Bard's Tale 2: The Destiny Knight

Bard's Tale 2: The Destiny Knight appeared in 1986 as the sequel to the RPG with which Interplay Productions helped define home computer dungeon crawling. The series belongs to what players now call the blobber: you steer a whole party as a single unit, move across an invisible grid in first person, and usually draw the map yourself on paper, because the game offers no automapping.

The second game expands the first in every direction. The world is no longer one town with a dungeon beneath it but several locations linked by travel, the underground areas are larger, and the design adds puzzles that cannot be solved by fighting — the best remembered being locks that require the correct sequence of steps. The party mixes several classes, and the bard is the series signature: instead of casting spells he plays songs that buff the group or reveal what is hidden.

Combat is turn-based and described in text, with minimal animation. Most information arrives as reports of what just happened, which means plenty of reading and keeping an eye on numbers. Difficulty is high — an unprepared party dies fast, and the game is generous with traps that can erase hours of progress. The reward is the sense of genuinely mastering a system that modern RPGs tend to smooth over.

Visually it combines a framed interface with hand-drawn portraits and a simple line-drawn corridor view. The aesthetic is austere but worked well on the imagination of the day.

On OldGame.cz you can launch it directly in your browser. One tip for newcomers: keep pencil and paper handy and expect the first hour to be about learning the rules.