Dark Designs I: Grelminar's Staff

The Good
This game is a dungeon hack of the most basic variety. The player gets to move through a variety of twisting passages, fighting endless hordes of monsters and collecting magic items and gold while growing in experience and learning new spells. While no new ground is broken here, the familiar formula is implemented very successfully. The inclusion of an automap to show where the adventurers have already gone is extremely helpful, serving as a useful and satisfying measure of progress. The pacing is also just about right -- the game is never difficult enough to become frustrating, but there is enough challenge to make the adventure last. It's necessary to return to town and regroup frequently, and there is always a sense of danger and excitement to the exploration of new territory.

The Bad
Players looking for more than mindless but satisfying hacking and slashing should look elsewhere. If the basic core gameplay doesn't sound satisfying, there is little reason to waste time on this -- the story is irrelevant to gameplay, the graphics are dismal (though functional) and the sounds are irritating. The lack of real challenge may also lead to boredom -- apart from finding some key secret doors and figuring out how to defeat an opponent that can only be killed in a particular way, the path to victory is straightforward. Finally, there is relatively little diversity of character classes, spells and equipment; the options are rather limited compared to those found in larger games.

The Bottom Line
If you view this game for what it is, a quickie adventure distributed on a disk magazine, it's a nice piece of work. It has obvious limitations, but it's solidly-designed, mindless fun.