Ecstatica 1994

Is it still worth playing?

A 1994 survival horror adventure for MS-DOS, set in 928 AD in the northern European town of Tirich, where a traveler finds the streets overrun by demons. You play that traveler as a man or a woman, and the goal is to lift the curse on the town by freeing the young sorceress Ecstatica from her possession. Nothing on the screen gets in the way: there is no health bar, no map and no quest log, and the camera cuts to a new fixed angle as you move. Goblins, a minotaur and a werewolf come after you, and you fight back with moves much like a fighting game's, but puzzles rather than combat open the way forward. Every character is built from ellipsoids instead of polygons, which gives people and monsters a rounded look, and the horror comes with crude, absurd humor. Reading each scene for yourself, with nothing to lean on, still makes this cursed and oddly funny town worth exploring now.