Wizard's Castle - Shadows of Zot
**I reimagined Wizard's Castle (1980) as a dark fantasy dungeon crawler — it's live and I'd love your opinion**
Back in 1980, Joseph R. Power wrote a BASIC game called Wizard's Castle. You explored an 8×8×8 procedurally generated castle, fought monsters, and hunted for the Orb of Zot. It ran on a terminal. It was brilliant.
I've spent the last months rebuilding it from the ground up as *Wizard's Castle: Shadows of Zot* — same soul, massively expanded systems.
**What it is:**
- Turn-based dungeon crawler, eight levels of procedurally generated castle
- OSR-inspired mechanics: d20 to-hit, ascending AC, Vancian spell slots, six classes (Fighter, Arcanist, Cleric, Thief, Ranger, Paladin), six peoples
- A two-step dodge system that makes DEX feel genuinely different from just bumping your AC
- Dark fantasy aesthetic
- playable in the browser on desktop, tablet and mobile (network connection required)
**What I'm looking for:**
Players who give me their honest feedback. I have spent quite some time crunching numbers to keep the game challenging, but not impossible — I want to know where else the difficulty spikes unfairly, what feels good, what feels arbitrary, and whether the OSR mechanical feel lands for people who grew up on this stuff.
The core mechanics are done— I'm still building out several features, and this is exactly the right moment for feedback before they go in. Among the planned features is a lore system that rewards exploration without forcing itself on you.
Happy to answer questions about the design decisions, the original game, or why I made a dungeon crawler instead of literally anything with a better market size.
The game is live at **wizardscastle.de** — it is free to play. If you want to enjoy all features, you can create an account, but guest play is available.
PS: The original is also available if you want to relive the old times