Adventure (1975-76) by Will Crowther & Don Woods - Website - "The Colossal Cave Adventure game, produced in the '70s, was the historic first "interactive fiction" game...(the player takes part in) an ongoing story in a fantasy setting -in this case, an exploration of Colossal Cave in Kentucky. But this Colossal Cave, though remarkably similar to its real-life counterpart, was also very different: Magic was afoot in the cave..." - Also see "Examining Adventure" by Dennis G. Jerz

Zork I: The Great Underground Empire (1980), Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz (1981) and Zork III: The Dungeon Master (1982) by Marc Blank, David Lebling, Tim Anderson & Bruce Daniels - History - "The Zork Trilogy is set in the ruins of an ancient empire lying far underground. You, a dauntless treasure-hunter, are venturing into this dangerous land in search of wealth and adventure. Many strange tales have been told of the fabulous treasure, exotic creatures, and diabolical puzzles in the Great Underground Empire."

HeroQuest (2002+) by Gerwin Broers - Website (click "Downloads") - Game + 7 Extra Quests - Quests Only - Map Shots - Info & More - "HeroQuest is a turn based computer game in a fantasy setting, Inspired (by) Milton Bradley's and Games Workshop's boardgame 'HeroQuest'. You can play it with 1 to 4 players on 1 computer. furthermore you can create your own quests in the editor..." - Includes a "self-generating Magic Dungeon."

The Sorcerer's Cave (1995) by Peter Donnelly - Website - Info & History - "A simple, fast-paced "dungeon crawl" based on the author's popular card game, once called "the best game since Diplomacy". You form an exploring party and enter a six-level cave full of treasures, creatures, and traps. Try to make friends, defeat enemies, and steal as much booty as you can carry. The game can be played in less than half an hour and is equally enjoyable for children and adults."

DND (1976) by Daniel Lawrence - "Arguably, (DND) is the first computer role-playing game. According to Daniel, he built it with nothing else (except Dungeons & Dragons) at the time to refer to. This version (PC port) fixed a bug when 'evade' was attempted in a room with four walls..." - History

Telengard (1982) by Daniel Lawrence - History - DND in realtime with its own cool features. - "Using wits, magic and true grit, your character delves deeper into the depths of Telengard in this real time fantasy role playing game." - Daniel Lawrence's nifty Telengard page - Also see Telengard for Windows (remake)

Dungeons of the Necromancer's Domain (1988) "was a ground-up rewrite of DND by RO Software. It was indeed "original" in that it wasn't simply a port, and used a new dungeon file format, new dungeons, and was heavily optimized and cleaned up from the original RO Software port...(Also included) are two excellent tools for dungeon creation, The Domain Master and the tool which the author himself used for quicker generation of dungeons, Maze." - History - Underdelve (2005), a challenging new 20 level megadungeon for DotND - Underdelve maps

Hack (1985) by Jay Fenlason, Kenny Woodland, Mike Thome, Jon Payne, Andries Brouwer & Don G. Kneller - "(A) classic. Initially created as a clone of rogue that allowed for more monsters. This has been a recurring theme in the development of hack and later nethack and slash'em ... Let's add more of everything, including weird effects in specific rare situations... It's a true classic. As evidenced from the extreme popularity of NetHack and a few variants, it's replayability is nearly infinite." - History (and see NetHack and Rogue below)

NetHack (1987+) by Mike Stephenson and the NetHack Dev Team - Website & Family Tree - "Your goal is to grab as much treasure as you can, retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, and escape the Mazes of Menace alive." (A minimal description of what may well be the most robust and complex rpg dungeon simulation yet created.)

Slash'EM (1996+) by Tom Proudfoot (created Slash) and the Slash'EM Dev Team - Website - Btw, Slash'EM means Super Lotsa Added Stuff Hack - Extended Magic. - "From the land before 3DFX, before VGA graphics and DOOM, before the IBM PC, way back in the dark ages of Unixland, there was a game. They called it Rogue...From this basis, Hack was born. Soon Hack became NetHack, because it was developed by many people (and has nothing to do with hacking the internet)...people played this on many machines... But...the reclusive masterminds of NetHack (only grace) the world with new versions as they see fit...usually a new version every good number of years...there was much gnashing of teeth...people began making their own versions of NetHack to tide themselves between magical releases. Slash'EM is the (continuing) saga of one such variant..."

Moria (1983) by David J. Grabiner and the Moria Dev Team - Website - "The game of Moria is a single player dungeon simulation. A player may choose from a number of races and classes when creating a character, and then `run' that character over a period of days, weeks, even months, attempting to win the game by defeating the Balrog which lurks in the deeper levels."

Angband (1989+) by Ben Harrison and the Angband Dev Team - Website - Angband, a popular Moria variant, "is a freeware computer dungeon exploration game based (loosely) on the books of J.R.R.Tolkien. You explore a very deep dungeon, kill monsters, try to equip yourself with the best weapons and armor you can find, and finally face Morgoth -The Dark Enemy." - download mirror

Zangband (1989+) by Topi Ylinen, Robert Rühlmann and the Zangband Dev Team - Website - ""Zangband is a single player computer role playing game set in the world of Amber created by the author Roger Zelazny. Zangband is a variant of the game Angband which is descended from the game Moria..."

Linley's Dungeon Crawl (1997+) by Linley Henzell and the Dungeon Crawl Dev Team - Website - "Linley's Dungeon Crawl is a free and portable roguelike molded in the tradition of the early greats of the genre: Rogue, Hack, and Moria. The player guides a single character deep into a subterranean complex to retrieve the Orb of Zot, fending off many horrible and hideous creatures along the way. Once retrieved, the player must return both character and Orb safely to the surface world." - Updates! Be sure to check out the excellent Dungeon Crawl graphics version (2004+) and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, a "variant of Linley's Dungeon Crawl that's openly developed and invites participation from the Crawl community".

Rogue (1980) by Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, Ken Arnold and the Rogue Dev Team - The classic that started it all, which is why these games are called roguelikes. - Info, History & Family Tree - "(The object of Rogue is) to descend into the Dungeons of Doom, defeat monsters and find treasure and come back with the amulet of Yendor (Sound familiar?). Dungeons of Doom are a randomly generated maze of rooms or corridors connecting them. Each level of dungeon has a staircase leading to a lower dungeon level. The dungeon has traps, secret doors, treasure and of course monsters, which will attack the player character on sight."

Lost Labyrinth (2001+) is "a so-called "roguelike" roleplaying computer game. Lost Labyrinth has the following features: relatively short gameplay (about 10-20 minutes); very high replayability; nearly everything in the game is randomly generated; a lot of options during the character generation --each character type requires another strategy to survive; game focus on exploration --killing monsters does not give an experience bonus; Multiplayer games on the same machine (up to 3 players with keyboard, mouse and joystick); "Zelda"-like graphics, sound and animation; smooth scrolling of game screen; FreeWare"

Sword of Fargoal (1983) - Remake by Jeff McCord - Website - "You are on a quest to retrieve the Sword of Fargoal, which lies between levels 15 and 20 of a dungeon. The dungeon levels are populated by an ever-regrowing number of different monsters..."

ZZT (1991) by Tim Sweeney - "(A) superb game...It pushes ASCII to its limits, creating a stunning range of graphical effects that set a new standard for text-mode games. Its complex, detailed rooms offer a combination of arcade-style action and mind-bending puzzles to solve. Most impressive is the fact that all of its rooms are arranged to form cohesive "worlds" that provide a strong narrative drive to the game play." - Info - Note: ZZT has a game speed slider. Set it to Slow.

Castle of the Winds by Rick Saada is a fantasy rpg (with basic gfx) in which you explore dungeons, kill monsters, collect all manner of items and treasures and so forth. Typical dungeon crawl material but this one is nicely done and it has a story (steeped in Norse legend) that is very well written. Recently, the author of the game posted this on his webpage: "What I didn't expect was that Castle of the Winds would generate some 13,500 registrations, and continue to generate mail to this day. At this point, I give the game away for free. Here's a zip with both part one (the free part) and part two (the part you had to register to get)." Cool. - author's page - COW Wikipedia page

= Recommended by Dwalin, Balin,
Fili, Kili, Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Gloin,
Bifur, Bofur & Bombur