This original release would find its way into the hands of the California Pacific Computer Company who offered to publish the game on a wider scale. It would become a hit for the young developer, providing the profits he needed to lay the foundation for the legacy that followed.

Sadly, for all it helped to foment, the game itself has not aged well. You're tasked by Lord British with proving yourself worthy of being a knight in the royal court. While there have certainly been adventures that launched on less, Akalabeth never grows beyond this bare-bones plot.

All it amounts to is entering a dungeon, killing a specific monster and then reporting back to Lord British so he can tell you to kill another one that's even tougher. Do this a few times and you win.

This on its own isn't necessarily a deal-breaker. In fact, none of the CRPGs that came before had any goals beside gathering treasures, so it's already an evolution of sorts. Unfortunately, Akalabeth's gameplay is just too thin to stand on its own.

As you start, the game lets you pick a “lucky number”, which serves as seed for its randomly generated overworld. Regardless of what number you pick, though, the worlds it creates are universally dull. The towns you visit have no real NPCs and you won't encounter any monsters outside of its dungeons.

Character creation and development is almost non-existent. Your stats are rolled randomly and your one big choice between playing a Fighter or a Mage is mostly just picking between more weapons options or being able to use the Magic Amulet, which holds a few magic spells. While combat can have some strategy, you'll often just press the attack button until someone dies. Akalabeth is the CRPG genre boiled down to its most rudimentary parts.