Game 115: DarkSpyre (1990)

At last, a game that combines "CamelCase" with "phantasy spelling."

      

DarkSpyre

United States

Event Horizon Software (developer), Electronic Zoo (publisher)

Released 1990 for DOS, 1991 for Amiga

Date Started: 15 September 2013

    

In almost every way, DarkSpyre wants to be a top-down, single-character Dungeon Master, and it generally succeeds. It's got twisty mazes with pressure-plate, lever, and keyhole puzzles. There are multiple types of actions (thrust, lunge, cut, shoot) depending on the weapon you hold, and after you choose each one you have to wait a bit before you can choose another action. There are hit points and magic points that decrease in combat and slowly replenish when standing still. The magic system requires prepping spells before casting. Potions are made by invoking spells on empty flasks. Skill levels increase with use of particular weapons and spells. It even allows the same trick by which you can smash a door on advancing enemies.

A process that never really gets old.

By far, it's strongest link to Dungeon Master is in its use of a thickly-written framing story to justify all of this dungeon-crawling. I've used the term several times in my blogging, and I want to make clear the distinction between a back story and a framing story. Back stories simply explain what's happened in the past, and how we got to our present circumstances. The player then carries the narrative forward. Framing stories, on the other hand, describe the beginning, end, and edges of the game, and what happens in the middle is really unconnected. You could replace it with a different "frame" and the player would barely notice, because the story itself is hardly referenced in-game. In fact, it often feels like the developers wrote the story after designing the game. By the same token, you could put the same frame on completely different content. 

Ultima IV, Champions of Krynn, and The Magic Candle all use back stories. What happens in the game--all the NPCs and elements you encounter--is inextricable from the continuing narrative. Dungeon Master, Bloodwych, and most roguelike games use framing stories. I suppose neither is particularly better or worse, but when a game goes out of its way to put a lot of detail in its framing story, it feels slightly dishonest, like a film trailer that promises something different than the film delivers.

Using that term for DarkSpyre is, admittedly, a bit premature. For all I know, as the game progresses, the story is referenced repeatedly, and I'll be fully drawn in to its developing lore. I just suspect not.

Part of the 15 pages of framing story written by Scott Noel, who specialized in game manuals, first for Event Horizon Software and later SSI.

The story chronicles the unannounced arrival of three beings calling themselves the Gods of Intellect, Magic, and War. Dragging a host of monstrous warriors behind them, the three Gods of the Ways met with an assembled group of lords and ladies, claimed to be humanity's creators, expressed contempt for how little the kingdoms of man had accomplished in the millennia since their creation ("true men, of any worth, would have reached those stars by now"), and demanded that the people subject themselves to some kind of test.

None of the people really believed them. They had long regarded the Gods of the Ways as a myth and saw no evidence of divinity in the visitors. Instead of submitting to their terms, the kingdoms of men raised armies to oppose them. Chief among them was Lord Borel of Laeytroeb, who was particularly incensed at the God of Magic's apparent seduction of Borel's lover, the witch Chesschantra. Recalling legends of a magic sword that his ancestors used to conquer the kingdoms, he retrieved it from its hiding place deep in a cave. The sword turned out to be evil--demon-possessed--demanding the blood of the innocent for its powers, and Borel ended up slaying his closest advisor with it. Nonetheless, with the sword, Borel was able to successfully oppose the gods and their armies, and to drive them to the brink of defeat. In a final clash with the God of War, the god and the blade unleashed such destruction that they obliterated the armies on both sides and turned a forest into a wasteland.

In the midst of that wasteland grew...wait for it...the DarkSpyre, which all three "gods" were last seen entering. Before they disappeared into its depths, they told the people they would come back in 300 years and eliminate humanity--unless a single champion could navigate the levels of the spyre and defeat all its challenges. Borel himself, broken and guilty, eventually took the cursed sword and entered the spyre, never to return. Other warriors, mages, lords, and peasants have tried and failed. 200 years have passed, and it's up to the player to save the world.

The character creation process continues the framing story.

The character creation process uniquely weaves the player's selections with a little fable about the hero's life, born to happy parents who had always wanted (in my case) a BOY named GIDEON, from a young age showing both skill with weapons in his RIGHT hand and with HEALING magic. (In a witty inversion of normal tropes, the boy learns fighting from his mother and magic from his father.) One day, an oracle wanders into town and names the character as the fated champion, and before long, he's breached the gates of the DarkSpyre.

You assign attributes from an initial pool. I decided to prioritize magic, which I rarely do.

The game randomly assigns an initial weapon proficiency and starts you in an area where you can load up on a limited selection of inventory. Skulls on the floor provide occasional helpful messages, and you find weapons, armor, spell scrolls, and other items scattered about as you explore. On the initial levels, the enemies have been rare and easy, allowing the player to slowly become competent with the interface.

As for the interface, this is the earliest game I can recall that offers full replication of controls on both mouse and keyboard, in such a way that it's truly intuitive to play with one hand on the keypad and the other on the mouse, alternating use of the two control systems for particular situations. There are essentially two windows: the maze window and the character (inventory and attributes) window, though some portion of the latter is always visible on the former, and the balance between the two is as simple as a flick of the mouse on the bar between the two. Since everything takes place in real-time, it's handy to be able to see what's happening in the maze while you adjust inventory, prepare spells, and so on.

Preparing to fight two wraiths. My partly-visible inventory allows me to quickly swap out equipment.

I played through the first three levels in my opening session, and each featured a different look and feel, with the puzzles increasing in complexity (though none terribly hard) throughout. The first level was mostly about equipping items and getting used to the puzzle mechanics. The second introduced some more complexity, such as rolling balls to avoid and movable walls. The third was quick and odd, with two huge rooms ringed by treasure-filled corridors. Each level ended at a portal that took me to the next level.

Leaving Level 1.

From these initial levels, I can report:

• The sound in the game is okay. There are no sound effects for things you'd expect, like casting "knock" spells at doors or moving walls, but there's a "bip" for every step and and a cute little victory tune that plays after vanquishing each foe.

• Where Dungeon Master offered proficiencies in levels, DarkSpyre offers proficiencies in various weapon types (clubbing, long edged, missile, hurling, etc.) and spell classes (healing, wizardry, sorcery, etc.). These increase with use from "beginner" to I-don't-know-what; I'm at "average" with some of them already.

Increasing in my "projectile" skill.

• Each item has various combat and non-combat uses that change with your proficiency level. You can "fling" throwing items, "shoot" missile weapons, "drink" or "throw" potions. When I first picked up my "saintese" (a kind of long sword), I could "lunge" or "cut" with it, but as my proficiency increased, the options changed to "thrust," "slash," and "block." Shields, in addition to providing protection, can "bash" or be "thrown" like Captain America, I guess. Each of these actions is mapped to a key (1-3 for right hand and 4-6 for left).

I'm not sure why I'd ever want to "throw" my spellbook.

• Each level so far has provided two items at the end: a "Raido" rune, which allows saving of the game (destroying the rune), and a chalice of "Ambrosia," which adds to max hit points and spell points. The former is a bit of a mystery, since ALT-S will save the game whenever you want. I wonder if that wasn't added by whoever cracked the version of the game I'm playing. I suspect that the developers intended saving only once per level, using the rune, so I'm going to try to adhere to that.

• Potions are made through the use of the "Liquify" healing spell. When cast by itself, it creates a JERA (health) potion. When cast with a gemstone in hand, it creates a potion specific to that stone (and consumes the stone). So far, I've found gemstones that create cure poison potions, poison cloud potions (when thrown), and a mysterious potion called "Teihwaz" whose purpose is unknown to me.

Getting ready to make a "JERA" potion.

• Early in the game, I got a spellbook. Spells are added to the book by finding scrolls. So far, I've found "Liquify," "Knock," "Fireball," "Magic Gas," "Freeze," and "Sight." (Of them, I don't know what the last one does.) I've found duplicate scrolls, and spells can be cast directly from them, but they can also be added to the book again. I'm not sure if it increases the spell's power in any way to add it to the book multiple times. Anyway, you cast spells by first "readying" them, in which case they get a function key assignment, then by casting them. Both readying and casting require a certain number of spell points.

• My colorblindness is going to hurt me in this game again, as some objects are hard for me to discern against the backgrounds.

Can you see the token on the floor to my lower-left? It took me a bunch of passes through the room before I noticed it.

• In addition to the "Raido" rune, I've found one called "Fehu" that, when invoked, adds a random item to the inventory.

• I haven't found any significant armor yet, just a leather helmet and some shields.

• Already, I'm having inventory problems. I have a ton of potions and empty flasks, a couple redundant weapons (I read somewhere that weapons can break), and a few throwing weapons. I decided to jettison a crossbow and bolts just because they were taking up too much inventory space.

My rapidly-growing inventory. I suppose I don't need those empty chalices anymore.

• I don't love the character portrait.

• It does not appear there's any way to return to an earlier level once you leave it.

• So far, none of the levels have re-spawned enemies. If this continues, it suggests that there are no real grinding opportunities. Thus, I suspect the best course of action is to specialize in a particular weapon type rather than spread proficiencies among multiple weapons.

It appears that a big part of the game is going to involve puzzles. So far, the following have appeared in some kind of combination:

• Pressure plates, some of which you activate simply by crossing, some of which require you to place items on them to keep permanently activated.

• Teleporters, some of which you want to enter, others of which you need to find a way to close with a pressure plate.

Any item placed on the pressure plate to the north closed this teleporter.

• Levers that open doors or cause other things to happen.

• Movable walls

• Rolling balls that must be avoided.

It's like four times as hard as Indiana Jones had it.

• Doors with keyholes that require specific keys

• Doors with holes that require tokens

• Doors that must be "knocked" to open

• Doors with holes that require specific items. One on Level 3 required a "potion of water." It's a good thing I didn't drink the one I found. I suppose it's possible to get into a "walking dead" situation on a level if you lose key items.

• Skulls that offer hints to all of the above

I'm sure I'll see more variants, and of course puzzles can occur in multiple combinations, such as a movable wall that has to be pushed onto a pressure plate to activate a lever to close a portal and allow access to a keyholed door. In most RPGs, these types of puzzles just exist, seemingly for no reason. At least in DarkSpyre, their artificial nature seems justifiable in the game's own lore, in which the gods created them specifically as tests for mortals.

 

Pushing a movable wall towards a pressure plate on the other side of a skull. Note the lever to the left.

 

Level 4 has started me in the midst of a complicated-looking maze, and I might have to resort to mapping, which I rarely do in top-down games. But DarkSpyre seems to assume this will be necessary and even came with a gridded "scratch pad" to facilitate mapping.

 

The fourth level begins. I'm holding hurling weapons in both hands.

DarkSpyre strikes me as the kind of game that will take a long time yet offer very little material for intensive blog entries. I experienced this most recently with Bloodwych, and I got bored when I realized that the only thing I could keep saying was "explored another huge maze, solved more puzzles, killed more creatures." But so far it's been fun, and I could see it achieving a high score as long as it doesn't reach a point where it seriously overstays its welcome. Let's continue on and see.