The best shareware games

Blades of Exile is a classic role-playing video game developed by Spiderweb Software. It's the third installment in the "Exile" series. The game was released in 1997 for Mac OS, an...

Aleshar: World of Ice is what happens when someone says, “Let’s make an RPG, but crank the realism to 11.” Set in a cold, brutal land where your sword arm is only...

Mario Bros VGA is a fan made remake of the original Mario Bros by Nintendo, the game that popularized the character of Mario, the Italian plumber that first appeared in Donkey Kong...

Despite the baffling title (Book I – Chapter 2, yes, really), this is a charmingly earnest old-school RPG. Think “Ultima clone with extra oatmeal” and you're clos...

Aldo Again (1989) is the platformer that dares to say, “Hey, what if Donkey Kong but with 100% more confusion?” You play as Aldo, a mustachioed man of mystery (and ques...

Before Titanic was a movie with a lot of weeping, there was Beyond the Titanic, a text adventure where surviving the iceberg is just the beginning. The game takes the historic disa...

Galactix continues the grand space-shooter tradition with enthusiasm and a healthy disregard for your survival odds. You control a small but determined ship facing waves of enemy f...

SkyGlobe is an astronomy software that was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was a DOS-based planetarium program that allowed users to explore the night sky in real-tim...

Xenophage: Alien BloodSport is a fighting game that leans heavily into its bizarre premise, featuring grotesque alien combatants battling it out in brutal arenas. It is unapologeti...

She’s pink, she’s fast, and she’s got a bow. CHAMP Ms. Pac-man reimagines the iconic maze-chaser with smooth controls and new levels while keeping that glorious m...

Escape from Delirium feels like someone took a pulp adventure novel, dipped it in a bucket of chaos, and fed it to a DOS system. You wake up with amnesia (because of course you do)...

In the Dead of Night is one of those mid-90s DOS oddities that feels like it crawled straight out of a programmer’s personal nightmares. Part adventure, part horror, and part...

Armchair Quarterback lets you live the dream of yelling at your TV — but on your DOS machine, and with even less control. It’s part simulator, part quiz show, and all w...

Temple of Kroz blends puzzle-solving with arcade reflexes, creating a strange but compelling hybrid. You navigate traps, monsters, and bizarre hazards while collecting gems and try...

Before space marines were gritty and everything exploded in brown and grey, there was The Adventures of Captain Comic. This is early PC platforming in all its clunky, jumpy, 4-colo...

Dark Designs 2: Closing the Gate picks up right where the first game left off, with your party stumbling into yet another world-threatening mess. The stakes are higher, the enemies...

Aldo’s Adventure is what you get when someone squints at Donkey Kong and decides to remake it after four cups of coffee and a long nap. You play Aldo, a brave little guy whos...