Akalabeth: World of Doom

Much like the early stone tools of Neanderthals, or a credit card imprinter (google it ;)), Akalabeth is a game that is only relevant today from a historical or academic perspective, not an artistic one. It is and was an achievement only for pushing the technical boundaries in computer gaming in its time. It is not a creative achievement, for it has neither inspired music, or story, or even sprites. It is not an achievement in game design, for there is no real strategy or variation in gameplay, particularly if one uses the MA/LM strategy. The fact that this game-breaking strategy (and a relatively easy one) exists in one of the earliest RPGs is exactly one of those elements that should fascinate any gaming scholar. All of this is not to bash or diminish in any way its importance, or a resentful criticism. Quite the opposite. Because the greatest achievement of Akalabeth was perhaps, to inspire a young Richard Garriot to pursue game design, and any GoG user surely knows the results of that labor. So, thank you Akalabeth, (even if I spent more time on you than i should have ;)) for being the stepping stone to getting the Ultima Series, which many of its games were and are great achievements in all aspects of game design.

The game hasn't aged well, it gets repetitive and it probably won't be enjoyable to people that didn't play it back in the day.

An extremely primitive and rudimentary RPG from the late 1970s. It has its place in history as one of the earliest computer role playing games, and as the progenitor of the Ultima series, but as a game itself Akalabeth is really not worth more than about twenty minutes of curiously playing around with its systems and mechanics nowadays. You go to the castle, get a quest to kill a specified creature type in one of the dungeons, and then come back for your reward. Which I suppose is the majority of RPGs when you really boil them down to their essence; questing and dungeon raiding and the like. But there is no real interesting narrative, character, or world building here to keep the player interested. Once you complete ten quests for Lord British, the game ends. You can also spend some time grinding and/or exploiting the magic amulet in order to cheese the game and make it ridiculously easy. Watch out and make sure that you keep well stocked on some food too, because you will get a "game over" if you are not careful and run out. It's free on GOG to check out and I suggest doing so, if for only a short period of time before the novelty and curiosity wears off.

Honestly once you get a handle on the controls it's pretty fun to just dungeon crawl and complete the basic kill quests. The biggest thing to get you head around is the vector dugeon visuals, expecially the invisible walls since it can be easy to get lost. I highly recommend picking Mage. The ability to pick you spells with the Magic Amulet and use Ladder Up and Ladder Down is very critical to not getting stuck in a loop of falling into pits and struggling to find a Ladder. Also BUY FOOD, as much as you can, easiest way to die early on is running out of food.

Modern CRPG gaming would not be where it is without Richard Garriott's pioneering work, and this is the place that started it all. Unfortunately, Alkalbeleth: World of Doom is not a particularly fun game unless you are masochistic or just absolutely NEED to play every CRPG ever made. The graphics are so primitive it makes BRogue look like an Unreal Engine Four game, and the interface is highly unintuitive. I am OK with bad graphics and I am OK with difficult games, but this game is so bare-bones that it's not worth playing. Still, I'm impressed by Lord British's achievement, and glad that he kept going and improving. I give this three stars: one star for gameplay, five stars for historical value.