Akalabeth: World of Doom

Akalabeth is a milestone in gaming history. It was one of the earliest RPGs (limited release in 1979) and precursor to the Ultima series. Akalabeth was inspired by Garriot’s weekly D&D sessions. The goal of the game is to kill the Balrog. This is done by receiving kill quests from Lord British followed by copious amounts of dungeon delving. Mechanically Akalabeth is pretty solid although it feels a bit dated. The most frustrating thing about it is the amount of dying, usually from starvation. And that’s the worst part of Akalabeth, each death felt cheap. Cheap deaths piled into frustration and quickly fermented into the bitter wine of rage quits. Altogether, I’ve probably only spent 45 minutes playing this game, and I’m unlikely to play it again. It’s an interesting piece of game history, but it hasn’t aged well. Of course, if you like this kind of thing, go for it. Verdict: Buy it on sale, maybe. If you’re interested in gaming history or just really like old-school games, give this a try. Otherwise, spend your money elsewhere.

As a game, Akalabeth isn't great- wander around the world map hoping to find a dungeon before you starve, head in, kill some stuff, hope you can find the exit before you starve, leave, hope a town is close enough to buy food before you starve, repeat until you're carrying thousands of food and don't have to worry about starving, at which point you can find the castle of Lord British and get some actual quests, which just consist of killing certain types of the monsters you've already been slaying just to survive. It's challenging but repetitive. As a way of experiencing gaming history, Akalabeth is fantastic. Imagine playing it on a clunky, clackity beige keyboard and big black and white CRT monitor, loading it up from an eight inch floppy disk, reading the manual full of fanciful, amateurish illustrations that draw you into the game world. Imagine living in 1980, when most computer games were either text adventures or had graphics on par with Pong, and being able to walk around dungeon corridors in three dimensions, seeing enemies in the distance moving gradually closer, having an actual goal, a QUEST, beyond "collect some treasure", a chance to be a hero, to explore and discover secrets. This was a turning point, a time when video games were beginning to develop plots and graphics were beginning to become immersive. Everything after, from The Legend of Zelda to first person shooters to plot-driven epics like Mass Effect, came from seeds like this. While I wouldn't say Akalabeth is directly responsible, it holds some of that magic, that sense of a new era in gaming just beginning to dawn, and it's nice that it's been preserved for us to experience. While simple by today's standards, it opened new horizons at the time, taking gamers on an adventure they'd never imagined before, and I think we can all appreciate that.

Akalabeth is one of the great grandfathers of role playing games, and it shows its age like a blemish out in the open, but REMARKABLY, it's still pretty fun in 2021 if you can get over its wireframe graphics! This was when being able to play a Dungeons & Dragons session on your computer was still a fresh, futuristic novelty, so Richard Garriot pretty much wrote the rule book on how to make a computer role playing game along with the other pioneers of yesteryear, and that has a lot to do with why this game's still playable and enjoyable... You delve into a randomly generated dungeon to build up your power level so you can take on progressively more dangerous monsters in the later levels, and keep track of where you are using graph paper to ensure you don't get lost.. it's simple, it's quick, and it's satisfying. EVERY GAME IN THE WORLD STILL USES THIS BASIC GAMEPLAY LOOP. Nuff Said, right? Too bad you can break the intended progression like a twig pretty easily, but I can't be too harsh since this is one of the earliest games in the genre AND It's FREE too. You can't complain about that!

Unfortunately, I encountered a bug that prevented me from finishing any quest from Lord British, but the 1998 version worked just fine. Overall, a very insightful game, brutal at first, but gets more enjoyable with subsequent tries, as I got used to the mechanics. I would advise just exploring freely the dungeons and shops at first, instead of rushing for the Lord British's castle, because of the food management.

The historical importance of this game is undeniable. Made in 1979 by a boy in his late teens (as impressive feat in itself), it brings to our screens for the first time some of the standard elements of what was later to become the RPG genre - quests, dungeon crawling in first person, items, health points, top-down world map etc. Of course, all of these things are inevitably present in their absolutely most rudimentary form. So, historical importance aside, exactly how entertaining this game is today, more than three and a half decades after its release? In short, I would say it is interesting maybe for the first half an hour or so. However, as there (understandably) isn't much content here, the playing will soon become repetitive and not much different from peeling a huge amount of potatoes. First, you find the Lord British's castle somewhere on a 20x20 (or 21x21, at least in my case) map. You get a quest to kill a creature. You go to the nearest town, buy lots of food and some weapons, enter the nearest dungeon (they are all exactly the same, given the lucky number you chose at the beginning of the game), kill some enemies on the first two levels, go out to regain the HP (you get them back only upon exiting the dungeon, there are no health potions), repeat this for 5 or 10 or 20 times until your health is around 300, get down to the dungeon, kill the creature, get out of the dungeon (not easy, since the enemies respawn), go to Lord British, receive another quest. Repeat. The fights are tiresome. Unless you abuse the magic amulet, you will be pretty weak and most of your attacks will result in a miss. The same goes for the monsters, so it's an endless parade of missed attacks until someone finally hits someone. Add to that that the enemies always appear in exactly the same place and you get the idea why fun quickly evaporates from playing. I think it's possible to finish the game without the amulet, but it would require dozens of hours of grinding.