success in The Dungeon

yep, I did it well, success is a quantifiable word. in this case, success meant finishing the game as per the explicit rules set. a big spoiler: I did. it was a surprisingly enticing evening of playing. I re-rolled the character a couple of times until, around 23:30, their stats were favourable where it mattered. this was not enough, and some of the characters that initially looked good on paper succumbed due to either bad tactics (flighting vs running) or just bad luck. some early surviving attempts meant I was in the right track, but I had yet to find a good balance. ...

October 1, 2025 · (updated May 14, 2026) · 4 min · Tnarik Innael

CRPG archaeology

lately I’ve been retreating into the past, at least partially, right? somehow, perhaps because I started playing some gamebooks and such, I wanted to recover the Dark Heart of Uukrul copy I had for macOS (using DosBox). in the process, I ended up recreating bundles myself, and choosing the best settings I could. and this took me into a couple of blogs, The CRPG Book Project, the Vogons forum, and the work of retrogaming and emulation. ...

March 4, 2025 · (updated May 14, 2026) · 4 min · Tnarik Innael