Trying To Remember a Dungeon Crawl Game From The Early Years

Slaanesh69

Slaanesh69

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I've been racking my brain trying to remember a dungeon crawling game I adored back in the early computer years, but I cannot remember for the life of me.

I tried some googling and still couldn't come up with it.

It kind of looked like Xlarn a bit, but with white background:

1711065703038.png


You could find books that would increase your stats so that you could really max out a character. There were like a dozen starting races and a bunch of different classes.

I swore it had Moria in it's title, but that is a roguelike and this game wasn't that genre. It WAS single character though.

I also believe it had it's own website and that was the only place to order it, and they mailed you a CD. I also recall install was janky and I am sure I couldn't get it to install properly sometimes.

Anyway, I thought I would put it out there to the other old gamers in case someone came across it. I am thinking '96 - '00 maybe?

Edit - and I seem to recall the cover art was frazetta-like.
 
Caliane

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Slaanesh69 said:
I've been racking my brain trying to remember a dungeon crawling game I adored back in the early computer years, but I cannot remember for the life of me.

I tried some googling and still couldn't come up with it.

It kind of looked like Xlarn a bit, but with white background:

View attachment 520925

You could find books that would increase your stats so that you could really max out a character. There were like a dozen starting races and a bunch of different classes.

I swore it had Moria in it's title, but that is a roguelike and this game wasn't that genre. It WAS single character though.

I also believe it had it's own website and that was the only place to order it, and they mailed you a CD. I also recall install was janky and I am sure I couldn't get it to install properly sometimes.

Anyway, I thought I would put it out there to the other old gamers in case someone came across it. I am thinking '96 - '00 maybe?

Edit - and I seem to recall the cover art was frazetta-like.
Click to expand...
96-00 would be much much later I would think. ps1 was in 94. 3d gaming as the norm by that point. I mean, there were retro games at that point as well, and roguelikes always a thing. I think we'd need to pin point the date a bit better.

the problem with much of those older games where there were TONS of pirated, regional copies and clones. it can be real tough to pin point.

what system? apple, pc? amiga, commadore 64? pentium, msdos, windows, vista? was aol a thing at that point, was it an online game?
those might help pin point a date.
Any other associated memories? like, remember watching ducktales while playing, or something.

larn is a roguelike, you don't think it was a roguelike?

Larn with white bg.
www.giantbomb.com

Larn (Game) - Giant Bomb

Larn is a 'roguelike' where players explore procedurally generated dungeons to gain experience and enough gold to venture into the volcano to retrieve the potion that will save the protagonist's daughter's life.
www.giantbomb.com www.giantbomb.com
your example of xlarn appears to be a modern visual pack. did it look like THAT, or old school ascii?

Larn

Larn Game: Play Larn and Ularn Online - A DOS/Amiga/Unix Roguelike Video Game
larn.org larn.org

Castle adventure was one of the early games I played.
en.wikipedia.org

Castle Adventure - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

dosgames.com

Castle Adventure game at DOSGames.com

This is a very old 'graphic' adventure game which uses textmode / ASCII characters. Despite its simplicity, there is something charming about its ...
dosgames.com dosgames.com
similar to, but not actually a roguelike either. it wasn't random. it was an early adventure game, with point and click adventure type stuff, along with combat.

I dont think it was castle adventure, just pointing out that kind of game. which also had tons of clones.
 
Slaanesh69

Slaanesh69

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Caliane said:
96-00 would be much much later I would think. ps1 was in 94. 3d gaming as the norm by that point. I mean, there were retro games at that point as well, and roguelikes always a thing. I think we'd need to pin point the date a bit better.

the problem with much of those older games where there were TONS of pirated, regional copies and clones. it can be real tough to pin point.

what system? apple, pc? amiga, commadore 64? pentium, msdos, windows, vista? was aol a thing at that point, was it an online game?
those might help pin point a date.
Any other associated memories? like, remember watching ducktales while playing, or something.

larn is a roguelike, you don't think it was a roguelike?

Larn with white bg.
www.giantbomb.com

Larn (Game) - Giant Bomb

Larn is a 'roguelike' where players explore procedurally generated dungeons to gain experience and enough gold to venture into the volcano to retrieve the potion that will save the protagonist's daughter's life.
www.giantbomb.com www.giantbomb.com
your example of xlarn appears to be a modern visual pack. did it look like THAT, or old school ascii?

Larn

Larn Game: Play Larn and Ularn Online - A DOS/Amiga/Unix Roguelike Video Game
larn.org larn.org

Castle adventure was one of the early games I played.
en.wikipedia.org

Castle Adventure - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

dosgames.com

Castle Adventure game at DOSGames.com

This is a very old 'graphic' adventure game which uses textmode / ASCII characters. Despite its simplicity, there is something charming about its ...
dosgames.com dosgames.com
similar to, but not actually a roguelike either. it wasn't random. it was an early adventure game, with point and click adventure type stuff, along with combat.

I dont think it was castle adventure, just pointing out that kind of game. which also had tons of clones.
Click to expand...
Thing is, I owned an Amiga, but it was well after that.

I bought my first PC in 1995 so it had to be after that.

It was PC, and it was bought from a website and mailed on CD.

And you are right about all the unlicensed crap - that may be a problem.

It wasn't ascii and it wasn't a roguelike.
 
AladainAF

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Slaanesh69 said:
Thing is, I owned an Amiga, but it was well after that.

I bought my first PC in 1995 so it had to be after that.

It was PC, and it was bought from a website and mailed on CD.

And you are right about all the unlicensed crap - that may be a problem.

It wasn't ascii and it wasn't a roguelike.
Click to expand...

Tower of the Sorcerer?

 
Control

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I was going to mention that there were a few Moria variants, but then you were all like "website"...

1711077702905.png
 
Rajaah

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Reposted from another thread, maybe someone can figure this one out. IIRC the game had a white background (might have been snowy graphics, might have been a flat white background). You moved around in an overhead tile format, up/down/left/right in single square steps.

Main thing was the giants being the main antagonists of the four levels. Not sure if there were a few giants and one chief (boss at the end) or if there was just one giant and it was the boss at the end of the level. Either way the first level was Hill Giant and the fourth (last) level was Fire Giant. I remember elemental resistance spells being in it and one of the first things I got was Resist Cold or something along those lines. Wouldn't mind having a rematch with whatever this game was.

Rajaah said:
Yeah, same thing happened to me early in the video when he was showing PC games from the 1970's like Moria. I recognized some of the footage from when I was VERY small, and unlocked a distant memory of playing Moria (or at least looking at it) on a school library computer at like 4 years old. Remembered the character sheet and everything. Wow, that was a blast from the past. Stuff like that piqued my interest in RPGs, LOTR, and D&D very early, before I knew much about any of them.

A couple years later there was a really cool PC RPG I tried to play and didn't get very far in, and I have no idea what it was called but maybe someone will know. It had four levels/worlds/dungeons? and each one was themed around a different type of giant. First was Hill Giants, fourth was Fire Giants, not sure what the two in-between were. You played as a single character who was some sort of battlemage and could fight/cast spells, and moved around the dungeon map engaging various enemies to get stronger to face the Hill Giant boss. It was really cool, but I was like 6 and kept rushing the boss, not knowing what the hell I was doing, so I didn't get past the first of the four sections of the game.
Click to expand...
 
AladainAF

AladainAF

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Rajaah said:
Reposted from another thread, maybe someone can figure this one out. IIRC the game had a white background (might have been snowy graphics, might have been a flat white background). You moved around in an overhead tile format, up/down/left/right in single square steps.

Main thing was the giants being the main antagonists of the four levels. Not sure if there were a few giants and one chief (boss at the end) or if there was just one giant and it was the boss at the end of the level. Either way the first level was Hill Giant and the fourth (last) level was Fire Giant. I remember elemental resistance spells being in it and one of the first things I got was Resist Cold or something along those lines. Wouldn't mind having a rematch with whatever this game was.
Click to expand...

What helps the most is a general timeline. Are we talking 1980s, 1990s? Mid 90s?
 
Rajaah

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AladainAF said:
What helps the most is a general timeline. Are we talking 1980s, 1990s? Mid 90s?
Click to expand...

I played this circa 1995 or so. Not sure if it was new at that point but I think it was. Also I'm about 90% sure it was some kind of shareware because that was all I had on PC at the time. It might have only included the first of the four levels as a demo.
 
V

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Rajaah said:
I played this circa 1995 or so. Not sure if it was new at that point but I think it was. Also I'm about 90% sure it was some kind of shareware because that was all I had on PC at the time. It might have only included the first of the four levels as a demo.
Click to expand...

Do you remember if it had separate screens for moving around and for combat ?

Secret of the silver blades had a lot of wandering around in snow fighting various giants, but it wasn't top down. Having both fire and hill giants suggests a D&D game though, although the 90s were pretty casual with shameless copyright infringement, especially among shareware.
 
Caliane

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Rajaah said:
Reposted from another thread, maybe someone can figure this one out. IIRC the game had a white background (might have been snowy graphics, might have been a flat white background). You moved around in an overhead tile format, up/down/left/right in single square steps.

Main thing was the giants being the main antagonists of the four levels. Not sure if there were a few giants and one chief (boss at the end) or if there was just one giant and it was the boss at the end of the level. Either way the first level was Hill Giant and the fourth (last) level was Fire Giant. I remember elemental resistance spells being in it and one of the first things I got was Resist Cold or something along those lines. Wouldn't mind having a rematch with whatever this game was.
Click to expand...
when you say, main antagonists, you mean they actually talked or something?
what kind of visuals? pixels, 3d?

now I'm drawing a blank.. I was going to suggest icewind dale 2, had you fighting hill giants, firegiants, icegiants, and in particular, there was a town being attacked by said giants, which one solution to it, is convince a local runt white dragon, to protect the town as his "horde". but, checking, walkthroughs... I don't see this.. I don't know which game "I" was remembering.

and found it. it was NWN:Shadows of Undrentide. did not remember that starting out that way. haha. 100% had wires crossed on which was which.
 
Caliane

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velk said:
Mordor: Depths of Dejenol maybe ?

View attachment 520935
Click to expand...
god damn, that sparked some 100% forgotten memories. pretty I had played that or a clone and completely forgot about it. the 3d view is not sparking memories, but the window based object/spells, and party info is. as well as automap.

oh, god yeah. someone has had to remake this for modern pcs...
 
rhinohelix

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Caliane said:
god damn, that sparked some 100% forgotten memories. pretty I had played that or a clone and completely forgot about it. the 3d view is not sparking memories, but the window based object/spells, and party info is. as well as automap.

oh, god yeah. someone has had to remake this for modern pcs...
Click to expand...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. We played some super fun games that were barely games by today's standards and they were great.
 
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Rajaah

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velk said:
Do you remember if it had separate screens for moving around and for combat ?

Secret of the silver blades had a lot of wandering around in snow fighting various giants, but it wasn't top down. Having both fire and hill giants suggests a D&D game though, although the 90s were pretty casual with shameless copyright infringement, especially among shareware.
Click to expand...

I believe everything was on the same general overhead screen. The character models were essentially .ico files that fit inside a square and moved around the map one space at a time. They'd bump into each other and do attacks / cast / whatever all on the same screen.

Caliane said:
when you say, main antagonists, you mean they actually talked or something?
what kind of visuals? pixels, 3d?

now I'm drawing a blank.. I was going to suggest icewind dale 2, had you fighting hill giants, firegiants, icegiants, and in particular, there was a town being attacked by said giants, which one solution to it, is convince a local runt white dragon, to protect the town as his "horde". but, checking, walkthroughs... I don't see this.. I don't know which game "I" was remembering.

and found it. it was NWN:Shadows of Undrentide. did not remember that starting out that way. haha. 100% had wires crossed on which was which.
Click to expand...


Naw this game was like rudimentary shareware circa 1995, but really good simple D&D derived gameplay.

The giants were just the bosses. No dialogue that I remember. I think the boss of level 1 was like the Hill Giant chief and there were a few other Hill Giants right before him that were regular mobs, and the other 3 levels each had a similar situation with a commanding giant and some underlings, after fighting through lots of other monsters. Maybe I did beat the first level because I kinda remember it being like "buy full version for the remaining 3 levels". Think it was Rock, Ice, Fire giants.

This was probably a super obscure game and probably one in a sea of D&D knockoffs.
 
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