Akalabeth: World of Doom

Back in my 20s, I was on a quest to find the most raw and primitive rpg games out there - Akalabeth delivered just what I was looking for and I had a lot of fun playing it. Today, I'm replaying this old gem and it still feels unique and special to me. The premise is very simple: roll stats, pick class, start as a weakling, go dungeon crawling, earn money, back to surface (ladder spells help A LOT), get better gear, raise hit points, go back to dungeon crawling, rinse and repeat until you make it to the final boss. It is pretty simple compared to today's standards, but it can get challenging. You'll find yourself dead sooner than expected if you low your guard. Even after beating the game, you can keep descending the dungeon and fight the harder monsters. Considering its age, Akalabeth is a hell of a ride and I encourage every rpg lover to give it a try.

but as a game. Just utter kack! That's about all there is to say. I would have been 9 or 10 when this was released, it would have astounded me then. But 42 years changes a lot of expectations. So barely 60 seconds of playing this was more than enough for me. At least you are not paying for it. Just take it as a gaming history lesson!

Akalabeth or Ultima 0 is one of the earliest examples of a role playing video game, just for that is worth checking out. Like many games that are more than 3 decades old it can look "unplayable" until you learn about its quirks, some of them due to limitations, some of them due to decisions made while treading new ground. And once you "get it", you realize is a fairly short and simple game with charming mechanics from way back then, monsters that flee in order to recover, hp increase instead of experience/leveling, insta death the moment you don't have any food, a copy paste world and thankfully for those who don't want to grind, a game breaking mechanic. It's a quite limited game for obvious reasons so under that lens you can forgive almost everything, only real gripes were how easily you can die right at the start without even getting to explore around (makes the game look unplayable) and getting stuck in a dungeon due to secret doors and not being able to find stairs with ease (makes the game look broken) -1 because I can't really recommend this and -1 because of the issues

This is the oldest game I've seen officially available and was quite curious to try a game that's two decades older than me. At first it was pretty rough - the food mechanic (i.e. actions available, which includes every single step) and it was easy to get lost, since the whole place is just white lines that form corridors and there's no map, so you have to remember your pathing. The combat was actually fair. The early monsters were easy to tackle and there was a normal difficulty curve. However, I didn't go through the whole "normal" journey, because after getting lost a few dozen times I decided to research how the game works and discovered that there's a pretty easy way to become overpowered as a wizard, which resulted in beating the game without further assistance afterward. It was a unique experience to play something as old and see where some games have evolved from, but it should still be approached with the understanding that it's a game older than half the current human population.

back then it was really good game, now its terrible, when u forgot about games like this one, and u want to come back to see how you started (into games) it will makes you bored… its good but still its kinda first step of the video games so...