Warrior

Scene: a dark tower, lime smoldering from the sink, and your character stumbling up the stairs like blind. Warrior is a classic MS-DOS adventure that's not afraid to let you wander for a while before you realize you just grabbed a key instead of a sword and cease to exist.

It's a combination of point-and-click adventure with modest platforming. You traverse a fortress, collect items, solve the same tired mechanical puzzles, and alternately fight enemies and grapple with the problem that you can either have a weapon or a tool in your inventory, but not both. The game world has that grainy texture of the DOS era — minimalist graphics that let you fill in the details with your own imagination. The goal is traditionally stated: get out of that tower, or destroy whatever evil is in it.

Gameplay revolves around exploration and item collecting. The controls aren't pleasant; rather, you try to come to terms with them — run in one direction, interact with the environment in another, and sorting your inventory probably means clicking and waiting. Hitboxes in combat are an uncertain ocean. Sometimes you swing at air, sometimes an enemy kills you even though you can only see them if you stand right and maybe in the right line of moonlight. But it's through this struggle that a strange atmosphere emerges — the game doesn't coddle you, not even slightly.

Warrior reads as a solid piece from the early nineties, when adventures were more experiment than formula. Graphics without grand ambitions, mechanics that nobody bothered to sharpen, and that peculiar feeling of not sensing a roof over your head. Today, in the era of tutorials and instructions in every menu, this game simply ignores what you want. Which can be refreshing or frustrating, depending on your mood.

For players itching for DOS-flavored chunks without polish, there's a bit of authenticity to be found here. It's not a masterpiece — it's no Monkey Island or Broken Sword — but its rough edges and bottomless inventory have their own charm. Give it a try in your browser; it's not an investment that will blindside you.