Despite trying both, I never finished either Grimrock title; I just find myself bored with the squaredancing mechanics. Starcrawlers is much more my cup of tea (turn-based and no fleeing); it's the best blobber in this style since M&M X.

I think the Grimrock games have some of the best puzzles in the genre, and they're both worth playing. The second game is basically just a bigger version of the first and with more varied environments. LoG 1 is a pure dungeon crawl while LoG 2 has an exterior map with multiple smaller dungeons.

Story-wise, they're not connected in any way that I could see, so you won't miss anything if you play LoG 2 without playing the first game.

I dislike the Grimrock puzzles. Not a surprise, really - because Grimrock was mostly a carbon copy of the original Dungeon Master in terms of features.

It was clearly a game by developers aping the past - rather than improving the past.

Dungeon Master was a classic, mind you - and I love it - but it was also the first of the real-time FP dungeon crawlers. Ok, not technically, but it was the one that set the standard.

Grimrock 2 was a big step up, though.

The formula was much refined after Dungeon Master, with games like Eye of the Beholder 2, Anvil of Dawn and Stonekeep. UU is arguably the ultimate (no pun intended) refinement - but I'd say it's more of a next step.

If you want the best puzzles in the step-by-step crawler genre, look no further than Black Crypt. That's a game with actual cerebral challenges (for its day) - and not "how fast can you move or dodge fireballs" crap.

As for StarCrawlers, something about the visuals put me off. It was too simplistic and seemed to be the kind of game that would offer little but endless repetition.

I never played it much, however. It rests in my Steam library - and I might give it another shot down the line.

Heh, talking about black crypt, I loved that game. My older brother bought it for Amiga and I played it when he wasn't home. Unfortunately I was still very young and didn't understand a lot of the English. I also didn't know I wasn't supposed to take out the discs while the Amiga were reading them. So I accidentally destroyed one of the discs when I tried to avoid being discovered… I don't think I ever told him :D

I tried it again maybe 10 years ago on an emulator. It was fun, but I never finished it.

It's my personal favorite of that particular subgenre. I was a huuuuuge fan of that kind of crawler - back in the day.

It had some amazing "boss fights" - where you had to figure out specific and relatively logical ways to beat them.

For instance, I remember fighting the Medusa - which would kill you by turning you to stone if you looked at her. So, you had to find a mirror and figure out how to force her to look at herself :)

It also had one of the very first underwater environments in that kind of game, as I recall.

An amazing title - and it's still Raven Software's best game - followed by ShadowCaster, which was their next title. Ironic that their first two games were - by far - their best ones.

How the mighty have fallen…..

That's a very inventive boss fight!

Considering the Amiga 500 belonged to my big brothers and I inherited his C64, I didn't have the chance to finish most games you mention. I only played when he was busy. I do however doubt I would've managed to finish most of them even if I'd had more time, due to not being able to read English properly. I had to do a lot of trial and error, which took a lot of time.

I'm finally getting more time to game again, since my kids are getting bigger, and I'm slowly working through my back log. Eventually I might get to the games in this thread.

Who knows, maybe I'll even try to play Black Crypt again :)

Hehe, I started playing games when I was 6 years old - and I didn't understand a word of English.

So, I learned by doing you could say. I used to play RPGs without having a clue what I was supposed to do. I guess I just enjoyed the shiny armors and deadly swords :)

Heh, I remember asking my older brothers and parents all the time about different words. One of my older brothers got really annoyed and said that if I have to ask so much, I'm obviously not ready to play yet.

One non-rpg I loved was Utopia (a space city builder). I had no idea what I was doing, though. I knew something was wrong with my colony since stuff was blinking, and I kept losing. Once my dad told me that O2 means oxygen, I realized that my colony was suffocating :D

Those were fun days. :)

Utopia was great!

I was a little older when that came out (played it on Amiga) - and did reasonably well.

I seem to remember it having great music as well :)

Yeah, I'm not sure how old I was, but probably less than 10, since I struggled so much with the understanding. And yes, the music was great! It introduced me to the amazing Canon in D major. It's still a favorite of mine :)