# Eye of the Beholder - Work: Dungeon crawler - Date: 1991 (MS-DOS, Amiga); Sega CD & SNES 1994 - Houses: Westwood Studios, Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) - Platforms: MS-DOS, Amiga, PC-98, Sega CD, SNES, Game Boy Advance (2002 adaptation) - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/works/eye-of-the-beholder/ > Westwood's 1991 descent beneath Waterdeep married the real-time, step-by-step dungeon of Dungeon Master to official AD&D rules, and gave PC owners the VGA dungeon crawl they had been waiting for. **Why it matters:** Eye of the Beholder carried the Dungeon Master model to the IBM PC under the AD&D banner, proved Westwood as a role-playing developer, and marked SSI's pivot away from its aging Gold Box engine. ## Quick answers **When was Eye of the Beholder first released?** Eye of the Beholder was first released in 1991 (MS-DOS, Amiga); Sega CD & SNES 1994. **Who published or developed Eye of the Beholder?** Westwood Studios and Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI). **What kind of work is Eye of the Beholder?** Eye of the Beholder is a dungeon crawler in the First-Person Dungeon Crawlers ('Blobbers') and Western Computer RPGs (CRPG) tradition, released for MS-DOS, Amiga, PC-98, Sega CD, SNES and Game Boy Advance (2002 adaptation). **Why is Eye of the Beholder important?** Eye of the Beholder carried the Dungeon Master model to the IBM PC under the AD&D banner, proved Westwood as a role-playing developer, and marked SSI's pivot away from its aging Gold Box engine. ## Overview *Eye of the Beholder* is a first-person [dungeon crawler](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/dungeon-crawler/) developed by [Westwood Associates](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/westwood-studios/) and published by [Strategic Simulations, Inc.](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/strategic-simulations-inc/) in 1991 for MS-DOS, and soon after for the Amiga. It uses the rules of [Advanced Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/advanced-dungeons-and-dragons/) and is set in the [Forgotten Realms](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/forgotten-realms/), beneath the great city of Waterdeep. Where SSI's own [Gold Box](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/pool-of-radiance/) games were turn-based and tactical, *Eye of the Beholder* is a real-time game in the mold of FTL's [Dungeon Master](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dungeon-master/): the party moves one square at a time through a pseudo-3D maze, and monsters do not wait for anyone to finish thinking. Its cover art — dominated by a looming [Beholder](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/beholder/) — was voted best advertisement by *Computer Gaming World* readers in January 1991. ## Origins By the end of the 1980s SSI's AD&D license had produced a stream of Gold Box games built on an engine designed for the Commodore 64. Meanwhile *Dungeon Master* (1987) had become the defining dungeon game on the Atari ST and Amiga, but it was not yet available for the IBM PC, whose owners were now buying VGA graphics and sound cards. SSI turned to Westwood Associates, the Las Vegas studio founded by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle in 1985, which had built its name on work for other publishers — including Amiga conversions of Gold Box games that added mouse support and improved graphics. Westwood's team, with design credited to Joseph Bostic, Phillip W. Gorrow, Eydie Laramore and Paul S. Mudra, built a mouse-driven dungeon that looked and moved like *Dungeon Master* but ran on AD&D rules: [classes](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/character-class/), [Alignment](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/alignment/), [Armor Class](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/armor-class/) and memorized [spells](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/vancian-magic/). The MS-DOS art was drawn in Deluxe Paint, and the game includes more than 150 AdLib sound effects. ## How it plays The lords of Waterdeep hire a band of adventurers to find the source of an evil stirring below the city. They enter the sewers, and a cave-in engineered by Xanathar, the beholder of the title, seals the way back. The only route is down: through levels inhabited by dwarves, then drow, and finally into Xanathar's lair. The player creates a [The party](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/party/) of four and can grow it to six by recruiting [NPCs](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/non-player-character/) found in the depths or by raising the bones of dead adventurers. Everything is handled with the mouse: characters' portraits line the side of the screen, weapons are wielded by clicking the item in each hand, and spells are cast from a menu after being memorized during rest. Because the world runs in real time, combat is a matter of position and timing — stepping back to let a monster advance into a thrown dagger, or sidestepping around it — as much as of dice. Puzzles, pressure plates, hidden buttons and illusory walls fill the gaps between fights, and each level hides a special bonus quest. ## Reception & impact The game was an immediate success. It reached number one on the Software Publishers Association's list of top MS-DOS games for April 1991, the last SSI D&D title to do so; SSI's records put its sales at 129,234 copies, and the trilogy passed 350,000 units by 1996. *Computer Gaming World*'s Dennis Owens called it "a stunning, brilliantly graphic and agonizingly tricky" 3-D role-playing game, and the magazine observed that IBM owners finally had a *Dungeon Master*-like game of their own. *Dragon* magazine's "The Role of Computers" column gave it five stars. Scorpia praised the atmosphere but criticized the awkward spell interface and what she called the "outrageous" ending — in the DOS version, simply a small blue box of text. British magazine *The One* noted, of the Amiga version, that it looked so much like *Dungeon Master* that "even their programmers would have trouble telling them apart." Later reviewers have been cooler. The CRPG Addict judged it a step toward merging D&D rules and real-time dungeon crawling rather than the destination, weaker than *Dungeon Master* in combat, magic and character development even if stronger in quests and NPCs. ## Legacy Westwood followed up the same year with *Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon* (1991), which added outdoor areas and more role-playing. After Virgin Games acquired Westwood in 1992, the third game, *Assault on Myth Drannor* (1993), was built in-house by SSI, while Westwood's team turned its engine and experience into the *Lands of Lore* series. Parties could be carried from game to game across all three. Ports reached Japan's PC-98 and, in 1994, the Sega CD and Super NES; a separate adaptation appeared on the Game Boy Advance in 2002. In the history of the genre, *Eye of the Beholder* sits between two currents. It shows how thoroughly *Dungeon Master* had rewritten the [blobber](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/blobber/), and it arrived the year before [Ultima Underworld](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/ultima-underworld/) swept the grid away entirely with a free-moving, texture-mapped dungeon. Fans have since rebuilt it as modules for [BioWare](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/bioware/)'s [Neverwinter Nights](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/neverwinter-nights/) (2002). ## Facts - It topped the Software Publishers Association's MS-DOS chart for April 1991 — the last SSI D&D game to reach number one. - The villain, the beholder Xanathar, dates back to the 1987 Forgotten Realms sourcebook FR1: Waterdeep and the North. - The original DOS ending was a single small blue text box; the Amiga version added an animated finale. - Players could revive skeletons of dead adventurers found in the dungeon to swell a party of four to six. - SSI ran a 'Beholder Bonus' contest: the first 50 PC and 50 Amiga players to find all 12 hidden bonus features won prizes. - The Sega CD version's soundtrack was composed by Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima. - Much of the design team went on to make Westwood's Lands of Lore series. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_the_Beholder_(video_game)) - [CRPG Addict — final rating](https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2015/06/eye-of-beholder-final-rating.html) - [Eye of the Beholder II (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_the_Beholder_II:_The_Legend_of_Darkmoon) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.