Best Games for Mac: A-list Mac games to play

Cyberpunk 2077, despite its troubled 2020 launch, sold more than 30 million copies. Now CD Projekt Red has made Cyberpunk: 2077 available for the Mac—on the App Store, Steam, and Epic Games Store.

The game is set in the Blade Runner-inspired Night City, a megalopolis obsessed with power, glamour, and body modification. 

Initially, the first-person viewpoint suggests a straightforward FPS, but it’s actually a deep and challenging role-playing game that boldly steps into the future, avoiding tired fantasy clichés. 

Your character – who can be male or female – is a hacker known as V, and you start the game by choosing one of three ‘lifepaths’ that fill in V’s background. You can assign experience points to attributes such as intelligence, reflexes, technical ability and ‘cool’, with each attribute giving you access to different skills that you can develop throughout the game. And, of course, there are plenty of body modifications and upgrades that you can collect along the way too. 

V is sent on a mission to steal a prototype chip called the Relic, but then ends up with the Relic implanted inside their own head. It turns out that the chip stores the digital personality of a dead anti-corporate rockstar called Johnny Silverhand (played by Keanu Reeves). Johnny soon starts to take over, forcing you to find a way to save your own personality before it is overwritten.

Night City provides a huge open world that you can explore. There’s a varied cast of characters that you can meet and plenty of jobs that you can pick up. There are few games on the Mac that create the same sense of freedom – you can spend hours exploring before tackling the main quest. 

The action can get pretty violent, and there’s lots of bad language too, so it isn’t for younger gamers.

The team at CD Projekt Red say that it will run on Macs with a basic M1 processor – but you’ll need macOS 15.5 and at least 16GB of memory (there’s no support for Intel Macs). There are presets that adjust graphics settings for different Mac models to get the best performance from the game.

Apple Silicon, with Resident Evil: Village at the end of 2023, quickly followed by Resident Evil 4 in 2024. The latest addition to the range is Resident Evil 7 Biohazard.

Biohazard requires a Mac with an M1 or later, running macOS 13.0 or later. Biohazard also runs on the iPad, as long as it has an M1 processor and iPadOS 17, and even the iPhone, with iOS 17 and an A17 processor.

It is cheaper than other games in the series, costing just $19.99/£15.99 on the Mac App Store. The game can be downloaded for free and run in demo mode, called ‘The Beginning Hour’, as an introduction to the main game. If you like the demo, you can buy the full game as an in-app purchase, and there’s an expansion pack available for another $19.99/£15.99.

The game introduces Ethan Winters (who also appeared in Village), who searches for his wife, Mia, who vanished mysteriously three years ago. He receives an email from Mia asking for his help and gives him an address in a swampy backwater town in Louisiana. The game switches to an isolated first-person view, making every shadowy corridor seem even more oppressive and creepy. The game also makes clever use of the found-footage genre of horror movies, with Ethan finding old VHS tapes around the house that help fill in some of the background. There’s also a time-travel effect, where you can take actions during video segments in the past that impact on the present.

Capcom recommends a game controller, but it’s possible to play with a keyboard and mouse if you prefer.

Shadows is the first game in the long-running Assassin’s Creed series that has been released on the Mac. It’s set in Japan during a civil war in 1579 as the warlord Oda Nobunaga attempts to conquer and forcibly unite the country’s warring factions.

You to play as two separate characters, each with their own different skills and fighting styles. Naoe is a shinobi (ninja) who specialises in stealth and agility. Yasuke, a samurai who can block and parry his foes’ attacks. It’s pretty violent but you can tone down the settings for blood and dismemberment if you want. This one isn’t for kids.

The game does take a little while to get going, as it effectively has two introductions to allow you to get some practice with the different fighting styles of Naoe and Yasuke. Things soon pick up, though.

Shadows provides plenty of quests and combat to keep you busy. For the most part, it’s all about the wall-to-wall combat, with lots of sneaking and parkour-style running and jumping to add variety. There are four difficulty settings available – which will be helpful for Mac users who haven’t played any of the Assassin’s Creed games before.

What most impressed me were the game’s 3D graphics. The early cut-scenes were very impressive, with some of the most detailed and photo-realistic effects that I’ve ever seen on a Mac. With many games, though, and when the cut-scenes finish you find that the actual in-game action tends to offer a lower level of visual detail, but, with Shadows, the game just continues smoothly at the end of these cut-scenes and maintains the excellent visual quality throughout the game.

Death Stranding, the idiosyncratic and sometimes downright bizarre game from Hideo Kojima, the renowned developer behind the long-running Metal Gear series, arrived on the Mac in 2024.

The game is set in a near-future version of the United States, in the aftermath of a mysterious apocalyptic event known as the Death Stranding, which has caused the collapse of society. All that’s left are a few scattered communities, which rely on ‘porters’ to deliver supplies and help set up a communications system called the Chiral network. That’s where you come in, playing Sam ‘Porter’ Bridges – who is voiced by, and modeled on the actor Norman Reedus of Walking Dead fame – as he trudges across the country delivering his supplies. Along the way, you’ll encounter terrorists and creepy invisible monsters called BTs (‘beached things’), but your real foe for much of the game is simply the environment around you.

There is some combat in Death Stranding, but your main task as a porter is to struggle across the rocky, ruinous countryside as you embark on a series of missions to deliver your cargo of medicines and other supplies. The game is sometimes described as a ‘walking simulator ’ as you spend much of your time clambering over rocks, up hills, or wading across rushing rivers and streams. That may not sound terribly exciting, but there’s a lot of satisfaction as you struggle to slowly inch your way towards the peak of a craggy hill with your cargo intact.

The game also has a dramatic cinematic flair – possibly a little too cinematic, as the first 45 minutes or so is really just a series of very long cut-scenes, interspersed only by a few brief sequences where you learn how to control Sam as he walks, jumps and wades across the rocky terrain. The long cut-scenes can try your patience in the early stages of the game, but they do look terrific – the landscapes have a cinematic scope, and the 3D graphics are tremendously detailed and realistic. And the feeling that this is the gaming equivalent of a blockbuster Hollywood production is further emphasized by cameos from a number of other Hollywood big names, including Mads Mikkelsen, Guillermo Del Toro, and Lindsay Wagner.

The graphics do require a bit of horsepower though. The game will only run on Macs and iPads that have an Apple Silicon processor (M1 or later), and running macOS 13.3 or iPadOS 17.0. We were pleased to find that the game ran well even on an iMac with an M1 processor, although we did have to lower the resolution to 1920×1080. You might need an M2 or M3 to really enjoy the game’s sweeping vistas and eerie special effects, but seeing a game like Death Stranding running on an M1 iMac gives us some hope for the future of games on the Mac.

When it launched a few years ago Frost Punk was a surprise hit. It tis a survival game based in an alternate 19th century world that has been plunged into a new ice age by a vast, global blizzard called the Great Frost. Frost Punk 2 is set 30 years after the original and you are tasked with finding new sources of food and fuel for the growing population and dealing with threats like hunger, crime and factional rivalries. 

The new game has a prologue that introduces the story for new players, and also acts as a tutorial, in which you struggle through the icy ‘frostlands’ to reach a wrecked train and scavenge its resources.

The game also looks great, with dramatic and imposing 3D graphics that look like Blade Runner with added snow.

Frost Punk 2 is quite a challenging game, even for people who have played strategy games before. Basic tasks such as gathering resources can prove to be quite complex. Frost Punk 2 is a little more abstract than its predecessor, as you now need to step back and take more of an overview of the structure of this society. There are several difficulty levels, where you can adjust economic conditions, such as the scarcity of food and fuel. You can also modify the weather. 

The scale of New London and its complex society provides a rich tapestry for the story that unfolds under your stewardship. Once you’ve finished the main game there’s also an ‘endless’ Utopia mode that allows you to start a new city by choosing from a variety of locations, with different terrain and weather conditions.

Frost Punk 2 is available on both Steam and the Mac App Store, but the Steam version of the game is slightly cheaper.

Control, a unique super-powered shoot-‘em-up action game with X-Files-inspired vibes, took a while to reach the Mac. It was worth the wait.

The game begins with Jesse Faden arriving at the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC), a government agency investigating paranormal ‘Altered World Events’ (AWEs). Jesse’s younger brother vanished during an AWE, and she’s guided by a mysterious voice to the FBC.

The FBC office, known as the Oldest House, is eerily quiet when Jesse arrives, with only a creepy janitor providing directions to the Director’s office. This opening section serves as a tutorial, introducing the main controls and setting the story. Jesse engages in dialogue with her inner voice as she explores the FBC.

Upon finding the Director’s office, she discovers he’s dead, having killed himself with his hand gun. This ordinary gun, the Service Weapon, whispers instructions to Jesse, recruiting her into the FBC and assigning missions.

Jesse’s first mission reveals the Oldest House’s connection to another dimension, where she encounters alien figures and experiences combat. The Service Weapon can magically reload, which is helpful since Jesse struggles with shoot-em-up games. She also discovers she has psychic powers, starting with a psychokinetic punch that knocks back enemies. This complements her shooting skills, allowing her to approach enemies and defeat them before shooting. As the game progresses, Jesse enhances her psychokinetic powers, learning to hurl objects and upgrading weapons.

The game does have some flaws. The auto-save feature is irritating, as it only saves at specific points, forcing players to replay sections repeatedly. 

Control requires an M1 processor or later running Sonoma or later, it’s playable on a MacBook Pro with an M2 Pro at 34 frames per second with Medium graphics settings at 2560×1440 resolution. Lowering the resolution and graphics settings can improve performance even with an M1.

The game’s combination of shooter action and psychic powers ensures fun and varied combat, even for those with limited shooting skills. It’s a good choice for those who enjoy challenging and atmospheric action games.

It can be a little tricky following the sequence of the Resident Evil games – especially as most of them have never been released on the Mac. Last year’s Resident Evil: Village was the eighth game in the long-running series, although it was the first ever to arrive on the Mac, and also one of the first games written specifically to run on Macs with Apple Silicon. However, Resident Evil 4 is actually a newer game (sort of) as it’s a remake of the original Resident Evil 4, which was first released back in 2005.

Being a newer game means that it’s considerably more expensive, though, weighing in at a rather hefty $59.99/£57.99. However, it works hard to earn its keep with “juiced-up visuals and a reimagined story” as well as improved controls for combat and other character actions. And, thankfully, you can actually download the game for free and play through the opening section, before deciding if you want to go ahead and buy the full version of the game as an in-app purchase (along with some rather pricey DLC packs too).

This installment follows the adventures of special agent Leon S. Kennedy – a floppy-haired special agent from an earlier game in the series – who has now been recruited to rescue the kidnapped daughter of the US President. Tracking her down to a village in Spain, Leon encounters a spooky cult called Los Iluminados, who have turned the villagers into crazed killers. You have to fight your way past the villagers and confront various bosses as you track down the President’s daughter and attempt to uncover the cult’s true plans.

Resident Evil 4 has some good jump scares along the way, but it’s more action-oriented than Village and doesn’t have quite the same creepy and tense atmospherics. It certainly keeps you busy, though, as you shoot and slice your way through the villagers, and encounter the mysterious figures who control the cult. And, of course, it’s pretty gorey too, with a 17+ age rating.

Like Resident Evil: Village, this game runs on Macs with Apple Silicon, and it ran pretty well even on a 24-inch iMac with a basic M1 processor. It felt a little sluggish initially, but seemed to run quite smoothly once we turned the resolution down to 1,920 x 1,080, and experimented with some of the graphics settings (the game will also run on iPads with Apple Silicon, and even on the iPhone 15 Pro as well).

The Lost Crown was released for Windows PCs at the start of 2024, but it took until December for it to appear on the Mac App Store where it’s working its way up Apple’s games chart.

The Lost Crown is a side-scrolling game that combines combat and platform-jumping elements. It’s presented like an old-school 2D platform game where you mostly run left or right across the screen and use the Space bar to jump over obstacles. The game looks great with detailed backgrounds that create a real sense of atmosphere

You play a young warrior called Sargon, who is a member of a group that modestly call themselves The Immortals. The kingdom of Persia is under attack from an enemy army, and Prince Ghassan has been taken captive and imprisoned on the magical Mount Qaf. Sargon and his associates head off to rescue the Prince, but soon discover that Mount Qaf is full of mystical enemies, puzzles and obstacles that have to be overcome.

The game requires an M1 processor or later (so it won’t run on Intel Macs). However, the 2D presentation means that it doesn’t need a powerful Mac, and we had no trouble running it with high graphics settings at 4K resolution on a MacBook Pro with an M2 Pro chip.

Capcom is putting in a lot of effort to release Mac versions of its games, especially the Resident Evil series, and as of spring 2025 it’s added a Mac version of Resident Evil 3, a remake of the original game from 1999.

You play as Jill Valentine, a special agent sent to Racoon City to investigate the outbreak of the ‘zombie virus’ that first appeared in Resident Evil 2. Jill and her fellow agents suspect Umbrella, a pharmaceutical corporation that developed the T-Virus, the biological weapon behind the outbreak. In most Resident Evil games, you fight zombies, but Resident Evil 3 introduces Nemesis, an intelligent super-zombie that is hunting you down. 

As the hunted instead of the hunter, instead of blasting zombies, you’re on the defensive, constantly pursued by Nemesis as you escape Racoon City. This offers a welcome respite from the usual offensive gameplay in the franchise.

The game doesn’t require a high-end Mac to handle its 3D graphics, but it only runs on Macs with Apple Silicon, not Intel. So that’s an M1 processor or later and macOS 13.0 or later. We tested it on a MacBook Pro with an M2 Pro chip and it ran smoothly, even with hordes of zombies. You can download a demo to see how it runs on your Mac before buying the full version. 

The Mac version also runs on iPhone 15 or later and iPads with an A17 or M-series processor, so you can play it on your mobile devices too.

The Mac version of Resident Evil 3 is currently only available on the Mac App Store. 

There are changes to the latest game in the long-running Civilization series that are a good way of making the game more accessible for newcomers, though veteran Civ players may feel the new approach is dumbing the game down somewhat.

As usual, you choose a leader and a civilization that you control and develop throughout the ages and your aim is either conquering rival civilizations, or emerging as a world leader through economic, scientific or cultural dominance. But, in Civilization 7, your leader and your society are entirely separate, so you can mix-and-match leaders and countries in historically inaccurate ways. We had Catherine The Great Of Russia leading the armies of ancient Rome rather than 18th century Russia.

Once you’ve chosen your leader and their civilization you start in any of three different Ages – Antiquity, Exploration, or the Modern Age. You follow four different ‘paths’ that lead to success – economic, cultural, scientific, or military. Focus on one path or diversify and explore the benefits of each. Your leader remains the same as you progress through all three ages, but you get to choose a new civilization each time.

Dividing the game into ages like this does make it more approachable, as it splits the game into manageable sections. However, some players may miss the military and political intrigue of previous games.

One criticism that has emerged loud and clear across the board is that the game’s user interface is poorly designed, with unhelpful menus and tool-tips that make it difficult to find the information you need. We found it annoying that the game was constantly badgering us to create an online account in order to use the online multiplayer mode and unlock other bonuses. The developers have announced that they’re working on fine-tuning the interface in response.

Civilization 7 runs natively on Apple Silicon – but not on Intel Macs. It lists Sequoia as the minimum required version of macOS, although we ran it in Sonoma without issue. Performance is good, despite the game’s detailed 3D graphics. The game has a built-in benchmarking tool, and my MacBook’s M2 Pro chip was able to cruise along at a comfortable 55fps using High graphics settings when set at 2,560×1,440 resolution.

I’m chomping at the bit to get my hands on the forthcoming Mac version of Cyberpunk 2077, which is due “early in 2025″’” according to the developers at CD Projekt Red. But, without making very much fuss about it, the Polish developer has also been updating some of its older games for the Mac as well, including the classic Witcher and Witcher 2.

The first two games in The Witcher series were released for Intel-based Macs back in 2008 and 2011 respectively, but they were among many games that were left behind with the introduction of macOS Catalina in 2019 (seriously, Catalina had the same effect on Mac games as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs back in the pre-historic days). More recently, though, both games have received updates that provide up-to-date support for Apple Silicon – although they do require macOS 11 or later for both Apple Silicon and Intel processors.

Both games are classics of the RPG genre, casting you in the role of Geralt Of Rivia, a ‘Witcher’ – or monster hunter – who uses a variety of weapons, magical spells and potions to tackle his supernatural foes. The first game hurled Geralt into a war between rival factions seeking power in Temeria, while the second game saw him framed for the murder of the King of Temeria. It might sound like standard fantasy role-playing stuff, but the great strength of the games is their rich and exciting story-telling – based, of course, on the novels of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski – which brings the world of Temeria vividly to life, and presents Geralt with complex moral decisions that genuinely affect the outcome of the games.

Sadly, The Witcher 3 was never released for the Mac, but The Witcher and Witcher 2 should provide enough role-playing goodness to keep you busy until Cyberpunk 2077 comes along. And, as they’re both quite old games, they’re relatively cheap these days too, with the updated The Witcher: Enhanced Edition costing £6.99/$9.99 on Steam and Gog, while The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition is $19.99/£14.99. Both games are available on the Mac App Store too but, as is so often the case, the Mac App Store is over-priced, charging $19.99/£19.99 for each game.

After a fairly epic detour into the fantasy worlds of Warhammer, the Total War series is back on its home turf once more, returning to the more traditional historical settings that the games have explored in the past. This time it’s ancient Egypt for Total War: Pharaoh, set in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze Age, and covering the lands of Egypt itself, as well as neighboring Canaan and the Hittite Empire.

There are eight factions spread across these three lands, all competing to take the throne of Egypt and become the next Pharoah (with additional factions available to purchase as DLC on Steam). Each faction has its own leader, with their own individual strengths and abilities, such as the reckless young warrior Ramesses (who has a tendency to “put the chariot before the horses”), and the cunning Tausret, who uses diplomacy and finance to pull the levers of power. If you’re new to the game then there are several tutorials available that introduce the basics of battle, as well as more advanced tactics, such as siege warfare, and learning how to use the land and weather to your advantage.

Pharoah might not have the otherworldly spectacle of the Warhammer games, but it still looks great, with spectacular vistas as the rival armies charge across the desert dunes. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t run on older Macs that have Intel processors, but it ran quite smoothly on an iMac with a basic M1 processor when set to 1920×1080 resolution (and using the new gaming mode in macOS Sonoma).

The main single-player campaign should keep you busy for quite a while, and as well as creating custom battles to hone your skills you can also customize the main campaign, adjusting the troops, resources and money that are available to make the game more challenging. It’s a shame, though, that the game’s multiplayer mode only allows you to play with other Mac users, as this means that – without being able to play against PC users – you’ll have a fairly limited choice of online opponents.

Hades II (Early Access) was released for Windows PCs in 2024 but at the end of 2024 an update added native support for Macs with Apple Silicon.

You play Zagreus’ (from the first game) sister, Melinoë, a sorceress with powerful magical abilities who attempts to find and defeat Chronos, the ancient god who was father of Hades and is now waging war on Olympus itself.

Like Hades, Hades 2 is a ‘roguelike’ game. Roguelike games don’t allow you save the game and reload when you die, so each death means that you have to start again. That can be frustrating, but you can find new weapons and learn new skills as you progress, as well as earning ‘boons’ from the gods that make you more powerful. You also get to keep your skills and upgrades even after you die, so each time you start again you’re a little bit more powerful. There’s a God Mode that gives you a power boost right from the start.

Hades 2 is in Early Access – and looks likely to remain that way for most of 2025 – but it’s pretty solid and stable. The hand-drawn graphics style looks great and the relatively simple 2D shaded graphics mean that you don’t need a particularly powerful Mac to run it (I was able to get 60fps using High graphics settings, even at 4K resolution using a MacBook Pro with M2 processor).

Roguelike games don’t suit everyone, but Hades 2 is a lot of fun and a worthy successor to the original Hades, and it’ll be nice treat for anyone that enjoys challenging arcade action.

Dredge was first released for Windows PCs back in 2023, but the developers at Black Salt Games have launched a Mac version, along with mobile versions for iOS and Android. At first glance, Dredge looks like a quiet, cosy game where you spend your daylight hours calmly fishing the seas around the island of Greater Marrow, occasionally delivering items to people on neighbouring islands, and trying to drum up enough cash to upgrade your fishing boat and equipment. The game’s simple shaded graphics remind me of Monument Valley, and its soothing soundtrack – complete with the sound of lapping waves – almost makes you drift off to sleep.

But you soon detect hints of something strange lurking beneath the surface. You start to find mysterious messages floating in bottles out at sea, and the local Mayor repeatedly warns you to get back to the dock before it gets dark at night. A few days of fishing and delivering parcels helps ease you into the game, and then you’re approached by a mysterious figure called the Collector, who asks you to find a number of items that were lost in shipwrecks around the islands.

This can be a challenge as you need quick reflexes to control the tension in your fishing gear and bring these items to the surface (and a game controller might be a better option here than using a keyboard). It takes time too, and I soon found myself hurrying back to Greater Marrow in the dark one night, only to be attacked by a great undersea creature that wrecked my boat and returned me to my last saved game.

Things just get creepier from there as you start to uncover the mystery behind all these lost ships, and the full game will keep you busy for 10-12 hours, depending on how much time you spend fishing, treasure-hunting and completing side quests. Admittedly, the excitement in Dredge is doled out sparingly, so it’s not a game for action fans, but the balance between the calm daylight hours and the menace that lurks in the dark creates an oddly soothing rhythm that will appeal to fans of more peaceful gaming pursuits (one review on Steam called it “Animal Crossing meets Lovecraft”).

Figuring out where to buy the game can be a little tricky, though. It’s already available on most of the main game stores, including Steam, Epic and Gog with the standard version of the game costing $24.99/£21.99 (with additional DLC bundles also available).

It’s not due for release on the Mac App Store until the end of February 2025, but the developers say that buying the Mac version will also give you access to the mobile version for the iPhone and iPad as well. The Mac App Store also provides a trial version that lets you play the first section of the game before buying. The developers do recommend a Mac with Apple Silicon, but the game ran on my aging Intel-based iMac with no trouble at all.

The original Baldur’s Gate games were classics of the RPG genre when the series was launched almost 25 years ago, but their 2D graphics haven’t aged well, despite an HD update in 2012. However, the forthcoming Baldur’s Gate 3 brings the series well and truly up to date with slick 3D graphics and a vast adventure that looks set to match the epic scale of its predecessors.

It’s actually been available in ‘early access’ on Steam since 2020, but the game finally has a firm release date for August 2023 so you can now dive in and test drive the early chapters of the game to prepare yourself for the arrival of the full game in just a few months time. It’s not a true sequel as the story and the main characters are all new – set more than 100 years after BG2 – although it is still set in the famous Baldur’s Gate region from the popular Dungeons & Dragons table-top games (and – spoiler alert – some familiar faces do make a welcome reappearance).

Rather than the powerful, god-like being that you became in Baldur’s Gate II, the new game lets you start from scratch with an entirely new character, chosen from the traditional D&D selection of races and classes – humans, elves, dwarves, wizards, warriors and rogues – and you then awake to find yourself prisoner on a flying ship controlled by Mindflayers (a familiar villain from D&D lore). The ship is attacked by dragons, but you’re able to escape – only to find that a Mindflayer larva has been implanted inside your brain. So, along with other survivors from the crashed ship, you set out to try to find a cure and then quickly find yourself embroiled in a mysterious war between the Mindflayers and an assortment of enemy races – who won’t be fully revealed until the game’s launch in the summer.

The 3D graphics really bring the game to life as you and your companions wade into combat, but the spectacular visuals do need a fairly fast Mac in order to run properly. The developers says that the game will run on an Intel Mac with a quad-core CPU and an AMD graphics card, or on most Macs with M1 or M2 processors. However, we had to drop the resolution to just 1600×900 on our M1 iMac in order to get a playable 25fps, so an M1 Pro or higher might be better. Fortunately, the game’s turn-based combat doesn’t require lightning reflexes and high-speed action, so you can still get by with an M1 Mac if you need to.

The decision to opt for turn-based combat might worry old-timers – like yours truly – who remember the terrific real-time-with-pause system of the original games. But turn-based is the trend these days, and if my time in the early access game is anything to go by then you’ll find that the old Baldur’s Gate magic will soon tempt you in as you “gather your party before venturing forth” – just like the good old days!

There aren’t many survival games that have made it onto the Mac, so we were pleasantly surprised when developer Iron Gate announced a Mac version of its hugely successful Valheim. The PC game has been available in early access since 2021 – which means that you’re essentially paying to play a beta version of the game – but it’s received a series of updates over the last couple of years that add more and more features, and the game has now sold more than 10 million copies.

Valheim follows the standard format for the survival. genre. Rather than providing a central story or quest, it simply drops you into the world of Valheim, which is based on Norse mythology, and then just leaves you to get on with things and decide how you want to play. The world includes several different biomes–regions with different terrain and climate–including leafy forests, snowy mountains or the barren Ashlands that were added in a recent update. You’ll start in a fairly welcoming leafy glade, where you can gather food and materials for crafting and building yourself a home.

Many people seem quite happy to spend a lot of their time working on their homestead, hunting and crafting to make themselves comfortable in their new home (a bit like the Sims, except with Vikings and monsters). But, as you develop your crafting and building skills, you’ll need to wander a bit further afield and explore other biomes in order to find new materials and resources.

As you visit each biome you’ll encounter a variety of beasts and monsters, which will force you to craft more powerful weapons and hone your Viking fighting skills. Each biome also has its own boss monster that you have to defeat as well, with the ultimate goal–when the game eventually emerges from early access–of reaching Viking heaven in Valhalla.

It’s quite a challenging game, and the intentionally retro 3D graphics may not appeal to everyone, but many people are happy to spend months at a time just exploring, hunting and building their home in Valheim. If things get a bit tough then there’s a co-op mode available so that you can recruit up to nine friends to help you out, and the old-school graphics mean that the game runs well even on older Intel-based Macs (although Macs with Apple Silicon will need to be running macOS 14.0 or later). It’s available on both Steam and the Mac App Store.

Elder Scrolls Online is one of the few MMO games that is available on the Mac, and it celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2024 with the launch of a major update called Gold Road. The game has seen a lot of changes along the way – both to the game itself, and also to the Mac platform, following the transition to Apple Silicon.

The bad news is that developer Zenimax states that Apple Silicon “is not officially supported”. In fact, the game does run on Macs with Apple Silicon – thanks to Rosetta – although some users have reported poor performance even on high-end Mac models. However, I was able to get a perfectly playable 40fps when running the game at 2,560 x 1,440 resolution with high graphics settings on my MacBook Pro with M2 Pro, and 55fps on medium graphics. There’s no free trial available for Elder Scrolls Online, but the game does run free play events every few months that allow you to play free of charge for a couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for these events if you’d like to check the game out before buying.

One of the good things about Elder Scrolls Online is that – unlike MMO rivals such as World Of Warcraft – it doesn’t require a subscription to play. You do need to pay $19.99/£15.99 for the base game (until end of June 2024 this is $5.99 at Epic), or $49.99/£42.99 for the complete Gold Road Collection – which includes a whole decade’s worth of expansion packs – but after that you can play for as long as you want without having to pay a monthly subscription (although a subscription is available as an optional extra).

Even the base game is huge, with a vast continent full of snowy mountains, windswept deserts and murky marshes for you to explore. There are epic quests, a wide range of skills and abilities to master and, of course, there are the inevitable dungeons and quite a few dragons that you can face on your adventures as well. As always, the Gold Road expansion adds a new region for you to explore, and a major new storyline called The Return Of Ithelia. It also introduces a major new magic system to the game, called Scribing, which provides new skills and spells that can be customized so that you can create a unique set of skills that really allow you to play just the way that you want.

It’s over 12 years since we originally reviewed the Mac version of Diablo III, and it’s safe to say that a lot has changed since then. The game still runs on Macs, but the transition to Apple Silicon has meant that it relies on Rosetta to run on modern Macs, and umpteen new versions of the macOS have introduced a few bugs that are annoying even if they don’t completely break the game.

The developers at Blizzard announced an update that brings Diablo III right up to date for Mac users. As well as being compatible with the most recent versions of the macOS and ironing out those old bugs, Diablo III now runs natively on Macs with either Intel processors or Apple Silicon – and that’s quite surprising for a game that’s this old.

Season 30 was the end of the road for new game content, but Blizzard did introduce a number of new features that should help to keep diehard players interested. The new Solo Self Found mode (SSF) is a completely single-player mode that forces you to rely purely on weapons and items that you find on your own. A new feature called Visions Of Enmity opens portals to a series of mini-levels that are crammed full of monsters, but which provide a chest full of loot once you reach the final level. There’s also the Altar Of Rites, where you can sacrifice some of your hard-earned loot to gain a series of bonuses and buffs that will help you tackle the game’s many challenges in solo mode.

The 2.7.8 update also arrived at the same time as Season 33 of Diablo III, that revisits the Shades Of The Nephilim theme and allows you to summon clone versions of your character to help you in battle.

Unfortunately, Diablo IV, which was launched in 2023, still isn’t available for the Mac at all, but at least this revamp of Diablo III provides plenty of dungeon-crawling fun for Mac users. And, of course, there are options that may allow you to run Diablo IV as well, if you read our guide to the best virtual machine software for Macs.

Along with World Of Warcraft, The Elder Scrolls Online – or ESO to its thousands of fans – is one of the few A-List MMO titles that still supports the Mac (sadly, we lost Guild Wars 2 a couple of years ago…). But, unlike WoW, you don’t need to pay a monthly subscription to play the game, which makes it great value for players who want to immerse themselves in hundreds of hours of quests and adventures in the game’s online world of Tamriel. Some people – i.e. me – also prefer its grittier graphical style to the Disney-esque cartoon graphics of WoW.

ESO keeps its fans coming back year after year by releasing regular expansions – which it refers to as Chapters, as each new chapter brings a new story and a new series of quests to the game, as well as opening up new zones for you to explore. The latest chapter is High Isle, which takes you to the homeland of the game’s Breton race, and throws you into a story of political intrigue involving High Isle’s rival factions and a mysterious organization known as the Ascendent Order. Other new features include a new deck-building card game that you can play to while away a few hours, and two new computer-controlled companions for players who prefer to go questing on their own. And, of course, there are plenty of new quests to complete and dungeons waiting to be plundered.

You can buy the base version of the game for $19.99/£15.99 (until end of June 2024 this is $5.99 at Epic), or buy the High Isle Collection, which includes High Isle and all the previous chapters for $49.99/£42.99. Or, if you already own the game, you can just upgrade with High Isle on its own for $29.99/£24.99. Once you’ve bought the game you can play for as long as you want without paying a monthly subscription, and there are enough dungeons and quests already available to keep you busy for years. However, you can pay for an optional subscription if you want ($14.99/£8.99), which provides bonuses such as a larger inventory for storing all your gear and some extra gold coins to spend in the game’s online store.

The Mac version of ESO did have a wobbly patch, around the time of Catalina, but it now runs well on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, and we were able to get a playable 30fps from the game at 1920×1080 resolution even on a basic M1 processor on our 24-inch iMac.

The Resident Evil games are the sort of A-List titles that rarely come to the Mac, so the announcement at 2022’s WWDC that Resident Evil: Village would be released on the Mac at the end of the year was big news for Mac gamers. The game doesn’t disappoint either, providing a series of creepy locations for you to explore, and a variety of supernatural menaces to fight against.

Mac users, of course, will be new to the games, but Village starts off with a brief recap of the previous game to bring us up to date. Three years ago – in Resident Evil 7 – Ethan Winters and his wife, Mia, were trapped by the Baker family in Louisiana, who had been infected – and mutated – by a mysterious black mold. They managed to escape, assisted by para-military operative Chris Redfield, and then three years pass by before things start to get weird all over again. Ethan and Mia are now living peacefully, along with their young daughter, Rose, until Redfield suddenly reappears, gunning Mia down in cold blood and kidnapping Rose. So, playing as Ethan, you now have to pick up the trail and try to figure out what is going on.

It’s a frustrating game to get into at first, as the early stages of the game simply involve stumbling around a dark forest, liberally scattered with dead animals. Eventually, though, you discover the Village of the title, which is under siege by wolf-like Lycans, and find clues that suggest your daughter is being held in the conveniently creepy nearby castle. The pace barely lets up after that, with the game combining atmospheric horror and manic combat in equal measure (not to mention enough gore and bad language to merit a 17 age rating).

Apple used the game at WWDC to demonstrate the graphical performance of its new M2 chips – but the good news is that we found the game runs pretty well even on a 24-inch iMac with the older M1 chip. The bad news is that (a) it doesn’t run on Intel Macs at all, and (b) you’re paying extra for the Mac version, which costs $39.99/£34.99 on the Mac App Store, while the Windows version – released in 2021 – is half that price on Steam. It’s still a great game, though, and hopefully it’s just the first of many A-List titles that we can look forward to on the Mac in the new couple of years.

World Of Warcraft has dominated the MMO genre for almost two decades now, and is one of the few A-list games to have staunchly supported the Mac throughout its history – in fact, it even provided an update that allowed the game to run on Apple Silicon Macs as early as November 2020. It’s had a few ups and downs in recent years – both in the real-world and in the game’s virtual world of Azeroth – but the release of the Dragonflight expansion at the end of 2022 was a welcome return to form, providing some important new features and also updating some of the more dated aspects of the game.

Dragonflight costs $49.99/£39.99, and is required in order to enjoy new features such as raising your characters to the new maximum of Level 70. It also gives you access to the Dragon Isles, which contain four major new zones for you to explore and go adventuring. The Dragon Isles are also home to a new playable race of ‘draconic humanoids’ called Dracthyrs, who can play as the new Evoker class, which has the ability to choose between either healing or combat abilities.

And, on entering the Dragon Isles, you can also obtain your own ‘drake’ – a flying dragon that allows you to learn a new set of ‘dragonriding’ skills that let you fly further, faster and higher as you explore the new zones. Throw in a more streamlined skill tree and a number of improvements to WoW’s aging interface, and the entire game feels more sprightly than it has done for several years. You don’t have to buy Dragonflight straight away though, as WoW still provides a free trial that takes you up to Level 20 for free, while owners of previous versions of the game can still continue to play – without the new Dragonflight features – by paying for a monthly subscription ($12.99/£9.99 per month, with discounts for three-month or six-month subscriptions).

Apple is trying very hard to encourage games developers to come back to the Mac, but – around 30 years ago – there was a time when big-names such as Bungie actually developed their games on the Mac first (until Bungie was taken over by Microsoft).

Before Bungie hit the big time with Halo, it made a name for itself with the Marathon series. The original Marathon games stopped running on the Mac long ago, but the entire Marathon series was recently revived with the help of an open-source programming team called Aleph One. The first Marathon game is now available on Steam as a free download – now called Classic Marathon – and it runs on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.

The game is a real blast of retro fun, set aboard a space ship called The Marathon, which has been boarded by alien invaders. Your task is pretty straightforward and mostly involves running along lots of corridors blasting the living daylights out of the aliens. Along the way, you can log in to computer terminals that provide access to the ship’s onboard AI, which points you toward your next target or sends you looking for useful information. There’s a plot twist, though, as there seem to be rival AIs at work, each with their own agenda, and this keeps you thinking about what comes next, as well as just exercising your trigger finger in combat.

The game’s old-school graphics obviously look a bit dated these days, but they have a lot of charm, and there’s a sense of satisfaction as you carefully attempt to pick off your enemies without wasting too much ammo – and a real sense of relief when you come across some spare ammo packs lying on the ground too.

The somewhat clumsy control system isn’t quite so charming – it took me some time reading around on the Internet to discover that there’s no Save Game command, so you just have to hope you can survive all the way to the next checkpoint, where your game is saved automatically. But that’s part of the fun, as it puts extra pressure on you to stay alive, and to keep searching for hidden areas that may reward you with extra ammo or weapons.

The two sequels – Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity – are also available, although you’ll need to download the open-source files from Aleph One’s own website, or wait for them to arrive on Steam for a more straightforward download and installation process.

Perhaps the biggest game release of 2022 on the Mac, Total War: Warhammer III provided a truly epic conclusion to this popular series of strategy games. There’s no need to worry if you haven’t played any of the earlier games, though, as this three-quel includes an optional prologue, called The Lost God, that can act as an introduction for people who are new to the world of Warhammer.

This prologue explains that the great Beard God, Ursun, who is worshipped by the human kingdom of Kislev has been imprisoned in the demonic Realms Of Chaos. In Ursun’s absence, a terrible winter has fallen over Kislev, so you start by playing Prince Barkov of Kislev, who leads a small band of warriors to discover the fate of Ursun. This section also acts as a tutorial for people who might be new to strategy games, and when you’re up to speed you can progress to the main campaign in which rival factions compete to reach Ursun and use his godly powers for their own ends.

As well the people of Kislev, you can command another human kingdom called Grand Cathay, or turn to the dark side by playing one of the many demonic princes who all have their own monstrous armies. There’s Nurgle, the Plague Lord, whose somewhat squishy troops spread disease and decay, along with Khorne, the Blood God, the hedonistic Slaanesh, and Tzeentch, the master of Chaos Magic. And, finally, there’s the uber Daemon Price, whose powers – and even body parts – can be customized so that you can create a playing style that’s all your own. You can also buy additional DLC packs that add new factions and races to the game. There’s also a free add-on called Immortal Empires, which brings together campaign maps, factions and battles from all three Warhammer games into one vast and endlessly replayable series of battles.

The good news is that the game will run on any Mac with an M1 or M2 processor – and we found that it ran at a smooth 30-40fps at 1920×1080 resolution even on a 24-inch iMac with a standard M1 processor. But while Intel Macs with AMD graphics may be able to run the game, there are a few technical glitches that can affect these Macs, so the game isn’t ‘officially supported’ on Intel Macs.

There aren’t a lot of sports games available on the Mac, but the Football Manager series is a longtime supporter, and we get the 2024 edition at the same time as the PC and console versions too. There’s also a new version of Football Manager 2024 Touch available for the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. And, somewhat confusingly, the App Store also has a separate version, called Football Manager Mobile, which is only available to Netflix subscribers.

One of the biggest changes is the arrival of the ‘J-League’, with 60 Japanese teams now added to the game, along with Japanese language support as well. There are also new playing modes, such as ‘Real World’ where players in your games move to new teams on the same dates as they do in real life.

Each new version of the game tends to bring graphical improvements, and FM24 provides smoother animations for players as they charge around the pitch, more realistic physics for ball movement, and enhanced lighting effects to create a greater sense of atmosphere. And, of course, there are the inevitable AI features, such as the introduction of ‘Intermediaries’ that you can hire to go out and hustle for the best prices when you’re thinking of selling some players. There are also new Set Piece Coaches, who can help you to choose the best players for events such as free-kicks and corners. However, you’re up against tougher AI managers on opposition teams too, as they can now make smarter decisions when purchasing players that suit their tactical style.

The game also follows recent trends in tactical play, such as the greater use of positional play, which allows players to switch positions when your team has possession. The sheer depth of all these tactical options means that Football Manager can be a bit daunting for more casual fans of the game, but there’s a demo version available on both Steam and Epic, so you can have a quick kick-about to see how you get on before buying the full game.

It’s been quite a while since any of the Grid games were released on the Mac and, in fact, the Windows version of Grid Legends was first launched back at the start of 2022. However, the Deluxe Edition that’s launched on the Mac App Store does include all the game’s recent DLC add-ons – listed at more than $60/£60 on Steam for the Windows version – so it’s great value for racing fans on the Mac.

You don’t have to be an ace F1 driver to play Grid Legends, though, as the game includes a variety of different modes that can appeal to casual players as well as experienced drivers who want a more demanding and realistic driving simulation. The game starts by throwing you into its Story mode, called Driven To Glory, which follows the Seneca Racing team as it tries to make its name in the new season. As well as following the action through a series of races, the Story mode is also presented as a kind of behind-the-scenes documentary, with video cut-scenes and interviews with some of the main drivers (including an appearance by the pre-Doctor Who Ncuti Gatwa).

Story mode is a good way for beginners to get started, but more experienced drivers can jump straight ahead into the Career mode. This provides five difficulty levels, and allows you to work your way up from rookie to a seasoned pro driver. There are 10 different racing disciplines available, including Drift, Elimination and the arcade-action of Classic Car-nage, and the game lets you play on 24 different tracks in locations such as Brands Hatch, Barcelona Dubai and Miami.

As you progress through the season, you can unlock 120 different vehicles, with different handling properties to suit your driving style. There’s also a Garage mode where you can upgrade and fine-tune your car to suit different terrain and weather conditions. The game also includes a Race Creator mode, where you can design your own custom race events, using different tracks, vehicles and weather conditions. It’s a shame, though, that the Mac version of the game is single-player only, and doesn’t have the multiplayer mode that’s available on the PC version. The game also requires an Apple Silicon processor, and doesn’t run on older Intel Macs. However, it ran more than fast enough for my somewhat chaotic driving skills on an M1 iMac with medium graphics and 1600×900 resolution, so you don’t need a super-fast Mac to put your pedal to the metal.

There aren’t many ‘soulsborne’ games available on the Mac – so called because they follow the format of the popular Lost Souls and Bloodborne games available on PC and consoles – but Lies Of P arrived on the Mac App Store recently and immediately walked off with Apple’s award for Mac Game Of The Year.

The game is dedicated to Carlo Collodi, the author who created Pinocchio, and your main character is referred to as ‘the puppet of Gepetto’, so it’s clear who you’re supposed to be. This isn’t the cute Disney version of Pinocchio, though – for starters the little wooden boy has grown a bionic metal arm to give him some extra muscle, and one of your first tasks is to pick up a sword and choose a ‘path’ that determines your fighting style. The Path Of The Sweeper tends to focus on heavy, two-handed weapons, while the Path Of The Bastard lets you fight with lighter, faster weapons. Or, as a safe bet, you can choose the Path Of The Cricket, which combines elements of the other two fighting styles.

Your puppet boy wakes in the city of Krat, a kind of steam-punk dystopia that has been over-run by rampaging puppets who have turned against their human masters. Guided by a cricket called Gemini (because Disney owns the name ‘Jiminy Cricket’) you fight your way across the city to locate Gepetto and end the puppet revolt. Like all soulsborne games, Lies Of P is very challenging, with a wide range of combat moves and skills that you have to master as you fight your way across the city. And, as the name suggests, the game also allows you to choose between telling lies or the truth as you encounter other characters in the game. The developers recommend using a game controller, rather than mouse and keyboard, and the game only runs on Apple Silicon, with no support for older Intel Macs. An M2 is recommended, but we still found the game playable on an iMac with a basic M1 processor, when running on medium graphics settings at 1920×1080, so most recent Mac models should be able to handle the game without too much trouble.