Crusader Kings III 1.20.0.4 Native

If you're planning to play on a Mac, know that this is an Intel-native application. The current build uses x86 64-bit architecture, so you'll need a machine that's still comfortable running that instruction set. On modern Macs, that means the operating system handles the translation automatically behind the scenes, and in practice the game runs smoothly on any recent Intel processor that meets the minimum bar Paradox sets for their grand strategy titles.

The draw here is the strange, often darkly comic blend of map-painting and family management. You pick a noble house in the Middle Ages and spend the next few hundred years steering it through marriages, murders and messy succession crises. War is one route to power, but it's rarely the most interesting one — the real engine is the personalities of your court, who fall in love, hold grudges and occasionally throw you in the oubliette. It is grand strategy played at the level of whispered conversations and badly timed feasts.

Play flows across multiple generations, so the long-term view matters more than winning any single battle. The interface supports English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Korean, which helps when you are trying to decode exactly why your cousin in Bavaria now hates you. On a Mac, the experience is identical to the PC version — same sprawling map, same reactive character system — and the performance holds up well provided your machine isn't stretching to run the operating system itself.

• Apple Silicon or Intel 64-bit Mac