Game 76: The Dark Heart of Uukrul (1989)

I'm not sure we're fighting this dragon in the most efficient manner possible

       

The Dark Heart of Uukrul
United Kingdom

Digital Studios (developer); Brøderbund Software (publisher)
Released 1989 for DOS and Apple II
Date Started: 17 October 2012

      

At this point in my career as a semi-professional CRPG player (hey, the $250 I get each year from Google isn't much, but it's something), I like it when games show me something new, even if the game itself otherwise isn't perfect. The Dark Heart of Uukrul opens with a delightful character-creation process reminiscent of Ultima IV, but even better because it applies to all four characters.

You play the game with a fighter, a paladin, a priest, and a mage--no sweating over class choices in this game. For each party member, the game asks you to envision the character and answer a series of conceptual questions based on your profile. The answers determine your starting statistics. I decided to play the exercise straight rather than game the system for the attributes I wanted. I envisioned:

• Gliglois the Fighter: A charismatic, dextrous, enthusiastic fighter of medium to thin frame--much more like Westley in The Princess Bride or Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood than, say, Conan the Barbarian. He likes fighting, but not particularly killing. He sees swordplay as an art and became an adventurer for the fun of it.

• Invictia the Paladin: The classic lawful good drill sergeant. Think Susan Ivanova in Babylon 5. She marches into battle with a straight back and a grim expression, focused always on doing her duty as efficiently and effectively as possible. She adheres to a strict set of virtues and habits and never deviates. She's tall and strong with a dark shock of hair topping a head that is often bloodied, but ever unbowed.

• Plenamujer the Cleric: A voluptuous and licentious woman, Plenamujer would be an atheist if she could. Every fiber of her being tells her to be a thief--and she's clever and skilled enough to do it--except, for reasons she's never been able to figure out, the gods speak to her, and give her holy powers that she never asked for and doesn't want. With every healing spell she casts, she curses the ability and the god that gave it to her--a rage that she channels into her wild, unpredictable combat.

• Prufrock the Magician: A portly fellow of middle-age, with a bald spot in the middle of his hair, Prufrock used to entertain children with sparkles and disappearing tricks. He would have been happy doing that forever. But he was good--too good--and someone important took notice. Now roped into this suicidal dungeon crawl, he's terrified of the dark, terrified of monsters, terrified of...well, everything.

It worked: with these descriptions in mind, I was able to answer the questions quite well. Here's  one for each character; see if you can guess how I answered.

 

Answers: 3, 1, 1, 1

Going against type led to some consequences: I ended up with a fighter who's not particularly strong, and a priest whose lowest score is in "piety." Things worked out better for Invictia and Prufrock. I'll play with this group and see how I do. Perhaps Plenamujer will discover some faith during her journey and Prufrock will discover some courage.

Plenamujer is the worst priestess ever.

The setup offers a familiar dungeon-crawling backdrop. The underground city of Eriosthe, constructed by the fabled Ancients in the Kalurn mountains, was once a shining beacon of peace and prosperity. But one of the Ancients, Uukrul, grew corrupt and powerful, and he drove away his colleagues, leaving the city to fall into darkness. Now, hundreds of years later, Uukrul's evil threatens to spill out of the underground and into the "Western Lands." The Lands' council raised a party of councilors, led by Mara (presumably before her ascension as a Divine), and sent them into the dungeon. They never returned.

The Council concluded--and try to follow this logic--that their mistake was sending a party that was actually powerful. Somehow, this "played into Uukrul's hands." They decided what they really needed to do was get a party of rank amateurs. Noting that my four characters are "the most promising of all the Aspirants," they intend to smuggle us into Eriosthe through a secret entrance and let us develop our skills once we're already there. Our only advantage is four "soul amulets," which will facilitate resurrection and allow access to secret refuges in the city.

Resurrection takes place, apparently, at the "Mausoleum." This feels like a trick.

The game begins with the party tossed into the starting dungeon with a few initial resources. Nothing to do from there but to explore. The exploration is fun. As a dungeon crawl, the game is a lot more like Pool of Radiance than Wizardry or Dungeon Master. You have frequent special encounters with numerous options, and when combat begins, the game switches to a top-down iconographic display. There are proper shops, too:

Gliglois is going to want that enchanted mail. Invictia will likely let him have it.

As you can see, the graphics are quite good. The dungeon corridors are mostly empty--it will be a while (Ultima Underworld?) before our dungeons seem like real places with unique sub-zones--but the graphics for monsters, shops, and special encounters are some of the best in the era.

Weapons occasionally break, but can be repaired here.

The encounters, which offer some opportunities for role-playing and logic, differentiate this game from a lot of dungeon-crawlers. Even something as banal as finding a secret door might present numerous options: listen at the door, trace its outline with a staff, search for a mechanism to open it, or shove it. Here are a few random screenshots of these special encounters so far:

I asked about Uukrul and he attacked me.

In most games, a door is just a door.

Prufrock begged Gliglois not to press it, but he did anyway, and we found a little bungalow with some treasure.

On the wall, a little map indicating a secret area. I found it off to the east.

And even when you're not in an encounter, the game provides fun and descriptive visual cues about the various areas you enter. Touches like this make for a good CRPG experience.

You don't often find this level of detail outside of text adventures.

Most games would just have the door open. This game feels more like there's a dungeon master behind it.

At first, I thought the town was a bit nonsensical. After all, who would expect to find robust commerce and trade in the middle of a pit of evil? But then again, it's most CRPGs that are unrealistic, not Uukrul. In the average high-fantasy game, the moment you leave a city or town, you're in amidst tribes and animals. But orcs and trolls have to get their weapons and armor from somewhere, meaning they must have trades and jobs and a functioning economy--just a tightly controlled one.

At several points during the game, you encounter sanctuaries that you're allowed to enter because of your magic amulets, although the game throws a copy protection at you. I found images of the amulets online that allow me to crack the code:

Entering a sanctuary with a soul amulet.

Sanctuaries give you the opportunity to rest and heal, store items, and teleport to other sanctuaries in the dungeon, which makes travel less of a nightmare than in, say, Bloodwych, when returning to the potion shop meant a good half hour of maze-crawling. I think you also need to visit a sanctuary to level up.

So far, I can't say I'm in love with the combat system. It's turn-based and tactical, which I do like, but a little too cumbersome. Each combat turn proceeds in two phases: a movement phase, in which you can move characters exactly one square, and an attack phase. in which you can swing  your weapons and cast spells and such. The whole thing is slower than it needs to be. I prefer the "Gold Box" style in which movement and combat take place simultaneously, and both characters and enemies can make multiple moves. You also can't strike diagonally in this game, making it a pain in the neck to position the characters just right.

The party fights rats--yes, rats--and some kind of slime.

On the positive side, there hasn't been an overwhelming number of combats so far, and enemies have the decency to flee when they're outnumbered, rather than making you shuffle across the map, one turn at a time, to kill every last bat. I just came from a game that was a little tedious for that reason. I also like the way the combat map models the corridor or room in which it's taking place.

As with many CRPGs, combat provides experience at the end. Each character gets a differing amount of experience, and I don't yet have a lock on the variables that influence this. Generally, the character who makes the most kills gets the most experience, but no one ever gets 0. I think it's possible that the game tracks all the individual actions you make in combat: moving, taking damage, dealing damage, casting spells, and awards an amount to each type of action. This is consistent with something else that I've discovered: combat isn't the only way to get experience. Characters also get it for finding treasure, finding secret doors, and I think even talking to people. (I don't always notice when it increases.) This is the most complex experience-based system that I've encountered so far.

Plenamujer killed the most bats in this combat, but Invictia still got some points without doing anything at all.

I'm not sure if the plot is going to unfold in stages, or if I'm just going to explore and get more powerful before I inevitably meet Uukrul. Evidence suggests perhaps the former. A key part of the back story involves the previous party led by Councilor Mara, and I've already encountered several inscriptions and diaries left by her group, as well as some kind of apparition instructing me to "find the frozen hearts."

I'm not sure if she's a ghost or a "sending" of her imprisoned form, but this diary I found doesn't bode well:

Here's one final twist: the game is practically roguelike in its saving. You get one save slot, and the game continually overwrites it on its own. If a character dies in combat and you don't like it, tough: it just got written to the save file. I suspect I'll be using the mausoleum quite a bit, and I'm curious to find out what happens in full-party deaths.

Despite the length of this posting, I'm still feeling my way around, so I'll cover navigation, inventory, magic and combat more in the next couple of postings. This is a rare game that I've entered with absolutely no preconceived ideas, or even knowledge of the interface, and I'm liking it a lot so far. Many of you predicted that I would.

Note: The last word in the game's title is pronounced "OOK-rull." I realize that in the matter of pronouncing the name of the game, it's difficult not to call to mind a certain 1990s TV character. When this happens, you will suppress it immediately and try to forget about it. You will not--WILL NOT!--make any jokes, references, or otherwise discuss said character in the comments; I will delete such comments immediately and ban the commenter from ever posting on my blog again. Got it? OOK-rull.