Life with a laptop once meant playing a lot of FreeCell, solitaire, and whatever Flash games you could kill a few minutes with. "Real" games were largely out of reach, or only playable on a gaming laptop that would guzzle down battery power faster than a hungry hungry hippo. These days even thin-and-light laptops are actually capable of playing a huge range of games, which is awesome—but it doesn't mean you should just play anything and everything on a laptop.
Some games just don't really work without a nice desk with a spacious mousepad and even more spacious monitor in front of you. Others are more geared towards leaning back with a controller or just need a honkin' GPU to really appreciate. But there are still so many games now perfectly suitable to laptop gaming, it can be hard to narrow down how to spend your time.
2024 games: Upcoming releases
Best PC games: All-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best MMOs: Massive worlds
Best RPGs: Grand adventures
That's why this list prioritizes lighter system requirements (make the most of that battery!) and stuff that works well on a trackpad or with a small USB mouse attached. We'd leave our favorite controller games to the Steam Deck, but there are still loads of great puzzlers, strategy games, and RPGs that work fantastically on a laptop.
The best laptop games don't rely on 120+ frames per second or ray tracing. A few faves have been highlighted with a 🖱 to indicate you'll really want a mouse to get the best out of them, though.
Plenty of these games do scale up nicely to more powerful hardware, you'll still be able to put that gaming laptop's 144Hz screen or mobile RTX 4080 to use if you have them. But none of them require that level of oomph just to be a good time.
Below you'll find our favorite just-one-more-round games for laptops, as well as free-to-play shooters and roguelikes and absorbing adventures. We've mostly stuck to recommending games from the last few years that have modest system requirements, but remember that just about anything from the early 2010s or prior will run on a new laptop with ease. Check out GOG's old games or the Internet Archive's in-browser emulation library for many, many more classic options.
And if reading about the best laptop games has you thinking it might be time for an upgrade, here's our guide to the best gaming laptops.
Best laptop games: Strategy & card games
🖱 Factorio: Space Age
Release: 2024 | Developer: Wube Software LTD. | Link: Steam
Factorio is a modern PC classic in the base-building / automation space, but this new 2024 expansion, Space Age, is practically a sequel. Heck, it's bigger than the original game, and is destined to be the kind of game PC players keep coming back to for the next decade. As we wrote in our review of Factorio in 2020: "Let's skip the preamble, shall we? Factorio is brilliant. If you're remotely interested in games about management, construction, and above all production chains, then hop aboard the nearest conveyor belt and grab yourself a copy of Factorio this instant. Then pick up another copy for the most important person in your life, because they won't be seeing you for a while, and at least this way they'll understand why."
Balatro
Release: 2024 | Developer: LocalThunk | Link: Steam
The indie card game sensation of 2024, deckbuilder Balatro uses the theming of poker to create a game that is very much not poker. Get ready to put together some wild "illegal poker hands" with jokers galore and blinds and point totals that ascend into the multimillions. "It’s like watching a Poker game on a cursed TV accidentally tuned to 1972, filmed by a crew gradually coming down from hallucinogens," as we wrote in our 91% review. "A roguelike deckbuilder debut already worthy of joining Slay the Spire and Monster Train at the King’s table. Essential."
Capes
Release: 2024 | Developer: Spitfire Interactive | Link: Steam
After Midnight Suns we're happy to play another superhero tactics game, this one a bit more focused on combat than book club with Blade (no shade: it was one of our favorite games of 2022). We appreciated how each hero in this game feels like they fit perfectly into a team and have their own clear-cut roles. "Clever decisions keep Capes' battles brilliantly tactical and riveting all the way through," Robin Valentine wrote in our 80% review. "It's these kinds of clever decisions that keep Capes' battles brilliantly tactical and riveting all the way through. Great pacing helps there, too—when you're feeling a little frazzled after a particularly complicated boss fight or a careful stealth mission, that's when the game will throw you a big dumb fight against an overwhelming horde and let you unleash satisfying havoc on them."
Cobalt Core
Release: 2023 | Developer: Rocket Rat Games | Link: Steam
A blend of FTL's space journey with Slay the Spire's deckbuilding, Cobalt Core manages to not feel too derivative of either. You'll use cards to do more than attack: positioning your ship and dodging attacks are key to battles, and the meta progression will see you recruit new crew members and unlock new ships that change how you play. It may sound like standard roguelike stuff, but the way all the pieces come together makes Cobalt Core quite possibly the best one of 2023.
🖱 Dwarf Fortress
Release: 2022 | Developer: Bay 12 Games | Link: Steam
The strategy sim to end all strategy sims, Dwarf Fortress took off a rocket when it launched on Steam (with graphics!) in late 2022. As of 2024, it now also features Adventure mode, a sort of roguelike RPG companion to the primary Fortress mode that has you overseeing a colony of dwarves. "The absurd depth of simulation gives Dwarf Fortress a frankly unreasonable amount of detail," our reviewer wrote. "It barely affects mechanical gameplay in any real way. But it doesn't need to. That ludicrous, near-pathological intricacy is what's kept me fascinated for over a decade."
While the new mouse-friendly UI can get cluttered, our reviewer couldn't imagine going back to the ASCII graphics and arcane keyboard commands that gave Dwarf Fortress its reputation for being impenetrable. If you've always thought about giving Dwarf Fortress a try but were too intimidated—now's the time.
🖱 Age of Wonders 4
Release: 2023 | Developer: Triumph Studios | Link: Steam
A new 4X favorite in 2023. Age of Wonders 4 resembles big strategy games like Civ, but with its own magical flavor. As Fraser wrote in our 87% review: "By selecting the physical form, traits, cultural leanings and societal quirks of your people, you're able to create all sorts of unusual empires, from sinister mole-people with a penchant for cannibalism to industrious goblins who just want to build epic cities and make new friends. Through these choices you'll determine your empire's starting bonuses, alignment and magical affinities, establishing how you'll influence the world ... every time, I return from my fantasy foray with a sack full of anecdotes, like when I resurrected a rival ruler who had been plaguing me all game as an undead minion, forced to serve me for eternity. Magic just makes everything more fun."
Slay the Spire
Release date: 2019 | Developer: Mega Crit Games | Link: Steam
An instantly addictive card combat roguelike, which takes the strategic fun of deckbuilding board games and marries it with the sensibilities of games like The Binding of Isaac and Risk of Rain, where finding random "relics" can change how you play. Or, if you get a lucky combination, turn you into a murderous card god. Like the best roguelikes and deckbuilders, Slay the Spire feeds you that immense satisfaction when you find a combo that absolutely wrecks. Enemies that were once intimidating fall before you like flies. It's a fun one to replay again and again, thanks to unlockables like more powerful cards for each deck type, and protagonists that play wholly differently from one another.
Best laptop games: RPGs
Metaphor: ReFantazio
Release: 2024 | Developer: Atlus | Link: Steam
One of the best games of 2024 is quite possibly Atlus's most accomplished RPG ever, and that's saying something given its string of hits with Persona and Shin Megami Tensei. We scored this fantasy RPG a rare 95%, praising its story, combat, and changes to returning Atlus ideas like social relationships with your party members and a daily calendar of activities to manage. It's a must-play, and best of all, has very modest CPU and GPU requirements that any gaming laptop should be able to chew up and spit out.
Disco Elysium - The Final Cut
Release: 2019 | Developer: ZA/UM | Link: Steam
This is one of our favorite RPGs of all time, and our Game Of The Year in 2019. Disco Elysium is gorgeous in a sad, gritty way, but its painterly 2D environments won't push your system. It's a detective RPG that feels quite a lot like playing a classic adventure game or a visual novel. Expect to slow things down here to discover clues and secrets in its detailed environments and read a lot of fantastic writing. It's sly, clever, and full of surprises, meaning you can get some of the best new RPG action without needing a GPU that handles ray-tracing.
Thanks to the Final Cut version of the game that now comes standard, Disco Elysium's installation size is a bit beefier than it used to be. If you've got the space to spare though, it should still run swell.
Best laptop games: Puzzle & Adventure
Riven
Release: 2024 | Developer: Cyan Worlds | Link: Steam
"This is how you remake a classic," we said in our 90% review of Riven, the 2024 update to the sequel to Myst. We reviewed this game on an aging laptop with an Nvidia GTX 1070 and found it played fabulously with the graphics dialed right up, while the experience of exploring Riven's world absolutely holds up thanks to some smart changes from the original. "The Riven remake preserves that unique sense of estrangement even though I've been to this world before," we wrote, pointing to how some puzzles have been changed. But "what hasn't changed in 27 years is that this is less a game to be solved and more a place to be experienced."
A new in-game notetaking system proves to be a smart addition, though, if you do want to fully unravel Riven's big mystery.
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
Release: 2024 | Developer: Simogo | Link: Steam
This puzzle mystery is quite a departure from developer Simogo's last game, the music- and rhythm-focused Sayonara Wild Hearts. But we boldly called it as an early contender for Game of the Year in our 89% review, praising how the pacing is built "around your own wit." Expect to think your way through "a whole haunted manor filled with puzzle boxes, safes, locked doors, mazes, and other puzzles that aren't immediately evident."
Dave the Diver
Release: 2023 | Developer: Mintrocket | Link: Steam
An "adventure RPG" that sort of defies genre; Dave the Diver has you managing a sushi restaurant and diving in the sea as an explorer, with many more activities layered on top. Like, many more, as described in our 91% review: "Nearly every time I sat down to play Dave the Diver it threw a new feature or activity at me. Night fishing opens up the pursuit of new species and turns the once comforting ocean spooky, and new gear like tranquilizers and submersibles give you new ways to catch fish. A staff management system for the restaurant lets you hire and train workers to help out... There's a farm to breed fish so you don't have to rely entirely on daily dives, and a farm to grow rice and vegetables for new recipes, and eventually even an underwater farm to grow different types of seaweed. As soon as you've gotten comfortable with one system, the game throws a new one on top."
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Release: 2023 | Developer: Capcom | Link: Steam
A long-awaited remaster and PC version of a Nintendo DS game that didn't quite get its due, Ghost Trick is a very funny, very clever puzzler about possessing objects as a ghost to eventually solve your own murder. As described in our review: "This is the gaming equivalent of an unmissable crime novel, a gripping mystery where every answer leads to three more questions and connects 10 seemingly unrelated people or places together in a way you'd never imagined. I honestly couldn't stop until I'd seen it through to the end and when I did all I wanted to do was dive back in again."
The Case of the Golden Idol
Release: 2022 | Developer: Color Gray Games | Link: Steam
Investigate a dozen baffling and gruesome murders, all involving the same mysterious artifact, in one of the most inventive and satisfying detective games in years. In The Case of The Golden Idol you're shown the moment someone has been killed, a grisly tableau frozen in time. Investigate by clicking on anything that seems suspicious or interesting—you can go through the pockets of the victim and bystanders, learn the names of everyone involved, and slowly collect clues, in the form of words, needed to solve the crime. Place the words into blanks on incomplete scroll to solve the murders and the motives behind them, each more puzzling than the last.
Alongside the individual mysteries there's a sprawling story spanning decades centered around the powerful and bizarre idol itself and the horrifying things people will do to possess it. The murders are fun to solve, and the story behind them is fascinating. I don't say this often (or ever) but this is one videogame that would make an outstanding mystery novel.
Best laptop games: Action & Platformers
Animal Well
Release: 2024 | Developer: Billy Basso | Link: Steam
This metroidvania-styled adventure may have actually fit in better with the puzzle games above. It plays like a platformer but diverges from other games in this style like Hollow Knight to focus far more on unraveling the world through clever puzzles, like modern classic Fez. There's no combat, and the more we played it the more inventive it revealed itself to be. In our 90% review we praised how puzzles are sometimes single-screen affairs, while other times they "spawn whole regions."
"The credits rolling in Animal Well just marks the end of one game and the beginning of another," wrote reviewer Shaun Prescott. "Animal Well morphed from a fun-verging-brilliant indie metroidvania into something that now keeps me awake at night. I'm not ready to move on, and I won't, but I'm going to need a hivemind's help to unpick its deepest secrets."
Hades 2
Release: 2024 (early access) | Developer: Supergiant | Link: Steam
If you're still playing the first Hades, we wouldn't blame you. But this follow-up is already the bigger game, even in early access, and makes enough fundamental changes to combat and boons that it's less a replacement for the original than it is a fantastic complement to it. We think it's absolutely worth playing right now, and we think you'll come to love some of the changes from the first action roguelike, even if they take awhile to settle in.
Tomb Raider I-III Remastered
Release: 2024 | Developer: Aspyr | Link: Steam
A trio of formative PC platformer adventures, the original Tomb Raiders have been lovingly updated for modern systems. They're great laptop games as the system requirements remain incredibly low even in these remasters, but you can now play them with either controller or keyboard and switch between new and old graphics to suit your tastes.
"Playing through these remasters confirmed that the original trilogy really were as amazing as I remembered them outside their very '90s flaws," our reviewer wrote. "Every puzzle solved felt like a well-earned victory, and the sneaky swerves these games pulled as they plunged Lara into an unseen trap remain exciting challenges. Simply nailing a risky jump (and a manual ledge grab) to avoid certain death is still a rush of adrenaline here, a tension modern adventure games have buffed out."
Terraria
Release: 2011 | Developer: Re-Logic | Link: Steam
Terraria is a huge game in a very tiny package. Even if you originally wrote it off as a 2D Minecraft clone, it's grown far beyond that label in the years since. Terraria is a crafting adventure with heaps of updates to its name with new bosses, biomes, fishing, and too many other things to name, and it's still seeing updates as of 2023. It's also wild how little this huge game demands from your computer with its tiny install size and modest system requirements.
Best laptop games: First-person shooters
🖱 Wild Bastards
Release: 2024 | Developer: Blue Manchu | Link: Steam
"The roguelike and FPS genres haven't been spliced so successfully since Deathloop—and Wild Bastards deserves just as much acclaim," we wrote in our 91% review. High praise for a shooter that, for this list's purposes, doesn't have a high barrier to entry; its recommended system specs call for only a quad-core Intel processor. The cool structure here sees Wild Bastards playing out like a strategy roguelike, except each expedition you set out on puts you inside a fast-paced arena FPS shootout. Enjoy how each Bastard plays differently (stealth is also a viable option) and you'll be able to play it for many a trip away from your desktop.
🖱 Counter-Strike 2
Release: 2023 | Developer: Valve | Link: Steam
After years of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive being the biggest FPS in the world, Valve has transformed it into Counter-Strike 2, a free shooter that is largely similar to its predecessor. Then again, in the grand scheme of things Counter-Strike hasn't changed that much since its very first iteration in the '90s. As a result the small details matter a lot, and CS2 does make some meaningful changes that will keep the competitive scene on its toes for the next year or so. Whether you've never played CS or haven't played in years, now is an ideal time to jump in: the game hasn't been this shiny and new for a decade.
Best laptop games: Multiplayer
Abiotic Factor
Release: 2024 (early access) | Developer: Deep Field | Link: Steam
This fantastically inventive co-op survival game feels a bit like an off-key version of Half-Life. You're stuck in an underground science lab when an alien disaster strikes, and you've got to use whatever's at hand to survive—the more comical the resource, the better. Expect to make chest plates out of couch cushions, survive on vending machine rations, and have your character defined by positive and negative traits. "I chose to have a weak bladder (I have to relieve myself 20% more often) so I could afford the Decathlon Competitor trait (sprint a lot longer)," writes Morgan Park. "I'm realizing that it's not survival-crafting that I was tired of all along, it's the homogeneity of trees, cabins, furnaces, and caves that wore me down."
Lethal Company
Release: 2023 (early access) | Developer: Zeekerss | Link: Steam
A viral smash hit from 2023, this dirt cheap survival game features the rarest of all multiplayer coups: making voice chat essential. Also hilarious, as described by editor Jacob Ridley in our GOTY 2023 entry:
"What makes this game so absurdly entertaining is 1) the proximity-based chat and 2) the lack of polish and 3) the social mechanics. The game is scary, and it's going to make you jump at times, but it's fun for the massively overblown reactions it generates and way it always keeps you either talking to one another or talking about one another (when you're dead).
"You'll find yourself giggling as your pal creeps deeper into a dark room. Then laughing as a far-off scream turns to a sudden silence. Then as quickening footsteps approach the room you felt oh so safe inside, the laughing quickly subsides and you're the one screaming as you sprint towards the door."
Stardew Valley
Release date: 2016 | Developer: ConcernedApe | Link: Humble
An indie sensation that brought the idyllic farm life of Harvest Moon to PC. Build your farm into a vegetable empire, go exploring, learn about the lives of your neighbors, fall in love and settle down. Simple graphics ensure this one will run like a dream on your laptop, and it'll make long flights pass by in a snap. Stardew Valley has officially supported co-op farming for a couple years now, which is undoubtedly a great way to go back to Pelican Town.
🖱 Minecraft
Release: 2011 | Developer: Mojang | Link: Official site
One of the main questions you see asked online about laptops is “Will it run Minecraft?”, to which the answer, for future reference, is “Yeah probably”. Mojang's infinite block-'em-up isn't terribly demanding specs-wise, and it's the perfect game to mess around with on a laptop when you're supposed to be writing features for PC Gamer about low-spec games. While it's often played on a tablet, phone or console these days, you're getting the latest updates and mod support if you choose to build stuff with your PC. Here's our frequently updated list of the best Minecraft mods.
