Doctor Whohas been enchanting and breaking the hearts of fans for decades. There’s likely been a time when every viewer has hoped a certain time-traveling phone box would suddenly appear in their backyard with the Doctor extending their hand to take them on some wild adventure.
In fact, you only need to take a quick glance at the Ao3 fan-fiction network to see that’s the case.
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The final frontier is the perfect setting for video games to take flight.
As tragic as it might be to admit, there’s a very low chance that the Doctor will ever appear to you,but certain video games can offer a similar sort of adventure. We may never sail across the stars or through time with the good Doctor, but these video games can help emulate that experience as best as possible.
To find the best video games for Doctor Who fans, I focused on several criteria—Science Fictionor Fantasy genre, exploration, whimsy, and puzzle-solving or mystery. After all, it’s not a Doctor Who episode without some great mystery or riddle for the Doctor and his Companion to solve!
10Doctor Who: The Edge Of Reality
Live Out Your Doctor Who Dreams
Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality
Let’s be honest here. Put David Tennant in anything, and it’s going to be gold. Or, in Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality’s case,it’s going to be as golden as possible.
This game is a bit rough, and the story is admittedly weak, but for Doctor Who fans who want the chance to be the Doctor’s Companion, even if only temporarily, this is the game for you. Players will take on the role of an original Companion who crosses paths with the 13th Doctor and is inevitably swept into saving the universe alongside her.
Jodie Whittaker reprises her role as the 13th Doctor, which makes the experience feel more authentic. But I know what many Doctor Who fans want and, yes,Edge of Reality provides.
David Tennant also reprises his role as the 10th Doctor, albeit for a short cameo, but even that little crumb makes slogging through Edge of Reality worth it. The game has everything a Doctor Who fan could want—traveling in the Tardis, battling with popular enemies like The Weeping Angels and Daleks, and saving the universe.
But let’s be real here—y’all really just want to interact with Tennant.
9The Stanley Parable
Defying Fate At Its Best
The Stanley Parable
The Stanley Parablefeels like it camestraight out of a Doctor Who episode. It has all the quirky, whimsy, and fate-altering decisions a fan would expect.
Also, like many Doctor Who episodes, the game leaves the player questioning concepts like fate and destiny. At each turn in the game, the player has a number of choices they need to make.
The Narrator is telling the player, who is acting on Stanley’s behalf, to do one thing, but the player can do the complete opposite if they so choose. The really fun aspect of The Stanley Parable is that the Narrator will then alter what they’re sayingand change based on the player’s actions.
I can totally see the Doctor taking on the part of the Narrator and trying to lead the Companion through a maze with some sort of countdown to the end of the universe in the background. There’s just enoughsilliness to the gamethat makes it fit perfectly into a season of Doctor Who.
The Stanley Parable has over 10 endings, with many of them pretty challenging to unlock unless you follow a very specific route. Happy hunting!
8No Man’s Sky
Tons Of Travel And Evil Robots
No Man’s Sky
One of the recurring themes of Doctor Who is traveling through space and having adventures on weird, alien planets. While there are plenty ofamazing space video gamesout there, there’s nothing quite likeNo Man’s Sky.
I recall loading into the game for the first time back when it first launched andbeing floored by how many star systems there were to explore. Even today, No Man’s Sky has a huge universe that hasn’t been fully cataloged.
It brings to mind the sort of open adventure that the Doctor is all about. He sort of just chooses a location at random and just goes to see what he can find.
Players can have that same sort ofopen and curious adventure in No Man’s Sky. They just need to board their starship, choose a solar system, and see what dangers and discoveries await them.
Speaking of dangers, much like Doctor Who, there are evil robots called Sentinels that will pester and annoy players while they make their way through the universe. So, just like any good episode from the show, you’ll have to come ready for a fight.
7Return Of The Obra Dinn
Return of the Obra Dinn
I was a big fan ofPapers, Please, so when I heard that the team behind it had made another game,Return of the Obra Dinn, I was immediately on board. As a Doctor Who fan, I think others will also find it very enjoyable.
Return of the Obra Dinn has you taking on the role of an investigator who works for the East India Trading Company. A ghost ship that has been missing for a couple of years suddenly shows up,with all of its passengers either dead or missing.
Equipped with a very useful pocket watch, players mustsolve the death of each personor find out their whereabouts if they are still alive. Now, the aspect that makes this a whole lot of fun for Doctor Who fans is the pocket watch.
The Doctor has his Sonic Screwdriver that can do a number of fun and useful things, but even it can’t play the last few minutes of a person’s life. Your pocket watch can. It’s able to play the last few words or things that happened to each dead passenger on the ship,allowing you to piece together what happened to them.
It essentially plays with time, with each person basically frozen in the moment of their death. This game has mystery, a bit of a time loop, and a magical object. What else could a Doctor Who fan need?
6BioShock Infinite
Time Loops And Lots Of Timey-Wimey Stuff
BioShock Infinite
Take the time loop from Return of the Obra Dinn and stretch it to the max, and you’ll have an incredible timey-wimey adventure in BioShock Infinite. Now, I’m a gluttonous maniac when it comes to anythingBioShock, so this is just a natural pick for a Doctor Who fan like myself.
Doctor Who often has aesthetic-heavy worlds, especially when traveling in time, sothe particular flair and style of BioShock Infinite fits right in. There’s a whole lot of pretty veneer and propaganda that tries to make it seem like everything is going well in the city of Columbia, but as players explore the city as Booker, they quickly discover that there’s an underlying layer of rot.
It’s not unlike a lot of the plastic smiles and propaganda used in some of the episodes of Doctor Who to hide the fact thatthe wealthy are eating people, or something really dark and twisted is happening just behind closed doors. BioShock Infinite also has something else going for it that I know Doctor Who fans will love—time loops.
Elizabeth, whom Booker is charged with killing and then later protects, can open rifts into the space-time continuum, which gives players a lot of fun ways to interact with the world and defeat enemies.
Messing with space and time?A Doctor Who classic.
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You know how there’s always that part of an episode where the Doctor starts rattling off a bunch of technical terms and jargon, andthe best you can do is nod along? That’s sort of what playingControlis like.
Now, on the surface, it’s a pretty easy plot to understand. You play as Jesse, and you’ve been randomly selected to become the new Director of the Federal Bureau of Control.Congrats!
The moment you step into the Oldest House, however, things start to get weird. There are floating people who seem possessed by some entity called the Hiss, you’re developing weird powers and abilities, and you’re trying to uncover what happened to your brother, who was taken by the FBC a long time ago.
There’s a lot of reality-warping, space-time-continuum-altering fun, andthe game isn’t exactly one that holds your hand. It’s like when the Doctor garbles all that nonsense at their Companion, then disappears andexpects them to do what he said.
Control is wildly fun, incredibly weird, and worth any Doctor Who fan’s time.
4Mass Effect Legendary Edition
End Of Galaxy Stakes
Mass Effect Legendary Edition
Mass Effectfits the bill for almost any kind of Doctor Who fan, but it really gives a certain group within the fandom exactly what they want—the ability to kiss aliens. Bioware is notorious for its romances, and it didn’t hold back for certain xeno relationships.
The trilogy also offers a ton of action as players step into the shoes of Commander Shepard, who must save the galaxy from the oncoming Reaper attack (among many other things). Mass Effect is just one of those iconic games that remainsas prevalent in today’s cultureas when the first game was released back in 2007.
Besides kissing aliens (if you aren’t sold already), Doctor Who fans who crave a little action will have a buffet. While you can use guns and weapons, Mass Effect also has its ownsort of space-magic called biotics, which basically lets certain people manipulate mass effect fields to perform special abilities.
There’s a certain magic to Doctor Who too, and Mass Effect has just enough charm and comedy for Doctor Who fans to feel right at home.
3The Talos Principle
Puzzles And Riddles And Mysteries
The Talos Principle
At the heart of every Doctor Who episode is some sort of puzzle, riddle, or mystery for the Doctor and his Companion to solve. He’s the Doctor, after all—he fixes things.
Now and then, there’s also an episode that’s philosophical in nature. It pushes its audience to think about the stakes or the message that it’s trying to convey.
A great example is the episode “Into the Dalek,” where the 12th Doctor basically has an identity crisis over whether he’s good or not. The episode is extremely juicy with allegories to the Fall of Man and human nature.
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These puzzles don’t simply scratch your brain, but completely scrambles it.
The Talos Principlemelds puzzle and philosophy too, in an extremely entertaining,albeit sometimes frustrating, narrative puzzle game. You play as a sentient robot who has to solve over 120 puzzles to get to the tower at the center of the world.
While solving puzzles, you can come across stories of others who have attempted the challenge and their thoughts on the world. You’re almost like a third party in this space, which gives the player the perfect opportunity to reflect on the questions being asked.
2Life Is Strange
Time Loops Packed With Emotion
Life is Strange
I’ll admit it: Doctor Who hasmade me bawl like a babyquite a few times during its run. There’s a reason it’s been in constant production for so long and is beloved by so many people—it knows how to pack an emotional punch.
The same is true forLife Is Strange, which is one of the best games I’ve ever played. As Max, you return to Acardia Bay after leaving it as a young child and discover that you have a unique abilityto rewind time.
In this world, the butterfly effect is alive and well, so naturally, every time Max uses her rewind ability, something else seems to go wrong. She saves one life, but at the cost of how many others?
Since the setting is in high school, you can expect a whole lot of high school drama, too. The stakes are pretty high though, especially when you begin to uncovera very dark and very adult threatlurking in the shadows of the school.
Emotion is atthe heart of Life Is Strange, and it comes with tough choices that will likely leave you crying just as much as when the Doctor regenerates.
1Outer Wilds
Space Exploration And A Time Loop
Outer Wilds
Outer Wildshas the entire Doctor Who experience packaged inone very interesting game. You have space exploration between vastly different and intriguing planets, aliens, a mystery surrounding the ancient Nomai civilization, and a time loop that resets every time the star goes supernova, killing everyone in the process.
As a character simply known as the Hatchling, it’s up to you to determine what’s causing the time loop. Now, the really cool gimmick is that players have22 minutes before the star explodes, and they can’t take anything back with them when the game resets, either.
While you get to keep your knowledge, no resources come back to the start of the game with you. The explosion also causes new areas to emerge, so the exploration never gets stale.
The Outer Wilds gets the number one spot here because it feels likea Doctor Who adventure from start to finish. The ending in particular would work as a perfect sign-off for the latest actor taking up the mantle.
With just a ship and a curious mind, you’d do the Doctor proud by experiencing this game.
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