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

Macworld

It’s no longer true that the best games aren’t available to play on the Mac. Recently we’ve seen many many A-list games arrive on the Mac, including Assassins Creed: Shadows, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Civilisation V11, Cyberpunk 2077 and Resident Evil. 

You can see reviews of our favorite A-list games that can be played on the Mac below. These are what we believe are the greatest Mac games out there, and you’ll find out reviews together with links to the Mac App Store, Steam and other reputable vendors, so you can buy them right away.

Best Mac Games 2025

There aer so many great games available to play on the Mac. Everyone has different tastes though, so we’ve tried to include something for everyone below. So whether you love RPGs, fighting games, action-adventure, first-person shooters, strategy games or puzzle, read on to find something to play.






1. Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition – An all-time great RPG
























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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.


Read our full

Cyberpunk 2077 (Mac) review







2. Resident Evil 7 Biohazard (Mac) – Creepy, unsettling and full of jump-scares
























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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.


Read our full

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (Mac) review







3. Assassin’s Creed Shadows – Action-packed with stunning visuals
























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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.


Read our full

Assassin’s Creed: Shadows review







4. Death Stranding Directors Cut (Mac) – Apocalyptic, cinematic
























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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.







5. Frostpunk 2 – Blade Runner with added snow
























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When it launched a few years ago Frostpunk 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. Frostpunk 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.

Frostpunk 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. Frostpunk 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.

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


Read our full

Frostpunk 2 review







6. Hollow Knight, Silksong – Atmospheric combat
























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Silksong works on both Intel Macs and Apple Silicon. The game’s 2D graphics run smoothly on older Macs, including my five-year-old Intel iMac at 4K resolution. 

Hollow Knight, developed by a modest three-man team in Adelaide, was a huge hit and sold millions of copies. The sequel has built up significant anticipation, but Team Cherry took their time to ensure Silksong lived up to its award-winning predecessor.

Silksong follows Hornet, a princess from the last game, as she escapes from a new kingdom called Pharloom. Despite sharing the same distinctive hand-drawn graphics, animation, and Larkin’s soundtrack, the game introduces new mechanics. Hornet navigates a sideways-scrolling 2D platform game, using her needle and thread weapons to defeat over 200 enemies. As she explores Pharloom, she gains new weapons and abilities to tackle the game’s bosses.

While I’m not skilled at platform games, I found the jumping mechanics in Silksong more forgiving than in Hollow Knight. Sometimes, Hornet could grab a ledge and escape danger if I missed a jump.

That said, Silkong is more challenging than its predecessors, with varied movement and powerful bosses.

Silksong’s opening screen suggests using a game controller, which I prefer with a keyboard and mouse. However, I struggled to adjust the keyboard controls to make Hornet move quickly. The Save system is also frustrating, only allowing saves at specific points like benches, forcing repeated retracing of steps to overcome obstacles or enemies.

While platform games can be frustrating, especially with restrictive Save systems, Silksong stands out for those who enjoy them. It’s one of the few games on the Mac that matches its challenge and style, making it a worthy successor to Hollow Knight.  

Silksong costs $19.99/£16.75 on Steam and Gog, and buying it once grants access to both PC and Mac versions. The first game is also on sale, making it an affordable introduction to the series.


Read our full

Hollow Knight: Silksong review







7. Control Ultimate Edition: Cult classic action-shooter
























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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.


Read our full

Control: Ultimate Edition review







8. Resident Evil 4 – Jump scares galore
























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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).







9. Prince Of Persia The Lost Crown – The Prince on the Mac
























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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.


Read our full

Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown (macOS) review







10. Resident Evil 3:
























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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. 


Read our full

Resident Evil 3 (Mac) review







11. Civilization VII – Rewrite history
























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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.


Read our full

Sid Meier’s Civilization VII review







12. The Witcher and Witcher 2 – Back on the Mac
























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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.







13. Total War: Pharaoh – New for Mac users