RetroDND

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(Another) Game of Dungeons█

Free on iOS & Android. No ads. No tracking. Just the dungeons.

== GET THE GAME ==

[ APP STORE ] COMING SOON [ GOOGLE PLAY ] COMING SOON

-- JOIN THE BETA --

[ TESTFLIGHT ] iOS BETA — LINK SOON [ PLAY BETA ] ANDROID BETA — LINK SOON

== SCREENSHOTS ==

Main menu: Create New Character, Characters, Shop, Help, and Settings in green phosphor text

Character creation: rolled ability scores with Reroll and Continue buttons

Dungeon gameplay: a level 7 mage exploring Telengard level 1, with the nine-button action keypad

The shop: armor, books, elven cloaks and boots, rings, shields, transportation, and magic weapons

== WHAT IS RETRODND? ==

RetroDND is my version of DND, the dungeon crawler Bill Knight of R.O. Software put on the PC as shareware in 1984, the far end of a family tree that reaches back to the earliest games ever played on a computer. This one is a rewrite, not a port: the code is new, but the gameplay, the combat math, the equipment, the spells, the monsters, and the maps are the same ones a kid in Virginia burned wore into a green phosphor display forty years ago.

Create a character, descend into the dungeon, and try to haul the dragon's orb up from the 20th floor. Permadeath included, exactly as the 1970s intended. Fair warning: the game is hard. Like...stupid hard.

CLASSIC MODE — as close as I could get to the original VAX-lineage game
ENHANCED MODE — level 5 spells, new monsters, themed dungeons, new rooms, new boss lairs
ORIGINAL MAPS — VAX and PC maps reverse-engineered and completed: 20 levels each, dragon orb on the 20th
ACTION KEYPAD — the whole keyboard-era game, playable with nine buttons
SAVE & RESUME — play a bit, quit, pick it right back up
TEXT DUNGEONS — no modern graphics; use your imagination

== A TANGLED FAMILY TREE ==

The lineage runs from The Game of Dungeons on the PLATO system, through Daniel Lawrence's DND on DEC minicomputers, to the VAX, to the 1984 PC shareware this game is built from, with fifty years of borrowing and building along the way (and one genuinely contested branch).

1974-75	PLATO — The Game of Dungeons	Gary Whisenhunt, Ray Wood, Dirk & Flint Pellet
1970s	Purdue DECsystem-10 → VAX	Daniel M. Lawrence
1984	PC/DOS Shareware	Bill Knight (R.O. Software)
2025	iOS & Android	RetroDND

> READ THE FULL STORY — the 286 clone, the Lone Star shareware disk, QuickBASIC 1.0, and the old plagiarism fight.

> EXTERNAL LINKS — further reading from the people who documented DND's history.

== CONTACT / SUPPORT ==

Questions, bug reports, or tales of glorious dungeon deaths:
support@retrodnd.org