Barbarians Now Available for MS-DOS
Saturday, 18th October 2025
Barbarians, a simple strategy game originally released on Psion handheld computers before being ported to the ZX Spectrum, has now been ported to another platform: MS-DOS.
In Barbarians, you play the part of the ruler of an ancient land. Your domain is being invaded by barbarians, and your task is to raise armies and drive them out of the country. The empire has twelve cities, which are ready to provide material resources and troops to help repel the barbarian hordes, and there are merchants with whom you can trade goods and gold to maintain your economy.
The game was originally designed in 2010 for the Psion Organiser II, an 8-bit handheld computer with between 8 and 64 kilobytes of RAM, and a small text display with redefinable characters. In the same year the game was ported to the Psion Series 3, Series 5, and a number of compatible devices. In 2012 the game was ported to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Its simplicity allowed it to run effectively on the 16k model.
Over a decade later, the game has been ported to MS-DOS for the DOSember Game Jam. As with the other games on this site, Barbarians runs on a PC with an 8088 CPU and CGA graphics, and uses the internal PC speaker for music and sound effects. The game also runs fine in DOSBox.
You can download the game and its manual using the links below, or from the Barbarians page on this site.
Edit: The wrong manual was originally uploaded. This has now been corrected. If you previously tried to download the Barbarians manual, and got The Chambers Beneath manual instead, try again and the correct manual should now download.
Barbarians for DOS
Download: barbcga.zip
Size 76kb, downloads 36.
This download requires DOSBox to run. Make a folder for the game wherever you put your other DOS games. Extract the contents of the ZIP into it, and have fun! A read of the manual or the quick start guide is essential if you don't want to die quickly. (read more...)
Barbarians Manual
Download: barbcga-manual.pdf
Size 843kb, downloads 27.
This is the full manual for Barbarians. It takes you through each of the activities from starting the game, to recruiting armies, moving them into the field, trading for resources, and destroying the enemy. (read more...)
Comments
Hi Damian,
I remember your old page on the different Psion versions of Barbarians and i still have a deep affection for the Psion 3C and a Psion 5MX.
There is a slight mixup for the Barbarians Manual: the download links to http://dos.cyningstan.org.uk/data-download/378/barbarians-manual
but the description and the actual pdf is clearly the manual for Chambers Beneath.
besides the psion i was also a big Speccy afficionado , so made me very happy with the C version of Ossuary , i couldnt made heads or tails from the original maze generation algorithm in the original z80 assembly . Will have a look at the LevelMap library for future retro game development.
keep up the good work!
Kyle Cactushead - 15:10, 05/11/2025
Thanks Kyle for the heads-up about the manual. I've uploaded the correct version now. and I'll amend the blog post and update social media when I get to the computer.
Sooner or later I'll get a proper home set up for my Psion games again. That Barbarians page is intact, along with a handful of my other Psion games. It's on my to-do list to get those, and pages that I never got around to for earlier games, on to a new web site.
The Ossuary source code for the DOS version is published, and its C code might be more readable than the Z80 version. The algorithm is slightly simpler than LevelMap, since the map proportions and room sizes are preset. I ought to add to my to-do list a blog series about how these algorithms work.
Cyningstan - 06:59, 06/11/2025