Ragnarok

Ragnarok is a video game in the role-playing (rpg) genre developed by Norsehelm Production and published by Optyk originally released in 1992. It is currently playable on DOS.

Ragnarok (or Valhalla as some know it) is a Rogue-like game with an early Ultima logic (for the uninitiated, Rogue is an ASCII-based open-ended dungeon crawl that was very popular from the early 1980s).

You are a simple mortal, whose mission is to help the ancient Norse gods in their battle against the evil gods (Ragnarok in Norse mythology is the final battle that would decide the fate of the worlds). You start in a Viking village, and you can choose to be a Viking warrior, a blacksmith, a woodcutter, a rogue, a sage or a conjurer. The strong point of the game is its virtually unlimited replayability. All the items you can collect, mix and use are almost unlimited.

But the designer hasn't stopped there. The best feature of Ragnarok is that every time you start a new game, the map is different (Blizzard Entertainment's new Diablo game is also built this way). The game mechanics are simple, and the graphics are very primitive, but there are so many different ways to play that you will never get tired of it. You can have several powers and a wide variety of equipment.

Overall, Ragnarok is truly one of the best, yet relatively unknown, RPGs ever made. Best of all, the developers have recently released the latest version as freeware . . unfortunately, the freeware version lacks sound effects that make the game much more atmospheric.

It is possible that we have multiple downloads available when different versions exist.