The most popular urban setting games

The Bard's Tale: Tales of the Unknown was developed by Interplay Productions and published by Electronic Arts for DOS and other systems. The game takes place in the fictional city of Skara Brae, which is overrun by monsters a...

Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released in 1995 as a sequel to the original Gabriel Knight game, "Sins of the Fathers". The game was designe...

Road Rash is an abandoned motorcycle racing game developed by Papyrus Design Group and released by Electronic Arts in 1996. Road Rash runs on Windows XP/98/95 but was also published for Amiga, Sega Genesis, Sega Master System, 3DO...

In Crazy Taxi, subtlety is for losers. Your mission: drive a cab like a maniac, pick up passengers, and deliver them to their destination faster than they can scream. Set to a punk-rock soundtrack that refuses to let you relax, ev...

In Grand Theft Auto the player takes the role of a criminal who can freely roam around the city (Liberty City) completing tasks for the local mobs: stealing cars, killing pedestrians, all of it while avoiding the police and the ar...

Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards is the debut title in the Leisure Suit Larry series, created by Al Lowe and originally published by Sierra On-Line in 1987. The game follows Larry Laffer, a leisure-suit-wearing...

Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel is an adventure game released in 1987 by Sierra On-Line, designed by former police officer Jim Walls. It's the first installment in the Police Quest series and is known for its realistic...

Grand Theft Auto 2 is the second chapter in the successful Grand Theft Auto series. GTA 2 is an abandoned top-down action-adventure / driving hybrid game developed by DMA Design and released by Rockstar Games in 1999 for various p...

SimCity 2000 is a classic city building simulation, part of the popular SimCity series, developed by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. SimCity 2000 is a huge step up from the 2D predecessor SimCity and boasts improvements like: i...

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is an open-world action-adventure game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games in 2002. It's the fourth main entry in the GTA series and serves as a spiritual successor to Grand Thef...

You are a cat. Not a cool panther or a mystical tiger. Just a good old alley cat trying to make it through a day full of brooms, angry dogs, and questionable fish. Alley Cat is a fever dream of a platformer, where you leap between...

SimCity (or SimCity Classic) is a popular city building simulation in which you, the mayor of a city, have to build a metropolis from the ground up. You can build police and fire departments, assign industrial, residential or comm...

If spreadsheets are your love language, Capitalism 2 is pure romance. This brutally detailed simulation lets you create your own corporate empire from scratch—manufacturing, retail, real estate, stock markets... even farming...

Bigger, bolder, and with more statues of yourself than ever, Caesar 2 builds on its predecessor like Rome after a good tax season. Now you get to manage both cities and provinces, making sure barbarians don’t redecorate your...

Dope Wars is a text-based simulation game that originated as a DOS program in the early 1980s, but gained popularity in its Windows version released in 1998. The game puts players in the role of a drug dealer navigating the underg...

In Carmageddon, winning a race is just one of three options—the other two involve mowing down pedestrians or wrecking your opponents. It’s the game your parents definitely didn’t want you playing, and that’...

Lincity-NG is an open-source city simulation game and a continuation of the original Lincity game. The "NG" stands for "New Generation." The game is designed to be a city-building and management simulation where players take on th...

Rise of the Dragon is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Dynamix in 1990. It was originally released for MS-DOS and later ported to other platforms such as the Amiga and Sega CD. The game is set in a cyber...

SimTower is an old Windows 3.x (1994) building and business simulation game where the player is tasked with the management of a skyscraper nonetheless. Raise floors, build apartments, shops, offices and try to avoid bankruptcy if ...

Midtown Madness is a car racing game developed by Angel Studios (later known as Rockstar San Diego) and released by Microsoft in 1999 for Windows. Midtown Madness is known for its open-world design, allowing players to e...

Ever dreamt of running ancient Rome without the toga chafing? Caesar hands you the reins of a budding province and expects you to not burn it to the ground—ideally. This city-builder mixes SimCity with Latin homework. Sure, ...

Jones in the Fast Lane is the kind of game that you don't see often these days. It's a mix between a digital board game and a modern day life simulation. The goal of the game is to live the life of Jones, making choices about scho...

The Blues Brothers is a platformer that follows the adventures of Jake and Elwood Blues as they try to put their band back together. The player controls one of the Blues Brothers through various levels, each filled with obstacles,...

The spiritual sequel to SimTower, Yoot Tower asks the important question: what if you were god, but only over elevators, sushi bars, and the occasional alien invasion? It’s a sandbox of capitalism, letting you build the vert...

Before co-op brawlers were everywhere, there was Double Dragon (1988 on DOS). Two brothers, one kidnapped girlfriend, and enough street thugs to populate a small city—that’s the setup. The game is all about walking rig...

Let’s be honest: Cobra Mission is remembered less for its RPG mechanics and more for its... risqué content. The first “eroge” RPG translated into English, it’s basically a detective story with lots o...