success in The Dungeon

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. then some early surviving meant I was in the right track. from that point on all I had to do was to be careful and inspect all rooms (all new rooms) and return to base with resources enough to survive. it became a game of balancing risk and reward, exploration and exploitation. going further or into unknown areas is more risky, but retreating after every combat takes a lot of time and is not so thrilling (although the race back to base is fraught with dangers, so you never know). ...

October 1, 2025 · (updated October 6, 2025) · 1 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 Bool Project, the Vogons forum, and the work of retrogaming and emulation. ...

March 4, 2025 · (updated October 6, 2025) · 4 min · Tnarik Innael