🐳 8,493 items were approved and added to the database in the past week!

Moria

aka: The Dungeons of Moria, UMoria, UNIX Moria, VMS Moria
Moby ID: 24385
See Also

Description

Moria is a member of the roguelike RPGs. It features several innovations, like a town level and dungeons levels that are bigger than one screen, and was the first open-source and freeware roguelike.

The goal of Moria is to descend in the dungeons of Moria and defeat the evil Balrog who is cowardly hiding on the lowest level. Other than this, there are no other references to J.R.R. Tolkien in this game.

You begin the game by creating your character, choosing your sex and one of eight available races. You can then roll your stats and, when you got some which suit you, choose your class from six available classes (you can only some of them, depending on your stats). After entering a name, you're ready to roll.

The game is entirely played in turns, features text-only graphics showing your environment from above, and is played by entering character commands.

You start in town, where you can visit several shops to buy weapons, armor, torches, food, and other useful -- and sometimes magic -- items. You can barter with the shopkeepers to get reduced prices.

The dungeon levels are randomly generated. They contain a variety of monsters, some of which are invisible, and items, as well as traps and secret doors. Each level has more than one exit. As in other roguelikes, you explore the dungeons, kill monsters as you go, and try to accumulate as much treasure as possible.

Groups +

Screenshots

Credits (DOS version)

19 People

Original VMS Moria by
UMoria by
MS-DOS Moria port, reduced map display, 16 bit integers
Macintosh Moria port for MPW C
Macintosh port for Think C
Atari ST Moria port for MW C
Atari ST port for Gnu C
Atari ST port for Turbo C
Recall, options, inventory, running code, etc.
Object naming code
Numerous bug reports, consistency checks, etc
UNIX hangup signal fix, many bug fixes
Amiga Moria port
IBM-PC Turbo C bug fixes
VMS support code
Line of sight code, monster compiler
PC-Curses replacement for Turbo C

Reviews

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 10 ratings with 0 reviews)

Be the first to review this game!

Discussion

Subject By Date
1983 release Freeman (65615) Sep 4, 2015

Trivia

The first implementations of Moria are called VMS Moria, as they were written in VMS Pascal running on a VAX. They were developed by Robert Koeneke with some help of Jimmey Todd , both students at the University of Oklahoma, inspired by playing the original Rogue. Moria V1.0 was released around 1983, and in 1985, Koeneke released the source code code for Moria V4.0. After releasing V4.8, released 1986 or 1987, Koeneke and Todd stopped further work on Moria and gave permission to others to work on the game.

Jim Wilson and David Grabiner then went on to create a UNIX version of Moria, based on Koeneke's V4.8 sources and using his version numbering, so that the first UNIX Moria or Umoria version was V4.83, released in 1987. It mainly fixed bugs and it was much more portable than the original sources, so that versions of Umoria were eventually created for other platforms, including IBM PC, Atari ST, Amiga, Mac and the original VMS. Wilson and others continued to work on Moria until V5.5, the last official version released in 1992.

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings and price history! (when applicable)

Related Games

dnd
Released 1975 on Terminal
Dungeons & Dragons: Forgotten Realms - The Archives Collection 2
Released 2015 on Linux, Windows, Macintosh
The Dungeons of Grimlor II
Released 1995 on DOS
DND
Released 1976 on Mainframe, DOS
Silmar
Released 1990 on DOS, Linux, 2004 on Windows
Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Sun Series
Released 2015 on Windows, Linux, Macintosh
Ancient Domains of Mystery
Released 1994 on Linux, 1996 on DOS, Windows...

Related Sites +

  • Beej's Moria Page
    Downloads of the latest source and binaries for PC, Mac and Amiga and some information (FAQ and manual) as well as links to lots of other pages about Moria.
  • Github
    Source-code
  • Official Moria Page
    This page, maintained by David J. Grabiner, hosts downloads of the source code as well as of executables for PC, Amiga, Mac, Linux and PalmOS.
  • Roguebasin wiki
    Information and history of the game

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 24385
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by General Error.

OS/2, GP32 added by 666gonzo666. Acorn 32-bit added by Kabushi. Mainframe added by vedder.

Additional contributors: Gouken.

Game added October 15, 2006. Last modified August 8, 2024.