I think most people of a certain age (or who at least peruse shareware discs for any period of time) are familiar with the Windows 3.1 title Castle of the Winds, but not too many know about Mordor: the Depths of Dejenol. In some ways it reminds me of Castle of the Winds, utilizing a similar layout of tiled windows for its interface and crudely-drawn but charming graphics. In most other ways, it reminds me of the countless Wizardry clones that came out throughout the '80s and early '90s - first person dungeon crawling action with high difficulty, much grinding for money, and absolutely no manual saving - only autosaves. That means that if you die, you're dead; you either have to create another character and send them in to retrieve your body (grinding them up to whatever level is required to reach the area you died in), or just start from scratch. A pretty unattractive prospect considering the wildly uneven prices for items in the games. Weapons and most pieces of kit aren't too unreasonable - you start with 1500 gold pieces, a sword costs around 300, and some boots, glove and a cloak run about 150 apiece - but even some basic armor can easily run into five digits. Recruitiable allies come in the form of monsters, which reminds me a bit of Wizardry IV, but they're also incredibly expensive, with five or even six-digit price tags attached. Leveling up also requires you to return to town and spend money at a trainer, and the price only increases as your level goes up, so basically, this game is all about the grind. Money, experience, and vanquishing thousands of thousands of monsters while hoping your luck holds out. If you're the oldest of old-school dungeon crawler devotees and you've already mastered all the Wizardrys and Might and Magics and just about every other clone of them under the sun, this is another you might want to pick up. Especially since, as of this writing, you can can still buy a brand new boxed copy on the author's website.
Developer: Decklin's Domain
Publisher: Decklin's Domain
Released: 1995
Platform: PC