Dystopian games sorted by release date

Released in 1984 for DOS, Farenheit 451 is one of those early adventure games that feels like it’s constantly judging your typing skills. Loosely inspired by Bradbury’s...

If you ever wanted to play a video game that doubles as a philosophical think piece, A Mind Forever Voyaging (1985) is your ride. Released for DOS and Macintosh, this is one of Inf...

What do you get when you mix Mad Max, Car Wars, and a fondness for vehicular homicide? You get Autoduel (1985, DOS), a top-down driving RPG where your car is your castle and your g...

Roadwar 2000 is a 1987 DOS strategy game set in a post-apocalyptic America where civilization has collapsed and the roads are controlled by heavily armed gangs. Players command a c...

Roadwar Europa is a 1987 DOS strategy game that moves the post-apocalyptic road adventure into a devastated European landscape. Players command a convoy through a continent where r...

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...

Scavengers of the Mutant World (1988) takes you to a post-apocalyptic wasteland where radiation has turned most life forms into something between a potato and a death machine. Your...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Wasteland is the kind of game that quietly changed history while pretending to be just another post-apocalyptic RPG. Long before wastelands were fashionab...

Archipelagos is like a fever dream after watching too much Myst. You’re dropped onto strange, floating islands inhabited by stone monoliths and evil terrain-infecting sludge....

Sci-Mutant Priestess (1989) is French, weird, and proud of it. You play as a rebellious mutant in a post-apocalyptic, sci-fi world ruled by bio-psychic cults. Obviously. It’s...

In 1989, Deathtrack tried to answer a question nobody asked: “What if NASCAR had machine guns?” The result is a futuristic racer where speed and firepower go hand in ha...

Interphase from 1989 blends action and puzzle-solving into a futuristic arcade experience that feels distinctly experimental. Players navigate abstract environments, collecting obj...

Manhunter 2: San Francisco continues the unsettling science fiction saga with another blend of investigation, puzzle solving, and dark storytelling. Once again humanity struggles b...

Mean Streets (1989) throws you into a gritty sci-fi detective story where neon lights, flying cars, and criminal conspiracies are just part of a normal workday. You play as a priva...

Neuromancer is a 1989 adventure game inspired by William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel, and it takes players into a world of hackers, corporations, artificial intelligence, cyberspace...

Robocop is a 1989 DOS action game based on the iconic film, putting players inside the heavily armored body of the cybernetic police officer. The gameplay focuses on shooting crimi...

Set in a post-apocalyptic world where leather vests are apparently immune to radiation, Bad Blood lets you wander the wasteland deciding whether to be a brute, a brainiac, or a mut...

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...

Fountain of Dreams is a post-apocalyptic RPG that feels like a distant, slightly sunburned cousin of more famous wasteland adventures. Set in a radioactive Florida, it sends you sc...

Narco Police is a 1990 cyberpunk action game that throws the player into a future where crime has become sufficiently unpleasant to require heavily armed officers, futuristic techn...

A gloriously grimy cyberpunk romp, Ranx: The Video Game drops you in a future where technology, attitude, and questionable hygiene coexist in uneasy harmony. Based on the French co...

Rise of the Dragon is a 1990 adventure game set in a futuristic Los Angeles where organized crime, corruption, and strange technology create a dangerous urban landscape. Players ta...

Set in a futuristic detective story, Martian Memorandum combines mystery, science fiction, and classic point-and-click adventure design into an engaging investigation. Private dete...

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is one of the many adaptations of the Terminator franchise. This one is based on the movie of the same name, but it's not as good as the movie, according...

Cybercon III drops you into a cyberpunk nightmare of claustrophobic corridors, hostile robots, and oppressive AI control. You’ll navigate a massive 3D complex, solving puzzle...

Space Crusade is a 1992 DOS adaptation of the Games Workshop board game, bringing the grim science-fiction universe of Warhammer 40,000 to the computer. Players command squads of h...

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...

In Syndicate, you don’t just play the bad guy—you manage a full corporate evil empire, complete with mind-controlled agents in trench coats and a suspicious lack of HR ...

The Terminator: Rampage puts you behind the controls of a combat vehicle in a future where humanity's relationship with Skynet has gone about as badly as expected. The game combine...

Transarctica presents a wonderfully bleak vision of the future in which Earth has frozen over and surviving civilization depends on enormous trains crossing the icy wilderness. The...