Semi-3D Dungeon Crawlers ... Moonshades & way back to Moraff

I was tinkering around in a game called Moonshades, which I would classify as a "semi-3D" dungeon crawler.  The scenes have 3-d elements, but they are fairly static.  You can walk (forward, backward, left or right, or turn left, turn right) to step one chunk at a time through a maze.  Fight monsters, take their stuff, level up your characters.  I find these relaxing, and really enjoy the highly creative names for the hundreds of items.  These modern games have some amusing cheats, like having teleport pads in every main encounter area so you don't have to walk all the way home through every level just to get to your drop chest.  I have also heard "two-and-a-half d" for these.

While this is a fine game, with plenty to fight, and lots of abilities and spells to learn, and even some crafting, it got an old memory stuck in my head.

So last night I was trying to remember one specific game from the 90s, a really early game of this type.  It was a DOS game with garish low-color graphics where you walk through endless mazes one step at a time, and fight endless things, from little green puffs to medusae.  I specifically recalled a big blue ball with a thousand hp.  I went through old backup drives and found old folder containing older folders, and finally found a folder called "Moraff stuff".

Sure enough, those were games from Moraffware, who put out a variety of shareware games back in those days, and since nothing ever vanishes now that internet hobbyists and collectors are here to save the day, it turns out the exact game was Dungeons of the Unforgiven.

Here's a long page from CRPG Addict which had the exact graphics I had been seeing in my head.

And here is the page at My Abandonware where you can theoretically play that old code right in your browser using one of their many DOS emulators.  It looks like, if you try to pick a video mode after 7, you need to select a chipset, and this version dead-ends with a blocked registration, but video mode 7 actually works!

Well, that was fun.  Old keyboard commands, and mouse actions were high tech back then, but you could click on the semi-3D view in front of you to run to the end of the hall.  I went up to the town, bought some armor and a club, then went into the crazy maze, fell down a chute to level 4 and barely got back out alive.  I ran into one of those giant balls I was picturing, and on level 4 they had almost 400 hp.  There's also a rainbow-colored giant trash can, and a nasty can of toxic waste that will poison you.  Plus the usual kinda-human-but-hard-to-tell things. 

I quickly remembered that if you find a ladder down, you should always take it, let the lower level render, then go back up the ladder again -- that way, when you fall down a chute you will be able to see where the up-ladders are on the map.

You can run this is DOSBox and hit Alt-Enter to bump it up to full screen.

I had totally forgotten that there are occasional teleporters in the walls.  Hop in and get a fun tunnel animation, and go to the next Tier.  If you have already gone one way, you get the choice to go back or forwards or stay at the current Tier.  I went to II and the first creature was still just level I, but after a while I went back to I and the mobs even one level down started at level 17.  So they killed me and my ogre monk was erased.

I started a sage called KnowItAll.  They do start out knowing all spells but with only 3 spell points, can't really use them.  And they suck with weapons.  And they do NOT gather experience just from exploring, unless it's too slow to notice.

Quick note: the way poison and disease work it that if you (V)iew your stats, you can see how many moves you have left before you die.  So, you get about 400 moves to get to a temple and buy a cure, or cast the spell yourself if you can.

This was actually part of a series of RPGs from Moraff, including Moraff World, which also looks familiar.  Here is CRPG Addict again.  He was really not a fan of the game.  Yes, it's primitive and had no NPCs or story, but I always liked the Moraff games for the endless hallways and mobs, and his smart-aleck comments when you least expect them.

Memories ... here's that big ball I was remembering, back to kick my butt again, 30 years later.