DOS Games Are Alive and Well on Itch.io

people investigating a safe
Quid Pro Quo

Despite the Industry moving on from DOS decades ago, Itch.io has an incredibly active community of folks making games for DOS, that folks to play on their retro computers and emulators. DOSember, the annual streaming event on Twitch where people play DOS games, just wrapped up their first DOS game jam on Itch.io. The jam received 39 submissions, which I think is a fantastic number of new games for something the games industry and tech world decided was “dead” decades ago. There’s a lot of fantastic stuff in there for you all to play with. They’re all free but if a game is taking donations, consider tossing a dollar or two to the games you like. And since it’s DOSember, consider streaming some of these brand new games.

top down view of someone shooting at monsters
Europa Panic

If that wasn’t enough, there’s been DOS games being published on Itch before that. THP put together a list of DOS games made for jams I hosted and there’s so many good games in here. There’s a few paid games as well that I think are worth supporting, especially since the exoDOS project threw the games in their torrent and doing nothing to support these devs. THP also made this free DOS demo disc, like in the old days of shareware. Go check the list and demo disc out!

person skiing down a hill
Did you know the original version of SkiFree isn’t actually a DOS game? It’s true!

Finally, there’s plenty more for you to check out on Itch. Poke around the site and check out tags such as the msdos and DOS tags and games like The Aching and Hibernated 1. You’ll find many more DOS games to play and enjoy!

pixel art of an office and some wizard stuff like a staff and monster head hanging on the walls
Quest for Erasmus

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