Ludography
Dungeon Hack cover

1993 · DreamForge Intertainment · Puzzle · Roguelike

Dungeon Hack

Welcome to Dungeon Hack. Explore countless new dungeons in a game that never has to be the same twice. Send your character on quest after quest, down through the many pits, traps, and puzzles of Dungeon Hack. Take control, if you wish and generate a new dungeon for every game.

Released
1993
Platforms
MS-DOSPC-9800 SeriesWindows
Genres
PuzzleRoguelikeRole-playing
Developers
DreamForge Intertainment
Publishers
Strategic Simulations
Modes
Single-player
Perspective
First person
Themes
ActionFantasy
Country
United States
Age ratings
USK 12
Languages
English, French, German

About

Dungeon Hack is role-playing video game developed by DreamForge Intertainment and published in 1993 by Strategic Simulations for MS-DOS and the NEC PC-9801.

The game is based in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons world of Forgotten Realms. It blends gameplay elements of roguelikes and the Eye of the Beholder series.

Keywords

  • high score
  • randomly generated dungeons
  • character creation
  • based on - tabletop rpg

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Dungeon Hack features a three-dimensional, randomly generated dungeon; SSI claimed that "over 4 billion" different dungeons were possible. The game features a pseudo-3D game screen based on Eye of the Beholder series. Like Rogue, dungeons are randomly generated whenever a new game is started. As a result, virtually all dungeons generated by the game are different.

However, players can share random seeds used to generate a specific dungeon. Dungeons can be customized for difficulty, such as limiting the number of traps, puzzles, and powerful enemies. Unlike Eye of the Beholder, players control only a single adventurer.

Story

An adventurer (the player's character of choice) is sent by an evil sorceress on a mission to find and retrieve a mysterious magical orb located within an ancient dungeon.

After defeating the final monster, the ending cinematic shows the adventurer leaves the dungeon with a wheelbarrow full of treasure, the sorceress waiting outside for him. The hero gives her the orb, and she gives him her thanks and says it time for them to leave. The hero remains behind during the credits to sort through his spoils. After the credits, the sorceress tells the hero to hurry as she is leaving and the adventure is over. The hero remarks on his treasure and that his adventure has only just begun, and moves his wheelbarrow off screen dropping a coin, before quickly coming back and picks it back up and goes back off screen.

Reception

SSI sold 27,110 copies of Dungeon Hack. Reviews at release were fairly positive, though some criticized the game for its lack of plot, or difficulty in finding essential supplies in the dungeon. Computer Gaming World's Scorpia in 1994 liked the game's flexibility and inclusion of all AD&D 2nd Edition character classes and found that "a 10-15 level dungeon is probably the best". She concluded that "in spite of some weak points, Dungeon Hack delivers what it promises: the chance to create your own, specially-designed, hack-n-slash paradise".

The game got 3 out of 5 stars in Dragon. Cory Brock of Hardcore Gaming 101 wrote that the game plays it safe by not changing the gameplay of the Eye of the Beholder series, but it is "a solid adaptation of the traditional roguelike".

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
MS-DOS31 December 1993North America
PC-9800 Series31 March 1995Japan
Windows29 March 2022Worldwide

Editions and related releases

Included in
Forgotten Realms: The Archives - Collection ThreeAdvanced Dungeons & Dragons Ultimate Fantasy

Games like this

Collections1 collection

Genres

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.