Amulets and Armor

It's 1997, the middle of the decade belongs to Diablo and Dungeon Keeper, but somewhere in a garage studio at United Software Artists, a bunch of people are quietly working on something of their own. Amulets and Armor didn't surprise anyone, didn't conquer the market — yet a few of us remember it to this day.

It's a first-person dungeon RPG in a direct line from Wolfenstein through Heretic to attempts at genuine RPG in first-person view. You pick a character, gear them up, and head into the dungeons to complete quests. The story starts classically — a stranger in a tavern, a job offer, your first quest. Nothing to knock you out of your chair, but in 1997 it was still acceptable as a hook.

The game combines real-time action with an RPG system — stats, equipment, spells, different character classes. Movement and combat work on principles close to the Build engine or rather the older engines of that era, with environments of corridors filled with textures and enemies that come straight at you. What sets Amulets and Armor apart from pure action is that layer of character management and inventory — you have to think about what you're carrying, what you're wearing, what spells you've got available. For an indie title from 1997, a solid scope.

What aged poorly? The engine. Movement is stiff, navigating levels is sometimes painful, and enemy AI stands roughly at the level of a pendulum — they go forward, attack, nothing more. The game never had a big budget or a publisher, and you can see it on every corner of every corridor. At the same time, it's fair to say that United Software Artists released Amulets and Armor as freeware — the studio deliberately sent it out into the world for free, which was more of an exception than the norm back then.

Today the game will appeal mainly to those who have a soft spot for forgotten 90s RPGs and don't mind that the shine is strictly relative. It's not Ultima Underworld or System Shock, but it has its charm — an honest, somewhat clunky attempt at a genre that was dominated by studios with ten times the budget. These days you can fire it up in your browser without installation and without configuring your SoundBlaster, which is actually the biggest improvement over the original in 2024.