Obitus

It's 1991, I'm twelve years old, and that exact opening flash of lightning striking into a forest and conjuring a mysterious tower would have had me hooked for the entire afternoon. Obitus by Scenario Software bet everything on that atmosphere — and then left the player standing in the middle of an empty world with no map, no quests, and no clue what to actually do.

This is an RPG from an era when the genre hadn't yet settled on established rules. The world is fantasy, the setting feels like a dungeon crawler mixed with adventure exploration, and the story — well, there's barely any story here. The opening animation with the lightning and tower hints that something mysterious is happening. Then you get the controls and you're on your own. No plot, no objectives. Just a world and you in it.

Gameplay revolves around exploration and combat. The perspective is isometric or semi-3D depending on the area, controls are intuitive without a manual — but you won't get far without one, because the game explains virtually nothing. The mechanics are solid for their time, battles have turns and a bit of tactics. The problem is that without any narrative framework, motivation evaporates quickly. You walk, you fight, you explore — and soon you're asking yourself why.

What Obitus delivered was visual impact. In 16-color VGA mode it looked respectable for 1991, and that opening sequence really did play like a little cinema — which made the contrast with the emptiness that followed all the starker. The game came out on Amiga too and later appeared on consoles, so it was an more ambitious project than your typical garage title. But ambition and results are two different things. What's aged the game most is that silence — the absence of any player guidance, which back then might have felt mysterious, now just feels unfinished.

In your browser, Obitus is worth trying mainly if you enjoy dungeon crawlers from the '80s-'90s crossover and don't mind a game that gives you nothing for free — not even an explanation. It's an archaeological artifact, not an evening of fun. But that lightning and that tower from the opening? They've still got style.