The best top down games

7 Colors is one of those puzzle games that sounds simple on paper but ends up consuming your entire afternoon before you even realize it. Released in 1991 for DOS, it throws you in...

The Temple of Apshai Trilogy is a series of classic role-playing games developed by Automated Simulations (later known as Epyx) in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These games were ...

In Battle Master (1991), you play as a heavily armored murder-hobo leading an army across a fantasy world that really doesn’t want you there. It’s part action-RPG, part...

This 1992 DOS version of Scrabble takes the world’s most civilized word battle and turns it into a duel between man and silicon. The AI opponent doesn’t cheat (much), b...

Azalta: Cult of the Raven is what happens when a lone developer says, “I can make an RPG better than Ultima!” and sort of does. Released in 1996, this DOS dungeon crawl...

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...

1999’s BitStorm is what happens when someone decides to make a strategy game and forgets to put the brakes on the caffeine. It’s fast, it’s furious, and you&rsquo...

Bolo Ball is a DOS game from the mid-1990s. It features a physics-based gameplay where the objective is to knock opponent balls out of an arena. When you start the game, you find y...

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...

Here comes another bubble game—but this one packs a punch. Bubble Trouble is a frantic shoot-’em-up where you pop evil bouncing bubbles before they bounce you out of ex...

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 ...

Dungeon Explorer takes the term “dungeon” very seriously—there’s a lot of it, and not much else. Released in 1990, this top-down adventure is part RPG, part...

England Championship Special (1991, DOS) is the kind of football game that doesn’t pretend to know what the Premier League will look like in 30 years—it just wants you ...

Evets is a puzzle game that proves simplicity can be deceptive. With minimal graphics and a straightforward premise, it invites you in gently before revealing its true complexity. ...

Postman Pat 3 is a retro video game based on the popular British children's television series Postman Pat. Released in 1992 by Alternative Software, it was available for platforms ...