Spies come in many forms, so the best spy games on PC could be tense games about intrigue and infiltration, or high octane adventures starring a special agent. It would be good to see more games focusing on spycraft, espionage, and subterfuge, but we can make do with putting on some cool glowing goggles to infiltrate a base. Here are some of our favourite games starring awesome spies.

Alpha Protocol

A gloriously janky RPG from Obsidian that casts you as crack spy Michael Thorton. This was a brave attempt to combine Mass Effect style conversation and branching plot systems with a cover-based shooter. The combat side of things is a mess, so it’s worth looking up the different weapon classes so you know which disciplines to avoid (I found pistols worked well enough). It’s worth playing through the dodgy action to roleplay your favourite flavour of spy—pick your JB: Jason Bourne, James Bond, or Jack Bauer. 

The best thing about Alpha Protocol is the branching plot. The alliances you choose will change the order you visit each continental hub, and can have a huge impact on the characters you meet and the endings you unlock.—Tom Senior

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

This classic stealth sandbox came out 13 years ago, but still perfectly captures the thrill of being an action movie covert agent. It’s like Hitman, but you have cooler gadgets and the ability to suspend yourself above guards by doing the splits. 

This is Sam Fisher’s finest hour thanks to Michael Ironside’s performance and a darkly humourous script. Chaos Theory features some exceptional level design, and a decent co-op campaign that encourages you to co-ordinate sweet simultaneous takedowns from the shadows. —Tom Senior 

No One Lives Forever

One of the few spy games to draw influence from the cheesy Man From Uncle meets Austin Powers 1960s idea of a spy adventure. As the glamorous Cate Archer you fight through jump out of planes, race bikes, scuba to sunken ships and other antics you might expect from Roger Moore era Bond. Every mission is different, and the whole adventure is played for laughs. It’s a difficult game to get hold of, and tough to get fully working on current machines, but it goes down as a great spy game in the PC gaming canon.—Tom Senior 

SpyParty

Paranoia is an important part of being a spy. Your cover could be blown at any moment, and the consequences are drastic. In fact someone could be watching you through a high-powered scope right now. SpyParty captures this feeling in a series of small scenes—a party in a pub, a penthouse party, a boat party (spies love to party). One player plays a sniper, assessing the scene for any signs of spy-like behaviour. The other player is the spy. As the spy you have to blend in with NPCs as naturally as you can while you saunter around completing secret objectives.

As the spy you can see the sniper’s targeting laser moving through the room. It’s terrifying to see it flick from one side of the room to your forehead after you make a sloppy move. On the plus side you can see when the sniper is obsessed with innocent NPCs and use them as cover to plant that bug you need to win.—Tom Senior 

Invisible, Inc

Infiltrate high-security environments as a group of specialists in this hybrid of stealth game, turn-based strategy and roguelike. Get in, run the job, then get out again, and use your agents' different abilities to make it happen. This is a meticulous spy game where every wrong move can cost you dearly (you can rewind a turn if you've messed up that badly), but every well-executed strategy will make you feel like a badass. 

The best thing about Invisible Inc is that you can customise the parameters of a campaign to your preferences—adjust the amount of credits you get, how long each campaign goes on for and how many guards you can expect to find in each mission. Even though it gets real tricky, the difficulty is very much in your control. On additional playthroughs, you'll unlock new agents who provide you with a different power base.—Samuel Roberts

Covert Action

Sid Meier’s spy game was remarkably ambitious for 1990. You investigate randomly generated missions by infiltrating facilities, planting bugs, stealing files, tailing suspects and decrpting codes. Each of these activities has its own minigame. To decrypt a code you have to decode a scrambled message under time pressure. To infiltrate a building you pick a loadout, slip into the premises and start photographing documents with a microcamera.

It looks ropey by today’s standards, but Covert Action has remarkable breadth of scope that few games attempt today. There’s a reason for that, perhaps. Sid Meier was unhappy with the disparate nature of the Covert Action’s minigames, and felt as though the activities detracted from the overall mission, which involved tracking down spies in a network to find the mastermind.—Tom Senior 

KGB

Set in Russia during the last days of the Soviet Union, this brutally difficult point-and-click adventure sees you investigating corruption within the KGB—at least to begin with. Over the course of the game, protagonist Maksim, a KGB captain, finds himself swept up in a conspiracy involving the murder of a former agent.

It’s from 1992 so it’s hardly the most slick or accessible of adventures, but its depiction of Cold War espionage is brilliantly done and uncompromisingly realistic in places. There are numerous ways to suddenly die, including being executed for speaking out of turn to your superiors. KGB was also released on CD-ROM under the name Conspiracy, featuring FMV cutscenes that starred Donald Sutherland as Maksim’s late father.—Andy Kelly

Gunpoint

Steal secrets in (former PC Gamer staffer) Tom Francis's stealthy puzzle/platformer, where you play a spy who can hack and control different parts of a building's security system. What I remember liking about Gunpoint more than anything is its length—you'll clear it in about three or four hours, but in that time you'll go from being shot dead a bunch of times by guards to perfecting its systems and skilfully bounding in and out of buildings. It's perfectly paced, with no unnecessary levels or dull bits. 

If you like immersive sims, this reframes most of their core elements into a 2D game. Plus you can smash your little spy guy through windows, which feels really good.—Samuel Roberts

Metal Gear Solid

“Tactical Espionage Action” is Metal Gear Solid’s tagline. In some ways the first game captures the spy fantasy better than the rest of the series, because in MGS Snake is an underdog rather than a legendary battlefield soldier. Snake’s hushed conversations with his handlers over intercom create a sense that you’re camped behind enemy lines, and it’s a dedicated stealth game. The worst thing you can do is get spotted by a guard. That brash alert noise is burned into my brain.

It’s a good introduction to Kojima’s brainverse. Expect bizarre bosses and a tendency to reach through the fourth wall. The spy fantasy starts to falter when you get into the extraordinary melodrama of the finale, but overall it’s a clever spy game that stands up today. Now we just need the brilliant Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater to make the leap to PC.—Tom Senior 

Neon Struct

A cyberpunk spy thriller that pays homage to Deus Ex, Neon struct is a slick heist game that challenges you to complete missions non-lethally. You have a bunch of sci-fi gadgets that can scramble gadgets and turn lights off at range, but its best move is a totally silent slide move that can get you out of trouble. 

You explore city hubs between missions. That’s where you buy gadgets and stims that make you invisible in short bursts. It’s a neat little spy game with a stylish low-fi look, though Andy found the sparse sound design offputting in our review.—Tom Senior 

Gunpoint and Heat Signature creator Tom Francis recently revealed the bones of what could be his next game: Tactical Breach Wizards. It's still a work in progress and subject to change, but I dearly hope that title sticks. 

Francis describes Tactical Breach Wizards as "a present-day turn-based strategy game" in which you command a team of wizards in breach-and-clear operations. It was partly born from his desire to see "more indie XCOMs," Francis wrote in an Imgur post, and silly modern wizards seemed a good fit—wizards like an agnostic priest and a pacifistic sniper.  

At least for now, combat plays out in turns. That is to say, you issue multiple commands to different units and they all happen at once. Francis is also playing with the idea of redoing turns as many times as you'd like until you get the outcome you're looking for—"like Frozen Synapse, but without even the uncertainty of the enemy's actions," he says.

"My prototype is too early to say if either of those systems will stick, I’ll happily scrap or change them if not," Francis said. "I might end up making a totally different tactics game with this same theme, or as I say, the whole thing might completely fail to coalesce and I scotch the lot." 

Disclosure: Tom Francis used to work at PC Gamer, and we still publish his articles occasionally, but we don't think you should hold that against him. 

Do you own either the Exclusive Edition of Gunpoint, or the Exclusive Extras DLC, on Steam? If so, you also have access to the first alpha test of the spacejacking sim Heat Signature that got underway over the weekend.

If not, you can still get into the club by simply buying Gunpoint (the Exclusive Edition, remember) now. Do take note, however, that Tom Francis, the man who made both games, doesn't think that anyone should actually do that.

"This is very unfinished, very unoptimised, and time-limited: I will close it down in two weeks and then you won t have it anymore," he wrote. "It exists purely to help me find problems with the game and get people s thoughts, not necessarily to give them the best experience or one I d charge for individually."

Francis also emphasized that this is not the same as an Early Access release, and that having the alpha will not get you the final release. Furthermore, there will be other closed alphas held in the future that anyone can apply for. "This first one is just a perk of the [Gunpoint] Exclusive Edition, part of what I promised to say thanks to those who supported Gunpoint so generously," Francis wrote. "I did the same thing with Floating Point—Exclusive Edition folks got the first alpha, then later ones went to people who signed up."

Unless you're desperate to play Heat Signature right freakin' now, in other words, ponying up $30/ 18 for Gunpoint to get into the first alpha probably isn't the thing to do. Which isn't to say Gunpoint isn't a fine game—we didn't review it, for reasons listed here, but plenty of other places did and they quite liked it—but when even the guy who stands to make money off the deal is recommending a good dose of sober second thought, you'd probably be wise to listen. Last time we played Heat Signature, we thought it was pretty neat.

(Disclosure: Tom Francis used to work here, but we don't think you should hold that against him.)

What time is it? Disclaimer time! Tom Francis used to work for PC Gamer. Also, a portion of PC Gamer UK went to his house on New Year's Eve. Also, we were all at the pub the other night, where he told us, among other things, that he was going to do an absolute beginner's guide to Game Maker. Here's the thing, though: it's January 6. Nothing interesting is happening. So I either write about this—a cool and potentially helpful thing that a game developer is doing—or I tell you how much money Kickstarter has received in total over the last year. Do you really care how much money Kickstarter has received in total over the last year? Because I don't.

Gunpoint creator (and... well, see above) Tom Francis is making a tutorial series showing absolute beginners how to make a game in Game Maker—the tool used to make both Gunpoint and Francis's upcoming Heat Signature. The first episode was released yesterday, and you can see it below.

Tom's own disclaimer states that this isn't a great series if you're looking to be a top programmer. Instead, the point is to show you how to make a game with absolutely no experience, and in the easiest way possible. As he puts it in the video, "once you get something working, you will know if making games if for you."

I imagine for many it could prove a useful resource. One of the big barriers to game development seems to be the first step: actually realising that it's possible to just start making a game. Having someone talk you through that—showing people that with a little effort they can make something—strikes me as useful.

You can find future videos over on Tom's YouTube channel. Previously, while working for PC Gamer, Tom talked to a bunch of indies about their own preferred game making tools. We've also talked to a selection of indies—Francis included—about the smash hit games being made with Game Maker.