Moria

Moria, first released in 1983, is one of the earliest clones of Rogue.

Description

Moria was based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and the player had to go down the mines of Moria and ultimately kill the Balrog to win the game.

Moria featured a town where the player could buy and sell items, the first roguelike to do so.

Versions and platforms

Moria was written by Robert Koeneke in 1983, in VMS Pascal. According to the author, he started development when, after being hooked on Rogue, he moved to another department where the game wasn't available. He released the source code in 1985. Last version he made was v4.7 in 1987.

After being ported to C by various people, Moria became available on many platforms, such as Unix (UMoria), DOS, Amiga, etc.

Legacy

Due to releasing its source code, Moria was used by several variants, the most succesful being Angband.

Related topics

• Major roguelikes

Related links

• The Dungeons of Moria
• Usenet article, where the author himself describes the origins of Moria
• Moria got its own dedicated newsgroup. It can be accessed through Google groups.