Forgotten Realms: The Archives - Collection Three

Dungeon hack is an absolute gem that's phenomenal and always a great time.

Developed by DreamForge Intertainment and published by SNEG, Forgotten Realms: The Archives – Collection Three is a retro RPG compilation that preserves two lesser-known but historically significant Dungeons & Dragons adventures: Dungeon Hack and Menzoberranzan. While these titles may not enjoy the same level of recognition as Eye of the Beholder or the Gold Box classics, they offer a fascinating glimpse into a period when developers were experimenting with different ways to bring the Forgotten Realms universe to PC gamers. The collection combines procedural dungeon crawling with story-driven exploration, delivering two very different role-playing experiences united by their connection to the legendary Dungeons & Dragons setting. What immediately stands out about this collection is its focus on adventure and exploration. Both games embrace the idea of venturing into dangerous unknown environments, gathering powerful equipment, battling monsters, and gradually becoming stronger through persistence and clever decision-making. Although their approaches differ significantly, they share the same spirit of classic role-playing games where discovery is often as rewarding as victory. Dun…

Come for Dungeon Hack, stay for Menzoberranzan.

Dungeon Hack: I absolutely loved this game as a kid. was good for its time. Now it's dated, but still entertaining. It An early roguelike, with very customizable RNG dungeons, but unfortunately with a lot of silly/crappy old AD&D rules. I actually like the solo realtime dungeon crawlers more than the party of 4 ones, which can often be a bit too hectic to control Some warnings: Resting without magic to heal drains food like crazy, so food can be a huge problem, tho you can increase the food availability when customizing things at the start. In my current playthrough, I accidently set food availability to below average when playing a ranger, and was teetering on starvation for like 8 levels until I lucked out and found a ring of sustenance (infinite food), which is probably the best item in the game, IMO. For anyone other than a cleric (easy mode) who can both heal and create food, you really have to to learn to time the monster movement to not get hit. In any event, you'll end up save-scumming a lot, firstly to identify things, secondly because of brutal monster effects like level/strength drains, and generally because its RNG and can be scaled up to be very hard. Good luck! …

Fun with simple controls. Good DOS port

I bought this because Dungeon Hack is known to have a weird bug with saving in DOSBox, and whatever settings the launcher has fixes it. It's still a lot of fun and has tons of customization options. Aside from the real-time battle system, it basically plays like a first-person roguelike, procedural generation and all. The other game (not even attempting to remember how to spell it) seems pretty ambitious for the time, but is way too clunky for me personally. Give it a shot and see for yourself.