Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is a pure dungeon crawler. Unlike Might and Magic or Ultima, it makes no attempt at creating a detailed setting with a rich history. It doesn't even provide a world outside its dungeon – the town of Llylgamyn is nothing more than a menu from where you can access services like a shop, an inn, a tavern and a temple.

There is, of course, a quest you're supposed to accomplish: defeating the evil arch-wizard Werdna and retrieving his amulet. But the game is ultimately about exploring a massive dungeon, surviving tough battles and power-building your party. This is where Wizardry's secret lies: a focus on a seemingly simple, yet highly addictive and replayable gameplay.

Wizardry is a claustrophobic experience, and it uses difficulty to enforce this concept. There's no save feature – if a party member dies you have to find and drag his body to the temple for a chance at bringing him back, use rare resurrection spells that would reduce the character's Constitution, or just re-roll a new character. The same applies if the entire party dies, obviously.

Thus, Wizardry is a game of danger assessment and resource management, in which your ability to win encounters unscathed decides how deep you'll be able to go. This makes every fight relevant; if you lose hit points or waste spells in non-lethal encounters, they'll quickly add up and force you to return to town – not via a handy Town Portal, but by walking back.

Besides the battles, the dungeon itself proves to be a big challenge. There's no auto-map, of course, and each level is full with false walls, spinners, teleporters, chutes and other nice surprises. The huge dungeon is divided into ten descending levels, and your primary task in each of them is to find the stairs or elevator that allows you to go deeper. All of this may sound more frustrating than fun, but believe me, it's both.