Dungeon of Doom

Dungeon of Doom, later released as The Dungeon Revealed, came out for the Apple MacIntosh in 1987. The adventure game was strictly black and white, and was played in a top-down view. Movement was from space to space, somewhat like moving across a checker board. The quest consisted of 40 randomly-generated dungeon levels which grew more complex as the player descended. The goal was to find the Orb of Carnos, guarded by a powerful wizard on the dungeon's 40th level.

The player started Dungeon of Doom with a single character, chosen from seven different classes. The classes were adept at performing different tasks, such as using wands or identifying potions. A couple of non-traditional classes available in Dungeon of Doom were the Jeweler, which could identify rings well, and the "Jones", who was a jack-of-all-trades. The most important aspects of any class were the ability to identify items of a particular type, and the character's ability scores.

There were an abundance of items in Dungeon of Doom. Some of the most profitable were the Monster Rings, which would actually lure monsters toward the character. This would be really useful to attract a lot of monsters to kill, thus gaining levels more quickly. Also useful were the Wishing Scrolls, which would allow for the character to request up to three wishes. These could be used to ask for powerful magic items, which would always be given exactly as requested. Polymorph wands would transform the recipient creature into some other kind of beast, but not necessarily an easier one to defeat.

Since there was little documentation that came with Dungeon of Doom, about the only help the player had was the collection of various rumors that popped up from time to time. In all, there were 26 of these somewhat helpful hints, the meaning of which was often quite obscure, even after the game was finished. The constant barrage of monsters coming at the hero made this game quite challenging, especially for the new player. Dungeon of Doom currently exists in a shareware version for the MacIntosh. PC users can also play it using a Mac emulator.