Long defunct game developer Troika is best known today for the dark roleplaying masterpiece/dropped bag of spanners Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. But the year before Bloodlines simultaneously spelled doom and immortality for the studio, Troika released The Temple of Elemental Evil, a similarly ambitious and similarly buggy adaptation of the Dungeon & Dragons scenario written by D&D's cocreators Gary Gygax and Frank Mentzer.
The Temple of Elemental Evil is fondly remembered by D&D fans for its meticulous adaptation of the scenario into the then newly released 3.5 edition. "It may not be the best D&D game, but it is the most D&D game," PC Gamer's Jody Macgregor wrote back in 2017. "Being alone at a computer isn't the same as sitting round a table shouting every time someone rolls a 20 or putting on a silly voice and making everyone laugh, but The Temple of Elemental Evil gets surprisingly close to recreating that atmosphere."
