The most popular science fiction games

When Bungie released Marathon, it offered far more than fast shooting by combining exciting combat with an unusually deep science fiction narrative delivered through computer termi...

Beneath a Steel Sky is a classic point-and-click adventure game released in 1994, developed by Revolution Software. Set in a dystopian, cyberpunk future, the game is renowned for i...

By the time Laser Squad reached DOS in 1992, its reputation as a superb tactical strategy game was already well deserved. Every mission demands thoughtful positioning, careful use ...

Solar Winds 2: Galaxy continues the space exploration and trading adventure established by its predecessor, giving players a large science-fiction environment to explore. The game ...

Wipeout is a futuristic racing game built around speed, aggressive competition, and vehicles that apparently have no interest whatsoever in ordinary road safety. The anti-gravity c...

Star Saga: Two - The Clathran Menace continues the science-fiction role-playing adventure of its predecessor, expanding the story and sending players deeper into a galaxy threatene...

Time Slaughter is a fighting game that embraces the wonderfully excessive attitude of 1990s arcade combat. Its roster of bizarre characters is more interested in beating each other...

Galaxian is one of those early arcade classics that proved space shooters didn’t need complicated rules to be thrilling. Instead of aliens politely marching in formation, the...

Billy’s babysitter has been abducted by aliens, and he’s not having it. Commander Keen 6: Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter! is the series at its most Saturday-morning-cartoon ...

Before Keen went full-on galactic hero, he had a Keen Dreams. Literally. This midquel drops him in a dreamscape ruled by King Boobus Tuber (yes, really), where vegetables are evil ...

Robo Rumble is a 1998 Windows action game built around battles between heavily armed robots in futuristic arenas. Players control a combat machine, maneuver around the battlefield,...

Space Hulk is a 1993 tactical game based on the Warhammer 40,000 board game, placing squads of Space Marines inside enormous abandoned spacecraft known as hulks. These dark corrido...

Flashback: The Quest for Identity feels like a playable sci-fi movie that misplaced its budget but kept its ambition. You wake up with amnesia, which is gaming shorthand for &ldquo...

Then there’s Martian Dreams, the Ultima game where you travel to Mars in the 19th century with none other than Sigmund Freud and Nikola Tesla. Yes, it’s as delightfully...

Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? adds a particularly nasty complication to the usual Carmen formula: the criminals are not merely running around the world, they are jumping throug...

If Frontier: Elite 2 opened the door to a vast universe, Frontier: First Encounters in 1995 basically kicked it wide open and invited you to wander in. This sequel expands the form...

Before Half-Life, there was Chasm: The Rift, a game where time-traveling mutants explode into limbs and every room looks like it was decorated by a doom-metal band. A first-person ...

Starflight is a 1986 science-fiction role-playing and exploration game that gives players an entire galaxy to investigate. You command a starship, travel between planets, land on a...

StarCraft is Blizzard's landmark 1998 real-time strategy game, bringing three radically different factions into a fast, competitive struggle for control of the Koprulu Sector. The ...

Take American football, remove the rules, add swords and fireballs, and throw in some screaming. That is Brutal Sports Football. This is not about touchdowns. This is about surviva...

Dreamweb (1994) went full dark cyberpunk, and it didn’t pull its punches. You play Ryan, a man convinced he’s on a mission from mysterious forces to kill seven people w...

Fade to Black (1995) aims high and mostly lands on its feet, delivering a cinematic science-fiction adventure that feels ambitious even today. As a sequel to Flashback, it keeps th...

Yes, it’s called Fish!, and yes, it’s as quirky as the exclamation mark suggests. This is a puzzle-platformer with personality, placing you in surreal environments that...

Star Goose! is a 1988 arcade-style space shooter with a wonderfully eccentric title and an equally straightforward mission: fly through hostile environments, shoot enemies, and try...

Few adventure games establish their unsettling atmosphere as quickly as Manhunter: New York. Set in a future where alien overseers dominate Earth, the story places you in the uncom...

Utopia: The Creation of a Nation challenges you to build and manage a society, which sounds noble until everything starts going wrong at once. Released in 1992, it blends simulatio...

Comix Zone (1995, Windows XP) is what happens when a comic book artist gets pulled into his own creation and reacts by roundhouse-kicking everything in sight. Stylized to the max, ...

In Altered Destiny, a perfectly average guy named P.J. Barrett gets sucked into a bizarre alien dimension because he answered a phone call. Seriously. What follows is a classic poi...

BloodNet combines vampires, cyberspace, and noir in a cocktail so strange it probably shouldn’t work but somehow does. You are a hacker who just got bitten by a vampire and n...

Deus Ex is a critically acclaimed action role-playing video game developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos Interactive. It was released in 2000 and was designed by Warren Spect...