The Bard's Tale

Imagine the dark alleys of the medieval town of Skara Brae, held in the grip of the evil sorcerer Mangar, and a party of daredevils setting out into the freezing underground to stop the evil. Thus begins The Bard's Tale, one of the most influential dungeon RPGs of the eighties, which on home computers defined what a properly gloomy adventure should look like.

The game put you in the role of the leader of a party of up to six adventurers of various classes, whom you guided through labyrinths seen from a first-person perspective. It stood out for its scale, the number of enemies, and a combat system in which the composition of the party and the clever use of spells mattered. Unique was the bard character, whose songs could strengthen comrades or weaken enemies, which gave the game its unmistakable identity and its name.

The Bard's Tale was designed by Michael Cranford and published by Electronic Arts in the mid-eighties, at a time when the genre of computer RPGs was only just forming in the shadow of titles like Wizardry and Ultima. The game became an enormous success, gave rise to an entire series of sequels, and is among the titles that helped establish Electronic Arts as a significant player on the market.

The version for the Commodore 64, the best-selling home computer of all time, brought this gloomy world into countless households. The C64 was an ideal platform for RPGs thanks to its sufficient memory and popularity, and it was precisely on it that many players first savored the slow, atmospheric exploration of an underground full of traps and monsters.

Today The Bard's Tale is recognized as one of the cornerstones of the dungeon crawler genre, and its brand survived for many years, including a later comedically-tinged reboot and a modern return to the original style via crowdfunding. For anyone who wants to understand the roots of computer RPGs, it's an indispensable milestone.

Why play: It's an influential and atmospheric dungeon crawler that laid the foundations of an entire generation of computer RPGs, ideal for fans of slow, tactical adventure in the underground.