In 2022, the famed Gold Box D&D games finally came to Steam (opens in new tab). They’d been on GOG for years, but the newer Steam releases featured updates including preinstalled versions of the Gold Box Companion (opens in new tab) and All-Seeing Eye (opens in new tab) apps that made the aged games more manageable on modern hardware. Now SNEG, the company behind those updates, is doing the same for eight more D&D classics from long ago, including Spelljammer, DragonStrike, and the Silver Box games.
The Silver Box games aren’t as well- known as those of the Gold Box lineage, but as Jody explained in his excellent analysis of the Steam updates, it’s all a little bit arbitrary anyway.
“Not every game made with the Gold Box engine was released in a gold box, and which games should be counted depends who you ask,” he wrote. “The bundle of Gold Box Classics (opens in new tab) SNEG released on Steam doesn’t include the 1991 online game for obvious reasons, or Spelljammer or the two Buck Rogers games made in the engine but not published with gold boxes, yet does include the Dark Sun, Ravenloft, and Eye of the Beholder series, as well as Menzoberranzan and Dungeon Hack, none of which were given gold boxes or made with the engine.”
The Silver Box games are similarly muddled: Wikipedia (opens in new tab) lists them as Heroes of the Lance, Dragons of Flame, and Shadow Sorcerer, while SNEG’s Silver Box bundle adds War of the Lance. Wiki lists that one as a “standalone game,” maybe because it’s not an RPG but a top-down strategy game. But Shadow Sorcerer is strategy-focused too, while…
