Fortress of Narzod

Fortress of Narzod belongs among the Vectrex games that don't draw attention with flashy visuals but with unusually tactical gameplay. The player controls a warrior with a cannon fighting his way up through several floors of a stone fortress. Each floor is essentially a maze of walls, slanted surfaces, and openings, populated by enemies. The key to the game lies in how the projectiles behave: they bounce off walls. Direct fire is often impossible because the opponent is standing around a corner or behind an obstacle, so the player has to aim at a wall and calculate the angle of the ricochet. A simple shooter thus turns into something between billiards and a combat puzzle.

Enemies differ in behavior — some charge straight at the player, others fire from a distance, and others try to block the path. Each floor also has its own layout of obstacles, so the player must quickly get their bearings and find a spot from which they can fire safely. The advance grows steadily denser, the space narrows, and there's less time to think. The vector display serves the game well: the walls are clean lines, so the player sees exactly the geometry they need to exploit — absolutely essential in a game built around ricochets.

The sound is sparse and functional: dull thuds when a shot hits a wall, and a sharp beep on a hit. At the time, the game was received as something more unconventional than a typical arcade title, precisely because it rewards thinking before reflexes. Today it's one of the best-aging titles in the library — the ricochet mechanic works just as well as it did forty years ago, and individual levels can be cleared in many different ways, which tempts players into repeated attempts at a cleaner, faster run. The game is uncompromisingly hard, and the first playthrough typically ends right in the lower floors, yet failure never feels random: the player usually knows exactly which wall they should have used and where they wasted a shot. This kind of informed defeat keeps people coming back to the controller and makes Fortress of Narzod one of the most underrated titles on the console.