Dungeon Master clones - the best or the memorable

Click here and disable ads!

The recent excitement from Legend of Grimrock made me all the more eager to try replay the DM-clones I have already played or try out new ones, once I finish the game.

Even though turn-based Might and Magic or Wizardry are easily superior to their real-time equivalents, I can't help but delight in the fact these games allow you to "cheat" the system by dancing and tangoing around the enemy in the dungeon - so even if you have a flawed party, you can succeed by running in circles. Yes, yes, I know, it's pretty stupid.

Anyway, my question - what are the best in this genre? And otherwise, which of this genre are better than the ones I have played or are more suited to my preferences?

Here are the ones I played and what I thought of them. I am not listing all of them, because the rest I played only superficially.



The game had excellent puzzles, but I did not like the fact that a) characters were pre-chosen and could not be altered, and b) it seems to be a party-less game and didn't allow you to recruit anyone, as far I went in the game. What offers the same as Anvil of Dawn, but with a party from start and customization?



I thought this one was better than Anvil of Dawn in that it you could recruit additional people much sooner than you could in Anvil (assuming it allowed you to do so at all). But it didn't have the complexity of Anvil's dungeons. And you don't start straight off with a party, and you are still in that situation of choosing pre-defined people. More than that, it didn't allow you to choose spells speedily enough, even when enemies were attacking you - a big nuisance. However, the graphics were great. What is just like LoL but without the flaws?



I guess played no more than an hour of the game long ago, and forgot. Is this game good and worth revisiting? I do recall it looked pretty, so that was one point in its favour. Other than that?

Chaos Strikes Back

All of those except LoL are mediocre games at best. Give a try to Captive and Knightmare, which are pretty much the best clones ever got to DM and Chaos Srikes Back. Black Crypt and Abandoned Places 2 were decent, but not remarkable. Eye of the Beholder -series was the amateur version of LoL, no need to touch them after giving LoL a try.

For a bonus play Curse of Dragor, an alleged DM clone. Even the shittiest clones seem great after Dragor.

Every DM clone I've played has been an anticlimax after this one.

The original Dungeon Master of course and CSB. Also DM II although it's inferior. Black Crypt is fine, though I didn't finish it. Can't seriously recommend anything else really, I dislike the genre.


As for (Anvil of Dawn)

It is possible to customize the attributes on start.

And thank the gods for that. By having a single character the impact of "clunky interface" and "ridiculous hit and run fighting" is lessened somewhat.

No, but

if you want to play RT blobbers Ishar is not bad compared to the majority of them. Maybe even "good for what it is". Don't expect wonders however. I don't remember it being very good in the puzzle department, but didn't play them that much either and... it's been a while.

Had a primitive but afaik unique system where murdering one of the party members (to make room for someone else for example) could lead to his/her friend retaliating by killing your main character or someone else. Sometimes ended in chain killings, wiping almost everyone. So at least had a single interesting feature.

To be fair, that's probably true.

Hired Guns:



Crystal Dragon (never played it):

Bloodwych on the Amiga was pretty good:



Two player mode as well!

Well, Stonekeep was pretty good:

It's not a DM clone if you add overland exploration with towns and taverns, vendors, quests, etc. but scrap the puzzles and dungeon interactivity. You get a RT blob RPG. Like Ishar.

Chaos Strikes Back and Black Crypt are the best this particular subgenre had to offer. Everything else is decent to forgettable.

PS: Stonekeep is fucking awful.

Seconded.

This neatly covers my recommendations.

Most people throw Eye of the Beholder around, but I didn't find it as fun as some of the others.

What is so awful about it? I found it to be a fairly good game.

Controls, movement, combat, UI, graphics, VA - basically everything that was wrong with early CD age games.

Fair enough. I never had any issues with the game.

Well, the inventory system was pretty dreadful.

Bloodwych - 2 player hotseat action was not the only thing this game had to offer. You could split the party up, talk to some monsters and even trade with them! Best version to play is the Amiga/Atari ST, since they have the expansion pack. But the game itself is just one gigantic key hunt, puzzles are mostly based on switches and pressure plates. The PC version was bugged for the longest time, rendering it unplayable.

Eye Of The Beholder - The game(s) that got me into this genre to begin with. They're not bad, but they haven't aged well either. It has a good variety of puzzles and monsters, and the graphics are pretty, but the character creation system is pointless. Only play the third game if you have a serious masochistic streak.

Captive - A VERY interesting game that does many things differently from the norm. It does feature a little bit of outdoor exploration as you land on planets and enter the bases (and fight dinosaurs!), and there are vendors who sell you stuff for money you collect. Also features some clever puzzles and obstacles to overcome, and some of the more trickier monsters you can encounter. Captive actually solved the "dancing" problem by introducing monsters that are SO FAST that you have to be lightning quick just to get past them. Just don't play the PC version, as it's bugged to the point of being ruined. Play it on the Amiga or Atari ST instead.

Hired Guns - Oh fuck yeah. Up to 4 player action with guns! I actually completed this game with 2 friends of mine over a period of several months. Good time spent. Interface may be confusing, but otherwise give it a try.

Lands of Lore - A much simpler, and therefore much more entertaining, version of Eye of the Beholder. It's light on puzzles and focuses more on killing all the monsters to make progress, and is probably one of the more "friendlier" games of the genre for newcomers to play.

Dungeon Master 2 - I'll be fair. I've only played Dungeon Master once (and didn't get very far) and never played Chaos Strikes Back, but I have played through DM2 (again, only once). It was alright. It has puzzles, it has vendors, it has outdoor areas (2/3ds of the game revolve around getting inside Stonekeep) and an interesting selection of monsters. But the final part of the game, which involves using some kind of drones to solve puzzles, quickly dragged the game down for me.

Stonekeep - For those who are hating on the game, I ask that you reconsider. Yes, it has a lot of things going against it, but it also has a lot of things going for it. It's actually a very funny game, but once you've passed the Fairy Realm it degenerates into something less than inviting.

Anvil of Dawn - I took this one for a spin lately. Whomever thinks this game is good, compared to other games of the genre, needs to be shot. You can't rest, which means sitting around for minutes at a time while you're waiting for health and mana to regenerate. Almost all of the puzzles involve pressure plates and rocks, so you have to lug around a bag of rocks at ALL TIMES. Plus, the game has an encumbrance system, some really confusing puzzles and a True Ending that can only really be gotten if you were clever in the second dungeon of the game and repeated that trick at the end.

Black Crypt looks remarkably like Grimrock, right down to the combat, judging by youtube videos. I think I'll give it a spin after I finish Grimrock.

Stonekeep isn't a DM clone, what are you talking about? DM clones are defined by the fact that you click on your characters' weapon to attack. Games like Dungeon Hack and maybe even Ravenloft are DM clones. The only thing Stonekeep has in common with Dungeon Master is that they're both in a dungeon.

Thank you very much.

This is exactly like level 6 of Grimrock.

No , again the blobbers arent superior to this genre , just different. I never had any trouble nor encountered trouble grinding throught the wizardries and might and magic, they dont requires any special intellectual skills , they are fun in their way as well , but really none of the deep strategy people here pretend they have.You can say the dodging and dacing is stupid, but blobbers dont fly that high either.
Its very easy to figure how to beat the special encounters between the copy pasted random encounters you fight ad nauseum . I often see people spitting on jrpgs, but games likes fire emblem or tactics ogre are way more strategic than those.

That said back to your question, load up WinuAE, and try blackcrypt wich is excellent and in my opinion the best DM clone on the amiga(yes it has automap!), then abandonned places, dragon crystal, bloodwych are worth playing too.
Captive is DM scifi, its excellent , gigantic, containing procedurally generated dungeons, and the aim of the game is freeing yourself using a team of 4 robots you control via your laptop, captive is definitively highly recommended.
Hiring guns, not a DM clone really but a very good and original game, worth the try too.Look at the screenshots on moby games that will give you a better idea .

Ishars are between might and magic and dm , cant say they are DM clones, they are good games,not popular around here cause they are french games , so likely too sophisticated for an USA crowd...They had their moment of glory in former sovietic countries when they were given for free with a magazine on a 3.5 floppy disk .

Stonekeep? Diddnt like it, its main selling point by then was the graphics and full motion videos, and guess what it ages extremely bad. The older games looks better than this, and play better than it.

I didn't recall Black Crypt but that vid definitely jogs my memory - mostly because I think I had the same character portraits in my main game. I'll probably put it at number 235 in my queue of old games I'd like to replay but actually never will before I die.