Every Doctor Who video game, ranked from worst to best

For as long as video games have been popular, the Doctor’s been foiling science-fictive malcontents in pixelated form.

When the TARDIS doors are flung open, the show might occasionally drop you on the Planet of the Wobbly Scenery, and the Doctor’s ventures in the world of gaming haven’t always been world beaters.

That being said, with the TV show ending its current run this weekend, it's the perfect time to dive into the wider world of Doctor Who spin-off material like this.

We set ourselves a mission: to hear the BBC Micro’s cassettes whir, to clamp our faces into a VR headset, to try each of the Doctor’s console and PC adventures (no phone or flash games this time). Let’s dive into the Vortex…

14. Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror (1985)

Many of the best Doctor Who serials were filmed in unglamorous quarries, and Mines of Terror honours this subterranean heritage by plunging the Sixth Doctor deep underground, where the Master’s busy extracting Heatonite, a substance which will further his domination of the universe.

Unfortunately, this digital Colin Baker doesn’t control like a man with any great urgency to spoil the Master’s fun – his ambling and leaping is rather half-hearted. The game also has the habit of reporting your method of death back to you, which is somewhat humiliating when you keep getting killed by an egg.

Released initially on the BBC Micro, Mines of Terror required some tinkering, as you had to install an extra ROM chip to have enough memory to play. It’s worth a go if you fancy meeting the Doctor’s robotic cat Splinx – an addition to the lore which Russell T Davies can surely ignore no longer. Unfortunately, the overall experience has aged about as well as the Face of Boe.

13. Doctor Who: Return to Earth (2010)

Must we return to earth so soon? Apparently so. This game was part of a deal between the BBC and Nintendo to bring the Doc to the Wii, and it ranks among his more questionable odysseys.

In Return to Earth, the Eleventh Doctor and Amy are bound to investigate the SS Lucy Grey, a spaceship that’s been abandoned near Jupiter. The dynamic duo must collect crystals from talking bollards, and fire these crystals at circles of various colours – and that’s about it.

The Cybermen and Daleks fulfil their contractual obligations, but the main villain this time is the camera controls, which are determined to demoralise the Doctor enough that he turns the TV off.

In this game’s favour, it was released alongside a Wii remote designed to look like Matt Smith’s sonic screwdriver, which may come to be seen as the high water mark of human ingenuity. As for the game itself, it’s more like Return to Shop.

12. Doctor Who: Evacuation Earth (2010)

On (psychic) paper, a puzzle game should be right up the Doctor’s street. Released alongside Return to Earth, this DS entry is set several hundred years earlier, as our planet, cohabited of course with the Silurians, is in the process being abandoned – threatened by powerful solar flares.

Although set in the Professor Layton mould, the puzzles are too easy and not particularly Whovian – you’ll have to spot the difference between pills and locate a lady’s favourite fish, for example. There’s a reason you’ll rarely turn to BBC One on a Saturday night to find Ncuti Gatwa rotating arrows for ten minutes. And DS must stand for ‘Dalek Suppression’, because we don’t hear from the evil pepper pots until far too late in proceedings for our liking.

The cartoony graphics spread across two screens are relatively handsome, though, and there’s also some pleasant teatime dialogue from Oli Smith - Amy is looking forward to visiting the exotic world of Larkhead Streaked, which turns out to be the Lake District. Still, not the Doctor’s best, so perhaps one for completionists only.

11. Doctor Who: The First Adventure (1985)

We’re back to the BBC Micro, and must begin by offering plaudits for this incredibly accurately titled game. This is where it all began. Like a TARDIS with a working chameleon circuit, The First Adventure is able to mimic several things around it: in this case, '80s arcade classics like Space Invaders, Galaxian and Pac-Man, although none quite measure up to the originals.

The Doctor even takes over where Frogger left off. In the midst of busy rocket-ships in a garish cityscape, you’ll have to help him cross the road – he is well over a thousand years old, after all. Your mission this time is to rebuild the Key of Time and return it to the centre of the universe, for reasons which are above our paygrade.

The awkward controls found here, like pressing the colon button to go up, never caught on; and underbaked gameplay pushes this game down the list. The game does open with an 8-bit version of Ron Grainer and Delia Derbyshire’s iconic theme tune, though, and there’s enough retro charm to make this worth a glance.

10. Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock (2012)

Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock is technically a platformer, in the way that the Weeping Angels are technically pleasant sculptures and Harold Saxon is a technically a respected political figure. The Doctor moves slowly again, and the controls are floatier than Lady Cassandra in a force 10 gale. You’ll spend a lot of your time pushing crates, using pipes as monkey bars and waiting for River Song to give you a leg up.

Brain-teasing is also on offer in this 2.5D release for PC, PS3 and PSVita - you can choose from easy, medium and hard puzzles, though as we repeatedly aligned radio waves and rotated circular images, it began to feel like The Eternity Clock might have been a design philosophy as well as a name.

The Eternity Clock might be worth a punt if you’re a super-fan, though – the game sounds luscious with Murray Gold’s music slathered all over it, and there’s top drawer voice acting from Matt Smith and Alex Kingston.

9. Doctor Who: Top Trumps (2008)

Rarely has a game been so encompassed by its title. There’s no false advertising: it would be churlish to deny that this is Doctor Who, and ridiculous to argue that it’s not Top Trumps. There’s little more than that here, but it’s still quite a fun blast-from-the-past to try.

The cards, featuring Captain Jack, Judoon Captain, and The Hoix (?), are drawn from seasons 1 and 3 of the revived show; rather curiously, this was the only game released during the high water mark of David Tennant’s New Who.

You’ll get bonuses and power-ups for winning several cards in a row, and you can even upgrade your cards’ stats. We’d have appreciated an in-depth story mode as well, and just like playing with the real deck, you’ll quickly learn which of the cards have the best attributes, which gives this a limited lifespan.

Come to think of it, this may be the only video game in which Harriet Jones’ height plays a decisive role, at a respectable 1.7 metres. Doesn’t she look tall-ish? We also learn that the Slitheen have a miserably low courage rating of 51, presumably as their gastric problems have affected their confidence. Is it good? Is it bad? Look, it’s Doctor Who: Top Trumps.

8. Doctor Who: The Edge of Time / The Edge of Reality (2019 - 2021)

Built by alumni from the cutting edge Sony London studio, The Edge of Time saw the Doctor’s first foray into the dimension of Virtual Reality. The Edge of Reality is an adaptation which followed a year later and discarded the VR element, adding new levels and expanding some of the existing ones.

Fittingly for a game built around immersion, the settings here are engrossing, from grimy chalk-scratched walls to rosily-lit spaceship interiors. VR effects in The Edge of Time are a mixed bag, though; on the one hand the controls can be fiddly, with even simple tasks like grabbing paintings failing to trigger at times. On the other hand, meeting the Weeping Angels in a cellar is a good way to test if either of your hearts are still working – though luckily there’s no blink detection system.

Jodie Whittaker delivers the Thirteenth Doctor’s lines with panache, but she’s mainly absent from proceedings, and as such the story often feels like it could do with a kick up the Plasmavores. Of these two, The Edge of Time is the one you’ll want to get hold of if you need some time-hopping suspense.

7. Doctor Who: Destiny of the Doctors (1997)

We’ve never heard the Doctor accompanied by a '90s breakbeat dance soundtrack before, and we may never again. Destiny of the Doctors on the PC was the second game to come out while the show was out of action, with only Paul McGann’s brief dandyish appearance in an American pilot episode to tide us over.

This game’s a real curiosity which demonstrates that nobody’s quite cracked how the Doctor should play as a video game hero. In Destiny of the Doctors, developers Studio Fish opted for a first-person shooter in the style of Quake. Notably, however, they subtracted the shooting, although you can canonically blow Autons’ heads off by tuning a radio to BBC Radio 1.

We have time for this game. The low polygon set-dressing makes exploring the darkened interior of the TARDIS a genuinely skin-crawling affair, and it’s stuffed with incredible voice performances from a pantheon of Who actors like Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy. You’ll even be taunted by full motion video of Anthony Ainley’s Master winking at you on the Underground, and maybe that’s what we’ve all been missing in our lives.

6. Doctor Who: The Adventure Games (2010-2011)

Released on PC and Mac, The Adventure Games are some of the more successful experiments in the digital Whoniverse. Styled as interactive episodes, these are penned by experienced hands: Phil Ford, who co-wrote The Waters of Mars, and James Moran.

While the stories are involving, taking you from dystopian London to an underwater headquarters, the gameplay’s a little more suspect, with slightly wonky stealth sections where Amy follows rather reluctantly behind. There’s the standard-issue rudimentary puzzling, too, like matching shapes to open encrypted doors. Unusually for a Doctor Who game, the voice acting is a bit hit-and-miss as well – it occasionally sounds like different takes of Matt Smith have been spliced together.

The last episode is easily the best – The Gunpowder Plot finds the TARDIS team in Jacobean London by night. This playable setting is a treat, with Guy Fawkes and the Sontarans living up to their billing, and a far larger environment than the preceding four episodes – the expanded cast of voiced NPCs make this feel closer to the ensembles of the Doctor’s best television mysteries.

5. Doctor Who: Dalek Attack (1992)

When New Who was barely a sparkle in Russell T Davies’s eye, fans who were jonesing for a Gallifreyan fix had to make do with Dalek Attack for the PC. Luckily, from the pixel-art comic panels to fighting double-headed dragons in the sewers, this side-scroller is a blast.

The Doctor is having a quick break from pacifism - the sonic screwdriver acts as a submachine gun, which is riotous fun but a bit out of character. His globe-trotting platforming quest takes him through the universe’s most luxurious tourist spots: Paris, Tokyo and, um, Skaro. By default you’ll play as Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor, but you can also choose Tom Baker or Patrick Troughton, and a two player mode adds either Ace or the Brigadier to make this a sterling cast for Classic Who devotees.

Controlling the Fourth Doctor as he flings himself from London Underground signs and throws grenades at Daleks is certainly engaging. Still, we can’t help feel that it’s the Daleks who should be doing the shooting. Actually, why isn’t there a game where you play as a Dalek? Perhaps a friendly one. BBC, let’s talk.

4. Doctor Who: The Lonely Assassins (2021)

We’re pointing the sonic screwdriver at our own rules here, as we said we’d exclude mobile games, and admittedly The Lonely Assassins is a game whose storytelling takes place entirely on a mobile phone. We’re giving ourselves a pass, though, as it was released on the Switch and PC, too.

The concept of The Lonely Assassins is compelling. You, the player, have got hold of the phone of one Larry Nightingale, AKA the bloke from the video shop in fan favourite episode Blink. As you tap through the phone’s abilities, like examining an order from a department store or hacking surveillance cameras, you’ll dig further into the mystery of why Larry disappeared.

Choosing text messages to send to suspicious characters doesn’t make for an all-action affair, but the writing is often amusing - several moments got a laugh from us, including one email detailing an incident with a chicken parmesan salad. Often, the Doctor’s role is as an intergalactic detective, and The Lonely Assassins scratches that itch, with a gratifying feeling as you advance through the intricate plot. It’s a real one-off, and worth a play.

3. Doctor Who and the Warlord (1985)

Let’s hop back in time again – if you’re wondering how long ago 1985 was, then we’ll remind you that Doctor Who and the Warlord came on two-sides of a cassette tape. It’s from a genre you’ll rarely see these days – an all-text adventure.

Back in the '80s, this game was marketed as something that would train you as part of the BBC Computer Literacy Project, although we don’t know if repeatedly typing ‘GO WEST’ counts as a transferable skill.

The text is relayed in second person. As an unnamed companion of the Doctor, you awake after a devastating battle on the planet Quantain, and your first expedition is to wander an irradiated desert to find a sonic lance – the adventure never gets less bizarre from there.

Graham Williams guides the story with genuinely well-crafted prose, painting pictures in a ‘pall of smoke’ and ‘battle scarred fields’ where ‘wounded space troopers stumble past you, unseeing’. There are no graphics to speak of aside from your imagination.

Some parts of the game show their age – Doctor Who and the Warlord is particularly unforgiving, offering instant death for seemingly innocuous choices like picking up coins.

And of course, a text-only game might not quicken your pulse - there’s a reason the Daleks don’t shout ‘EXTRAPOLATE’. Even so, this is an adventure put together with a huge amount of heart and wit, and it deserves to be near the top.

2. Doctor Who: The Runaway (2019-2020)

In The Runaway, the Thirteenth Doctor made another venture into Virtual Reality, and this is our favourite of the two, even if it’s much shorter. The Runaway is far and away the best looking game in this list: the art direction here is magnificent, as is the fluidity of the Doc’s animation, as she pivots across the TARDIS like a veritable ball of energy.

In fact, a literal ball of energy takes centrestage in this story - that’s Volta, a lovably whistling and anxious teenager running away from their own planet. Concerningly, the Volta has the ability to turn into a black hole when stressed, so the Doctor tries to calm them down by guiding a meditation session. Reuniting Volta with their family quickly becomes a breathtaking ride.

Some might argue that a game of under 20 minutes is closer to a tech demo, but The Runaway is put together with real care and artistry – and it does exactly what it sets out to do. Like The Edge of Time, this feels like a blueprint for future Doctor Who games, and we’d love to see a longer story with a style this gorgeous.

1. Doctor Who: LEGO Dimensions (2015)

Deciding which of the Doctor’s regenerations count is a matter of debate. When the Tenth Doctor shot his life force into a severed arm, did this use up one of his regenerations? (The answer is yes, but it’s complicated.)

The debate rages too with the Doc’s video games. LEGO Dimensions is a toy-to-life project, where themed expansions are unlocked by real-life LEGO sets. So if this Doctor Who game is just an expansion, should we count it?

We should - because it’s the slickest Who game made so far. Everything including the kitchen sink is here: the Dalek Emperor, the First Doctor, Captain Jack singing to a bemused group of the Ood… The TARDIS’ time travelling abilities are also used as a gameplay mechanic for once – in order to remove a forcefield from embattled London in 2025, you’ll need to travel back to the same level in 2015 and the Victorian era.

Naturally, everything is made of LEGO bricks – there’s more plastic here than an Auton’s recycling bin, but that doesn’t take the shine off this copious celebration of Doctor Who history. You can even ride a LEGO K9 and use his laser nose to blast intergalactic ruffians, which we’re pretty sure was the whole point of inventing video games.

In addition to romping gameplay, you’ll get to experience Peter Capaldi delivering lines like ‘Davros: not so much a bad penny as a mad penny‘ as though it’s something Shakespeare wrote (when he wasn’t fighting the Carrionites).

The downside, as with a few entries on this list, is that this one’s hard to get hold of these days, unless you have a trustworthy LEGO dealer. It’s worth getting your mitts on Doctor Who: LEGO Dimensions if you can, though. For now it’s the Doctor Who game. The definite article, you might say.

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