The best turn based games

In the 25th century, bureaucracy is still awful—but now you also have laser guns. Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday is a surprisingly solid sci-fi RPG that blends space opera drama with crunchy tactical combat. Think Dungeons & Dragons in space, minus the dragons but with more cyborgs. The plot is melodramatic, the graphics are delightfu...

Block O Mania is what happens when a Rubik’s Cube and a sliding puzzle fall in love during a rave. Released in 1989 for DOS, this game will twist your brain into shapes it wasn’t designed for. The goal? Push blocks. Lots of them. Into place. It sounds easy until the game decides it hates you and introduces one-way paths, immovable obsta...

Secret of the Silver Blades is a fantasy RPG set in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons universe, developed and released by SSI Strategic Simulations Inc. in 1990 for DOS, Macintosh, Amiga and Commodore 64 systems. Secret of the Silver Blades is part of the Pool of Radiance series and uses the same "GoldBox" engine with isometric turn-based combat ...

UMS, short for Universal Military Simulator, is a computer-based wargame simulation developed by Rainbird Software in 1988. It was designed with the intention of providing players with a comprehensive and realistic military simulation experience.The game allows players to engage in strategic and tactical warfare across various scenarios and battlef...

With a title that sounds like a deep-sea motivational poster, Big Sea: The Better One Will Win is a maritime strategy game where the stakes are high and the water’s pixelated. Outwit your foes on the high seas while trying to figure out what exactly the game is about. Naval warfare? Diplomacy? Fish-based economics? The answer is “yes.&r...

Princess Maker 2 is a life simulation anime-style game developed by Gainax in 1993. In Princess Maker 2, the player is the father of a young princess and must tutor and raise her to the age of 18 by scheduling jobs, school classes and programming other activities. The princess is defined by attributes (strength, cooking, etc.) that will change depe...

The first Fallout game was released in 1997 by Interplay Productions and is widely regarded as one of the most influential RPGs of its time. The game begins in the year 2161, over 80 years after the nuclear war, with the player assuming the role of a resident of one of the many underground shelters known as Vaults. The player's mission is to l...

A direct sequel to Deathwatch, Ancients 2: Approaching Evil is like returning to your childhood neighborhood, except everyone’s still trying to kill you. Released in 1994, it builds on the first game’s formula by adding more monsters, spells, and slightly improved graphics that still look like a dungeon crawler built in a spreadsheet. E...