Play Eternam Online

Eternam came out in 1992 from Infogrames, one of those MS-DOS games that felt ambitious for its time. It didn't have the polish of some contemporaries, but it tried something different, blending genres in a way that was rare back then. You got a big box with a feelies sheet, and the manual had that particular early-90s charm, full of backstory and slightly awkward translation.

You control a space adventurer, exploring alien islands from a first-person perspective, shooting dive-bombing reptiles with a laser pistol. The main goal is to find and reassemble pieces of a powerful artifact. The gameplay shifts unexpectedly between action sequences and a slower, parser-driven adventure mode where you type commands to interact with objects and characters. Glowing lines highlight things you can use, which helps a lot with the sometimes confusing navigation. The pacing is uneven, with moments of frantic combat followed by stretches of careful exploration and puzzle-solving. It feels like two different games stitched together, and playing it is a strange, disjointed, but oddly compelling experience.

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