What really stands out in Moraff's games is the four-way first-person view: you constantly see what's North, South, East and West of you. There's no “facing” – you can attack in any direction, and pressing the left arrow key moves you left, instead of turning.

Gameplay is a blend of roguelikes and Wizardry. You create a character, choosing from eight races and seven classes, then delve into an enormous, randomly generated dungeon. You battle, gather XP and return to town to heal, level up and buy better equipment.

There's little variety in items or monsters, but it still makes for a surprisingly addictive loop, as you try to go as deep as possible, balancing risk and reward. There's no real story or goal either, but there are floors where you can hunt a monster that holds a treasure, following simple hints like “Go East” or “Go North”.

These floors are the game at its best. The sheer size of each floor and the countless hidden pits that drop you a few floors make navigation very tricky. You'll have to think three-dimensionally, using the floors above and below to move towards your goal. The shareware version of Moraff's World offers four of these hunts, on the 4th, 8th, 12th and 16th floors.

The registered version, however, has 200 floors! Not only does this become insanely repetitive, but it breaks parts of the game. Character progression stagnates and Fighters becomes useless, as spells are mandatory to quickly ascend and descent floors, teleport, heal, enchant and protect yourself from level-draining monsters.

In an age when computers were still novel and retail RPGs like Ultima were expensive, Moraff's games were accessible and seemingly endless. Perhaps the best way to understand them (and many 90s sharewares) is to compare them with mobile or browser-based games – some discard them as not “real” games, yet they are widely played, often more than acclaimed classics.