abandonware games sorted by popularity

Hugo’s House of Horrors is a classic example of early adventure gaming, complete with pixelated graphics and puzzles that require a mix of logic and guesswork. Released in 1990, ...

Becoming a Renaissance ruler is complicated enough without everyone around you plotting something. Machiavelli the Prince transforms politics into an engaging strategy game where d...

Dark Legions is a 1994 strategy gem that asks: what if Archon got a DOS makeover with bloodier battles? You command armies of fantastical creatures, from vampires to trolls, across...

1893: A World's Fair Mystery is an interactive fiction game developed by the American studio Illuminated Lantern and released in 2002. Set during the Chicago World's Columbian Expo...

With Battle Isle 2200 (1994), the series goes full 3D cinematic—with cutscenes so dramatic you’d think they were auditioning for a soap opera in space. The gameplay is ...

Amerzone is like stepping into a dream where logic is optional and atmosphere is everything. You play a journalist unraveling the mystery of a dying explorer’s last journey, ...

More smoke-filled backrooms than a noir film and enough slot machines to trigger déjà vu—Caesars Palace is your low-res Vegas getaway. You're given a pile of ch...

Exile II: Crystal Souls is the kind of RPG that quietly sneaks into your life and then refuses to leave your thoughts. Released in 1996, it looks humble, even a bit scruffy, but be...

La Abadía del Crimen (1987) is famously unforgiving, and it knows it. Inspired by Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, this is an isometric adventure where breaking the...

Dragon Lord (1990) is what happens when you let a fantasy novelist design a strategy game. You’re a would-be sorcerer trying to raise dragons, manage villages, and conquer la...

The Operative: No One Lives Forever is a first-person shooter with stealth gameplay elements, developed by Monolith Productions and released by Fox Interactive in 2000 for Windows,...

18th Airborne is what happens when a military recruitment pamphlet and a tactical shooter have a baby. You’re thrown into the boots of a paratrooper with a mission, a gun, an...

Cosmic Spacehead is a cheerful point-and-click adventure wrapped in platformer segments, starring a purple alien who’s equal parts explorer and goofball. You’ll travel ...

Magnetic Scrolls was one of the finest developer companies dedicated to Interactive Fiction. The Magnetic Scrolls Collection is a trilogy of Magnenic Scrolls adventures remade usin...

Step into a dungeon, take a left at the creepy skeleton, and say hello to Bloodwych, the 1989 DOS game that proves co-op first-person dungeon crawling can be both confusing and odd...

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption is an action role-playing game released in 2000 by Nihilistic Software and published by Activision. It is based on the "Vampire: The Masquerade...

Back in 1990, Legend of Faerghail was what you played if you wanted a role-playing experience both grand and slightly unforgiving. A German-developed RPG, it combined dungeon crawl...

By 1994, point-and-click adventures were everywhere, but Dragonsphere carved out its niche with lush graphics, an intriguing plot, and plenty of puzzles. You play a young king task...

In Druglord, you’re back on the mean streets, older, wiser, and with slightly better ASCII. Think of it as Drug Wars’s bigger, nastier cousin. You start broke, deal wit...

Igor: Objective Uikokahonia—or however many vowels you can fit into that kingdom's name—arrived in 1995 as a delightfully oddball adventure game. Its humor leans absurd, its pu...