The best isometric games

Castles is what happens when SimCity meets Game of Thrones. You design your own fortress, manage the budget, and tell unruly peasants why the walls are more important than food. Be...

Baldur's Gate a fantasy RPG set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe which is regarded as the RPG that brought new life in a dying genre in the late 90s. Baldur's Gate was d...

In Airball (1987), you don’t play a knight, a space marine, or a plumber - you play a literal ball of air. Trapped in an isometric nightmare of spikes, fans, and poison gas, ...

In Contraption Zack, you play as a kid with more mechanical gadgets than common sense. Your job? Fix a series of increasingly absurd machines in a puzzle platformer that’s eq...

Don’t let the tongue-twister title fool you—Divine Divinity is a classic in the sprawling world of RPGs. Think of it as Diablo’s eccentric cousin who insists on t...

Dominus (1994) is what happens when a tower defense game and an RPG get thrown into a medieval blender. You’re tasked with defending your castle from wave after wave of enemi...

Imagine X-COM but with fewer excuses to blame the developers when you miss a 95% chance shot—because in UFO 2000 (2004), the chaos was entirely player-driven. A free, open-so...

With a name like Dink Smallwood, you’d expect something ridiculous—and you’d be right. Released in 1998 for Windows XP, this action RPG follows a pig farmer with ...

D/Generation is a slick blend of action, puzzle-solving, and corporate dystopia. You’re a courier dropped into a high-security biotech facility to deliver a package, only to ...

Set in the far-off future of 1992, Battle Chess 4000 brings space-age flair to intergalactic checkmate. Now your queen is a laser-wielding dominatrix and your pawns might be robots...

SimTown is a city-building simulation game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. It was released in 1995 as a spin-off of the immensely popular SimCity series. Unlik...

Dungeon Keeper 2 took everything its predecessor did and gave it a demonic polish. Slicker graphics, full 3D environments, and imps that finally looked like they deserved a raise. ...

Sid Meier took one look at Earth and said, “Let’s leave this dump.” Thus, Alpha Centauri (1999, Windows XP) was born - a 4X strategy game that takes Civilization ...

Lemonade Tycoon is a business simulation game that allows players to run their own virtual lemonade stand and try to turn it into a successful and profitable business. The game typ...

The Sims, released in 2000, marked the beginning of the iconic life simulation series. Developed by Maxis and designed by Will Wright, the game quickly became a cultural phenomenon...

Ever dreamt of running ancient Rome without the toga chafing? Caesar hands you the reins of a budding province and expects you to not burn it to the ground—ideally. This city...

The original Crusader: No Remorse sets the tone for the series: brutal, explosive, and unapologetically action-focused. You’re a rogue operative taking on a dystopian corpora...

HeroQuest is a classic video game adaptation of the popular board game HeroQuest, released in 1991 by Gremlin Interactive. HeroQuest faithfully recreates the turn-based, ...

You are Sherlock Holmes, and someone has committed a crime, possibly because they couldn’t handle the game’s UI. 221B Baker Street is a detective board game where your ...

Combat Chess (1997, Windows XP) takes the cerebral game of kings and adds swords, screams, and shameless violence. Every piece battle-animates into Mortal Kombat-lite fights when y...

With a name like Genocide (1996), you know you’re not in for a lighthearted romp. This DOS platformer is dark, moody, and filled with enemies that seem genetically engineered...