New Games on The Great Games Experiment http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/css/logo.jpg en-us Mt. Drash: The Roguelike, is a roguelike game based in the ancient game Escape from Mt. Drash; it takes the main idea from the original and puts fast paced gameplay on it.

In the game, the Stranger from another world, is caught by evil garriontrots, a race of interdimensional beings, and given a chance to gain your freedom by fighting your way through different levels fulls of monsters and dangers.

Drash Roguelike is a fast paced roguelike game in which both strategy and tactics are very important to survive, you must carefully decide how you want to shape your character, as the options are limited. There are no experience points or levels, all advancement is made by transversing the levels of the Arena. There are combat tactics and magic spells for a great variety of interaction types.

This game has an active web community at http://www.santiagoz.com/web

Thereby you can share your comments and ask questions about the game and download the latest version.

]]> 09 Mar 2007 11:31:26 EUO is an Ultima-based online RPG with many influences, varying from Diablo-style hack'n'slash to NetHack quirks. It is closely tied to the Origin Ultima V RPG.

Created originally by eggmceye to be a rogue-like game named Balrog in 1998, it was quickly turned into an Ultima-like game with the discovery of an Ultima 4 tileset created by Josh Steele, giving the game its retro feel. Over the past nine years, it has slowly evolved into an online RPG with a small but growing fanbase spanning two servers, each one incorporating slighty different gameplay.

In those nine years, the game has grown from a four player only server to one that incorporates a full Ultima V magic system, including the Runic alphabet, crafting and creature taming. It also contains numerous easter eggs in tribute to NetHack.

]]> 03 Mar 2007 07:44:19 Taskmaker is a game for the Macintosh developed by Storm Impact in 1989 and re-released in 1993. In it, you take the role of a young hero who must serve the TaskMaker, a powerful man who commands over a large kingdom.

You adventure through various realms, encountering ferocious monsters, in-jokes, and an amazing depth of features (including ATMs, recycling depots, public drunkenness, teleporters, "pass walls") and an enormous game world, particularly for the time. Its most obvious inspiration is the Ultima series, particularly Ultima III and IV, but far surpasses those games in terms of the interactivity the player can engage in with the world.

It features an extremely simple RPG system: characters are created with nothing more than a name, and the player rarely has to look at sheets of statistics to figure out what has to be done next.

Later, a sequel, Tomb of the TaskMaker, was released, also for the Macintosh.

]]> 08 Jan 2007 08:31:28 Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds takes place one year after the events of Ultima VII: The Black Gate. To celebrate the defeat of the Guardian, Lord British invites the Avatar and his companions to his castle. However, in the night of the feast the Guardian attacks again, encasing the castle in a giant gem of blackrock. Deep in the sewers of the castle, another blackrock gem is found, created as an aftereffect of the attack. This gem is a teleporter to other worlds controlled by the Guardian. Now you, the Avatar, must travel to these worlds in order to free the castle from the Guardian's spell.

This sequel to Ultima Underworld plays almost exactly as the original, with its 3D world, action-oriented combat, and magic and dialogue systems. The storyline is more connected to the main Ultima series and the game world is larger and has more variety: besides the usual castles and dungeons there are such diverse locations as an ice world, a totally alien place called Talorus and the enigmatic Ethereal Void. Graphics and sound have also been improved: the size of the viewing window has been increased, there are all-new monster graphics and the game now features digitized sound effects.

from the (Moby Games UW2 page)

]]> 24 Dec 2006 07:00:00 You are the Avatar. Once again you return to Britannia. Upon your arrival, you witness the kidnapping of Baron Almric's daughter. Found guilty of the crime, you are thrown into the Great Stygian Abyss with the choice of either finding the girl or rotting in the dungeon. On your journey you have to get along with the many inhabitants of the dungeon, who are survivors of a failed colony, and eventually find out that there's much more to this kidnapping than meets the eye.

Ultima Underworld was the first RPG that had fluid first-person movement in a 3D environment, revolutionizing the genre. Unlike earlier first-person RPGs like Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder, the player can move in every direction and the graphics are updated continually. The dungeon also is not made entirely of corridors and rooms arranged in a rectangular fashion but has a lot of variety: slopes, stairs, bridges and more.

Underworld's combat system is action-oriented. The player has to draw his weapon and aim at his opponent in real time. The magic system is based on runes that can be found in the Abyss. If combined in the right order, they produce a magical effect. As the Abyss is populated by more than just monsters, there are also various dialogue sequences with NPCs, who one can also barter with.

(from the Moby Games UW page)

]]> 02 Dec 2006 01:23:49 Ultima V: Lazarus is an exceedingly ambitious project that greatly improves the graphics and sound of the PC version of Ultima V. However, that's not all. Rather than releasing an "upgrade patch," as happened with Ultima IV, what we've done is a true from-the-ground-up remake of the gaming classic, Ultima V.

]]> 27 Nov 2006 11:44:10