Eye of the Beholder (2022, C64)

Note: The game has mouse support, but I could not get it running, so I used keyboard controls only.

Eye of the Beholder is a dungeon crawling RPG. It was originally developed by Westwood for the PC, and also came out for Amiga, Mega CD/ Sega CD, NEC PC-98 and SNES. A port for the Atari Lynx was in development, but cancelled.

The C64 version is an inofficial port developed by fans. It came out as cartridge rom and can be downloaded here:

https://eotb64.com/v1-00-ready/

Eye of the beholder is the Forgotten Realms setting of D&D and uses AD&D rules. The story is set in the city of Waterdeep. An ancient evil lurks under the city. One day, the lords of the city decide to find out what this evil is and to get rid of it. They hire a party of heroes to do the job and send them to the city's sewers for investigation. Unfortunately, the evil powers have spied upon the operation and set a trap. Just after the heroes have entered the the sewers, the entry collapses, trapping them inside. Now the party has only one option. Go forward and face whatever is ultimately lurking below the city.

The game is dungeon crawler similar to Dungeon Master, with fieldwise movement and 90 degree turns, 1st person perspective and real-time battles. You start out with a party of four characters and you can recruit new and additional characters over the course of the game. The order of the characters is important, as only the first two can do melee combat, all other characters can only throw things, use distance weapons or use magic.