Backtracking: Amulet of Yendor (1985) and Leygref's Castle (1986)

Note from the future: When I wrote this entry about 6 years ago, I didn't know what I was talking about. I recommend ignoring it and reading my full posts on The Yendor's Castle and Leygref's Castle instead.

Amulet of Yendor and Leygref's Castle are both remakes of Wizard's Castle (1981) which I reviewed a couple of postings ago. They are both roguelikes from the mid-1980s, and neither of them have aged very well, especially compared to the 1985 remake of Rogue that I played many months ago.


Amulet of Yendor (this is the MobyGames name; in the game itself it seems to be called Yendor's Castle) involves a quest to retrieve the Orb of Power forged by the elven wizard Yendor. It takes place on an 8-level dungeon with 64 rooms (8x8) each. As in Wizard's Castle, the rooms contain various monsters, pools, chests, books, treasure, vendors, and other assorted items. You have to fight monsters to find an artifact called the Runestaff which teleports you to Yendor's Orb. Winning the game involves leaving the dungeon with Yendor's Orb in your possession, at which point you are given a score based on the treasure you've collected and the monsters you've slain.

After an equipment buy, you're off to the dungeon. Mapping and exploration are complicated by random teleporters ("warps") and sinkholes which toss you about the dungeon randomly. In my first time out, I got warped to Level 4 before I knew what was happening, and I was killed in short order by a dragon. My second time out, I literally made one move from the entrance and got tossed down to Level 8 by a warp/sinkhole combination.

The "map" only displays for a couple of seconds, even when I slow DOSBox down to a crawl; I don't know if this is a deliberate game design or a technical issue.

Every time the game starts up, it takes you through six screens of instructions which are apparently inescapable, meaning dying sucks more than it did in Wizard's Castle.

I played six times but never lasted more than about 25 turns thanks to the balrogs and dragons the game cheerfully throws at you even on Level 1.


Leygref's Castle is essentially the same game but with much more tolerable graphics and gameplay. You are once again after an Orb of Power, this time forged by the elf wizard Leygref instead of Yendor. Other than the name change, the instructions are word-for-word identical to those in Amulet of Yendor (although this game helpfully gives you the opportunity to bypass them). Improvements include a map that remains in front of you throughout the game and more information about your status and inventory on the screen. There are a few other tricks introduced by the game, including a mysterious jerk called "The Phantom" who shows up and steals your stuff and the chance of going blind (I was never able to cure this). The author of this one, a Frank Dutton of either Texas or Louisiana, deserves a lot of credit for this version, and if you're really eager to play one of the Wizard's Castle derivatives, this is the one I'd recommend.

Both games randomly regenerate the map when you start a new game, allowing (in theory) an infinite number of variations in the game. But both keep Wizard's Castle's baffling conflation of strength and hit points. As shareware games, they're an amusing diversion.