Eye of the Beholder

Eye of the Beholder brought the real-time, first-person dungeon crawling of Dungeon Master to the Forgotten Realms and the official AD&D rules. The lords of Waterdeep hire your party to investigate an evil lurking beneath the city, and before long you’re trapped in the sewers with only one way to go: down. It was a big hit and became one of SSI’s best-loved games.

Gameplay

You create a party of four characters using the AD&D rules, choosing from races such as humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes and half-elves, and classes such as fighters, rangers, paladins, clerics, mages and thieves, including multi-class combinations. Up to two more characters can join you along the way, giving you a party of six.

The game is played in first-person, in real time, on grid-based maps:

• Real-time combat: Monsters move and attack in real time, so you click to attack with each character while dodging and repositioning.
• AD&D magic: Clerics and mages memorise spells from the familiar AD&D lists by resting, making spell preparation an important part of survival.
• Puzzles and secrets: Pressure plates, hidden buttons, teleporters and secret walls fill the dungeon, along with special quests that reward careful exploration.
• Survival: Food is a constant concern, and resting in dangerous areas can attract monsters.

The dungeon descends level after level, from sewers and dwarven halls to much darker and stranger places, with a growing sense of danger as you go deeper.

Verdict

Eye of the Beholder is a classic dungeon crawler that combines the tension of Dungeon Master with the familiarity of AD&D. The lack of an automap and some unforgiving difficulty make it hard work today, but its atmosphere, puzzles and secrets still hold up.