The Chambers Beneath

You are an adventurer who has recently arrived in a once-bustling medieval city whose streets are strangely deserted. The people are here, but they no longer gather in the cobbled streets and the public squares. Instead, they cower in the safety of their houses. Few shops are open, and it is difficult to find out the cause of this eerie quiet.

All that you can find out from the few frightened, gabbling citizens you come across is that a great and significant treasure has gone missing from the city. It seems that this is no ordinary treasure, but one that guarantees the safety of the city and its inhabitants. With it missing, everyone is expecting a great calamity to fall upon them.

You will have to consult the city’s ruler to find out exactly what has gone missing, and what reward there is to the hero who retrieves it. All you can gather from those you have spoken to so far is that there exists a network of underground passages and chambers with unsavoury inhabitants, and everyone believes the treasure has been hidden down there.

So being an adventurer hungry for glory, you think you should be the one to take on the quest, and venture down into The Chambers Beneath. This is a role-playing game, of a type sometimes known as a roguelike or a dungeon crawler. It is turn-based, meaning that the emphasis is not on fast reactions but on planning and careful con- sideration.

In this game you will be choosing a character, and equipping them with weaponry to start the adventure. You’ll be descending into the dungeons, killing monsters, finding treasure, and improving your natural attributes and skill set in order to deal with ever more difficult challenges down in the depths. And if you do well, you’ll be returning to the ruler of the city to present them with the lost treasure and gain a great reward.

The Chambers Beneath runs on any PC with an 8088 processor, CGA graphics, and 512k RAM, or better, including an emulated PC in DOSBox.