Dungeon Hack

In 1993, Strategic Simulations, Inc. published Dungeon Hack, a Dungeons and Dragons based adventure. The game took the player through randomly-created dungeon levels of sizable scale. Somewhere around the 20th level of the dungeon, the player would encounter the game's main boss creature. Once this foe was defeated, the game would end.

The Dungeon Hack player would have quite a few D&D character classes to choose from, including multi-class characters such as Fighter/Mage or Cleric/Thief. Because the adventure was for a single character, picking a multi-classed persona who could fight and cast spells was nearly essential for success. Certain classes would gain the ability to use weapons in both hands. This becomes a big advantage when fighting really tough monsters.

Each dungeon level, although randomly generated, would consist of a number of rooms, usually connected by long corridors. Each level usually contained only two different random monster types, plus a tougher, boss-type creature. This could make fighting monsters somewhat tedious, especially if the same creatures were encountered on multiple dungeon levels. The difficulty of Dungeon Hack could really turn, depending on which types of monsters the computer generated for any given level, especially after level 10. Each dungeon level seemed to take up every available space on the map. Thus, if all areas had been explored, but there were still blank areas on the map, there was probably a secret door somewhere that had not been discovered yet.

Dungeon Hack boasted about 50 different monster types, which countered the game having only two or three different monster types per level. Spell casters also had seven levels of Cleric or Mage spells at their disposal. The game's real allure comes from the plethora of items that one could find in the dungeon. In fact, inventory space becomes a definite issue at points in the game because there are so many items that a player wants to keep.

All in all, the random levels of Dungeon Hack make it a worthwhile dungeon quest. Dungeon Hack is now listed as Abandonware, and can be downloaded for a small fee. There is also a great FAQ and Strategy Guide for those who need help with the game.