Rise of the Triad: Dark War is a first-person shooter video game, developed and published by Apogee Software (now 3D Realms) in 1995.

It includes both single-player and multi-player functions, allowing individuals to connect with other gamers and tackle missions as a team.

Like most early first-person shooter games, the single-player mode's objective is to collect keys in order to proceed through the levels.

The player chooses between five characters: Taradino Cassatt, Thi Barrett, Lorelei Ni, Doug Wendt, and Ian Paul Freeley.

The amount of gibs can be controlled through the options menu, which allows the player to set the graphics to various levels of goriness, from completely bloodless to extreme.

These include a standard deathmatch mode, and the similar "Score More", which assigns different points depending on the weapon and way that a kill was done.

Options that can be set for a multiplayer game include player attributes, and whether or not health refills, missile weapons, or traps are spawned.

A team of special operatives known as the HUNT (High-risk United Nations Task-force) is sent to San Nicolas Island to investigate deadly cult activity taking place in an ancient monastery.

The operatives, now unable to return whence they came, are then left to fight their way into the monastery on the island and eventually put a stop to the cult's activities.

The presence of the Walther PP pistol, the MP 40 submachine gun, the bazooka, and the outfits worn by the enemies allude to Nazi Germany and imply the original aforementioned intent for the development of RotT.

[3] In order to keep as many of the numerous game assets the team had already created from going to waste, Tom Hall came up with a new storyline which still incorporated the Nazi themes seen in the Wolfenstein series, however they would ultimately depart from plotlines involving Nazis, with the final narrative concerning a cult apparently inspired by the Californian folk legend of the Dark Watchers or 'los vigilantes oscuros'.

According to the Apogee website, the original storyline was the following: After the fall of Hitler, the true powers behind him have drawn into seclusion, planning their next strategy for world domination.

The level design uses 90-degree walls and unvarying floor and ceiling heights in individual maps, limitations that are vestiges of the Wolfenstein 3D engine.

However, the Rise of the Triad engine also includes features not possible with the original Wolfenstein 3D engine, such as elevation, panoramic skies, simulated dynamic lighting, fog, bullet holes, breakable glass walls, and level-over-level environments (made possible by "gravitational anomaly disks", suspended objects that collectively form stairs, floors, etc.).

[citation needed] The level layouts were created with Tile Editor version 5 (TED5), which was also released with Extreme Rise of the Triad for users to customize their own maps.

Other members of DIP included Mark Dochtermann, Jim Dosé, Steve Hornback, Chuck Jones, Nolan Martin, Tim Neveu, William Scarboro, Joseph Selinske, Susan Singer, and Marianna Vayntrub.

A second game that was planned, Prey, never took off, but its title and parts of the original design were eventually recycled by Human Head Studios.

[6] Several planned elements were cut from the game, including female versions of certain enemies, like Low Guards, Strike Force soldiers, and the Overpatrol.

This had the side effect of making memory requirements much higher than normal for the time, so in order to conserve performance, the alternate versions of the enemies were removed.

The shareware episode, which contains ten original levels, is titled Rise of the Triad: The HUNT Begins.

An official retail add-on level pack was released by Apogee for ROTT entitled Extreme Rise of the Triad, also in 1995.

Fans of the game ported it to AmigaOS, Linux, Mac OS, Xbox, Dreamcast, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS (homebrew) and 32-bit versions of Microsoft Windows.

[12][13] At Realms Deep 2022, this was re-announced as Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition, developed by Nightdive Studios and co-published by Apogee Entertainment and New Blood Interactive.

[24] A reviewer for Next Generation assessed that Rise of the Triad is an entertaining but ultimately undistinguished Doom replica which fails to rank with the best of the genre.

Remarking that the game "has its own style but never strays far enough from the Doom herd to fully break free", he gave it three out of five stars.