Spire spires were an astounding architectural innovation, beginning with the early fourteenth-century spire at Freiburg Minster, in which the pierced stonework was held together by iron cramps. The openwork spire, according to Robert Bork, represents a "radical but logical extension of the Gothic tendency towards skeletal structure." The organic skeleton of Antoni Gaudi's phenomenal spires at the Sagrada Família in Barcelona represent an outgrowth of this Gothic tendency. Designed and begun by Gaudi in 1884, they were not completed until the 20th century. In England, "spire" immediately brings to mind Salisbury Cathedral. Its 403-foot (123-m) spire, built between 1320 and 1380,
The Dark Spire even equipment choices. The Spire is explored in a first-person perspective, and many classical RPG elements are included, such as random encounters and equipment. The player is tasked to find and defeat the Archmage Tyrhung at the top of the Dark Spire and to retrieve a necklace from him. "The Dark Spire" is a throwback to old first-person dungeon crawler RPGs, such as "The Bard's Tale" or "Wizardry". As a tribute, the game can be set in a mode which renders graphics and sound/music which could have been produced in a game dating to the late 1980s or early 1990s.