Game 116: Empire I: World Builders (1981)

As I suspected, DarkSpyre's playing-to-interesting-blog-material ratio is turning out to be quite high. I've finished about nine levels but I don't have a lot to say, so while I try to scrounge more material for something interesting about that game, let's clear out another 1981 offering. That I'm able to play it at all is due to reader Josh Lawrence, who scanned me a copy of the manual and its vital list of command words.

Empire is a uniquely weird game. Its weirdness begins with its manual, full of a propagandist history of the empire that offers an alternate take on human history, and continues with its interface, mechanics, and overall gameplay goals. If it was created today, I would suspect its creator to be a gifted but extremely disturbed person. But 1981 was a time in which video games were new, and common tropes not yet established, and this game comes from a creator (Edu-Ware Services) that specialized in educational software rather than role-playing games. Even with this understanding, playing the game feels a bit like indulging someone's lunacy.

Preparing to lift off into space.

The game takes place in the future, naturally. The manual comes with an "official imperial textbook" called The Birth of a Free Empire. It's an extremely bizarre bit of propaganda that breaks human history down into periods called the "Primative Era," the "Feudal Era," the "Great Anarchy," and the "Imperial Solution," through which man evolves from "very savage man" to just "savage man" to "perfect man." The history is presented in a timeline that diverges from actual human history at some point--it has the nuclear destruction of San Francisco in between the invention of the computer chip and the moon landing--but it clearly suggests there was some kind of apocalypse after our modern era that ultimately led to the formation of an empire led by Gortus Lazur, glorified in the history as the first "perfect man." It's unclear how much of the fictional history is supposed to be an alternate reality and how much is supposed to be an imperfect recreation of actual human history, but either way it's entertaining in a somewhat uncomfortable way.

The "perfect man" is apparently a South American dictator.

The game begins with the player in a spaceport in New York City, just before he blasts off for the stars. The player enters the "new colonists" section and randomly rolls attributes for a new character, then determines whether the character is going to be a miner, missionary, or homesteader, which feels a bit like you're about to play one of the background NPCs in a traditional RPG.

Rolling stats for a new character.

One you choose your class, you're assigned an allotment of money and equipment. You then proceed through a medical check and customs before passing through the "boarding gate" and blasting off in your ship. You're treated to a launch animation, find yourself in space, and must immediately make a constitution check to see if you survived liftoff.

Assuming you survive, you're soon orbiting a "new planet," and this is where the game truly begins. If you choose to land on a planet whose atmosphere you can't breathe or whose gravity is too strong, you die. Otherwise, you can exit and start exploring. On each habitable planet, you can visit towns, fight creatures, interact with NPCs, sink and explore mines, establish homesteads, preach in public parks, buy and sell goods, and blast off for other planets or for home.

 

An NPC approaches me on a horizon that also contains a town and my ship.

The basic mechanic of Empire is to navigate through a series of simulated environments and situations using a baffling number of commands. Some of the activities are centered around the character's core role (miner, missionary, or homesteader); some, like combat and NPC interaction, are common to all roles. Success is influenced by the types of equipment you carry and constant attribute checks. There are many things that can kill you, including starvation and thirst (you start with 10 food and 10 water).

Selling ore at the company store.

An early goal on every planet is to find a town and purchase decent weapons. Of the dozen or so characters I created, most of them died while trying to find the town on the planet's surface. If you're lucky enough to arrive there, you find that every one has four shops: a casino, a "company store," a general store, and an armory. You can only gamble a maximum of $250, and winning is entirely about "psionics" checks rather than any actual strategy.

Combat--which can be triggered randomly or by attacking an NPC--involves a screen in which you and your enemy trade blows (or shots) and roll attribute checks to determine their success or failure, slowly taking damage to your body parts until one of you dies. If it's the enemy, you can loot whatever goods or food he had.

I don't know how to begin to describe the multitude of things that happen during the game. Weird creatures (including unicorns) appear on the horizons. Random vigilantes, soldiers, traders, and other NPCs show up and either give you items, offer trades, or demand items from you. Constitution checks every time you blast off can result in your death. Every time you move, there's a chance you might wind up in quicksand or drown in the ocean or suffer some environmental hazard. Dinosaurs attack. Sometimes, you just die without any explanation. One of my characters got this message randomly while he was exploring a planet:

I made a successful charisma check, was promised wealth, and suddenly found myself starting over in New York. When I checked the "off-worlders" section of the starting area, I found the character present, with an additional $50,000. I'm not sure what happened or how I got home.

Explaining gameplay, including commands, is perhaps best done with a couple of sample characters. These are a few who I managed to play for a reasonable amount of time. There were plenty of others that died in combats, falling into quicksand, starving, in mine collapses, or for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

Um...why?

I'll skip the earthbound parts of the descriptions, which always proceed the same way: STRAIGHT AHEAD to an examination room, STRAIGHT AHEAD through customs (the purpose of these screens seems to be to remind players of a character's attributes and inventory when reloading an old character), LEFT through the boarding gate, and a constitution check upon launching.

1.  Mark the Missionary

With lousy strength, this character makes a poor miner, and his extremely low speed doesn't recommend him well as a homesteader. The high psionics and intelligence scores, on the other hand, are perfect for a missionary.

The first planet Mark comes to has low gravity and a thin atmosphere, so he continues to SEARCH for a more likely candidate. The second has the right atmosphere but no government; he figures he needs a governmental system for the type of civilization that would be ready to receive his proselytizing. After a few more planets go by, he finally finds a suitable one: regular gravity, standard atmosphere, high population, modern technology, and an oligarchical government.

This stage of assessment is not unlike Starflight from five years later.

He LANDs on the planet and gives the command to GO OUT of his spacecraft. Finding himself on a barren plain, he decides to engage in a circular pattern to search for a town, going first EAST, then NORTH.

A "noble" approaches. Using the WHO command initiates dialogue. The noble introduces himself as Gaheris and gives Mark some of his food, which is awfully nice. He is followed almost immediately by another noble named Zora, but he simply says "hmmph!" and stalks off.

Mark proceeds WEST and WEST again and finds himself at the ocean. He becomes thirsty and chooses to DRINK some water.

Returning to the EAST and NORTH, Mark is approached by a soldier. When asked WHO, he says he's collecting taxes. Mark says NO to the request and finds himself jailed for two months (where?). When he gets out, he is immediately approached by a merchant WHO offers to sell water for 90 credits. Since Mark only has 500, he says NO and fails a charisma roll. Next along comes Gort the peasant WHO asks for food. As a missionary, Mark feels compelled to GIVE him some.

After some more wandering and unhelpful NPCs, Mark comes across Bonzo the Bandit, who demands his money. Mark says NO. Combat begins. Bonzo throws a broadsword (leaving him weaponless) but Mark dodges it. Mark hits RIGHT several times to approach Bonzo, and Bonzo flees before Mark can even get a screenshot. LOOKing reveals the discarded broadsword, which Mark GRABs.

In some mountains to the south, Mark meets Lazarus the Missionary, who gives him some food.

 
Mark continues to explore, DRINKing and EATing when necessary. Marco the trader appears and offers to trade his "electronic" for Mark's knife, but since the knife is the only weapon Mark has, he says no.

Mark is suddenly attacked by a "Bandersnach," a tyrannosaurus-like creature who swipes off Mark's right arm with his claws. Just as Mark assumes he's about to die, the "Lord of Light" appears and gives a "prophecy" that for some reason takes Mark to the "end of game."

When I reload, Mark is still available as a character and is back on Earth, so I load him up and launch him into space again. He LANDs on a planet run by a "company" government. He GOES OUT of his spaceship and immediately finds himself attacked by another bandersnach! (Oddly, he has his arm back.)

Things look bad for Mark at first. He loses his left leg and suffers damage to his torso, but he is ultimately able to kill the monster with his knife.

Flush with victory, he grabs the only item the bandersnach left--some food--and prepares to embark on his quest when yet another goddamned bandersnach appears, takes off Mark's right arm with a swipe, then disembowels him. I guess it was Mark's destiny to be killed by a bandersnach. He never got to find a town and PREACH.

2. Cornelius the Miner

Cornelius starts with strong strength and dexterity but poor senses, which should theoretically make him a bad miner, but I figure what the hell. The first planet he finds has a religious government and a mineral density of 6 on a 14-point scale. He LANDs and GOes OUT.

Fortunately, there's a town (and, for some reason, a unicorn) within the opening area, meaning Cornelius doesn't have to risk death wandering the planet looking for civilization.

Instead, he immediately sinks a MINE and begins hunting for ore. Using combinations of LEFT, RIGHT, UP, DOWN, and LOOK, he builds his mine and searches for minerals, using MINE whenever he thinks he's near something. Every movement is accompanied by an associated strength roll.

He nearly chokes on gas a few times and has to extricate himself from a couple of cave-ins, but otherwise he doesn't do too poorly. After mining about 10 units, he returns to the surface and goes IN TOWN to sell his ore.

In the general store, he BUYs a pistol and some bullets along with some leather armor.

At United Ores, he has the proprietor ASSESS his haul and sells it for 560 credits, which he reinvests in an electorch (a more sophisticated bit of equipment than his shovel). At a gambling facility, he GAMBLES 50 credits and wins.

Unfortunately, upon leaving town to sink his second mine, he is immediately attacked by a bandit. Though he LOADs his pistol and EQUIPs his leather armor and SHOOTs to the best of his ability, he is killed in the resulting duel.

****

I tried a few homesteader characters but couldn't survive long enough to do the core things that homesteaders are supposed to do: SETTLE to establish a farm, select a spouse, PLOW, SEED, HARVEST, and so on. All together, there are more than 200 commands in the game, and it's a bit difficult to keep them straight. There are a ton that I never found the remotest use for: TEST water; STEAL, ROB, or BRIBE;  get so desperate in combat that I had to use PUNCH, SLAP, or SLUG; PREACH or CONVERT as a missionary; CAPTURE stray animals or MATE livestock.

Empire is merciless in is lethality. Killed characters are immediately deleted from the disk. Since the game constantly references and saves the character file, using save states in the emulator doesn't work: if the game can't find the character file, it crashes shortly after you load the save state. You'd have to back up the character file every time you created a new save state and then painstakingly restore it.

There appears to be no way to "win" Empire--just to continually improve the character and try to survive in a hostile environment. You can theoretically return home in your rocket and attempt another profession with the same character, though I wasn't able to get anyone to survive nearly so long. Characters age--every action in the game takes time--and apparently 200 years old is the maximum playable character you can attain.

Empire was developer Edu-Ware's answer to the lawsuit that forced it to withdraw Space (an obvious ripoff of Game Designer Workshop's Traveler RPG). Empire lacks Space's detailed background development for the main character but obviously improves on the gameplay in other ways, and it's hard to argue that it's not an RPG--just a really, really odd one. In a GIMLET, I'd give it:

• 3 points for the game world. Extremely original, yet not referenced during gameplay that I could see.
• 3 points for characters. There's not much customization going on, and no development once created (in fact, the character slowly deteriorates), but the three "classes" do feature very different games.
• 2 points for NPC interaction. There are some limited NPCs, and choosing whether to aid or fight them does offer some role-playing options.
• 3 points for encounters and foes. The monsters are well-described in the manual and do behave and fight differently depending on type.
• 2 points for combat. You have a lot of options, but only a few viable ones, and thus there aren't many tactics to pursue.
• 2 points for equipment, used for both combat and core missions.
• 2 points for the economy. I never outspent my starting cash, but perhaps I would have if I'd survived long enough.
• 1 point for quests. There is no main quest, just gameplay mechanics that vary among classes.
• 1 point for graphics, sound, and interface. Graphics and sound had not advanced anywhere by 1981 that I'd remotely recommend them. The interface, with its ridiculous selection of commands that work inconsistently, is mostly awful.
• 3 points for gameplay. Non-linear and replayable, but extremely frustrating in its difficulty and lethality.

The final score of 22 isn't bad for a 1981 game, and if I had a lot more time or the game had a main quest, I'd love to play it longer and see what other gameplay elements it revealed. As it is, I'll have to leave that to you while I return to DarkSpyre.

We'll be encountering this series again if I'm able to play Empire II: Intersellar Sharks or Empire III: Armageddon. The manual for this game announces the sequel titles even though they wouldn't come out until 1982 and 1984, respectively. It sounds like they might have something approaching an actual quest.

The Empire series was designed by David Mullich (b. 1958), who was recruited into Edu-Ware when the company's owner met him working in a Los Angeles computer store. His first game was The Prisoner (1980), based on the cult British TV show. Mullich's long and currently-active history includes stints at Cyberdreams, 3DO/New World, and Abandon Interactive Entertainment, with credits on famous games like I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, the Heroes of Might and Magic series, and Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines. I've written to him to see if he's interested in commenting on this entry.

Back to DarkSpyre for me!