Understanding the importance of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is critical to seeing where RPGs went in terms of PC gaming, console gaming and fantasy gaming in general. Originally crafted in 1981, this classic title saw the mainstream birth of the first person dungeon crawler and the advent of Dungeons and Dragons titles ported to something other than pen and paper. Focused on text menus, wireframe dungeons and crude but descriptive monsters, this sparked a series that ran for over a decade and sits in the hearts and minds of PC gamers everywhere. RIfe with merciless encounters, impossibly deep levels and plenty of smashed keyboards, it’s a boon and a blessing for modern players that Digital Eclipse has decided to remaster Proving Grounds for a new generation.

As this game predates a lot of innovation in terms of storytelling through gameplay, you aren’t really seeing any deep lore unfold here in Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. You are a party of classic fantasy heroes, from different fantasy races, who want to venture into a cursed temple beneath Trebor’s castle. This is a D&D module boiled down to its very essence and turned loose in a digital realm, with the entirety of reality based on this “simple” quest. If you want to take the time to craft the backstory for each character or really delve into the how and the why, be my guest: many roleplayers would welcome the opportunity. If you need motivation the likes of which future games provide (like the fabulous nonsense that is Crusaders of the Dark Savant), then you’re too early: come back in four games or so.

If this were a straight port of the original game, Digital Eclipse would be doing players dirty in terms of presentation and ease of use. The first Wizardry title was originally made for the Apple II E and the Commodore 64, so “rough graphics” is putting it mildly. Not only was the initial incarnation simplistic in presentation and sound, the act of actually playing is wildly infuriating nowadays. You have to figure out your location and direction without any on screen map, expecting players to have pencil and paper handy to graph out where they’re walking in real time. Enemies, traps, treasure chests and the dungeon itself is chock full of saving-throw based encounters, sometimes resulting in fighting an enemy you cannot identify. There’s nothing like pen and paper rules applied to a digital realm where you know SOMETHING is beating your ass, but you can’t figure out what it is.

Additionally, the almost militant focus on keeping the core rulebook alive makes for some interesting situations that have become less commonplace in modern RPGs. You absolutely cannot have party members with opposing alignments: stripped of the minutiae that comes current systems, there’s no “true neutral” or anything, just good, neutral and evil, and good and evil won’t hang out. Being poisoned with no antidotes means a fast track to death unless you can exit the dungeon. Your bag is not a Bag of Holding, you must realistically limit your pack. And the importance of having a balanced party cannot be overstated: no Final Fantasy rules about a party full of fighters and you can just plow forward. If you don’t have a thief, a mage and some kind of healer, you’ll be a pile of bones somewhere on the fifth floor.

Proving Grounds is a give and take as a result of the straightforward gameplay and expectations. On the one hand, failure to latch onto this spartan fantasy setting can cause a player to bounce off hard within minutes. It’s a real “half the game is in your mind” situation, and it’s perfectly justifiable to not want to concoct your own reasons for dungeon diving in a place you’ve never been, with characters you’ve got no backstory with, for purposes that boil down to “treasure good.” It’s one of the reasons that tabletop sessions require both a good dungeon master as well as solid players for any form of longevity. You got some fool with the mental depths of a rain puddle, your whole party turns into murder hobos despite the best laid plans and now no one wants to go to Greg’s house on Sunday night.

In that same vein, though, this is also an incredible longform game to play bit by bit in your freetime. The traps and dungeon layouts are the same, but the enemy encounters are randomized and it’s next to impossible to simply buffalo forward and achieve victory. You need to spend some time in the dungeons, gradually level up, retreat to the surface, identify and sell equipment, restock and then distribute attribute points. The power of having something like a Dwarven Samurai is incredible, but you need to grind to get your fighter to a good position before re-classing them, and you’ll lose some stats in the process, but it’s so worth it as long as you take the time. There’s no time limit and no official game over, so patience is rewarded.

Speaking of no game over, first time players for this first Wizardry will also want to take the time to parallel play as two parties. While this seems counter intuitive, having a set of six capable characters to act as a backup is critical to not hurling your Switch into the ocean when things go wrong. A party wipe means your beloved Elven bishop is somewhere on the eighth floor, holding all the loot and equipment you’ve been investing for hours now, and the only way to get the player and the enchanted stave back is to send a rescue party. Fail at rescuing and it’s lost forever, so why gamble with a hastily assembled crew you made on the fly? Just have the B team at the ready to extract and you’re good to go.

Players should also note that, despite the expansive dungeon floors and daunting prospect, this game is surprisingly smaller than it appears if you adhere to tried-and-true grinding rules. If you’re willing to take the time to keep slaying bubble slimes and skeletons over and over on the earliest floors, you can theoretically jump forward from the first straight to the fourth with few difficulties. That’s the only disappointing aspect: as an older game, there’s plenty of filler to basically keep this from being The Wizard’s Castle, and it can make things feel repetitive without any real reward. Then again, players might really love the power fantasy of going level by level and murdering everything, because we all have our own stress releases.

Naturally, the folks at Digital Eclipse couldn’t just straight port a game from an era where not all computers came with sound cards, and so the overhaul to Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is a sight to behold. The biggest visual impact comes from the attention to detail that went into bringing these designs to life in a more robust form and color. The dungeons now glow with dank stones, imposing corpses, guttering torches and any number of booby traps that have actual representation other than text on the screen. Enemies are all clearly defined, from the lowly kobold to the massive orcs and the terrifying liches and worse that inhabit the grim darkness beneath Trebor’s castle. Items, equipment and everything else has beautifully done fantasy thumbnails and portraits, so there’s no chance of mistaking a flail for a sword or vice versa.

The visuals cannot be understated, and the decision to include a mini window of how the game originally looked at all times is a master stroke in preservation. While many modern remasters give you a chance to toggle between old and new looks, Wizardry opts to constantly have a glimpse into the past in real time, so you can compare what was with what is. You can also use the minus button to allow the legacy look to take over more of the screen for better appreciation, plus the option to turn it off completely if you don’t care about history. It’s both intriguing to see and also makes you realize how primitive the game was, given that it can run simultaneously without impacting the main game visuals/actions whatsoever.

If it was just a matter of better looking graphics and a beefed up score, that would be enough, but Proving Grounds has a slew of QOL options that players can activate at any time. The notes about this menu are long enough to have an article by themselves, but the long and short is that it makes the game fun and more adjacent to modern fantasy RPG titles. You can distribute attribute points as you see fit, not have your dead party get looted by dungeon monsters, get pre-made characters from the Tavern instead of making them from scratch (and have them be a better level as a result) and have an ambient map for general orientation. Hell, one of the options is to now have thieves be able to hide and ambush, which was a bold innovation later in games (apparently).

In my opinion, these options turn this from a cultural curiosity into a full fledged enjoyable title. Without being able to have auto attack redirection, you end up swinging at dead air once a foe is slain, which is the most frustrating thing in the world for these sorts of games. Letting resurrection be free instead of costing an arm and a leg actually makes it worth continuing forward once you fatally misstep. And conversational hints, while adding a bit of fun flavor overall, actually gives players a good sense of what to do and where to go in a game that, otherwise, is freeform without actual form. These are all minor tweaks that can be turned on and off, but they add up to crafting a new take on an old title and giving it life and enjoyment that otherwise may have turned off newcomers.

While there are certainly better, more robust and more inventive dungeon crawlers, Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is a classic that deserves recognition and, in this new form, can be appreciated both on modern systems and in modern terms. If you’ve any love for the spice of yesteryear and the rawness of digital fantasy, then this early incarnation of Wizardry merits your attention and investment. Now to see if The Knight of Diamonds will be in our future, or if this jaunt back in Wizardry’s history is a one and done journey.

Graphics: 7.0 Upgrade aspects aside, the choice of classic fantasy design from all angles – the bestiary, the cavernous dungeons, the grizzled heroes and heroines – solidly captures the atmosphere of Wizardry in a modern template without going overboard.	Gameplay: 8.5 The classic interpretation of the crawl is well and good, with plenty of important QOL options to make the journey significantly easier and more bearable. Masochists who want to keep it pure may, but the option to not have everything feel chaotically unfair is quite nice.
Sound: 8.0 Well scored drums, strings and flutes put you in the darkest part of the Reniassance Faire, with the occasional grunts, squelches and screams to punctuate the mayhem that unfolds as you dive deeper and deeper beneath Trebor’s castle.	Fun Factor: 7.5 Repetitive and demanding, Wizardry is a type of RPG that appeals to a very specific playerbase, but it delivers in spades for those who seek this kind of gratifaction. It’s slick, it runs great and it lets you see what was, what is and, hopefully, what will be in the future.
Final Verdict: 7.5

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is available now on PC, Playstation 4/5, XBox Series One X/S and Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord was provided by the publisher.