The best top down games

Empire Soccer 94 is football stripped of glamour and presented with a straight face that makes everything unintentionally funny. There are no licenses, no famous players, and no at...

Inindo: Way of the Ninja is a Japanese role-playing adventure that combines exploration, combat, character development, and the colorful setting of feudal Japan. You play as a ninj...

Mortal Pong takes the simplest possible tennis-inspired game and gives it an absurdly dramatic fighting-game twist. The result is exactly as strange as the title suggests: players ...

Pong Kombat is a 1994 DOS game that combines the simplicity of Pong with the exaggerated excitement of fighting games. The result is an unusual mixture where bouncing a ball across...

Subbuteo brings the famous tabletop football game to the computer, attempting to capture the peculiar magic of flicking tiny players around a pitch without requiring an actual dini...

Tie Break turns tennis into a compact computer simulation where timing, positioning, and a good understanding of the court matter more than frantic button pressing. The game captur...

Titan is an action-puzzle game built around a small craft navigating increasingly dangerous environments filled with obstacles and enemies. Success depends on movement, timing and ...

Tunneler is a wonderfully simple two-player game built around one extremely important idea: dig toward your opponent and try not to crash into the scenery first. Each player contro...

Turbo Gomoku takes the ancient Japanese board game Gomoku and gives it a suitably computerised makeover. The rules are wonderfully simple: players place stones on a grid and attemp...

Batalia (1986) is what happens when war games and spreadsheet programs fall in love. This early DOS strategy title throws you into tactical battles with graphics that would struggl...

Windwalker (Moebius 2) is a fantasy adventure that follows the successful tradition of combining exploration, combat, character development, and a large world into one ambitious pa...

Despite its ominous title, Lord of Destruction from 1994 is less about theatrical villainy and more about classic DOS-era ambition. This is a game that wants to be big, dark, and d...

Microsoft Hearts is a digital adaptation of the classic trick-taking card game, and it became another famously distracting member of the Windows software family. The objective is s...

Shanghai II: Dragon’s Eye (1990, Windows 3.x/Mac) takes the serene logic of mahjong solitaire and wraps it in a calm, almost meditative presentation. Tiles stack in intricate...

Released in 1994, Alien Olympics answers the age-old question: “What if the Olympics were hosted by Martians on acid?” This wacky collection of mini-games has you compe...

Final Frontier is a late-80s slice of space ambition, the kind that assumes you’re perfectly happy staring at menus while imagining epic interstellar conquest. It’s str...

Gremlins is what happens when someone decides that cute, chaotic movie creatures should be turned into a game that is slightly less cute and a lot more confusing. In Gremlins, you ...

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...

There’s a quiet ambition to First Expedition, a game that invites you into exploration with a mix of curiosity and caution. It doesn’t rush; instead, it nudges you forw...

Flame Dragon Plus: Marks of Wind is a Japanese-style role-playing game with a strong emphasis on fantasy adventure, character development, exploration, and tactical battles. Player...

The wonderfully direct title If It Moves, Shoot It! leaves little room for misunderstanding. Released in 1989, it is a side-scrolling shooter where diplomacy is not among the avail...

Quest for the Unicorn is a 1990 fantasy adventure that sends players on a quest involving magic, danger, and the sort of mythical creature that is never simply standing around wait...

Pictionary: The Game of Quick Draw is a 1989 adaptation of the popular drawing and guessing board game, bringing the creativity and chaos of group play to the computer. Players att...

Storm is a strategy game built around the classic idea that controlling an entire world is much easier when nobody can complain about your management style. The game challenges you...

Poko Memorial: 18 Hole Miniature Golf is a 1987 DOS golf game that focuses on the lighter and more playful side of the sport. Instead of professional courses and serious tournament...