In recent years, the number of great games for Mac has declined because many are no longer supported. Every new version of macOS tends to break a few games, but macOS Catalina in 2019 meant that lot of games that used 32-bit code were no longer Mac compatible.
At the same time that Apple went 64-bit only it also introduced Metal for 3D graphics, which left a lot of games developers with a decision: make new Mac versions of their games or stop making them. Unfortunately many chose the latter.
This will hopefully change now that macOS Sonoma is here. With Sonoma, Apple provides two things: a new Game Porting Toolkit to make it easier for game developers to bring their games to the Mac; and a new Game Mode to ensure a game gets the highest priority on GPU and CPU, for better playability.
Even before the changes that Sonoma brought, and contrary to popular belief, Mac gamers already had plenty of top games titles to choose from – indeed, the most difficult part is narrowing down the options, and then finding the money to buy and time to play them. We can’t help with the latter, but the first problem is right up our alley. We’ve collected the best Mac games for your delectation – including some of the best new games.
Below you will find what we believe are the greatest Mac games out there, together with links to the Mac App Store, Steam and other reputable vendors, so you can buy them right away.
These are the very best games for Mac. They are in alphabetical order, not in order of preference (because everyone likes different things).
BEST NEW MAC GAMES
Before we run through our list of the best games we’ve played on the Mac, here are games we recommend you play on the Mac in 2024.
1. Total War: Pharaoh
Price: £29.99 from fave.co/3Hq1QW5
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 neighbouring 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 Pharaoh (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.
Pharaoh 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 1,920x1,080 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.
2. Baldur’s Gate 3
Price: £49.99 from fave.co/3TQx9yJ
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 traditionala 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.
