Eye of the Beholder
Golden Box Classic
I have to confess, I am a little young to have played those games when they first released in 1990 (Published by Strategic Simulations, Inc (SSI)). But I am no stranger to old games, having played MUDs like Valinor (a topic for another day), the magic of older games was very present when I first learned about computer games
In Steam, some of the classics are easily obtainable now through the Golden and Silver box classic games. Eye of the Beholder is part of the first Golden Box classic, “Collection One”. They go for pretty cheap in the platform.
You will be going through a Dungeon, and the goal is to goal deeper and deeper and fight the final boss. In the image below you will get a feeling of how these plays. Look at the grit ambient, the feeling of enclosed walls and moisture. The sound is also great! Behind it all, the engine is processing AD&D rules, so you will need to learn the system outside the game for better understanding.
The launch of the game on steam, had the game worked in a way to give you some quality-of-life upgrades while maintaining a nostalgic feeling. You can see before you start the game, options to read the clue book and the manual. Both are scans of originals, with redacted texts to be easily searchable. They even update the material from time to time when they find better copies.
Another point is the “mini map” that is always on the side of the game window. In the past we used to have to draw those by hand in our notebooks (or get the clue book!). I remember doing that back in the days.
Look at this page, it is like art. I love the way those Clue books were made back in the day.
For someone younger, the books are almost mandatory, to learn how to play and what to do. So if you get the games, don’t sit on them, read them!
The Good
QoL are amazing! I wish we could go back in the past and hand them over to a young me. They make the game so much better.
Fidelity concerning the older print material is amazing. It truly is great to be able to read the clue book and manual while playing, this is something that was lost in today’s gaming industry. Reading trough this content was as enjoyable as playing the game itself. I wish games could go back to elaborate physical boxes with a bunch of extra content and a fat rule book. Nowadays we only get a paid “Soundtrack” as extra.
Simplicity, straight to the business. I like how old games play, they don’t have a 2-hour long intro or a hand-holding beginners’ quest or anything like that. They go straight to the game, assuming you read the manuals beforehand, and if you didn’t, well, death is near. Due to that, you can complete those games very fast, between 10 to 25 hours.
The Bad
Dosbox can be a pain to setup if you don’t have a full keyboard. I use a 60% keyboard, without the numpad, and those games really make use of the numpad for navigation. I had to click to ratate evey time. I manage to remap some of the keybinds in Dosbox, but it was kind of complex -you need to delete the previous key assignment in order for the new mapping to work, like you had to go to numpad, manually delete 7, and assign 7 numpad to Q for example. It made me acquire a dedicated mini numpad keyboard on Amazon.
The game is hard, at times, unforgiven. I have never finished the games. On the first one, I started to play without reading the Clue Book and I went very far, until a door that needed a lot of artifact keys to activate to open. I was already 10 hours in before I could go any further, and after reading, I would have to back track the whole dungeon to get the artifacts, lol. (please read the clue books)
Enemies are also hard, sometimes you need to read the manuals to learn how to beat them (they have advice on how to deal with the enemies).Save Game. Older games have some moments where you can corner yourself and lose your save data, so it is fundamental to save often, and on multiple saves (without a shortcut). This can be tiring after a while.
