For when: You want to go really old-school
Given how much the role-playing game genre, as a whole, owes its existence to Dungeons & Dragons—with early titles like Wizardry and Ultima serving, in no small part, as efforts by their creators to bring the tabletop experience to the computer monitor—it’s not surprising to see official Dungeons & Dragons games popping up as early as 1988. But while the “Gold Box” and “Silver Box” games created by SSI and U.S. Gold in the 1980s remain fascinating as historical objects and relics, they’re also brutal to the point of nigh-inaccessibility. They’re interesting, beautiful in their own way—but only really “fun” for those prepared to meet them far more than merely halfway.
The same cannot be said, though, for Westwood Studios’ Eye Of The Beholder, an early exercise in adding just a touch of action to the D&D on PC formula. Lifting liberally from FTL Games’ Dungeon Master, the game puts you in control of four heroic adventurers who move as one, traveling space by space through a grid-based series of ingenious labyrinths. (If you’ve played the far more modern Legend Of Grimrock games, you’ll recognize the shared DNA here.) Colorful, bright, and occasionally brain-bending, Eye Of The Beholder and its sequels drop some of the number crunching of earlier D&D games in favor of a much smoother, and more exciting experience. 22 years later, they still remain eminently playable adventures.
