There is a pretty major caveat for Mac owners, however. Ever since the release of macOS Catalina in 2019, modern Macs can no longer run 32-bit games, which is why we sadly left classics such as Portal and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis off the list. There are workarounds, as are there for playing Windows-only games on Mac. But for the purposes of this list, we included only games that you can download and play without any knowledge of Parallels, Bootcamp or similar programs.
Video Games For Mac
Wherever you choose to purchase the best Mac games, make sure that the game is Mac-compatible (check for a little Apple symbol), and will work with the version of macOS your computer is running. The system requirements section on a store page will usually provide this information.
There are few things as soothing as a good farming sim, and Stardew Valley set a new standard for the genre when it came out in 2016. Building on the legacy of the farming-themed games that came before (most notably the Harvest Moon series), Stardew Valley adds depth to almost every system: agriculture, animal husbandry, combat, friendship, exploration and more.
Speaking of Maniac Mansion (and when are we not?), its 1993 sequel Day of the Tentacle got the remaster treatment in 2016, bringing one of the funniest, most creative games of all time to modern systems. DOTT was widely regarded as a masterpiece throughout the 90s, and unlike many other games from the era, it holds up wonderfully. Time travel? Sentient tentacles? A plan to enslave humans? Making a time capsule with Thomas Edison? Day of the Tentacle has it all.
Like other games of this nature, Firewatch is extremely narrative-focused, and incorporates themes such as the fear of the unknown, and the loneliness of self-imposed isolation. Its success in storytelling so made it a top pick among critics and players back in 2016, and six years later, its story still resonates.
Now over a decade old, this indie hit remains a sterling example of how minimalism can serve video game design. Not everything has to be over-the-top and explosive. Likewise, not every plot point needs an in-depth explanation. If nothing else, Limbo will make you think, and leave you grasping to understand its hidden meaning.
Every Apple Arcade game is handpicked to bring together an incredible variety of games for all play styles and generations. Types of games include puzzle, strategy, adventure, simulation, board, card, sports, and more.
Unfortunately in recent years a number of great games for Mac have declined because many are no longer supported. Every new version of macOS tends to break a few games, but macOS Catalina in 2019 meant that lot of games that used 32-bit code were no longer Mac compatible.
At the same time that Apple went 64-bit only it also introduced Metal for 3D graphics, which left a lot of games developers with a decision: make new Mac versions of their games or stop making them. Unfortunately many chose the latter.
Below you will find what we believe are the greatest Mac games out there, together with links to the Mac App Store, Steam and other reputable vendors, so you can buy them right away. These are the very best games for Mac. They are in alphabetical order, not in order of preference.
Company: Creative Assembly/ Feral InteractiveWhere to buy: Steam ($59.99/39.99)System requirements: macOS 10.14, 2GHz Intel Core i5, Radeon R9 M290 or Intel Iris 540 with 2GB video memory
For the first time, the 'It just works' philosophy now extends to open source video game emulation on the Mac. With OpenEmu, it is extremely easy to add, browse, organize and with a compatible gamepad, play those favorite games (ROMs) you already own.
We combine some of the best emulation projects together into one beautiful unified application that simply organizes your personal games library. Watch as you drop in backups of your games (ROMs) & they are gracefully added to their appropriate library along with original box art!
Portal was a ground-breaking title akin to the Great American Short Story of video games. Portal 2 takes the brain-bending mechanics of its predecessor and fleshes them out into a longer, more challenging story.
It will have you laughing out loud and yelling in frustration by turns, but the feeling of completing a particularly tricky level is second to none. If puzzle games are your thing, then the Portal Bundle needs to be in your Mac games library.
To survive, you must explore the subterranean depths and scavenge what little resources you can, but this is no easy task. Limited oxygen, unfathomable depths, and monstrous creatures make exploring an often-perilous task, but it must be done if you are to stay alive. Few games combine beauty with tension so successfully.
Many Apple Arcade games also support Game Center. In Game Center, you can see the games your friends recently played and their achievements. See the Apple Support article Access your Apple Arcade gameplay data on all of your devices.
Mac gaming refers to the use of video games on Macintosh personal computers. In the 1990s, Apple computers did not attract the same level of video game development as Microsoft Windows computers due to the high popularity of Microsoft Windows and, for 3D gaming, Microsoft's DirectX technology. In recent years, the introduction of Mac OS X and support for Intel processors has eased porting of many games, including 3D games through use of OpenGL and more recently Apple's own Metal API. Virtualization technology and Boot Camp also permit the use of Windows and its games on Macintosh computers. Today, a growing number of popular games run natively on macOS, though as of early 2019, a majority still require the use of Microsoft Windows.
By the mid-1980s most computer companies avoided the term "home computer" because of its association with the image of, as Compute! wrote, "a low-powered, low-end machine primarily suited for playing games". Apple's John Sculley, for example, denied that his company sold home computers; rather, he said, Apple sold "computers for use in the home".[4] In 1990 the company reportedly refused to support joysticks on its low-cost Macintosh LC and IIsi computers to prevent customers from considering them as "game machine"s.[5] Apart from a developer discount on Apple hardware, support for games developers was minimal.[6] Game development on the Macintosh nonetheless continued, with titles such as Dark Castle (1986), Microsoft Flight Simulator (1986) and SimCity (1989), though mostly games for the Mac were developed alongside those for other platforms. Notable exceptions were Myst (1993), developed on the Mac (in part using HyperCard) and only afterwards ported to Windows,[7] Pathways into Darkness, which spawned the Halo franchise, The Journeyman Project, Lunicus, Spaceship Warlock, and Jump Raven. As Apple was the first manufacturer to ship CD-ROM drives as standard equipment (on the Macintosh IIvx and later Centris models), many of the early CD-ROM based games were initially developed for the Mac, especially in an era of often confusing Multimedia PC standards. In 1996 Next Generation reported that, while there had been Mac-only games and PC ports with major enhancements on Macintosh, "until recently, most games available for the Mac were more or less identical ports of PC titles".[8]
The Apple Pippin (also known as the Bandai Pippin) was a multimedia player based on the Power Mac that ran a cut-down version of the Mac OS designed, among other things, to play games. Sold between 1996 and 1998 in Japan and the United States, it was not a commercial success, with fewer than 42,000 units sold and fewer than a thousand games and software applications supported.[9]
The co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, disliked video games,[10] but Apple has at times attempted to market the platform for gaming. In 1996, the company released a series of game-enabling APIs called Game Sprockets.[6] In April 1999, Jobs gave an interview with the UK-based Arcade magazine to promote the PowerPC G3-based computers Apple were selling with then new ATI Rage 128 graphics cards, and describing how Apple was "trying to build the best gaming platform in the world so developers are attracted to write for it" and "trying to leapfrog the PC industry".[11]
We tried to have a conversation with Apple for several years, and they never seemed to... well, we have this pattern with Apple, where we meet with them, people there go "wow, gaming is incredibly important, we should do something with gaming". And then we'll say, "OK, here are three things you could do to make that better", and then they say OK, and then we never see them again. And then a year later, a new group of people show up, who apparently have no idea that the last group of people were there, and never follow through on anything. So, they seem to think that they want to do gaming, but there's never any follow through on any of the things they say they're going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms.
Although currently most big-name Mac games are ports, this has not always been the case. Perhaps the most popular game which was originally developed for the Macintosh was 1993's Myst, by Cyan. It was ported to Windows the next year, and Cyan's later games were released simultaneously for both platforms with the exception of Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, which was Windows-only until a Mac-compatible re-release (currently in beta) by GameTap in 2007, with the help of TransGaming's Cider virtualization software. From the 1980s an atmospheric air hockey game Shufflepuck Café (Brøderbund, 1989) and a graphical adventure game Shadowgate (Mindscape, 1987) were among the most prominent games developed first for Macintosh and later ported for other platforms.
Another popular Mac game in the mid 1990s was Marathon. It was released in the wake of DOOM, which defined the first-person shooter genre, but gained notoriety by appearing on the Mac before the official port of DOOM. Bungie would port the second in the series, Marathon 2: Durandal, to the Windows platform, where it met with some success. They also ported their post-Marathon games Myth and Oni to Windows. 2ff7e9595c
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