Curious fact about me: I only learned of Lord of the Rings way after I had learned about Dungeons and Dragons.

My first D&D game was "Eye of the Beholder 2" by Westwood Studios.

The atmosphere in the intro (the medieval town, the storm looming from afar, the drop of water), combined with the no-music, SFX-only gameplay made it so damn immersive.

I played this game whenever I had the chance, and kept trying to level up, collecting potions, and so on.

The underground dungeons kept me on my edge, I kept hearing the footsteps of my enemies approaching, or in the even lower levels, the hard steps of heavy monsters stomping on the echoing floor.

I would stare at the moss in the walls, listen to the occasional drop of water dripping from the ceiling.

The different types of monsters made different background sounds; giant bugs made a sound like dirt and rocks moving around; monsters which crawled on the floor made slithery sounds; and then sere the flying snakes.

The most terrifying part was an area of the dungeons where you could not sleep at all because your characters would have nightmares. So you couldn't recover health or spells. It was terrifying and the doors even looked evil; instead of closing down they were jaws with pointy teeth closing.

I wanted to go on, and there were many, many levels. And then you would go up again, because the bottom part was only necessary to get an artifact. And then you began a perilous trial.

It was the most immersive PC game I've ever played, despite the lack of realistic graphics or voice acting.

Only much later I realized dungeon crawling was a genre.

But it started my love for D&D and high fantasy.

#DnD #EyeOfTheBeholder #RetroGaming

youtu.be/A0lteK-l7YQ