The Bard's Tale (1985) (1985)
The Bard's Tale (1985) is a 1985 rpg video game made by Interplay Entertainment.
The city of Skara Brae is locked in perpetual winter, held under the sorcerer Mangar's spell. Into its grid of frozen streets and the five dungeon layers beneath, Michael Cranford dropped a party-based RPG unlike anything home computers had seen in 1985: first-person 3D corridors with animated character portraits, and a class called the Bard whose lute songs conjured magical companions into the fight. The maze design is demanding and the bookkeeping unforgiving, but the sense of a real, besieged city shaped the genre in ways that echo through decades of dungeon-crawling successors.
Quick answers
What is The Bard's Tale (1985) about?
The city of Skara Brae is locked in perpetual winter, held under the sorcerer Mangar's spell. Into its grid of frozen streets and the five dungeon layers beneath, Michael Cranford dropped a party-based RPG unlike anything home computers had seen in 1985: first-person 3D corridors with animated character portraits, and a class called the Bard whose lute songs conjured magical companions into the fight. The maze design is demanding and the bookkeeping unforgiving, but the sense of a real, besieged city shaped the genre in ways that echo through decades of dungeon-crawling successors.
When was The Bard's Tale (1985) released?
The Bard's Tale (1985) was released on 1 January 1985.
Who made The Bard's Tale (1985)?
The Bard's Tale (1985) was made by Interplay Entertainment.
Similar games
The Bard's Tale (1985) in our writing
- Companion guide: The Golden Age of the CRPG: 1981 to 1999
- Companion guide: The Dungeon Crawler: Grid by Grid Through Gaming's Oldest Genre
- Companion guide: Interplay: By Gamers, For Gamers, and the Golden Age of the RPG
A few thoughts on The Bard's Tale (1985)
The dungeon-crawl DNA that Skara Brae established runs through decades of RPGs. Fallout: New Vegas shares the same fascination with a world gone wrong and a hand-built setting that rewards careful mapping, while The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim carries forward the first-person perspective and the sense of underground spaces worth exploring room by room.