King of Dragon Pass is that rare pleasure, a game that feels fresh and almost totally unique 25 years later. From a high level, it sounds like a strategy game crossed with an RPG: using a simple menu-based interface, you must lead your clan to prosperity over the course of decades, managing your people’s wealth, happiness, and relationships with your gods and other clans. Several times a year, you’re faced with a narrative event that requires you to make a decision as clan leader. Along the way, you’re helped by a group of clan nobles who offer advice and guidance.

But where most other games treat culture as something intrinsically narrative, in KoDP, culture is gameplay. Set in the rich fantasy world of Glorantha, every single one of the game’s systems is governed by the laws, customs, traditions, history and religion of your people, the Orlanthi. It’s a complex harmony of gameplay and worldbuilding where learning the game means learning about Orlanthi culture and fully inhabiting your role as a clan chieftain. In so doing it carves out its own genre, cultural roleplaying. It’s practically a crime that this game was such a commercial failure on release and has exerted such little influence on video games as a whole.