The most popular underrated underdog games

Roadwar Europa is a 1987 DOS strategy game that moves the post-apocalyptic road adventure into a devastated European landscape. Players command a convoy through a continent where r...

In Taipan for Windows, you’re not a hero, you’re a 19th-century capitalist trying to get rich trading tea, silk, and the occasional bit of opium in the South China Sea....

Time Bandit is a sprawling arcade adventure that throws the player into a collection of strange worlds filled with enemies, treasures and secret passages. Its maze-like environment...

Released in 1995, AIV Networks dares to ask: what if the real hero of industrialization was... logistics? Here, you’re not conquering worlds - you’re routing freight. B...

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...

Stormlord is a colorful fantasy platform adventure in which the title character has the rather unpleasant job of rescuing magical creatures and confronting an assortment of hostile...

Power Drift feels like a rollercoaster decided it wanted to be a racing game. The tracks are tilted, twisted, and occasionally seem designed by an architect who had a personal grud...

In Auf Wiedersehen Monty, our favorite marsupial is back, and this time he's taking a very pixelated Eurotrip. Released for Windows XP in 2001, it's a nostalgia-fueled platformer t...

Paganitzu is a 1991 puzzle-platform adventure starring explorer Alabama Smith, whose archaeological expeditions have an unfortunate tendency to involve deadly temples and elaborate...

Grand Slam Bridge is exactly what it says on the tin, which is both comforting and slightly intimidating if you are not already fluent in the mysterious language of card games. In ...

If classic fantasy ever needed a designated clown, Eric the Unready would proudly volunteer. This 1993 adventure from Legend Entertainment gleefully demolishes every heroic trope i...

Part puzzle, part platformer, part “what is even happening,” Bombuzal (1989, DOS) is a game where your job is to blow up every bomb on the screen—while not accide...

Wacky Wheels takes kart racing and adds an important scientific discovery: apparently, racing around tracks in tiny cars is more entertaining when the drivers are animals. Released...

1893: A World's Fair Mystery is an interactive fiction game developed by the American studio Illuminated Lantern and released in 2002. Set during the Chicago World's Columbian Expo...

With a name like Dink Smallwood, you’d expect something ridiculous—and you’d be right. Released in 1998 for Windows XP, this action RPG follows a pig farmer with ...

In the neon-lit corridors of cyberspace, you're a "decker," infiltrating corporate mainframes like a digital ninja. Released in 2002, this roguelike RPG offers a tile-based cyberpu...

Superfrog is a cheerful platform adventure starring a frog who has somehow found himself in a world filled with enemies, obstacles, coins, and enough dangerous gaps to make amphibi...

No guns. No glory. Just two invisible players navigating a weird Tron-like maze to steal each other’s flag. Capture the Flag is what you get when someone says “let&rsqu...

Normality is a first-person adventure video game developed by Gremlin Interactive and released in 1996. The game is set in a dystopian future where a totalitarian regime known as t...

Rock 'n Roll is a 1989 DOS puzzle game that combines rolling-ball mechanics with increasingly elaborate mazes and obstacles. Players guide a ball through levels filled with hazards...

Sanitarium is a 1998 psychological horror adventure that follows a mysterious protagonist who awakens in an asylum with no memory of how he got there. As the story unfolds, players...

Holiday World Tycoon is the sort of game that feels like it was designed after someone spent a bit too long staring at a postcard rack in an airport gift shop and thought, &ld...

Ganja Farmer is a small, deliberately unusual farming simulation built around a subject that conventional agricultural software tends to avoid mentioning. The basic idea is familia...

Wizard of Wor 98 revisits the classic maze-shooter concept and gives it a late-1990s computer makeover. Players move through labyrinthine arenas while hunting monsters, dodging att...

Dive into Aquanox (2001), where post-apocalyptic submarines battle it out beneath the ocean in a world that’s half Waterworld, half neon rave. With moody lighting and dialogu...

Legions, released in 1994, offers a strategic experience where careful planning consistently outperforms reckless aggression. Players command military forces across challenging bat...

Monuments of Mars (1991) is one of those puzzle-platformers where patience is less a virtue and more a survival tool. You’re stranded on Mars, exploring alien ruins filled wi...

Zeitgeist — also known as Jupiter Strike in some markets — is a PlayStation-era space shooter that boldly says: "Let’s do Star Fox, but with less personality and ...

Overdrive is a fast-paced driving game built around the pleasures of speed, aggressive maneuvering, and trying not to turn your vehicle into an expensive collection of pixels. The ...

Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space is a compact space strategy game built around exploration, discovery, trading, combat, and the delightful possibility that your carefully pla...