Dungeon Master
| Developer: FTL | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: Psygnosis | Sound: |
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| Year: 1988 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Role-playing game | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 1 | Rating: |
9/10 | |
Dungeon Master would be the first real time role-playing game, meaning the monsters no longer patiently wait for you to make your move before tearing you apart. A moment of hesitation or poor preparation usually results in the death of one of your companions, or worse. This generates a lot of tension, especially since the very few sound effects are limited to signalling the presence of hungry monsters near you, but not necessarily in your line of sight! Add to that a stressful setting: labyrinthine catacombs, dimly lit and low-ceilinged; a first-person perspective that pulls the player in; and a constant need to carefully manage vital, limited resources (water, food, torches)…
On the other side of the anxiety? A clear and intuitive interface, well-designed puzzles, and plenty of treasures to discover. Here we have all the ingredients for one of the biggest commercial hits of the time. It will undoubtedly remain the most iconic representative of the dungeon crawler genre (“crawling inside a dungeon”, initiated by a certain Wizardry in 1981), offering a level of realism never before seen, which would be copied and revisited countless times.
An expansion would follow the next year: Chaos Strikes Back, followed by a reworked version: Dungeon Master v3.6 (1992), and finally a true sequel: Dungeon Master 2: The Legend of Skullkeep (1995).
Also see: Legend of Grimrock (2012) and its sequel (2014).
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