Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Slayer | |
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Developer(s) | Lion Entertainment |
Publisher(s) | |
Director(s) | Ronald Bolinger |
Producer(s) | Douglas Grounds |
Programmer(s) | Glen Merriman |
Artist(s) | Daniel Bourbonnais |
Composer(s) | Billy Wolfe |
Series | Dungeons & Dragons |
Platform(s) | 3DO |
Release | |
Genre(s) | Dungeon crawl, action role-playing |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Slayer is a fantasy first-person, dungeon crawl / action role-playing game based on the second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The game was developed by Lion Entertainment and published by Strategic Simulations in 1994 for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. A Japanese version titled Lost Dungeon (ロストダンジョン) was published by T&E Soft the following year.
Slayer features a customizable dungeon generator so each time the player starts the game, they are faced with a new dungeon. The dungeon always ends with a boss floor, randomly selected from several possible bosses. When starting a new game, the player may either create a custom character with randomly generated stats, pick from a selection of preset characters, or reuse a previously created character. The game may be saved at any time, but is limited to a single save slot.
Slayer was developed as part of a contract between video game corporation SSI and TSR, the owner and publisher of the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons . SSI had previously used the license to adapt the property into a number of notable games including Pool of Radiance , the Gold Box series, and Eye of the Beholder . [3] For Slayer, SSI gave development duties to Lion Entertainment, an Austin, Texas-based studio founded by Douglas Grounds in June 1993. [4] Grounds was also a producer at The 3DO Company's Austin office. [5] Lion Entertainment's principle staff for Slayer consisted of director Ronald Bollinger; programmer Glen Merriman; music composer Billy Wolfe; sound editor Geoffrey Sanders; art director Daniel Bourbonnais; and artists Daniel Bourbonnais, Martin Thomas, Sara Farr, and Rebecca Price. Grounds served as executive producer while assisting on programming. The game's 3D modeling and rendering were done by Grounds, Bollinger, and Sanders. [6]
Slayer was released exclusively for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer by SSI in North America in September 1994 [1] and by SSI's parent company Mindscape in Europe in 1995. The game was published by T&E Soft in Japan on January 20, 1995 under the title Lost Dungeon. [2] Computer Gaming World reported months ahead of the game's scheduled launch that SSI and TSR were dissolving their partnership and that Slayer would be one of the last products in that agreement. [3] A version for the PlayStation was announced for an October 1995 release but never materialized. [7] [8] SSI and Lion Entertainment did collaborate on a sequel to Slayer titled Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: DeathKeep , released on 3DO in 1995 and Windows in 1996. [9] [10] Lion Entertainment went on to port several popular first-person shooters including Doom II , Duke Nukem 3D , and Quake to Macintosh before voluntarily closing in 1999. [4] [11] [12]
Publication | Score |
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Computer and Video Games | 59% [13] |
Electronic Gaming Monthly | 35/50 [14] |
GamePro | 15.5/20 [15] |
GamesMaster | 80% [16] |
Génération 4 | 79% [17] |
Joystick | 75% [18] |
M! Games | 71% [19] |
Mega Fun | 58% [20] |
Next Generation | [21] |
Video Games (DE) | 52% [22] |
VideoGames & Computer Entertainment | 6/10 [23] |
3DO Magazine | [24] |
Ação Games | 23/30 [25] |
Electronic Entertainment | [26] |
Electronic Games | B+ [27] |
Publication | Award |
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Electronic Games | "Best Multimedia Adventure/RPG Game" (1995) [28] |
GamePro gave the game a generally positive review, saying it successfully combines fast-paced action in a Wolfenstein 3D vein with traditional RPG gameplay. They criticized the music and lack of sound effects, but praised the abundance of options and the varied dungeon layouts, and commented that the adjustable difficulty make the game appropriate for players of all ages. [15]
Next Generation was generally negative to the game and gave it 2 stars out of 5. [21]
Allen Rausch for GameSpy called Slayer "a fantastic game" for how rare it is, and that it "was actually one of the better games" for the 3DO system. [29]
Concordia University professor and author Mark J. P. Wolf noted Slayer as an example of a game that utilizes handcrafted assets (including walls, doors, and windows) to give each of its dungeons a deliberate feel in their design despite a reliance on random, procedural generation for their layouts. [30]
Doom is a first-person shooter game developed and published by id Software. Released on December 10, 1993, for DOS, it is the first installment in the Doom franchise. The player assumes the role of a space marine, later unofficially referred to as Doomguy, fighting through hordes of undead humans and invading demons. The game begins on the moons of Mars and finishes in hell, with the player traversing each level to find its exit or defeat its final boss. It is an early example of 3D graphics in video games, and has enemies and objects as 2D images, a technique sometimes referred to as 2.5D graphics.
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Eye of the Beholder is a role-playing video game for personal computers and video game consoles developed by Westwood Associates. It was published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. in 1991, for the MS-DOS operating system and later ported to the Amiga, the Sega CD and the SNES. The Sega CD version features a soundtrack composed by Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima. A port to the Atari Lynx handheld was developed by NuFX in 1993, but was not released. In 2002, an adaptation of the same name was developed by Pronto Games for the Game Boy Advance.
Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) was a video game developer and publisher with over 100 titles to its credit from its founding in 1979 to its dissolution in 1994. The company was especially noted for its numerous wargames, its official computer game adaptations of Dungeons & Dragons, and for the groundbreaking Panzer General series.
Gold Box is a series of role-playing video games produced by SSI from 1988 to 1992. The company acquired a license to produce games based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game from TSR, Inc. These games shared a common game engine that came to be known as the "Gold Box Engine" after the gold-colored boxes in which most games of the series were sold.
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Dark Sun: Shattered Lands is a turn-based role-playing video game that takes place in the Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting of Dark Sun. It was developed and published by Strategic Simulations in 1993. It received positive reviews although released initially in an unfinished state. The game had a sequel, Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager, in 1994. An online MMORPG taking place in the same setting, Dark Sun Online: Crimson Sands, was released in 1996 and hosted on the T.E.N. Network.
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