Tunnels & Trolls is a fantasy role-playing game designed by Ken St. Andre and first published in 1975 by Flying Buffalo. The second modern role-playing game published, it was written by Ken St. Andre to be a more accessible alternative to Dungeons & Dragons and is suitable for solitaire, group, and play-by-mail gameplay.
Bloodwych is a dungeon role-playing video game, a dungeon crawler, developed for the Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum. Its box featured artwork by Chris Achilleos. The plotline identifies the player as a champion of Trazere who, after recruiting up to three fellow champions, travels through dungeons and mazes fighting creatures along the way to find and destroy the evil Zendick, and banish the Lord of Entropy.
Rogue is a dungeon crawling video game by Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman with later contributions by Ken Arnold. Rogue was originally developed around 1980 for Unix-based minicomputer systems as a freely distributed executable. It was later included in the Berkeley Software Distribution 4.2 operating system (4.2BSD). Commercial ports of the game for a range of personal computers were made by Toy, Wichman, and Jon Lane under the company A.I. Design and financially supported by the Epyx software publishers. Additional ports to modern systems have been made since by other parties using the game's now-open source code.
Lode Runner is a 2D puzzle-platform game, developed by Doug Smith and published by Broderbund in 1983. Its gameplay mechanics are similar to Space Panic from 1980. The player controls a character who must collect all the gold pieces in a level and get to the end while being chased by a number of enemies. It is one of the first games to include a level editor.
Gauntlet is a 1985 fantasy-themed hack-and-slash arcade video game developed and released by Atari Games. It is one of the first multiplayer dungeon crawl arcade games. The core design of Gauntlet comes from 1983 game Dandy for the Atari 8-bit computers, which resulted in a threat of legal action. It also has similarities to the action-adventure maze video game Time Bandit (1983).
Temple of Apshai is a dungeon crawl role-playing video game developed and published by Automated Simulations in 1979. Originating on the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, it was followed by several updated versions for other computers between 1980 and 1986.
Ultima III: Exodus is the third game in the series of Ultima role-playing video games. Exodus is also the name of the game's principal antagonist. It is the final installment in the "Age of Darkness" trilogy. Released in 1983, it was the first Ultima game published by Origin Systems. Originally developed for the Apple II, Exodus was eventually ported to 13 other platforms, including a NES/Famicom remake.
Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny is the fifth entry in the role-playing video game series Ultima released in March 1988. It is the second in the "Age of Enlightenment" trilogy. The game's story takes a darker turn from its predecessor Ultima IV. Britannia's king Lord British is missing, replaced by a tyrant named Lord Blackthorn. The player must navigate a totalitarian world bent on enforcing its virtues through draconian means.
Wizard of Wor is an arcade video game released in 1981 by Midway. Up to two players fight together in a series of monster-infested mazes, clearing each maze by shooting the creatures. The game was ported to the Atari 8-bit computers, Commodore 64, Atari 2600, and Atari 5200 and renamed to The Incredible Wizard for the Bally Astrocade. The original cartridge came with a cash prize offer to the first person to complete the game.
The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth is an adventure module for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. It was written by Gary Gygax and published by TSR in 1982 for the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) rules. The 64-page adventure bears the code "S4" and is set in the Greyhawk campaign setting. It is divided into two parts, a 32-page adventure, and a 32-page booklet of monsters and magic items. The plot involves the player characters investigating rumors of lost treasure. After traversing a wilderness and two levels of dungeons, the players face Drelnza, the vampiric daughter of long-deceased archmage Iggwilv.
Gemstone Healer is an action-adventure game created by Canadian developer Paradigm Creators for the Apple II and Commodore 64 and published in 1986 by Strategic Simulations. The sequel to Gemstone Warrior, the player controls an armored figure in search of treasure and the way to heal the Gemstone.
Legacy of the Wizard, originally released in Japan as Dragon Slayer IV: Drasle Family, is a fantasy-themed action role-playing platform game released for the MSX, MSX2 and Famicom in Japan and for the Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States. Legacy of the Wizard is an installment in Falcom's Dragon Slayer series, and one of only five Dragon Slayer games that were localized outside Japan. The game was an early example of an open-world, non-linear action RPG, combining action-RPG gameplay with what would later be called "Metroidvania"-style action-adventure elements.
Gateway to Apshai is an action-adventure game for the Commodore 64, ColecoVision and Atari 8-bit computers. It was developed by The Connelley Group and published by Epyx in 1983 as a prequel to Temple of Apshai. It is a more action-oriented version of Temple of Apshai, with smoother and faster graphics, streamlined controls, fewer role-playing video game elements, and fewer room descriptions.
Telengard is a 1982 role-playing dungeon crawler video game developed by Daniel Lawrence and published by Avalon Hill. The player explores a dungeon, fights monsters with magic, and avoids traps in real-time without any set mission other than surviving. Lawrence first wrote the game as DND, a 1976 version of Dungeons & Dragons for the DECsystem-10 mainframe computer. He continued to develop DND at Purdue University as a hobby, rewrote the game for the Commodore PET 2001 after 1978, and ported it to Apple II+, TRS-80, and Atari 800 before Avalon Hill found the game at a convention and licensed it for distribution. Its Commodore 64 release was the most popular. Reviewers noted Telengard's similarity to Dungeons and Dragons. RPG historian Shannon Appelcline noted the game as one of the first professionally produced computer role-playing games, and Gamasutra's Barton considered Telengard consequential in what he deemed "The Silver Age" of computer role-playing games preceding the golden age of the late 1980s. Some of the game's dungeon features, such as altars, fountains, teleportation cubes, and thrones, were adopted by later games such as Tunnels of Doom (1982).
Dandy is a dungeon crawl maze video game for Atari 8-bit computers published by the Atari Program Exchange in 1983. It is one of the first video games with four-player, simultaneous cooperative play. Players equipped with bows and unlimited arrows fight through a maze containing monsters, monster spawners, keys, locked doors, food, and bombs in search of the exit leading to the next level. If a player dies, they can be revived by finding and shooting a heart. The game includes an editor for making new dungeons.
Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerberus is the second game in the Elvira series of horror adventure/role-playing video games. It was developed by Horror Soft and published by Accolade in 1992. The game is a sequel to 1990's Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. It was followed by Waxworks, which can be considered its spiritual sequel.
Dunjonquest is a series of single-player, single-character fantasy computer role-playing games by Automated Simulations. Temple of Apshai was the most successful and most widely ported game in the series. The games relied on strategy and pen & paper RPG style rules and statistics.
Hellfire Warrior is a dungeon crawl video game for the Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80 published by Automated Simulations in 1980. A port to Atari 8-bit computers was released in 1982. Hellfire Warrior is the direct sequel to 1979's Temple of Apshai. Two expansion packs were published.
Questron is a 1984 game from Strategic Simulations, the first fantasy title from a company known for computer wargames. It was written by Charles Dougherty and Gerald Wieczorek and released for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit computers, and Commodore 64. A sequel, Questron II, was released in 1988.
