The most popular top down games

Imagine being a bouncing ball in a series of floating sky islands full of monsters, traps, and puzzles. Welcome to Cloud Kingdoms, where the laws of physics politely take a backsea...

The original Grand Theft Auto drops you into a city where rules are more of a suggestion than an obligation. In Grand Theft Auto, you play from a top-down perspective that somehow ...

Grand Theft Auto 2 refines the original formula and then adds more attitude, more chaos, and more ways to get into trouble. In Grand Theft Auto 2, gangs matter, reputation matters,...

Sid Meier’s Civilization is the game that tricked an entire generation into loving history, city planning, and the occasional world domination. Starting with a tribe of stick...

Civilization II is a turn-based strategy game developed by MicroProse and released in 1996. It's the second installment in the "Civilization" series, created by Sid Meier. The game...

Princess Maker 2 is a 1993 life simulation game where players take responsibility for raising a young girl and guiding her future. Instead of controlling a warrior or explorer, pla...

Ultima 7 is often hailed as the crown jewel of the series, and with good reason. It throws you into an open world that feels startlingly alive, even decades later. Townsfolk go abo...

Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness is the sequel that helped turn Blizzard fantasy real-time strategy formula into one of the defining PC experiences of the 1990s. Released in 1995, it ...

Volfied is a deceptively simple arcade puzzle game in which drawing lines is far more dangerous than it sounds. The basic idea is straightforward: your little craft moves around a ...

Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2 expands the historical strategy formula of its predecessor, offering a deeper simulation of warfare, politics, economics, and diplomacy during China...

Command & Conquer: Red Alert is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game developed by Westwood Studios and published by Virgin Interactive in 1996. It is part of the Command &...

Dune 2000 is an abandoned science fiction classic real-time strategy game based on the popular Dune franchise. The Dune "universe" took form in the books of science ficti...

Soko-Ban is the classic 1984 DOS adaptation of the deceptively simple puzzle concept in which the player pushes crates onto designated spaces. There is one important catch: crates ...

Albion is a science fiction role-playing game (RPG) developed and published by German studio Blue Byte Software. It was released in 1995 for MS-DOS and later for Amiga. Albion...

Back in 1992, Sensible Soccer arrived and proved that football games did not need dozens of buttons or endless realism to become addictive. Tiny players with oversized heads sprint...

Starflight is a 1986 science-fiction role-playing and exploration game that gives players an entire galaxy to investigate. You command a starship, travel between planets, land on a...

Before Remedy Entertainment was known for moody shooters and mind-bending narratives, they gave us Death Rally in 1996—a top-down racer with a mean streak. Imagine Mario Kart...

SimFarm takes the simulation philosophy of Maxis and moves it away from skyscrapers and into the countryside. Players manage a farm, choosing crops, raising livestock, buying equip...

Star Trek: Birth of the Federation is a turn-based strategy video game set in the Star Trek universe. The game was developed by MicroProse Software and published by Infogrames for ...

In Ultima 6, you finally meet the Gargoyles, who aren’t the snarling monsters everyone assumed—they’re just misunderstood neighbors with a different perspective. ...

Heroes of Might and Magic offers a strategic playground where armies march, heroes grow stronger, and time seems to disappear without warning. It has that classic “just one more ...

SimCity (AKA SimCity Classic) is the game that turned urban planning into one of the most addictive forms of procrastination ever invented. Released in 1989, it lets play...

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...

Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons takes everything its predecessor attempted and refines it into something richer and more engaging. Released in 1995, it expands the scope with mult...

Telengard is one of the earliest computer role-playing games, released in 1982 for various home computers like the Commodore 64, Apple II, and TRS-80 and later for PC. It was devel...

Micro Machines turns ordinary household environments into enormous racing circuits where tiny cars roar across tables, kitchen counters, and other places that definitely were not d...

Romance of the Three Kingdoms 3: Dragon of Destiny continues the series' detailed treatment of ancient Chinese history, giving players control over rulers attempting to unite a fra...

4Play was a risqué trivia and multi-player board-style game released in the mid-1990s. Designed as a party game, it combined trivia questions, mini-games, and challenge...

Rome wasn’t built in a day—but you’ll conquer it in one afternoon. Centurion (1990) lets you play as a Roman commander with delusions of grandeur and a thing for ...

If you’ve ever dreamed of becoming a ruthless tycoon without being yelled at by shareholders, Entrepreneur (1997, Windows) is your playground. It throws you into a fierce wor...