Dark fantasy games sorted by release date

Released in 1987, Dark Castle is infamous for two things: its moody castle setting and its protagonist’s uncanny ability to slip on stairs as if they’re coated in banan...

Shadowgate is an abandoned fantasy-themed adventure game developed by ICOM Simulations and released by Mindscape in 1988 for Macintosh, DOS, and also for Amiga, Apple IIgs, At...

Blade Warrior (1991) is a side-scrolling beat 'em up that looks like it was illustrated entirely in heavy metal album covers. You’re a silhouette of rage, cutting through dem...

Elvira 2: The Jaws of Cerberus is an abandoned horror adventure/RPG hybrid game with elements of dark fantasy, developed by Horror Soft and published by Accolade for DOS in 1991. E...

Wrath of the Demon is a fantasy action-adventure game developed by the Canadian company Abstrax and published by ReadySoft. The game was released in 1991 for the Amiga, Atari ST, a...

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...

Super Cauldron is a platforming game developed by Titus Interactive and released in 1993 for platforms like MS-DOS, Amiga, and Amstrad CPC. In the game, you play as a witch on...

Blackthorne (1994) is what happens when a '90s action hero gets lost in a side-scrolling alien world and decides to shoot everything until it makes sense. You’re Kyle, a shot...

Witchaven is an abandoned fantasy first-person shooter (or "slasher", since you'll wield melee weapons) developed by Capstone and released by IntraCorp in 1995 for DOS and Windows....

In 1996, Diablo descended onto PCs and basically defined the “click until everything dies” genre. The gothic town of Tristram sits atop a dungeon stuffed with demons, l...

Inner Worlds is the kind of side-scroller that sneaks up on you. At first, it’s a fantasy action-platformer—monsters, dungeons, the usual—but then you discover th...

Mageslayer is an action game developed by Raven Software and published by GT Interactive in 1997 for MS-DOS. It stands out as a top-down, hack-and-slash dungeon crawler inspired by...

The Temple of Elemental Evil is a computer role-playing game (CRPG) released in 2003 by Troika Games and published by Atari. The game is set in the World of Greyhawk, one of D...

Ghosts 'n Goblins is an iconic arcade game developed by Capcom, first released in 1985. It’s widely remembered for its challenging gameplay and its distinct horror-fantasy ae...