Play Moria Online
You creep through ASCII dungeons, deciphering letters as monsters while weighing every step—one misread symbol and your dwarf’s a stain on the floor. That ‘d’ might be dinner or death, and the Balrog’s just the warm-up act.
Moria, released in 1983 as part of the MS-DOS Classic Games series, was developed by Robert Alan Koeneke. It belongs to that early era of PC gaming where imagination filled the gaps left by simple graphics, and players spent hours mapping dungeons on graph paper. The game draws from Tolkien's lore, but it stands on its own as a deep, unforgiving roguelike that demands patience and attention.
You control a single character, typically a dwarf, delving deeper into the Mines of Moria level by level. Your goal is to find and defeat the Balrog, but survival itself is a constant struggle. You explore the dungeon screen by screen, each represented by ASCII characters; a 'd' might be a dragon, an 'o' an orc, and misidentifying a symbol can mean instant death. Combat is turn based, allowing careful strategy with weapons like swords or bows, and you must manage limited resources, including food, light, and health. The pacing is slow and deliberate, with every step carrying risk, and the difficulty is notoriously high, ensuring that death is frequent and lessons are learned the hard way. It feels tense and absorbing, like a high stakes game of chess played in the dark.
Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".
Download Moria ROM
You can download this ROM to play Moria offline using an MS-DOS emulator (Top Emulators).
*This ROM is provided for backup and educational purposes only.
