully weird strategy game about two rival wizards who absolutely refuse to get along. Each turn, you gather resources, cast spells, and tr...

Few titles announce their intentions as clearly as Fire Power. This is top-down tank warfare with all the subtle grace of a marching band in a library. You roll into battle, shells...

Great Napoleonic Battles is the kind of game that assumes you are ready to command armies and possibly rewrite history before breakfast. In Great Napoleonic Battles, strategy is ev...

Guardians is a science-fiction action game built around the familiar idea that humanity needs someone brave enough to deal with an assortment of hostile forces. The player explores...

Jonny Quest: Curse of the Mayan Warriors turns the familiar animated-adventure setting into a computer game filled with exploration, danger, puzzles, and ancient mysteries. Jonny a...

Kingdom of Kroz is a delightful blend of action, puzzle solving, and exploration that quickly became one of the defining entries in the famous Kroz series. Armed with limited resou...

In Lost Adventures of Kroz, ASCII characters do all the heavy lifting. No sprites, no polygons — just your imagination and a fearless “@” symbol running for its l...

Meantime is one of those fascinating lost adventures that has become more interesting precisely because players never got the chance to experience the finished game. Designed by th...

Moraff's Morejongg takes the familiar tile-matching concept of Mahjongg Solitaire and expands it with a broad selection of layouts, variations, and challenging puzzles. The basic i...

Oxyd Extra is a puzzle adventure centered on exploration, pattern recognition, and manipulating objects in increasingly elaborate environments. The player controls a small ball thr...

Paladin 2 is a fantasy strategy and role-playing game where commanding troops and managing a growing force are just as important as swinging a sword. The player takes control of a ...

PC Pool brings the familiar game of billiards to the computer with a straightforward approach that focuses on physics, positioning, and the eternal question of why that perfectly o...

Sarakon is a 1991 DOS puzzle game centered around manipulating pieces on a board to create matches and clear obstacles. The basic rules are easy to understand, but the real challen...

Shamus is a maze action game developed by William Mataga and published by Synapse Software in 1982. The game became popular on various home computer platforms of the early 1980s. I...

Swap is a puzzle game built around a wonderfully simple idea: rearrange things until the board behaves itself. Released in 1992, it challenges the player with increasingly tricky a...

Traffic department 2192 imagines a future where keeping the streets safe apparently requires considerably more shooting than most traffic departments would recommend. The game comb...

Visual Star Trek brings the famous space-faring universe into the world of early computer strategy, replacing cinematic spectacle with text, diagrams, commands, and plenty of imagi...