The best abandonware rpg games

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...

Before Wake of the Ravager, there was Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, the first CRPG to bring Athas to life. It was a bold departure from the usual Gold Box formula, with more freedom i...

Circuit's Edge is a cyberpunk-themed role-playing game developed by Westwood Associates and published by Infocom. It was released in 1990 for MS-DOS. Set in a dystopian future, Cir...

Dark Sun 2: Wake of the Ravager takes the harsh desert world of Athas and turns up the intensity. Building on its predecessor, it offers deeper role-playing, improved combat, and a...

By 1994, RPG fans were spoiled with titles like Might and Magic and Ultima. Then along came Disciples of Steel, a brutally complex, turn-based fantasy epic for DOS. It drops you in...

Elona looks innocent, almost cute, and then immediately proves it has no interest in your comfort. This roguelike RPG is bizarre, unpredictable, and gleefully cruel. You can become...

Escape from Hell asks the important question: what if escaping the underworld were less Dante and more sarcastic road trip? You descend into a demon-infested landscape armed with d...

Icewind Dale arrived in 2000 as a frosty sibling to the Baldur's Gate formula, trading political intrigue for glorious dungeon crawling in the forgotten corners of the Forgotten Re...

Keef the Thief: A Boy and his Lockpick refuses to take fantasy role-playing too seriously, filling its world with eccentric characters, witty dialogue, and situations that regularl...

Keys to Maramon is a role-playing game developed by Mindcraft Software and released in 1990 for the Amiga, MS-DOS, and Commodore 64 platforms. The game is set in the same universe ...

Phantasie 3: The Wrath of Nikademus continues the fantasy role-playing series with a larger adventure, stronger enemies, and an even greater challenge for returning heroes. Players...

Shadows Over Riva caps the trilogy with a confident stride. The graphics receive a welcome upgrade, the atmosphere takes a darker turn, and the narrative leans heavily into detecti...

Reaping The Dungeon is a 1993 DOS dungeon adventure centered on exploration, combat, and the traditional pleasures of crawling through dangerous underground environments. Players v...

Shard of Spring (1987, DOS) is a role-playing adventure from an era when mapping dungeons on graph paper was practically mandatory. You assemble a party and set out on a quest fill...

The Bard's Tale 2: The Destiny Knight expands the original formula with a larger world, tougher enemies, new locations, and another opportunity to discover that adventuring is most...

Vengeance of Excalibur is a fantasy role-playing adventure built around the legendary sword Excalibur and a suitably grand quest involving magic, monsters, and medieval intrigue. P...

Wizard's Crown is a classic fantasy role-playing game that gives players a party of adventurers, a dangerous world, and a generous supply of reasons to regret entering the nearest ...

Before Ultima 1 came along, role-playing games on PC were about as sophisticated as a pocket calculator. Then Richard Garriott threw players into a digital world full of space trav...

Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (1993) is a classic first-person RPG that understands pacing better than many of its peers. It offers a rich fantasy world, memorable characters,...

Bigger, darker, and just as merciless, Dungeon Master II: The Legend of Skullkeep doubled down on everything that made the first game great—and slightly unhinged. Released in...

Battlespire is the weird, dark cousin of the Elder Scrolls family - the one who shows up late to the reunion with a sword and no pants. This first-person RPG strips out all the com...

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 ...

If you’ve ever thought The Lord of the Rings needed more ASCII and fewer hobbit feelings, Angband is your jam. Since 1992, this dungeon-crawling roguelike has been throwing p...

If you ever wanted to explore endless, procedurally generated tunnels filled with monsters, traps, and the occasional existential crisis, Dungeon Crawl is your kind of misery. Rele...

If Sorcerer Lord was about controlling armies, Sorcerian (1990, DOS) zooms in to the party level — a side-scrolling RPG that’s as odd as it is ambitious. You build a te...

Stonekeep is a first-person fantasy dungeon crawler with an appropriately unpleasant central premise: the kingdom has been attacked, evil has taken over, and you are expected to cl...

Darklands is what happens when medieval Europe gets even darker than it already was. This 1992 RPG drops you into the Holy Roman Empire, but don’t expect knights in shining a...

In Might and Magic 2: Gates to Another World, the designers apparently decided that the best way to reward players for finishing the first game was to throw them into a world that ...

Might and Magic Book One: Secret of the Inner Sanctum is the place where the whole saga begins, and it proudly carries the wild ambition of early computer RPGs. The land of Varn is...

Whale's Voyage is a quirky science-fiction adventure that combines exploration, trading, combat, and a surprisingly large amount of freedom. Despite the title, you are not spending...