14 DAY TRIAL // Everyone playing RPGs knows or has heard about Ultima series, the franchise that changed the history of online and PC gaming in general. Created by Richard Garriott, also known as Lord British, the Ultima series inspired other developers, including World of Warcraft makers.
But not everyone knows the name of the first game developed by Richard Garriott because the titles in the Ultima series were not the first he created.
The good folks over at GOG.com are now offering for free a game that’s been released back in 1980. The game is called Akalabeth: World of Doom and it was completely written by none other than Richard Garriott.
In fact, Akalabeth: World of Doom is one of the earliest role-playing games and many fans of Richard Garriott’s work consider it “Ultima 0,” the game that precedes all the Ultima games launched by Lord British in the coming years.
Although the game was released in 1980, Richard Garriott made the game one year earlier. Akalabeth: World of Doom was developed in Applesoft BASIC for the Apple II and features no less than 10 different monsters, as well as procedurally generated dungeon crawling gaming experience.
For that time, Akalabeth: World of Doom was extremely advanced thanks to its wire frame 3D graphics and the game mechanics.
Make sure you read the manual in order to learn the text-based commands
The manual of the game provides players with a list of text commands they can use to survive Akalabeth. Once you learn these commands, the story told in the game should be easy to follow.
Obviously, this isn’t a game for everyone, but we’re sure that it will increase nostalgia levels in just about any RPG addict that previously played Richard Garriott’s games.
Nostalgia games will be even higher for those who have played Akalabeth: World of Doom when they were kids. If that happens to be you, then you will probably get the hang of it in no time, unlike the new generation of gamers which will need a bit more time to understand the controls and mechanics.
In other news, Lord British is now hard at work brining RPG fans a new game, Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues. The game has been successfully funded on Kickstarter back in 2013 and is now slated for a 2015 release.
Richard Garriott’s Shroud of the Avatar is already available for purchase as Early Access Game on Steam, so if you can’t wait to try out the spiritual successor of the Ultima series, then by all means make your purchase now.
