Bloodwych: More than I Wanted to Chew (Final Rating)

Note that the ad tells a slightly different back story than the game manual.

Bloodwych
United Kingdom

Image Works (Mirrorsoft)
Released 1989 for Amiga, Atari ST, and DOS; 1990 for Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum
Date Started: 29 July 2012

Date Abandoned; 31 August 2012
Total Hours: 21
Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)
Final Rating: 27
Ranking at Time of Posting: 42/66 (64%)

Raking at Game #455: 241/455 (53%)

All right, I'm going to spare us all and pull the plug. I'm prompted partly by an e-mail from a Bloodwych fan who estimates that I'm only about 20% through the game, mostly because "the Chaos Tower takes almost as long as all the other towers combined." I'm already into this game for 20 hours, and I honestly can't see putting another 80 into it. That would make my game time exceed even Rogue. You can't say I didn't give it a fair shake. The fan also told me that the rest of the five towers offer simply "more of the same," with some slightly more difficult puzzles. I've had enough of this unvarying gameplay.

Nothing significantly new happened since last time, so let's get to the GIMLET.

1. Game World. Bloodwych opens with the breathtakingly original plot of an evil sorcerer having taken over the land and summoning legions of demonic minions. The "world" in this case is the city/castle of Treidhadwyl, which is essentially a featureless dungeon. There is virtually no reference to the plot during the course of the game, making me wonder if the developers invented the back story after the game was developed. (Except for a final screen that I saw at the end of a YouTube video, it doesn't even appear that the word "Bloodwych" appears in-game.) The story is, in fact, such a carbon copy of Dungeon Master--right down to the champions being possessed or guided by the spirits of the exiled mages--that it nearly crosses the line from homage to plagiarism. I gave Dungeon Master a 6 in this category, but it had the whole order/chaos thing going on plus several in-game references to the plot. Score: 3.

Look at this screenshot from the ending. Shouldn't it be "THE Bloodwych ARE restored?" It's almost as if the game didn't know what "Bloodwych" was until the manual was written.

2. Character Creation and Development.  Like Dungeon Master (and I'm sorry to keep saying that, but it will happen again), you don't "create" your characters so much as simply select them. You don't even get the "reincarnation" option here, meaning you're stuck with the names and classes they start with. Leveling up is entirely within the class and seems to occur at odd intervals; it was maddeningly slow for the first half of my gameplay and more rapid after that; there is no progress meter or experience to indicate where you are in the leveling process. Leveling bestows attribute increases and an occasional new spell (the frequency of this is dependent on the class), but few choices on the part of the player. With different character choices, you'd have different levels of difficulty and perhaps some different tactics, but essentially the same game. Score: 3.

If I did have to play again, I'd play with Mr. Flay Sepulcrast. I understand he doesn't need to eat.

3. NPC Interaction. One improvement over Dungeon Master is that the game has NPCs, but they're not very good. You can theoretically ask any NPC, including monsters, about characters, objects, and lore, or trade with him or her. In practice, I never got them to tell me anything useful, and more than likely they'd start attacking me in the middle of the conversation, putting me at a tactical disadvantage. Except for the 16 potential starting characters, none of them even have names. I do have to give the game some credit for different disposition options (bragging, praising, insulting) and the ability to bribe and threaten NPCs, but in the end it doesn't amount to much. The interface was there for a decent NPC system, but the content wasn't. Score: 3.

...say the unidentifiable monsters just before attempting to slaughter me.

4. Encounters and Foes. Frustrating. The game doesn't bother to tell you the names of the monsters you fight, and I found the various humanoid monsters indistinguishable on visual inspection (my color-blindness might play a role here). Some of them cast spells, including an annoying "arc bolt" that goes around corners, but there's really no way to anticipate this until they start casting. There are no real "encounters" in the game, although I've taken to using this category to award points for puzzles, which is a kind-of encounter. Although these are basic, they do break the monotony a bit. Areas don't respawn, so there are no opportunities for grinding. Score: 3.

5. Magic and Combat. Combat is of the most basic sort. You wield weapons, enter "attack" mode, and start swinging. Your rear characters can't do much unless they have missile weapons, but if you're adept with the mouse, you can quickly swap positions to give lead characters a rest. There's a "defense" mode that you can theoretically use if you want to swap inventories or prepare spells, but I found that I usually died fairly quickly if I was trying to defend. Ultimately, the only viable combat technique is to use the terrain tactically to dance around your opponents and strike them at their flanks and rear. I found it tedious.

The magic system offers 32 spells grouped into four "schools." It's best to specialize in one or two schools because you can only get the higher-level spells after you've mastered some of the lower-level ones. I liked that you could adjust the power that you put into the spells, but overall I found them underwhelming. The buffing spells, even on high power, lasted only a couple of minutes, and you can only have one spell active at a time. Defensive spells take too long to prepare to be viable in the middle of combat. It never seemed to me that the offensive spells were doing much damage, even on max power. I never saw an enemy die from a spell, although I grant that I usually used them at the beginning of combat to soften them up. Finally, I didn't like that you were required to have two spells for the Moon Tower; since the game is linear and monsters don't respawn, failure to have the spells when you get to the right locations means that you have to start over. Score: 3.

Trying to cast a spell in the middle of combat often results in something unpleasant.

6. Equipment. As you progress, you find better weapons, armor, shields, gloves, rings, wands, potions, arrows, and food. It happens often enough that you feel suitably rewarded on a regular basis, and with the exception of some melee weapons, you can generally tell what items are best. It doesn't appear that there's any randomization to the items. The paucity of arrows throughout the game is a major problem, though, rendering the rear two characters useless most of the time. Score: 3.

7. Economy. Like the NPC category, I give the game credit for having an economy. It just isn't well implemented. You find gold on some NPC corpses, and I like that you can sell equipment (sometimes!) and use the "alchemy" spell to convert unneeded equipment to gold. I just never found much to buy with the gold. The weapons and armor shops never had better stuff than I had found, and while the potion shop was useful, I only ever found one and it was buried in an inconvenient part of the main tower. Even with the requirement to buy spells from the fairy on leveling up, I quit the game with nearly the maximum of gold in my backpacks (99 per character). Score: 3.

8. Quests. The game has a main quest; it's just boring and derivative. It progresses in five stages, as you collect the various gems from the various towers, and I guess there's a slight feeling of progress on the way, but not much. No side quests, no choices on the main quest. Score: 2.

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. Universally horrible. Again, my color-blindness may be playing a role, but I found the graphics confusing, ugly, and pixelated. I would have preferred the wire frames of Wizardry. There was nothing special about the sound effects, and since they're inseparable from the obnoxiously repeating music track, I left the sound off. I discussed my problems with the interface in an earlier posting. I find the buttons too small and inconveniently located, and the game requires too many clicks to perform simple actions. The keyboard is only good for some movement and saving the game. Some simple improvements, such as keeping the spellbook open to the last spell you used, or allowing the number keys to select characters, would have been welcome, but alas. Score: 1.

10. Gameplay. The gameplay is extremely linear and it lasts far, far too long. The need to find a bunch of keys--many of them virtually hidden in back corners--to progress makes it too easy to become a "walking dead" if you accidentally overlook or abandon a key. I couldn't imagine a single reason to replay the game after winning it once. Score: 1.

The game is at least consistent in its badeness. I ranked 7/10 categories at exactly 3, with a total of 25. However, we have to talk for a second about the multiplayer aspect of the game, which is remarkably innovative and, frankly, belonged in a better game.

Bloodwych is not the first game to feature cooperative multiplayer mode. The first I can recall is Zyll from 1984, followed by Swords of Glass in 1986. I find it odd and amusing that the only cooperative multiplayer CRPGs so far are comparatively obscure and not very good otherwise. Although I didn't have anyone to play with, I have to applaud the innovation that went into this addition to the game, and I'll award 2 bonus points for a true final score of 27. This still puts it in the lower tier of games (35% at the time of this posting).

Nonetheless, the game has a small but devoted cult following, and in preparing for this posting, I was astonished to find message boards full of players eager to try again with different characters or such. I find it a little baffling, but to each his own. There are several projects in the works to port the game to a new engine, and to make additional game levels using the original engine.

In Dungeons and Desktops, Matt Barton seems to agree with me, noting that: "[C]ritics mustered little praise for the game. Although the story and multiplayer options were admirable, the graphics were dull compared to Dungeon Master's, and the soundtrack was lamentable." But some contemporary reviews, especially in Europe, seemed to rank it quite high. I wonder if the version issue doesn't make a huge difference here. The game was big on the Amiga, and I can actually see where the game might be fun while played with a joystick next to a friend or sibling. Enough people liked it to support an expansion pack in 1990 (only for the Amiga and Atari ST, so I will not be partaking).

I can't find any full-length plays online. It looks like a YouTube user named jamesthebe [careful; some NSFW content there] got started with one, but gave up after 14 videos. Another user named ToricoUK, however, posted only the ending (only 36 seconds).

I assume that's Zendick.

Now, if you're frustrated that I ended this game too soon, take heart: the developers followed up with Hexx: Heresy of the Wizard, published by Psygnosis in 1994, which Wikipedia says was "basically the same game with updated graphics, a slightly modified cast of champions, and a greatly expanded magic system." We also have The Four Crystals of Trazere (1992) from the same developers, and ostensibly set in the same universe.

In 1993, Anthony Taglione gave an interview to an obscure U.K. gaming magazine called SynTax, in which he was frank about Bloodwych's origins in Dungeon Master. Recalling his time at a university in the late 1980s:

It just so happened that Dungeon Master appeared around this time on the ST and what a product that was! Three weeks later we'd played it to death, even taking just a party of short people. My own record is twelve hours with just two characters. I was talking with Mirrorsoft at the time and suggested that I could do a DM conversion for them on the C64. They ummed and arred a lot and Pete carried on drawing screens until they finally said 'Yes!' and I said 'No!  We've got a better design and it'll be two-player-simultaneous'. They said 'Ok but we want ST and Amiga as well'.

Throughout the rest of the article, he really does come off as a talented programmer, and I look forward to trying his later offerings.

For now, though, it's time to move on. I've decided to kick The Magic Candle down the list a bit and tackle it in December. Next up is Star Saga: Two!