Play The Bards Tale Online

Man, The Bard's Tale on MS-DOS—this one's a proper old-school dungeon crawl with more personality than your average tavern bard after three ales. You start by cobbling together a ragtag party (because let's be real, nobody survives those dungeons solo), then it's straight into grid-based hellholes packed with monsters that hit way harder than you'd expect. The bard's the real star here—instead of just swinging a sword, he busts out tunes mid-fight to buff your team or even summon backup. Feels ridiculous until it saves your hide for the fifth time.

It's got that classic '80s RPG vibe where you'll scribble maps on graph paper, reload saves after walking into an obvious trap, and actually celebrate when you finally remember which spell counters petrification. The difficulty's brutal by modern standards, but there's something satisfying about cracking its puzzles—even if half the time you're just happy to stumble onto the right solution. That first time your bard's song summons an ally at the perfect moment? Chef's kiss.

Just don't get attached to your first few parties. The teleport traps see to that.

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