Thursday, February 6, 2025

Game 538: Unlimited Adventures (1993)

 
I like how the title screen exemplifies the act of creating a dungeon.
       
Unlimited Adventures
and "The Heirs to Skull Crag" module
United States
MicroMagic, Inc. (developer); Strategic Simulations, Inc. (publisher)
Released 1993 for DOS and Macintosh
Date Started: 31 January 2024
(Title note: Almost every existing reference to the kit calls it Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures and uses the acronym FRUA. However, it does not appear to me that the "Forgotten Realms" setting title, which is present in all the Gold Box games set there, is meant to be part of the kit's title. The manual refers to it solely as Unlimited Adventures every time it appears, although it does also use the FRUA acronym for the default directory.)
       
It's hard to believe that it's been over four years since I played my last Gold Box game: The Dark Queen of Krynn (1992). I've missed it. There were a few things I never liked about it, but man have I missed its combat system. In the 150 games I've played since Dark Queen, only about half a dozen have exceeded a 5 in the "magic and combat" category on the GIMLET, and most of those were roguelikes. It has been dismal. So I found myself grinning like an idiot while playing the first few battles of "The Heirs to Skull Crag," the adventure that comes packaged with Unlimited Adventures. I've said before that you can't make a truly bad fantasy game with this engine, and I stand by it.
      
Hold my beer.
      
Unlimited Adventures is one of those rare bean-counting business decisions that also happens to be great for the fans. Strategic Simulations' contract with TSR was extended into 1994 (resulting in Dark Sun, Eye of the Beholder III, and games I haven't yet covered, like Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession and Menzoberranzan), but TSR stipulated that 1992 was the last year of the Gold Box. Someone—I'll try to find out who before we wrap up this game—had the bright idea of releasing the Gold Box development tools to the fanbase. They farmed out the job to MicroMagic, the TK-based company who had written The Dark Queen of Krynn after a prior history specializing in ports for SSI, Origin, and Electronic Arts. The resulting kit allows anyone to make a Gold Box game.
   
And wow, have people done it. Commenter Abacos was kind enough to put together a master list of all adventures hosted and reviewed on just one web site, and there are over 650 of them. Abacos's datasheet is a thing of beauty; it includes the file sizes, the number of reviews, the date, the starting character levels, and other key data elements, including a brief description. It looks like the most popular adventure is "AT1: Dark Alliances" (1999) by Ben Sanderfer. The largest by file size is "The Snow-Woman's Daughter" (2023) by an author named "hans" (he has the top four largest by file size), but the largest by number of dungeons (80) is "As Seen Through the Eyes of Jade" (1997) by Harri Polsa. The most recent one came out just last month: "The Horse Plague" by Ronald M. Green. There are updates of almost all the classic Gold Box titles, including an offline version of Neverwinter Nights (1990), plus fan sequels and adaptations of Dungeons & Dragons modules. I will naturally not be able to play all or even a modest portion of them. I'm starting with the adventure that came with the kit, "The Heirs to Skull Crag," and after that I may pick a superlative, a commenter favorite, or just a random roll.
  
The kit comprises a map editor, a monster editor, and an event editor. You cannot create your own spells. There is no graphics editor; you must select everything from stock art or create your own using a couple of specific graphics programs (the manual mentions Electronic Arts' DeluxePaint and ZSoft's PC Paintbrush, but I don't know whether this list is exhaustive). I've read in a couple of places that TSR gave explicit permission for designers to use any published Dungeons & Dragons artwork as long as they owned a valid Unlimited Adventures license, but I haven't come across any paperwork to that extent. I'm inclined to think it's an urban legend, but if anyone knows an official source, please let me know.
        
The monster editor lets you rename and change the statistics and abilities of your least favorite monsters.
           
The event editor allows a variety of complex events, both combat and non-combat, including dialogue options and choices. I would be interested if any readers could point me to an adventure on that list that has a lot of role-playing choices, which we haven't seen in the commercial Gold Box games since Pool of Radiance
   
Choosing among different event types.
       
Some commenters have said that they'd like to see me make a game, and all I can say is that if I'm going to do that, it's going to be after May when I have more time. It won't be part of this initial set of reviews. However, I did fire up the kit, and it feels user friendly enough. Walking around the dungeon and putting up walls, I was reminded a bit of settlement-building in Fallout 4
      
Water pumps and auto-turrets next.
      
I jumped right into character creation with the default adventure, which is provided less for play and more as a template for editing. Character creation remains identical to what MicroMagic developed for The Dark Queen of Krynn, including its icon selector, which has you choose from 49 options instead of meticulously coloring every arm and leg yourself. I was surprised to see that the kit still applies AD&D first-edition class restrictions on races. Only humans and half-elves can be clerics, and the only classes available to dwarves, gnomes, and halflings are fighter, thief, and fighter/thief. Attribute rolls are generous: I rarely saw a single digit, and the average attribute is at least a 14. As usual, the game includes the ability to modify the character to any set of attributes you want, ostensibly so that "it matches a favorite AD&D® game character."
       
This was my first roll.
       
Based on random rolls, I created:
       
  • Hemlock, a lawful evil female elf fighter/thief
  • Ascham, a neutral good male human ranger
  • Isaac the Blind, a neutral evil male half-elf magic user
  • Thaxla, a chaotic neutral female dwarf fighter
  • Choshen, a lawful good male human cleric
  • Gary, a true neutral male half-elf fighter/magic user
     
Characters start with 50,000 experience points, enough that the single-class characters are Level 6 and the multi-class characters are Level 5 in each. The characters also start with a selection of equipment, including +1 weapons and armor appropriate to their classes. That's too bad; I rather like the process of going to the store and equipping the characters. But the game's way makes more sense for the plot.
      
Selecting the right character icon.
      
(When I was creating the characters, I didn't worry about level caps, as I assumed this would be a short game and I didn't realize that the characters were going to start at a high level. I guess Hemlock is destined to remain a Level 5 fighter forever; a few of the others will get only one or two boosts.)
   
If the game documentation came with any backstory for "The Heirs to Skull Crag," I overlooked it. However, it's relatively clear from the opening screens what's happening. The party is a group of caravan guards who have just finished escorting a client to the titular keep, which has a small town at its base. Before they've even done anything, the caravan master pays them a bunch of gold and what turns out to be a Ring of Protection +1.
       
This doesn't look much like a "Skull Crag."
     
I remember when I played Pool of Radiance, I spent an hour or so before playing imagining how my six characters met each other in the first place, making up backstories for each of them. I did that a bit here, trying to account for the varied alignments among the party members. The backstory works well with my motley party; you could imagine caravan guards coming from all walks of life, not caring much about each other's worldviews when they have a straightforward job to do. I don't know what the official AD&D line on this is, but I've decided that "evil" is just a worldview and doesn't necessarily mean that a character can't have friends, or isn't pleasant enough to be around as long as no major ethical issues present themselves. So here we have a tired group heading into the Thirsty Traveler to toast the end of a lucrative gig, with no plans to talk politics. (And for some reason they share finances and have no problem with Gary taking the Ring of Protection. We'll ignore that.)
   
Some of the sites I consulted about the game talked about how the graphics and textures had improved from the previous Gold Box releases. I don't know. I think those sites are forgetting about Dark Queen. To me, they seem about equal to the portraits, scenes, and textures in that game. In fact, most of them are re-used from previous games. There are definitely some nice images, and the textures perhaps support a wider variety of materials, doorway types, and environmental features like crackling fires in every house. The problem, of course—and this is one of the key issues with the Gold Box—is that as nice as they look, they are just textures. They don't really tell you much about the real environment. You can't interact with them. They don't even show approaching enemies. Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, and Ultima Underworld ruined this kind of abstraction. Even the NPC portraits feel more like placeholders than the actual NPCs in front of you. They often show backgrounds that don't make sense in context, for instance.
         
If we're in an armory, why do gothic spires rise behind her?
      
The town at the base of Skull Crag is small and doesn't use all of the spaces in its grid. One big change became clear as I explored the town and, later, the keep: Unlimited Adventures finally supports maps larger than 16 x 16 without playing tricks. The town and its keep are 19 x 19. At first, I thought the town map was just warping the character to unused areas and fudging the coordinates as we saw in previous Gold Box games. There are even areas that look like the "excess" squares could fit. But I confirmed its 19 x 19 configuration in the editor. The keep has the same size and actually uses almost all of it. Moreover, the instructions say that you can go up 576 tiles, and they don't have to be in a square configuration. The keep is 20 x 28, for instance.
           
The town at the base of Skull Crag. The winding passages to the north and south are also clearly supposed to be going "up" to the keep and "down" the valley below.
      
The town has an inn, a tavern, stables, a general store, an armory, a missile weapon store, and a magic shop that either is always closed or opens later on. I bought arrows in the missile weapon store and was pleased to find that they automatically stacked in my inventory—no more having to go in and "join" them. That might have already been in Dark Queen; I don't remember.
       
80 gold pieces for 20 arrows seems steep.
      
The inn has half a dozen guest rooms. The innkeeper tells you not to enter any of them. If you do, you get a shocked or angry reaction from the guest within. This was fun. Few of the Gold Box games had this level of world detail.
     
"Plus, I'm in the middle of turning into a lich."

Wow, this inn will rent rooms to anybody.
         
The tavern also has more options than in the last few Gold Box games, including the option to listen for rumors (and without having to look them up in a separate adventure journal!). I hear:

  • "The witch in the tower on the west side of town is mighty secretive about her home. I wonder what she's got hidden in there." This refers to a building that we later enter and are automatically teleported to another part of town.
      
This is what the witch is hiding.
     
  • "Bjorn's in a bad mood recently. I heard someone stole his horse. You know, he's killed people for less than that before." No idea.
  • "Tinya says her aunt Penelope just died . . . but you can never trust a word she says, anyway. Her name's not even Tinya, you know. They just call her that."
  • "Do you remember Kitama and Moraya, the two little ones visiting from Eagle Peak? On their way back home, they were captured and devoured by a roving band of ettins."
       
This is the work of Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, grandson of folk legend Pete Seeger, who was on the design team. "Penelope" is Pete Seeger's sister, "Tinya" is his daughter, and "Kitama" and "Moraya" are two of his grandchildren.
        
There are a lot of private homes with fireplaces but no people. As we wander the streets, we meet a few combats with drunk mercenaries, thieves, and the like—nothing hard, but reminding me how the system works. I am surprised that my fighter/mage can cast spells in armor; I thought the series fixed that a while ago. Nothing otherwise seems new in combat or spells, at least so far. I notice the party can't rest or "fix" (a shortcut command that heals all wounds without having to cast individual spells) except in safe spaces, but we've seen that in the games before. 
      
Happy days are here again.
         
Overall, it's disappointing that the authors didn't make a few fixes. I would have liked the ability to select characters with the number keys, for instance, and to switch between character screens or inventories without having to back entirely out and select a new character. These shortcuts are the norm in most other multi-character games such as Betrayal at Krondor. I suppose it's folly to have expected much from a project meant to simply wring a few coins out of an existing property.
    
The north gate is broken and the keep is blocked by guards, so the only way for the party to leave the city is through that little trail to the south. It presents itself as a tunnel carved through the mountain which releases the characters into the outdoors, although the "outdoors" is a straight corridor with stone walls (at least until combat begins). Walking along the corridor, the party encounters a lone rider on an injured horse being chased by a horde of monsters. An arrow sends the stallion to the ground, spilling the rider, who jumps up and prepares to defend himself. The party runs forward to defend him; we'll assume that the evil members are thinking about reward.
        
It would be nice if the engine had supported lower-case letters.
         
The battle that ensues is the fifth or sixth of the game, but it is the first authentically challenging one. The party, assisted by the rider (whose name is Sir Dutiocs) and a few road guards, faces a small army of minotaurs, ogres, and hill giants led by an ogre mage. Fortunately, large monsters fare poorly on outdoor maps, where they get hung up easily on trees and rocks and such. The party is able to keep their distance and take out most of the monsters with arrows and spells. I can't tell you how much I dig this battle. It has been literally years since I had truly enjoyable party-based combat.
       
 I really needed my "Fireball" fix.
        
As the last ogre falls, Sir Dutiocs thanks us for our intervention. He was bearing the body of the leader of the Roadwardens, Arelin Starbrow, back to the keep. She was killed by the monsters. He asks us to join him there: "We will have need of valiant fighters such as yourselves to recover the arms of the Roadwarden." He gives us a writ of passage to show to the guards.
   
As we return to town, the passage collapses behind us, so I guess there's no more leaving to the south. After resting and re-memorizing spells, we make our way to Skull Crag, a multi-leveled fortress with a training hall on the first floor, though none of us are ready to level up yet. The first floor has a Great Hall, guest rooms, a Temple of Sune, and other typical castle features, but there's nothing to do here except store excess items in a vault.
       
So this is where Sasha ended up.
          
Upstairs, we find Dutiocs meeting with an old man named Morudel of Marsember. Morudel was the "consort" of Arelin Starbrow, who must now be replaced as Roadwarden. One of their children will probably inherit the title, but first Arelin's arms—sword, shield, lance, and helm—must be recovered, as they "embody the power that sustains Skull Crag." Morudel asks me to assist the heirs in accomplishing this task. Their names are Kallithrea, Dazmilar, and Yemandra, and Dutiocs tells me where I can find them in the keep and town.
     
This guy looks a bit old to have been romping with the leader of a knightly order, but that's what happens when all your art is repurposed.
     
As I've said many times before, I always prefer the low-key, low-level, local quest to the world-saving adventures that most RPG heroes get up to. So far, "Crag" has checked that box. I'll wrap up here and see if I can win it in one or two more, then move on to some other modules.
      
Time so far: 2 hours

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Star Saga: Two - The Clathran Menace: Summary and Rating

     
Star Saga: Two - The Clathran Menace
United States
Masterplay (developer and publisher)
Released 1989 for DOS, Apple II, and Apple IIGS
Date Started: 7 December 2024
Date Ended: 25 January 2025
Total Hours: 32 (1.9 winning games)
Difficulty: Easy (2.0/5), although tough to rate with this sort of game
Final Rating: (to come later)
Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)   
    
Summary:
    
Like its predecessor (Star Saga: One - Beyond the Boundary), The Clathran Menace is a hybrid between a computer game and a board game. The computer keeps track of your inventory, health, statistics, and location, while you use a physical map to plot routes across the galaxy and physical books, with about 1,000 numbered sections, to read what happens. When you finish, you have both played a game and read a novel. You play one of six space explorers with both a personal quest and a general quest to understand and stop the slow advance of the Clathrans (a reptilian species) across the galaxy—all while the mental stresses caused by a widening "Dual Space Interphase" are causing havoc back on the Nine Worlds, including Earth.
   
The game involves a lot of reading, exploration, and trading, but not much in the way of traditional RPG mechanics. There are no probabilities associated with combat: either you have the right equipment to defeat the enemy or you don't. You get to choose where to go, but otherwise the character dialogue and choices are completely scripted—and, with a few exceptions, identical to every other player. The game is meant to be played with between 2 and 6 players who take turns of 7 "phases" each, but it can be played solo, and I did that for most of my experience. 
    
****
       
I was a bit exhausted when I finally got to the game's ending passages, although that was in part due to my decision to play it twice in a short time period, for which I can hardly blame the authors. Still, the basic format of the Star Saga games is not for me. I kept wishing the same plot were grafted onto a more traditional RPG like Starflight or Star Control, with proper combat mechanics, actual risk, and a more traditional inventory. I rather like the trade mechanics, though I'm not sure the game needed so much of it. I respect the opinions of players who enjoyed the multiplayer aspect of it, but I'm glad that I finished it by myself and saved my game-playing time with Irene for games that have a bit less reading and more action. We've been playing Descent: Legends of the Dark (2021) lately, and it has the same characteristics of being both a board game and a computer game, in both cases, I frequently find myself wishing that they had just gone all-in on one or the other.
         
To the extent that Star Saga is a "computer game," we have to confront the fact that it isn't really much of an RPG, lacking traditional character development and combat mechanics. Both the character and ship get stronger with purchases of weapons and defenses and the acquisition of special skills, but it's an odd sort of "development" given that combat is always about hitting a certain threshold. It would be as if in a traditional RPG, you always lost battles against orcs when you had a short sword, then always won the moment you acquired a long sword.
      
A random battle with a Clathran convoy. Having acquired the right items, I will never lose such a battle again.
     
Yet, to me, the most disappointing aspect of the series is not the lack of traditional RPG combat mechanics but the lack of any significant role-playing choices. The player has a lot of choices when it comes to directing the character to various places, but essentially none when it comes to deciding what the character will say or do. Moreover, even in the limited choices the player does get—what planets to visit in what order—he or she gets the same text, with the same dialogue, as every other player. That rather damages the illusion of the six characters as unique individuals with unique perspectives and motivations.
   
On the positive side, I praise the plot and the imaginative characteristics of the alien worlds. It was never boring to arrive on a new planet and start learning about its culture and history. The story is derivative in places, but the authors are aware of this and did it deliberately. I'm a tepid science fiction fan at best, so I'm sure a lot of references went completely over my head. I also liked the logistics of plotting trade routes, but again this is hardly an RPG staple.
     
I don't think the GIMLET works well with this type of game, so I'm going to skip the detailed analysis by category. Suffice to say that it naturally does best with the "Game World" (7) and overall nonlinear gameplay (5), but worst in traditional RPG mechanics like character development and combat. I had trouble applying some of the categories; are there really "NPCs" in those passages or just "Encounters"? I did my best, and it scored a 32 in total, one point higher than the first game, though I don't think that's significant. There are some variances in the categories between the two games, but they likely have more to do with my using different thought processes when applying the GIMLET categories and less to do with any real differences between the two titles.
       
It's nice to know that people were using "artificial intelligence" as spuriously in 1989 as today.
     
Vince DeNardo and Chris Lombardi reviewed the game in the September 1989 Computer Gaming World and agreed with me that it is "unfortunate" that the computer handles all combat. They note that there is more combat in Two than in One, "and the frustrations of not being able to pick and choose weapons and tactics [is therefore] magnified." They also lament the fact that if you lose a combat, you can't tell what sort of weapon, defense, or skill might help change the outcome; you just have to buy everything and hope for the best. They further note that non-combat skills are used less than in One. This is also true. I wondered at several points why I had bothered to acquire certain skills. I'm not sure "Darthan," "Flying," "Jump'r," "Sensaround," "Deresha," "Mellomia," and a variety of other skills ever played a role. I was confused until the end about the distinction between "Chameleon," "Illusion," and "Ghost" when it came to stealth.
   
The reviewers played with multiple players over several sessions, and they had some issues where some players spent multiple turns primarily trading while others spent the same turns primarily reading, creating a somewhat imbalanced and disjointed experience. However, their overall feelings were positive, and they thought it was equal to the first game. The same basic sentiments are found in the January 1990 Compute! review and the May 1990 Games Machine review. No one really liked the combat; everyone thought the text was well-written and addictive. Looking at pictures of the box and contents, I'm almost sorry that I played this all electronically. I might have enjoyed moving the game piece over the map (something for which I did not find an electronic analog) and marking up pages in the physical books. The setup is impressive just to look at, and even if I liked the game less than I did, or didn't like it at all, there's a sense in which I'd still have to admire it.
      
The writing was almost always good, but the sheer amount of text got to be a bit much.
      
The two Star Saga games were the only titles from Masterplay Publishing Corporation, the Florida-based company founded by Mike Massimilla and run by Andrew Greenberg. Production costs were expensive, and the first two games did not sell well enough to justify the third planned title. For 35 years, therefore, fans have tossed and turned at night, kept awake by their gripping questions about the Masters, why they hate and fear humanity, the Message, the Core, the fate of Vanessa Chang, and the true source of Flame Jewels.
   
For those sleepless fans, I have happy news: Mike Massimilla's daughter discovered my entry on Star Saga: One back in 2023. She alerted her father, who wrote to me and offered to share the story that would have been presented in Star Saga: Three. I present it gratefully below, only lightly edited. According to Mr. Massimilla, the game never went into production.
        
*****
    
Synopsis of Star Saga: Three - The Return of the Masters
By Mike Massimilla with contributions from Walt Freitag
    
In Star Saga: Three, the Explorers continue to encounter alien races, some still living and some only by their relics and ruins. These encounters are overall stranger than in the previous games. They are conveyed using abstract and psychedelic reality-bending styles of science fiction, as in the early George R.R. Martin short stories. The old races and ruins tell of an ancient cataclysmic war and a dominant race of psychic Masters. The war destroyed many planets and threatened all life in the galaxy. The Masters put an end to the war, using genetic technology to enslave the vicious Clathrans and pacify everyone else.     

Since then, intelligent races have not traveled far from their home worlds. There have been no recent wars, just limited trading and terraforming. This has been no accident: it was the effects of the Masters' intervention. The Masters kept tabs on any race that might be ambitious or threatening, and they took steps to limit that race. In most cases, they did this by modifying the race's genes. The Clathrans were genetically modified to be subservient police. They surveyed the galaxy, reported back to the Masters, and either weakened or exterminated any races deemed dangerous. The Space Plague that decimated the human worlds and led to the establishment of the Boundary was an example of this treatment. Many of the oddities of the races the players have met can be explained by the Masters' meddling.  The Masters were determined that Galactic War would never occur again.

The gameplay in the main portion of Star Saga: Three focuses on assembling sufficient technology to enter the Galactic Core, where the Masters live. The Core has a nearly impenetrable surface. Any matter that attempts to pass through disintegrates. The old races that live near the Core are said to have knowledge and abilities that can be combined to build a Core Ship. This has not been done in a long time.

Meanwhile, the dream about the Message becomes more insistent, and not only for the Explorers.  Humans back on the Nine Worlds are experiencing the Dream and speculating about what it might mean.  Even worse, the widening Dual Space Interphase is causing disturbing psychic episodes. People are anxious, confused, and occasionally violent. Society is at risk of falling apart. To save humanity, the Explorers must enter the Core, meet the Masters, and deliver the mysterious Message.  

Complicating the situation, the Explorers encounter a political conflict between two factions of Masters, more accurately known as Archaegenitors. There are not many Archaegenitors left, but they are powerful.  One faction sees humanity as a threat that must be destroyed at all costs. This faction, with the Clathrans doing their bidding, is symbolized by the green-scaled dragon. The other faction believes humanity is carrying the Message referred to in ancient texts, vital to the future of the galaxy. This faction is broadcasting psychic calls for humans to come to the Core. The Explorers meet various aliens aligned with each faction.  

Following various clues (a tip from a friendly alien race, an advanced tracking technology, etc.) the Explorers discover Vanessa Chang—still alive! She has been trapped in stasis on a ship she built trying to make it into the Core. The ship fortunately got caught in a time eddy, as it likely would have been pulverized. (The time eddy brings to mind the unfortunate planet stuck in a time loop; how did the Masters arrange that?) The Explorers rescue her, and she joins the expedition. More accurately, we should say that the Explorers join her. She provides important technology, history, and map coordinates.

Eventually, by getting enough help from the planets they visit, the Explorers upgrade Vanessa's Core Ship with everything they can. Small scale tests near the Core's surface look promising, but it's impossible to know for sure. In case they fail, the Explorers leave instructions behind for the next crew to attempt the mission. Taking the plunge, their ship slowly approaches the Core's surface. Space and time flow into a new dimension—a psychic one? Their minds expand, and they are through.

At this point, the game's finale begins (about a quarter of its total content). There are changes in game mechanics as the Explorers are now traveling together. Instead of separate exploration and trading, this segment poses problems requiring simultaneous actions by different crew members (whether played by one or multiple players). These are somewhat like multiplayer escape room mechanics, but as in previous Star Saga segments, they are based on narrated problems rather than abstract puzzles. There are no dead ends (getting stuck), and still no deaths.  (The printed books contained some red-herring death passages.)

Before the final chapter, the Explorers have to complete a quest that requires traveling back to the outer parts of the galaxy.  Fortunately, the Core Ship is capable of passing through Space Walls. No one is quite sure how Space Walls work. One of the old races recalls that they were created by a doomsday weapon used in the Galactic War.

Finally meeting with the seemingly all-powerful Archaegenitors, the Explorers learn that the Masters can no longer reproduce or travel outside the Core. The Masters have been able to perpetuate their race with cloning and genetic engineering, but each generation is physically weaker and less numerous. Moreover, they are extremely sensitive and poorly adapted to the widening Dual Space Interphase. [Ed. I thought the opposite was true about the Masters, but I didn't get a chance to clarify this with Massimilla. He might have meant "narrowing," or I might be confused about what "widening" means here.] They hope to eventually find a solution to further extend their lifespan, but their efforts thus far have been unsuccessful. Life for them is now difficult and painful.

The Masters ask for permission to examine one of the Explorers. An analysis of human DNA solves the mystery of the Message: it is humanity itself. A mostly forgotten farsighted faction of ancient Archeagenitors engineered humans to be their eventual successors. Humans were given enhanced intelligence, the desire to explore, hardiness to withstand danger, and an exact copy of the Archaegenitors' psychic genes. The closer the humans travel to the Core, the more powerful their psychic abilities become.

Given the revelation that humans are the Masters' descendants, the Masters unite in support. They agree to put the fate of the galaxy in human hands. They will train the Explorers how to use the genetic technology and how to command the Clathrans.  However, the Masters warn that keeping watch over the galaxy is no easy task. What, they ask, do the Explorers think is the best course of action for the future?  Will they:
      
  • Continue the Masters' legacy, using the genetic engineering throughout the galaxy to ensure peace? Or:
  • Abandon the genetic technology and let life go its own way, even if that might again someday again lead to galactic war?
     
Meanwhile, the widening Dual Space Interphase threatens everyone. Maybe a solution can be found if all the races of the galaxy work together.

The End
    
*****
   
Chet again. I like it. I think it would have wrapped up the series nicely. Again, it draws from existing tropes about "ancestor races" without precisely copying them. It leaves the players with a major role-playing choice at the end. I'm curious how that would have been handled with multiple players, as I'm curious about how the turn-based gameplay would work once the players are united with Chang. It's possible that the authors hadn't worked that out before they abandoned the project.
   
A March 1990 Computer Game World article about the pending sale of the franchise.
     
My understanding is that as Masterplay dissolved, they sold the rights to Star Saga to Cinemaware, which did nothing with them and was itself out of business a year later. While the rights were for sale, Andrew Greenberg was interviewed for a brief September 1990 Computer Gaming World piece. It's a curious interview, as in the space of just a few lines, Greenberg says that the company's decision to support the Apple II, which was incapable of advanced graphics, partly accounted for poor sales, but then he goes on to reject the idea that graphics are needed or even desirable for the game. To me, especially since they also released it for DOS, the more likely explanation is that the $80 price tag (around $200 today) was too steep for most players, and that the hybrid nature of the gameplay didn't appeal to them.
   
As we discussed in the opening entry, Mr. Greenberg died in 2024 at age 67. His negative experiences with Sir-Tech on Wizardry led him to become an intellectual property attorney. He was beginning this career in Tampa at the same time he was running Masterplay. Mike Massimilla, who did most of the programming, became a software engineer for a variety of industries. Rick Dutton and Walt Freitag wrote most of the game text; Dutton went to medical school and became an anesthesiologist; Freitag remained active in the CRPG community through online forums and has worked in a variety of industries. I thank Mr. Massimilla and Mr. Freitag for offering the conclusion to the story even as I think that modern technology might offer new life to the franchise should they wish to pursue it.
 

Saturday, February 1, 2025

The Power Stones of Ard II: The Five Towers of Trafa-Zar: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

 
We never get to see Niz's reaction.
     
The Power Stones of Ard II: The Five Towers of Trafa-Zar
United States
Three C's Projects (developer and publisher)
Released in 1990 for Tandy Color Computer 3
Date Started: 10 January 2025
Date Ended: 31 January 2025
Total Hours: 15
Difficulty: Hard (4.0/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)
Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)  
     
Summary:
    
This sequel to The Power Stones of Ard: The Quest for the Spirit Stone significantly changes the original game's interface to a first-person dungeon crawler with numerous adventure game puzzles. Trafa-Zar takes place entirely within the titular five towers, all five levels, all 5 x 5 tiles, as the PC, an apprentice wizard, seeks to destroy the evil wizard and recover the Mind Stone.
   
The spell system, consisting of 10 battle spells and 10 exploration and defensive spells, works well, but both combat and puzzles alternate between too easy and too hard. For every puzzle that requires the clever use of an object or the environment, there's a blatantly absurd or unfair puzzle that forces the player to guess the arbitrary way the author used his own interface. In the end, it does not have enough character development and tactical combat to be a good RPG, and the puzzles are too nutty to make a good adventure game.
      
****
   
The last two towers offered the same experience as the first three: lots of combat, lots of puzzles, some fair, some not. I needed LanHawk's help a lot. We're all lucky he struggled through the game before I got to it.
   
An example of an unfair puzzle was the one that greeted me right away on Tower 4, Level 1. The completely open level had only two items of note: a pile of hay in one square and a glass case in another. The glass case was filled with smoke, but peering through it revealed a Fire Sword. The unintuitive solution was to T)ouch the GLASS. But you have to type GLASS, not CASE or SWORD or anything else. You also have to T)ouch it, and with an empty hand, not P)ut your hand on it the way you do when touching your nose in that previous puzzle. Nobody likes adventure game puzzles that have silly solutions, and nobody likes adventure game puzzles that force the player to fight with the commands. This one managed to include both of these elements in several of its puzzles.
   
The Fire Sword ends up being the best weapon in the game, but more importantly, it ignites the pile of hay in the other room (it must be magic hay, as a "Fireball" spell doesn't ignite it), which in turn somehow carries you up to the next level on the smoke. As smoke tends to do.
    
Getting from Level 2 to Level 3 was as simple as finding a pole and hook, attaching them with the P)ut command, using them to hook the edge of a hole in the ceiling, and C)limbing up.
   
Level 3 was back to the absurd. One room has a huge iron vault that won't open to anything. The door has a small hole in it (which you only see if you examine the IRON VAULT, not just the VAULT). Elsewhere on the level, you find a fuse (the kind that lights a stick of dynamite, not the kind that's in a box in your basement). You have to stick the fuse in the hole on the vault door and light it with the Fire Sword. The door blows off the vault and shoots through the ceiling, leaving a hole. You can then climb the vault to get to the next level. Why does this work? Were there explosives in the vault? Does the author think that a fuse by itself can cause an explosion? Who knows.
      
This is the only screenshot I got during this section of the game because I forgot the keyboard shortcut.
      
Towers 4 and 5 stopped introducing new enemies every level. In Tower 4, the entire bestiary consisted of dust devils, glass golems, red devils, rog demons, and blood beasts. Of the four, the blood beasts were the most difficult, with 5 attacks per round each. Fortunately, I had enough spell points by now to keep "Ironskin" going almost constantly, and this spell essentially makes you immune to physical attacks. I'm not sure I saw an enemy get through it even once. Magical attacks are another matter, but rarer; I don't think any of the Tower 4 enemies had spells. Thus, the battles in the tower were trivial as long as I was willing to grab hold of that pebble and rest frequently.
   
Level 4 offered the one exception. There were no regular enemies on the level, just a demon lord. He killed me three times before I discovered that he was vulnerable to the "Hold" spell. One casting took care of him.
    
Isn't this more of a "devil"?
      
Beyond the demon lord was a chamber with a demoness, who did not attack. I discovered I could kill her, but then I was stuck. The solution was to give her the diamond discovered on a much, much earlier level. (If you give her anything else, she gets angry.) She took it gratefully and stuffed me into her boudoir, which had no obvious exit. First, you can shatter the mirror on her vanity to get a glass shard. To get out, you have to pile pillows and climb them through a hole on the ceiling—a hole that the game never tells you is there. Plus, it only says there's one pillow. I can't remember how I piled them. I might have picked one up and dropped it or P)ut it somewhere. Whatever the correct command was, it took me a while.
 
She turned out to be too materialistic.
      
The final level of Tower 4 evoked a pentagram, as it had five single-square rooms arranged as if they were the points of a pentagram. Each had a wall that teleported me clockwise around the level, which was completely unnecessary. I have no idea what that was for. One of the rooms had a rag doll in it. It was missing its left eye.
   
The central square on the level had a pentagram with a little girl kneeling in the center. Giving her the rag doll, or anything else, caused her to turn into a star demon and tear me apart. The solution was to P)ut the glass shard on the doll; "it replaces the missing eye," the game said. How does a shard of glass replace a doll's eye? Whatever. If you give the doll to the girl after that, she looks at it, sees her own reflection, and disappears. Saying FIRE in the pentagram sends you to Tower 5.
        
If you were exploring a deserted tower in real life, it's hard to imagine encountering anything scarier than a little girl sitting in a pentagram. Maybe a clown.
     
The fifth tower was unlike the others in that there was really only one puzzle. Each level had a series of colored circles on the walls, and I had to associate the colors with letters based on clues found throughout the other towers. LanHawk had to help me with this one. A few were easy, such as a brown "E" in Tower 1 and a white "Y" in Tower 2. But the game kept giving me colors that it had not associated with any letters--unless you sound some of the other clues aloud. Tower 1 has a statue of a blue jay ("J"); Tower 2 has a picture of a woman pouring golden tea ("T"); Tower 3 has a painting of a farmer picking green peas ("P"). I'm not sure I would have figured that out, but it's a fair puzzle, and closer to the ones that I enjoyed in the first Power Stones game.
   
The circles on Level 1 of Tower 5 were blue, orange, and white, which spelled "JOY." Each level has a room where you're told to "speak the word of passage," so you just string the colors together and find the right words, which end up being JOY, FAITH, HOPE, and LOVE.
   
     
Beyond that, the only puzzle is an optional one on the first level. You find a room with a stone altar and a crystal chest. The chest opens with a crystal key found so long ago I didn't even note it. Inside is an ephod, which I had to look up (it's a ceremonial garment worn by ancient Jewish priests). A message on an earlier level had said: "Find his place, gird thyself in purity, and call upon the Father." I was pretty sure I had found the place, but I had no idea how to gird myself in the ephod as there's no W)ear command. I tried P)utting it on my BODY, CHEST, BACK, SHOULDERS, ARMS, TORSO, and so forth to no avail. I don't know how it came to me, but just as I was about to give up, I tried simply putting it ON, and it worked. This makes no sense because when you use P)ut, the game asks, "Where will you put the ephod?" ON is not a place.
   
I didn't know how to "call upon the Father," but I tried just K)neeling, and it worked. A column of light descended upon me, all my maximum attributes increased by about 5 points, and I was knocked out. The game then asked if I wanted to continue playing. This is what it asks when you die, so I thought the experience had somehow killed me. I was in the middle of cursing Bill Cleveland's name to hell and back when I hit "Y" and the game just continued. I don't know what that was about.
      
Consciousness ran from the room, screaming, "I am FREE!"
        
The enhanced attributes helped, but I think I could have won without them. As I continued to explore the tower and work my way up, I met black knights, iron golems, eyes of Argon, executioners, and apprentices. Apprentices have magic attacks, so I had to keep "Magic Shield" going in addition to "Ironskin." The enemies otherwise weren't very hard. I hit Level 7, the final character level, at some point, earning enough spell points for "Brimstone," which I never successfully cast. I never did earn enough for "Mind Melt." I suppose you need to roll very high intelligence and perhaps play as an elf.
    
The final level had only three battles: a group of vampire lords, a dragon, and Trafa-Zar himself. Each required a unique strategy. I found that the vampire lords were vulnerable only to "Stone," but I could only cast one of those between rests. So I had to encounter them, cast it, flee, get through a door, cast "Lock" to seal it from the other side, rest to restore spell points, cast "Knock" to unlock the door, engage the rest of the party, and repeat.
   
The dragon was invulnerable to anything except the basic "Arcane Arrows" spell. 
    
Finally, Trafa-Zar attacked me in his throne room. His battle is scripted to always start with "Mind Melt," then move to "Fireball," "Lightning," and "Arcane Arrows" before settling on some kind of "Bolt" spell for the remainder of the battle. In the meantime, I was trying all of my spells to no avail. He was immune.
      
His portrait adds another angle to the Santa Claus puzzle in Tower 3.
     
You're supposed to defeat Trafa-Zar using a special staff, disguised on a much earlier level as a black snake. The backstory warns you about this. When you meet the snake, you're supposed to say "ARD" to transform it. During the battle with Trafa-Zar, it blows up in his face. 
   
Lacking the staff, I just pumped myself with a few castings of "Augment," then whacked him half a dozen times with my Fire Sword.
    
Striking the final blow.
    
When Trafa-Zar dies, he drops a key. It unlocks a chamber that holds the Mind Stone. Picking it up has you immediately transported back to Niz's workshop, which ends the game. There isn't much of a denouement, either, just a single victory screen.
     
"Wow, that's a lot of magical energy," Chester said as clumps of his hair began to fall out.
    
In a GIMLET, I give the game:
   
  • 4 points for the game world. It's not bad. I like how the "accident" in the backstory leads to the main quest, and how the game's connection to its predecessor is a bit of a mystery. But the tower doesn't feel anything like a real place. Why would Trafa-Zar want to devote 90% of his floor space to weird puzzles?
  • 3 points for character creation and development. There isn't much to creation—name, sex, race—and development is relatively slow, with the difficulty of monsters matching your growth in lockstep. It is nice to unlock new spells, however.
  • 0 points for no NPC interaction. The few people you meet in the tower are "encounters," not NPCs.
  • 2 points for encounters and foes. There's nothing really special about the monsters. They're high fantasy tropes, mostly distinguished only by how hard they hit and whether they cast spells. If the game consisted only of its fairer puzzles, it would earn a 4 or a 5 here, but I have to take as many points away for the more ridiculous puzzles.
  • 3 points for magic and combat. Combat is just about holding your best weapon and hitting A)ttack, but the spells add some fun variety. Being able to flee from foes, slam the door behind you, and "Lock" it is not an experience that most games of the era were offering.
    
Figuring out the best spells to use against certain enemies was a fun part of the game.
     
  • 2 points for equipment. It's mostly of the puzzle variety.
  • 0 points for no economy.
  • 2 points for a main quest. It has one side puzzle that isn't worth an extra point on a 10-point scale.
  • 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics are fine; the interface is mostly fine. It could have offered a second hand slot so you're not always having to re-equip your weapon after picking up something else. Unless I screwed something up in XRoar, there's no sound.
  • 2 points for gameplay. It gets those for not being too long. It's otherwise very linear, not replayable, and extremely frustrating. The difficulty is all over the place. Spells cost too many spell points, but it's also too easy to restore those points.
   
That gives us a final score of 21, four points lower than I gave to the first Power Stones title. That one was far more innovative, with a mix of outdoor and indoor exploration, an economy, NPCs, and puzzles that were a little less absurd. This one feels like it was meant to be lost.
    
Tony Olive reviewed the game in the August 1990 Rainbow. He didn't get out of the first tower, and some of his information is wrong (you don't have "over 50 spells"; you have exactly 20), but he found what he experienced fast-paced and exciting. The review smacks of the desperation you find in a lot of Color Computer reviews, where they know they have a miserable platform for CRPGs and they don't want to criticize one of the few titles to come along. I would have liked to read a review from someone who made it as far as the "Santa" puzzle, but alas I couldn't find one. I don't find it improbable that LanHawk and I are the only two people to have ever won the game.
        
I never got to ask Bill Cleveland who the other two Cs were.
              
The Three C's Projects, headquartered in Hamlet, North Carolina, sold the game primarily through magazines like Rainbow, charging $25, or about $60 in today's dollars. Someone sent me a link to a Color Computer newsletter in which owner/author Bill Cleveland announced he was leaving the business, but I can't seem to dig it up now that I need it. I think it was from late 1990 or 1991, and he indicated he just didn't have time for it anymore. He became a dentist in his hometown instead, which was probably a good career move. I tried to reach him back in 2022 after I played the first game, but he wasn't interested in talking about it.
   
Thus, we never got the third title in the trilogy, so we never found out the name of the third stone (after the Mind Stone and Spirit Stone) nor how all three stones would be united and used. I'm going to assume that the third stone was the Power Stone and at the climax of the trilogy, Thanos shows up and grabs them with his gauntlet.
   
***
   
Edit: Based on some news letters linked in the comments and sent to me by LanHawk, we can piece together what happened. By 1994, Bill Cleveland had gotten busy with other things and closed his company, as reported in the November 1994 Adventure Survivors (this link also has hints for the first game that would have been helpful when I played it). The following month, the publishers of the newsletter, Lin and Nan Padgett, announced that they had the two games "available," and they were offered for sale in subsequent issues. So it appears that Cleveland sold the rights to the Padgetts.