LogFAQs > #949240120

#87 Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol (Microsoft Windows, 1995)

Mordor (which has nothing to do with Tolkien or his writing) is the first rogue-like game I ever played. I did play the original Rogue at some point, but I am sure it was at least a few years later.



Mordor is a text and window-based dungeon crawler with very little in terms of graphics. The game is presented in a bunch of different windows that show the character sheet, inventory, dungeon map, enemy portraits, et cetera. Like Rogue, the game revolves around exploring a procedurally-generated dungeon and attempting to get to the last level. If you die, you have to start over with another character and find your corpse. If you take too long (or have the misfortune of having your life drained), your character will get elderly and weak and eventually die for good. Although it's all very old now and probably has not aged well at all, I found it to be incredibly addicting, even if it was impossible for me to beat at the time. And I never did actually finish it.

It happened to be one of those formative games for me and as a kid with way more free time than money, provided an enormous value. The only reason I won't rank it higher than this is that I hardly remember the details 25 years later.

---

At least your mother tipped well