Dungeon Master is FTL Games' 1987 role-playing dungeon crawler for the Atari ST, a real-time first-person adventure that sends a party of resurrected champions into Lord Chaos' dungeon to recover the Firestaff.
Dungeon Master was developed and published by FTL Games in 1987, first for the Atari ST before later ports brought it to Amiga, DOS, Apple IIGS, SNES, and other systems. At a time when many computer RPGs still leaned on turn-based menus and abstract dungeon grids, it made the dungeon feel immediate, physical, and dangerous.
The player assembles a party from champions trapped in mirrors, then explores a first-person labyrinth one tile at a time. Food, water, torches, injuries, inventory weight, spell runes, and creature sounds all matter. Combat unfolds in real time, so a monster in the corridor is not waiting politely for a command; it is advancing while the player swaps weapons, casts spells, and retreats around corners.
Its interface was a major part of the breakthrough. Players could click objects directly in the view, drag items between character sheets, and learn magic through reusable rune combinations. Those ideas helped make the screen feel less like a report about an imaginary dungeon and more like a set of hands inside one.
Dungeon Master became one of the Atari ST's defining games and a template for later first-person party RPGs. Its influence runs through Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore, and the broader lineage that eventually led to modern dungeon-crawler revivals.