Telengard

Avalon Hill's 50-level dungeon adventure called Telengard was released in 1982 on various computer platforms, most notably the Commodore-64. The goal of the player was to take their character from the first level down to the 50th level and find their way out of the dungeon. Despite the Telengard dungeon containing 2 million different spaces, the dungeon levels were not random, but created according to an algorithm. That way, a player could take their knowledge of prior games, and use it to navigate the dungeon in their next game.

Telengard contained twenty different monsters, with each monster having its own level. Thus, a Minotaur could be 1st level (very easy) or 15th level (much more difficult). Players could gather items such as swords and armor to fight their foes. These items had modifiers, so that the deeper the dungeon level, the more powerful were the items discovered. Players moved up in level, and grew more powerful, with experience gained from defeating monsters.

Dungeon features included treasure chests, traps, and teleporters. Mysterious multi-colored boxes could yield interesting results if their buttons were pushed. The Gray Misty Cubes were the key to the game, however. These teleportation devices would not just transport the player to another location on the same dungeon level, but would send the player to a completely random level! Thus, you could start your game of Telengard and a few moves later, be whisked away to level 38. This created an opportunity for the player to gain some very powerful items early in the game. If they could somehow avoid combat deep in the dungeon and get back to the upper levels, they could breeze through the first stages of the game.

Telengard was not a quick game to play, and the original version had no savegame, so there was no reloading your character once they had died. A PC-compatible version of Telengard has been created by Travis Baldree, which enables the player to save their progess.