Stonekeep is a large palace-turned-dungeon located to the north of the city-state of Rihad, in southern Hammerfell. The palace is one floor, but is quite extensive. Among the rooms included is a throne room, office hall, royal bed-chamber, residential area, dining room, kitchen, and a prison. Step into the mystery of Stonekeep and begin a quest through dark corridors, treacherous sewers and subterranean realms of faeries, magic and the living dead. You'll discover a world where darkness reigns and where you become part of a detailed story line that unfolds at your command.

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1. Stonekeep

Description of Stonekeep

One of the best 'cinematic' RPGs ever made, Stonekeep is an excellent introductory-level single-player first-person RPG that boasts very high production value, but unfortunately suffered in the market due to some game-crashing bugs that should have never made it past beta testing.

Once patched, though, Stonekeep shines through with excellent story, immersive gameplay, one of the best user interfaces ever seen in RPGs, and a gentle learning curve that makes the game perfect for newcomers to the genre who find statistics-based RPGs (e.g. Wizardry) too daunting. You are Drake, a hero who finds himself in the ruins of Stonekeep. Your task is to find and rescue Thera, who has been trapped by the evil Shadowking. The game includes a surprisingly well-written novel which describes the backstory about the world, Thera and Stonekeep in great detail, perfectly setting the stage for the actual game. The game is played in real time, i.e. things happen regardless of whether you move or not. The basic gameplay is very simple, and very easy to learn. Use the arrow keys to move around, use the mouse to pick up, equip, and fight. Right and left mouse clicks do different things, so you must practice and remember which hand holds the weapon when you get into a fight. The monsters are relatively stupid-- my favourite fighting technique is to stand at a door and throw things at the monsters inside, since they can't come out of their room to get you. This means you are safe until you run out of things to throw. It's stupid, but hey, even classic first-person RPGs such as Dungeon Master are rarely popular for smart AI. The game of course makes up for the monsters' low intelligence by throwing hordes of them at you at a time. This means you will die quite often in lower levels are Drake is still weak, but the game is not overly frustrating-- it just takes a bit of patience and preserverance to improve your character stats (which are mostly hidden from the player due to this being a 'light' RPG). Aside from hacking monsters, you will come across helpful NPCs who can sometimes join you for a while. You cannot control these NPCs' behavior, so it is a lot of fun to watch their unique attacks and constant quips. Most puzzles are standard dungeon-crawl fare, e.g. look for hidden switches open up blocked passages, deliver item A to player X, and so on. Nothing special here, although a few sub-quests are quite interesting. What makes Stonekeep a great game as opposed to merely a good one is the incredibly immersive atmosphere that makes you feel as if you are truly wandering in the halls of Stonekeep. Although most monsters look a little pixellated and two-dimensional (similar to cardboard cutouts in Betrayal at Krondor), the full-screen, first-person perspective and excellent background graphics maintains a suspension of disbelief. Additionally, all cut-scenes occur right inside the gameworld, making the immersion even more powerful. The game's user interface is also very well thought out. The 'magic journal' automatically keeps track of everything for you, including player stats, clues, items you have found, and maps. Another very nice feature is that you can easily add your own notes-- not only annotating the maps, but also your own observations about each item you collect. The game provides a large number of shortcut keys to let you get at specific pieces of the journal at any one time, and the spellcasting interface is elegant and effective. In keeping with the strong emphasis on immersion, none of the interface takes you 'out' of the gameworld (e.g. to a separate stat/inventory screen); everything is accessible on one screen.

Overall, Stonekeep is an exceptional RPG that ranks among the best games ever made for novice adventurers. The plot develops very nicely from a somewhat cliche premise to a great fantasy tale of deceit, power, and even a trickle of romance. After buying the game, be sure to download the latest patch to save yourself some grief along the way. Two thumbs up, way up!

Review By HOTUD

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Comments and reviews

Hugo2018-07-140 point

You need to edit config file for right path.

Daje2018-04-03-2 points

Use DosBox 0.72 to run stonekeep.
It run as good as on a real Dos machine.
You can use a frontend, like DFend, but is not needed.
To run on your Android, you need, again, a DosBox emulator running on it.

ThomasFfobbs2016-04-222 points

one could allways buy an old PRE-XP 'puter [i.e. Win 3.* to 98 II ED with the ability to boot into D.O.S. Proper].
after all; as they are so cheap [@ £20.. or even free if you search the skips & 2nd-hand ADS] surely one could keep a couple of computers.. each for its own purpose. so much easier than countless nights of hair-pulling :-)
who knows; one might even be lucky enough to pick up a few dozen 'really' old Dual-5 1/4 Floppy IBM Servers from a live Balliff-Auction-Sale where the Ram [256 KB Mods} are mounted on their own 'Daughter-Board'.
cheaper than a few rounds of Beer down the pub with your mates, surely :-)

Jypsie2015-12-03-26 points

Will Stonekeep still work If I have Windows 10?

big d2015-02-01-13 points DOS versionAncestor definition history.

how do I run stonekeep on my android?

gusgus002015-01-05-16 points DOS version

how do you start the game

therealLGR2014-12-292 points DOS version

try using dfend a frontend for dosbox works fine for m,e lol

Juzeric2014-09-13-6 points DOS version

Cannot get this to work with Dosbox

mad dog2014-02-02-6 points DOS version

i cannot get this game to work in dosbox what is wrong with it?
id like for it to run as this site has the closest one to a running version of this game
yet i have had no luck yet though

Frida2013-05-190 point DOS version

Goooooood

Carvalho2012-11-111 point DOS version

Não instala, ele pede o CD de instalação!!!!

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