Akalabeth: the dungeon that came before the first Ultima

The re-release shipped with a bug that stalls the ending — and fans and detractors alike point to the same fix buried in the extras.

A teenager, an Apple II, and a dungeon that never repeats

By the game's own account, Richard Garriott was still a teenager, coding in Applesoft BASIC on an Apple II, when he wrote the 1979 title that many now treat as ground zero for an entire series: before there was any Ultima, there was this. Ten types of creature, a dungeon reshuffled with every new game, and a screen where walls, monsters, and the castle itself are drawn as outlines alone, with no filled-in surfaces — a technical feat in 1979, and today the calling card of a relic.

The story the store tells takes place before the game even begins: a golden age of plenty and peace that Mondain, the youngest son of King Wolfgang, destroys by opening demon-guarded dungeons for the sole purpose of stealing his brother's inheritance. Plague and bloodshed sweep the land until British confronts Mondain deep in his own tunnels and drives him out of Akalabeth for good, becoming Lord British, protector of the realm. That is where you come in, the plague beaten but the creatures still loose: it falls to you to clean up what's left — and to try not to starve along the way, because your character has to eat with every turn spent down there.

The re-release GOG carries today arrived on Christmas Eve 2014 with no middleman: on this listing, the studio and the publisher are credited to one and the same person, Garriott himself. It's a fantasy RPG with a firm footing in adventure, but it carries a second layer of interest: the rough, early sketch of everything the Ultima series would go on to build.

The fan who brought Akalabeth to MS-DOS

People who write in praise of Akalabeth today almost never talk about how it plays — they talk about lineage. The most-flagged account on the page, from February 2015 and marked helpful by more than a thousand people, doesn't come from just any player: it comes from the person who, still a student, wrote the game's MS-DOS version after bumping into Richard Garriott by chance and offering to port it for free. The original plan was for that version to stay hidden inside Ultima IX, a secret item the player would have to find; Ultima IX was delayed so badly that it only surfaced years later, inside the Ultima Collection.

The rest of the praise is more modest, but it echoes the same respect. A review written on Christmas Eve 2014, the day of the re-release, describes the game as the sketch of what the community still calls Ultima zero and recommends digging out the 1998 version from the extras, the one that adds color and a soundtrack. Two others — one from that same Christmas, another from October 2018 — tell the same humbling story: starting over after starving to death, still not realizing the character has to eat every turn; the further-along of the two even reaches the castle and receives its first quest before starving on the way back. By 2021, one review swears the game is still fun with nothing on screen but lines, as long as you're willing to draw the dungeon map by hand, because the game won't do it for you. A German review from 2017 sums up the tone running through nearly all the others: it's no game for anyone in a hurry, but for those who accept that, few experiences come this close to the genre's own origin. Almost every bit of praise, sooner or later, runs into the same quiet caveat: to get the most out of it, don't settle for the default installer.

The quest Lord British never closes out

Even its detractors don't deny the historical weight. A January 2015 review acknowledges the game's importance but argues it was outclassed by Wizardry not long after it went on sale, and calls it repetitive and lacking any real tactics. Another, from mid-2016, sees in it the first steps toward what Garriott would build up to the standard of world-building the series became known for — except that, as a game, it now boils down to hit a monster, grab the gold, go down another floor, and repeat, with no reason to play beyond historical interest. A third, from May 2019, grants that the game made Ultima I possible and still advises against lingering: give Akalabeth a little of your time, then move on to Ultima I, which does better what Lord British was reaching for here.

The most recurring complaint, though, isn't about the game's design: it's about a bug that traps the player inside the very story the game tells. From one review to the next, year after year, the account repeats: Lord British tells you to kill a monster without saying which one, or accepts that you killed the right one but won't unlock the next stage — and the only way out is to start over from scratch. A December 2018 review goes so far as to warn in capital letters that the game, as the store installs it, cannot be beaten without resorting to a fix made by someone else; another, from 2023, was still describing the same deadlock, illustrated with the two exact ways the quest jams. The recommendation, repeated by those who liked it and those who didn't, is always the same: dig the 1998 version out of the extras — the one you can actually finish.

For those willing to fix the origin in order to play it

Akalabeth is for players who like tracing the RPG's family tree back to its root and don't mind doing extra work for it: hunting down the right package among the extras, accepting that you'll starve before you grasp the game's own food system, drawing the dungeon map yourself because the game won't. It's not for anyone who wants to open it and finish without friction: the store's default installer, on its own, doesn't close out the story it promises. And the rebirth of Akalabeth that its own story foretells really does happen off-screen: anyone who wants to finish the game in full has to first bring the 1998 version back from the extras.