On some platforms, the player could import previously created characters from Wizardry and/or Ultima III, which was somewhat revolutionary at the time. The classes sorcerer and wizard were available to experienced conjurers and magicians.

When beginning the game, the player may create up to six player characters, chosen from among the following classes: bard, hunter, monk, paladin, rogue, warrior, magician, and conjurer.

This is done while exploring maze-like dungeons, solving occasional puzzles and riddles, and finding or buying better weapons, armor, and other equipment. The objective is to gain experience and advance characters' skills through (mostly) random combat with enemies and monsters. The Bard's Tale is a straightforward dungeon crawl. Luckily you have a Bard with you to sing your glories, if you survive. You are the leader of this ragtag group of freedom fighters. And who was left to resist? Only a handful of unproven young Warriors, junior Magic Users, a couple of Bards barely old enough to drink, and some out of work Rogues. The future of Skara Brae hung in the balance. Then, one night the town militiamen all disappeared. Mangar froze the surrounding lands with a spell of Eternal Winter, totally isolating Skara Brae from any possible help. Evil creatures oozed into Skara Brae and joined his shadow domain. Long ago, when magic still prevailed, the evil wizard Mangar the Dark threatened a small but harmonious country town called Skara Brae. In August 2018, a remastered version was released for Microsoft Windows, followed by the Xbox One release in 2019.

It was originally released for the Apple II, and was also ported to the Commodore 64, Apple IIgs, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, Macintosh, and NES platforms. The Bard's Tale was noteworthy among other role-playing computer games at the time for its unprecedented 3D graphics and partly animated character portraits. It spawned The Bard's Tale series of games and books. Tales of the Unknown: Volume I, better known by its subtitle The Bard's Tale, is a fantasy role-playing video game designed and programmed by Michael Cranford, produced by Interplay Productions in 1985, and distributed by Electronic Arts. This game can be played also in a version for DOS. The following emulators are available for this game: NeptunJS (JavaScript), Nesbox (Flash), RetroGames (JS) and vNES (Java).

Bards tale for mac emulator