Tomb Raider is a 1996 action-adventure game developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive as the debut entry in the Tomb Raider media franchise. It was first released on the Sega Saturn, followed shortly by versions for MS-DOS and the PlayStation. Later releases came for Mac OS (1999), Pocket PC (2002), N-Gage (2003), iOS (2013) and Android (2015). The game follows archaeologist-adventurer Lara Croft, who is hired by businesswoman Jacqueline Natla to find an artefact called the Scion of Atlantis. Gameplay features Lara navigating levels split into multiple areas and room complexes while fighting enemies and solving puzzles to progress.
The initial concept was created by Toby Gard, who is credited as Lara's creator and worked as lead artist on the project. Production began in 1994 and took 18 months, with a budget of £440,000. The character of Lara was based on several influences, including Tank Girl, Indiana Jones, and Hard Boiled. The 3D grid-based level design, innovative for its time, was inspired by the structure of Egyptian tombs. The music was composed by Nathan McCree, who took inspiration from English classical music. Originally announced in 1995, the title went on to receive extensive press attention and heavy promotion from Eidos Interactive. An expansion pack subtitled Unfinished Business was released in 1998, containing new standalone levels.
Tomb Raider was praised for its innovative 3D graphics, controls, and gameplay. The game went on to win several industry awards and is considered to be one of the greatest video games ever made. It is also one of the best-selling games for the PlayStation, with seven million units sold worldwide, and it remained the best-selling title in the Tomb Raider franchise until the 2013 reboot. Lara Croft herself became a cultural icon, rising to prominence as one of gaming's most recognisable characters. Following the game's success, numerous sequels were released, beginning with Tomb Raider II in 1997. Two remakes have been developed; Tomb Raider: Anniversary (2007), and the upcoming Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis (2027). A remastered version of Tomb Raider, alongside Unfinished Business, was released as part of Tomb Raider I–III Remastered in 2024.
Gameplay
Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game in which the player assumes the role of archaeologist-adventurer Lara Croft, who navigates through a series of ancient ruins and tombs in search of an ancient artefact. The game is split into four zones: Peru, Greece, Egypt and the lost island of Atlantis. A training level set in Lara's home of Croft Manor can be accessed from the start menu. The game is presented in third-person perspective. Lara is always visible, and the camera follows the action by focusing on Lara's shoulders by default, but the player can take manual control of the camera to get a better look at an area. The game automatically switches to a different camera view at key points, either to give the player a wider look at a new area or to add a cinematic effect. In the Sega Saturn and PlayStation versions, players save their progress in a level using Save Crystals, while in the PC versions the player can save at any point. If Lara dies, the player must restart from a previous save.
The object of Tomb Raider is to guide Lara through a series of tombs and other locations in search of treasures and artefacts. On the way, she must kill dangerous animals and creatures while collecting objects and solving puzzles. The emphasis lies on exploring, solving puzzles, and navigating Lara's surroundings to complete each level. Movement in the game is varied and allows for complex interactions with the environment. In addition to standard movement using tank controls, Lara can walk, jump over gaps, shimmy along ledges, and swim through bodies of water. Certain button combinations allow Lara to either perform a handstand from a hanging position or execute a swandive.
Lara has two basic stances: one with weapons drawn and one with her hands-free. When her weapons are drawn, she automatically locks on to any nearby targets. Locking onto nearby targets prevents her from performing other actions which require her hands, such as grabbing onto ledges to prevent falling. By default, she carries two pistols with infinite ammo. Additional weapons include a shotgun, dual magnums, and dual Uzis. A general action button is used to perform a wide range of movements, such as picking up items, pulling switches, firing guns, pushing or pulling blocks, and grabbing onto ledges. Items to pick up include ammo, small and large medi-packs, keys, and artefacts required to complete a stage. Any item that is collected is held onto in Lara's inventory until it is used. Throughout each stage, one or more secrets may be located. Discovering these secrets is optional, and when the player finds one a tune plays. The locations of these secrets vary in difficulty to reach. The player is usually rewarded with extra items.
Plot Archaeologist-adventurer Lara Croft is approached by a mercenary named Larson, who is working for businesswoman Jacqueline Natla. Natla hires Lara to acquire the Scion, a mysterious artefact buried in the tomb of Qualopec, situated near Vilcabamba within the Peruvian Andes. After recovering the Scion from Qualopec's tomb, Lara is ambushed by Larson, who reveals after his defeat that she is holding merely a piece of the artefact, and Natla has sent rival treasure hunter Pierre DuPont to retrieve the other pieces. Breaking into Natla's offices to find out Pierre's whereabouts, Lara discovers a medieval monk's diary, and learns that the Scion is a powerful artefact composed of three pieces, which were divided between the three rulers of the ancient continent of Atlantis, and one of these pieces is buried alongside former Atlantean ruler Tihocan, beneath an ancient monastery, St. Francis' Folly, in Greece.
Navigating the monastery, and following several firefights with Pierre, Lara locates the tomb of Tihocan, where she kills Pierre and recovers the second piece of the Scion he had taken. From a mural, she learns that Tihocan unsuccessfully tried to resurrect Atlantis after a catastrophe struck the original continent. After combining both pieces of the Scion, Lara is shown a vision that reveals the third and final piece of the Scion was hidden in Egypt after the third Atlantean ruler, a traitor who used the artefact to create a breed of monsters, was captured and imprisoned by Tihocan and Qualopec. Making her way through Egypt to the lost city of Khamoon, Lara kills Larson and recovers the third Scion piece.
Emerging from the caves, Lara is ambushed by Natla and her three henchmen, who take the Scion. Lara escapes and stows away aboard Natla's yacht, which takes her to an uncharted island where an Atlantean pyramid filled with monsters is located. After dispatching Natla's henchmen and making her way through the pyramid, Lara finds the Scion and sees the rest of the vision, revealing Natla to be the betrayer. Lara faces Natla, who reveals that she intends to use her army to push forward humanity's evolution, as she believes both Atlantis and current civilisation are too soft to withstand disaster. Lara decides to destroy the Scion, and Natla's attempt to stop her sends her into a crevasse. After fighting a large legless monster, Lara shoots the Scion, setting off a chain reaction that begins to destroy the pyramid. Lara kills a winged Natla and escapes the exploding island.
Development
The initial concept for Tomb Raider was created by Toby Gard, who worked for Core Design, a game development studio based in Derby, England, that had established itself developing titles for home computers and Sega consoles. It was proposed by Gard to company head Jeremy Heath-Smith during a 1994 brainstorming session for game concepts for the then-upcoming PlayStation console. The entire staff approved, and Heath-Smith gave Gard permission to start the project once he finished work on BC Racers for the Sega CD. The game concept was created before anything else, with the main hooks being its cinematic presentation and being a 3D character-driven experience.
Gard worked with Paul Douglas on fleshing out the concept and design and doing pre-production for six months, before the team expanded to six people including programmers Gavin Rummery and Jason Gosling, and level designers/artists Neal Boyd and Heather Gibson. The team wanted to mix the adventuring style of Ultima Underworld and the 3D characters shown off in Virtua Fighter. The team kept the project deliberately simple and comparatively modest in scope, with its development budget being approximately £440,000. The production atmosphere was fairly informal. Development began in 1994 and lasted eighteen months. The team endured excessive overtime and crunch during the last stages. During production, Core Design was sold to CentreGold, which in turn was purchased by Eidos Interactive in May 1996, who became publisher for the title.
When Gard first presented the idea for the game, the concept art featured a male lead who strongly resembled Indiana Jones. Heath-Smith asked for a change for legal reasons. When Gard created the initial design document, he decided to give the player a choice of genders and created a female adventurer alongside the male character. Once he realized creating and animating two playable characters would require double the design work, he decided to slim back down to one. The female character, originally named Laura Cruz, was his favorite, so he discarded the male character before development work began. After Eidos became the game's publisher, they unsuccessfully lobbied for a selectable male lead. Speaking about his approach to the concept, Gard noted that he deliberately went against publisher trends when designing both the character and the gameplay. Laura went through several changes before the developers settled on the final version, including a name change to Lara Croft after Eidos executives in the United States objected to the original name. The inspirations for the character of Lara Croft included the character Tank Girl, the Indiana Jones series' titular lead, and the John Woo film Hard Boiled. Lara's notably exaggerated physical proportions were a deliberate choice by Gard, as he wanted a caricatured personification of women who could be an action icon for the younger generation.
From the game's earliest stages, the team wanted the title to involve tombs and pyramids. In the early story draft, Lara would be confronted by a rival group called the "Chaos Raiders". During the Greece levels, Lara and Pierre were to have been less hostile rivals, helping each other with puzzles in the first level. Larson evolved from an Afrikaans character called Lars Kruger, who shared a similar role in the original plot. The script itself was written by Vicky Arnold, who joined in 1995 and would work on later Tomb Raider titles. Gard and Douglas created the basic story draft alongside the initial game design, then Arnold turned it into a script after joining the project. It was Arnold's job to write the dialogue, and create a cohesive narrative around the locations selected by the team members. While Lara's character design and Gard's initial concept were present, much of the additional detail was worked out by Arnold.