The best top down games

Ever dreamed of a medieval Wall Street where knights swap swords instead of stocks? Knight Exchange turns that fever dream into pixels. Released in 1988 for DOS, this quirky strate...

Long before comic-book games became blockbuster spectacles, The Punisher (1990, DOS) delivered gritty vigilante action with a side of pixelated attitude. You step into Frank Castle...

Ajax (1989) is like an arcade fever dream: vertical shooter, transforming vehicles, lasers everywhere, and a soundtrack that yells “blast stuff!” every few seconds. One...

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...

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...

Don’t let the cartoony name fool you: Skullduggery: Adventures in Horror wants to unsettle you, and it’s surprisingly good at it. This early horror adventure mixes clas...

Heavy Barrel is an action game that embraces chaos with enthusiasm, throwing enemies at you in a way that feels both overwhelming and oddly satisfying. The gameplay is straightforw...

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...

Telengard is one of the earliest computer role-playing games, released in 1982 for various home computers like the Commodore 64, Apple II, and TRS-80 and later for PC. It was devel...

Black Hole (1993) is a space shooter where you're thrown into the gravitational madness of, you guessed it, a black hole. The physics are wild, the enemies are relentless, and you&...

Finally, a game for people who think solitaire is just too wild. Bridge 7.0 is the digital equivalent of sipping tea with your grandparents while arguing about trumps and bidding s...

Imagine being a bouncing ball in a series of floating sky islands full of monsters, traps, and puzzles. Welcome to Cloud Kingdoms, where the laws of physics politely take a backsea...

Long before indie developers made “roguelike” a buzzword, someone decided to fuse Doom with permadeath and ASCII graphics. The result: Doom: The Roguelike (2005). On pa...

House of Cards offers a straightforward card-playing experience that focuses on simplicity rather than spectacle. Released in 1989, it provides a digital space to enjoy classic car...

Back in 1985, Cavequest asked: what if you mixed ASCII graphics with deadly bats and claustrophobia? The answer: a punishingly hard maze crawler that’ll have you screaming at...