Play Crystals of Arborea Online

Game Overview

So Crystals of Arborea is this weird, ambitious MS-DOS RPG where you play as Jarel, the last prince of these elf-like people trying to save their flooded world from a chaos god named Mogroth. The setup’s pretty wild—most of the world’s drowned, and now you’re scrambling to find four elemental crystals before everything goes full apocalypse.

You start by rounding up a party (wizards, fighters, the usual suspects) and honestly, the first hour is just figuring out how to split them up. The game throws you into this mix of 3D exploration and 2D maps, and you’ll spend a lot of time sending scouts ahead because some areas are crawling with enemies. Rangers are clutch for spotting trouble early, but good luck keeping your swordsmen alive—they have to get right up in enemies’ faces to do anything.

The puzzles are… something. Half the time you’re deciphering riddles from random NPCs just to get a hint about where the next crystal might be. And the combat? It’s all about positioning—if your wizard gets cornered, they’re toast. The final fight against Mogroth is brutal, but pulling it off and slotting that last crystal into place feels like a real victory. Just don’t expect to see all 16,000 locations unless you’re a completionist with way too much time.

It’s janky, but there’s something weirdly satisfying about outmaneuvering the chaos.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".