Tom Proudfoot's first published game, Nahlakh, is a traditional top-down role-playing game that pits your party of eight adventurers against a force of evil that is threatening the land.
While the crude graphics and the really hard first fight with a tribe of kobolds may scare away a more casual player, this game is a nugget of gold for the fans of the genre. The turn-based combat engine is quite easy to learn and among the best I have seen in role-playing games. Sporting such nice features as targeting specific body parts (the groin being my favorite), fatigue and various states of injury (bleeding, poisoned, stunned, down etc.) it makes the combats a joy to go through. Skills and experience are both handled extremely well here. A character advances only in those skills that he uses and every character is able to learn any skill (except magic and prayer). There are some skills that are not usable in the game at all, though, but that is a minor fault. Magic system is pretty much copied from the Ultima games, with each of the over hundred spells consisting of three magic syllables. But unlike in Ultima, you actually can experience with the spells and deduct new variants from those you already know. The game is nicely balanced to keep you on the edge of your seat. Each time you think you have got the upper hand in combat, it's time to move on to the next dungeon where you will again be fighting for your life. But it is also really easy to get killed if you enter a place where you aren't supposed to go yet. With the staggering amount of different magic items (14,000 different weapons for example) and nice user-friendly features (automap, healing the whole party by one command and the lack of random encounters), Nahlakh is very much recommended to all who like a good RPG.
Note: Faster computers may need a slowdown program to run the game. It works well with my 233 MHz one, but crashes on a friend's 400 MHz. Tom Proudfoot has recently released the game as freeware, although you can still pay him $15 registration "fee" if you enjoy the game ;)
Review By HOTUD
English 
Comments and reviews
It can be a hard game, especially because the skill progression is so insane that once you start specializing a character in a skill it's pretty much impossible to train them up in another skill. (EG: you start training one warrior on clubs and another on swords, but if you find 2 really good swords.. well, your club guy is SOL.) The battles can be very strategic, and you'll find yourself evenly matched and sometimes just at the mercy of the RNG. It is a rewarding experience to play through, but IIRC you eventually reach the end of the shareware and need to pay to unlock later episodes to continue.
True classic for fans of difficult, old school RPGs. Runs great under DOSbox and the DFEND frontend. Go to www.proudft.com and go to the Nahlakh forum to find the Nahlkah hint book PDF download (contains a lot of necessary information as well as spoilers and such).
No comment nor review for this game at the moment.