Descent into Wyrmdeep

Descent into Wyrmdeep is an oldschool BBS door game style text-based fantasy adventure game. I created it just for fun on a whim with the launch of the new Paths to Adventure website. You can play it right now!

It’s completely browser based, and is intended to be able to be “won” in a single sitting (roughly 15-20 minutes). It has roleplaying game elements, but it’s really more of a short fantasy adventure focused on hack-and-slash to delve deeper into the monster-infested dungeon.

I hope it provides a nostalgic smile for those who remember how much fun it was playing games on bulletin board systems back in the day, or a fun perspective of what it was like for those who weren’t around for the experience.

My first foray into both game design and programming was back in my early teen years. When I was 13, I was running a local Renegade BBS called “The Dungeon“, and I first learned how to code by creating custom door games for my board.

That same year I would earn my first “paycheck” when a SysOp from another board mailed me a $20 check via USPS to register one of my distributed door games (because, that’s how we did things back then). I would end up writing about half a dozen distributed door packages before the world wide web became accessible for me, and I shifted gears from Fidonet to the Internet. Sadly none of the source or games I have any longer. Though, I do keep checking contemporary shareware/bbsware collections in hopes of one day recovering them for my personal project library!

Coming back to it after 30 years and creating one of those old door games for use on the web was on my list of personal project ideas, so that’s another one checked off. Even if I didn’t realize I was going to and it was rather spur of the moment.

And just for the fun of it, here are a few of what were my favorite BBS door games to play, some of them may have heavily influenced my then 13-14 year old game design aesthetic!