Expedition Amazon: Final Rating

The bottom level of the ruins. I'm sure the entrance to Ka was somewhere in here, but I never found it.

Expedition Amazon

United States

Penguin Software (developer and publisher)

Willard Phillips (author), Greg Malone (graphics), Dave Shapiro (programming)

Released 1983 for Apple II, 1984 for Commodore 64, FM-7, PC-88, PC-98

Date Started: 15 April 2014
Date Ended: 5 June 2014

Total Hours: 15

Difficulty: Moderate (3/5)
Final Rating: 21
Ranking at Time of Posting: 35/142 (25%)

Ranking at Game #456: 154/456 (34%)

[Edit from 5 June 2014: I wrote this posting before figuring out how to win the game. You can read my account of the endgame here. After winning, I updated the values above.]

I didn't intend to offer a second posting on Expedition Amazon, but I continued playing it for about six hours after the first posting, so this allows me to make something of that time while easing myself back into the blog after a regrettable, unanticipated absence.

The game has some interesting ideas but isn't, in 2014, very fun. The basic dynamic is to stock up on as much stuff as you can carry in the town, explore until your supplies run out, and return to the city. The party can only lug 200 bullets, 8 grenades, 4 lamps, 4 spare batteries at a time, so your expedition is over after about 10-15 combats or 2 game days of tunnel-crawling. Random events (e.g., some creature smashing a lamp, natives stealing grenades) can lead to faster depletion. Very rarely, you find needed supplies on slain enemies, but for the most part, you have to be careful lest you find yourself fighting with fists or bumbling through dungeons in the dark.

After the first couple hours of gameplay, by the time the characters reach Level 4, there is very little danger from combat. Your hit points are high enough that even when enemies repeatedly ambush you (and get a free round of attacks), they don't pose any risk of death. Combat is a horribly rote affair by which your party members either throw grenades (killing a maximum of 10 enemies) or shoot a pistol (killing a maximum of 6). Technically, the "guard" character can also fire an assault rifle, which kills a maximum of 20 enemies, but the guard always goes last, and there are never so many enemies that you need him to shoot that many bullets by the time the first three characters have acted. Combat swiftly became extremely annoying, and I groaned audibly every time "jaguar cult priests!" appeared in the dungeon while I was just trying to get from one place to another.

My party status not long before I gave up.

I don't know if there's a maximum number of levels, but every character maxed at 40 hit points, so further leveling didn't really do anything for me.

With combat posing no challenge, the only real threat to the party in the dungeons are the traps, which can kill a party member (or the entire party) instantly and are impossible to detect, disarm, or avoid. Every death requires a reload or a trip back to Iquitos for a Level 1 substitute. I typically chose the former.

I'd like to give the game credit for including some obscure element from Incan mythology, but I can't find any evidence that "Imatu" wasn't just invented by the game developers as a vaguely Incan-sounding name.

In the first post, I talked about overland exploration and the process of "completing" a map by exploring every available square, at which point the map is saved permanently. The party gets experience for every new square explored as well as every sector completely mapped. This dynamic continued in the dungeons, although the game mercifully allows you to complete a sector without stepping on the trap squares. There were a couple maps that I couldn't complete even though I hit every visible square. I suspect there were secret doors somewhere, but the game doesn't have a mechanic to search for secret doors, and no amount of bashing into the walls seemed to produce any.

With as much time as I invested in the game, it's annoying not to be able to win it. But I've explored every square multiple times, and I just can't see what I'm missing. There are no walkthroughs online, but a few hints gleaned from a variety of sources suggest that somewhere, something was supposed to convey on me the ability to read Incan runes, and all those gibberish pieces of paper I'd been recovering from natives would start offering clues instead. This never happened. One place suggests that you have to wait in a "poison room" until three of the four party members are dead before you can find the door, but I never found this location.

One of the unavoidable--and thus unfair--traps.

Viewing the game files in Notepad does offer the clues that I was supposed to be getting, but they're pretty cryptic and don't really help: "SEQUENCE IN PAIRS TO FIND THE PATH"; "LEFT IS MORE FROM 4 OVER 4"; "SUCCESS BEGINS AT THE BOTTOM"; "A BATH IS NICE, BUT TWICE?"; and so on. The last two probably refer to the map at the top of this post: a weird maze on the bottom level that keeps shifting paths every time I move from square to square. There's an encounter on the map with a "fountain of black," where you have the option to bathe, which depletes all but 10 hit points. A second bath kills you, so that makes sense. But if success was supposed to begin here, it didn't do me any good.

In a quick GIMLET, I give it:

• 3 points for the game world. The back story is idiotic, but the game deserves some credit for offering a modern South American setting with themes from Incan mythology. This isn't the first RPG to offer a non-fantasy setting (that would be 1978's Space), but it is the first to offer a contemporary setting.

• 3 points for character creation and development. Expedition Amazon offers a Starflight-like approach by which each character occupies a role, and if he dies, you can no longer perform the functions of that role. It also offers a rare mechanic by which you accumulate experience through simple map exploration as well as combat. But the only obvious benefits of the experience--hit points and increased combat skill--max out fairly quickly.

• 0 points for no NPCs.

• 2 points for encounters and foes. There are a lot of "encounters" both outdoors and indoors, such as snake attacks, ambushes by natives, traps, and pits, but there are no role-playing options, or really any options, associated with them. You just take the damage and suck it up, or hope some piece of equipment saves you.

Sometimes, stepping on a random square causes a volcano to explode and kill everyone.

• 2 points for combat. As I described above, there are only a few options, no tactics, and very little danger. Combat is more about resource management (conserving bullets and grenades) than strategy.

• 3 points for equipment. You have a variety of equipment to help you explore, and the basic dynamic of the game is to manage it and make sure you return to the city before key items deplete. There just isn't much that's interesting about it.

Playing the game is a process of routinely returning to this screen to replenish stocks.

• 3 points for economy. You get money by finding and selling artifacts, but after a few hours of gameplay, you have more than you need. The most expensive items in the game are unnecessary.

• 1 point for having a main quest, though with a silly premise.

• 2 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics and sound are both very primitive (as was common in 1983). The interface is simple enough, but at the default speed, everything, from movement to waiting for the results of a combat action, takes too long.

• 2 points for gameplay. It's relatively linear and offers limited replayability. The basic game mechanic is a bit too easy, although clearly some aspects are too hard, since I couldn't figure out how to win no matter how much time I invested.

The final score of 21 is about par for the course for these early-1980s, mostly-forgotten offerings that never had a DOS port. Since I did a u-turn with my "new plan" back in November, I've met a few non-DOS offerings that I'm glad I experienced (e.g., Dungeons of Daggorath, Sword of Fargoal), but none that I've felt are truly great RPGs, even for their eras. What will be the first, do you think? Questron?

What interests me is how well these authors thought they were replicating the tabletop role-playing experience. Some commenters have noted that game magazines made no distinction between "adventure" games and "role-playing" games in the early era; this may be true, but game developers clearly did make distinctions. Perhaps the earliest commercial RPG, Dunjonquest: The Temple of Apshai, begins with a long description of role-playing and how Apshai replicates the experience on the computer. So does Expedition Amazon. The manual opens with a section titled "What is a Fantasy Role Playing Game?," and it mentions all the conventions of the genre--attributes, character development, player identification with the character, economy, equipment--while carefully skirting the fact that Expedition Amazon makes poor use of all of them. Though, as always, we have to remember the technology limitations of the time.

A reviewer named Johnny Wilson covered Expedition Amazon in the August 1984 Computer Gaming World, calling it "a very enjoyable game that doesn't take itself too seriously," but he goes on to say, "For me, it's much more satisfying to adventure in this manner than to deal with a limited parser in a text only game," suggesting that he didn't have a lot of basis for comparison. His review does provide an interesting window on what players thought was fun back in the early 1980s:

One of the most satisfying features of this adventure game was that by having four player characters, I could have a group over and play the game together. We had great fun laughing at each other's misfortunes; harassing one another for inept shooting; and generally suggesting mutiny toward whoever happened to be piloting the boat or leading the expedition. We would name at least one of the characters for someone we didn't like and would absolutely refuse to give medical aid to them, regardless of what happened to them.

The limited gameplay doesn't remotely support this depth of engagement. It doesn't even really treat the four party members as individual characters, and harassing someone for "inept shooting" is to harass him for the outcome of a 1d6 roll. The idea of four friends huddled in front of an Apple II, hooting and hollering about the twists of fate in Expedition Amazon--not to mention what the review calls "sparkling graphics and gags"--makes me want to cry a little.

Cue peals of laughter from four desperately lonely individuals.

I wish I knew more about the game's author, Willard Phillips. MobyGames doesn't have him credited on any other titles. [Later edit: Mr. Phillips later commented below, and I have more information about him in a later posting.] As I noted in the opening post, Greg "Moebius" Malone and David "Dr. Cat" Shapiro, both of whom would go on to work at Origin Systems, are credited in the Apple II version. At first, I thought this was quite surprising, but it turns out that Penguin Software's stable of employees or contractors included a lot of future Origin employees, including Dallas Snell, Denis Loubet, and Richard Garriott himself (he's credited for graphics on 1985's Ring Quest). Penguin (later Polarware) has only one other RPG on its list: 1984's Xyphus.

If any later reader comes along and knows the secret to winning Expedition Amazon, feel free to drop a comment and I'll see if I can pull off a victory screen. [Later edit: I did it! On my own!] Until then, it's time to move on and get back into a regular schedule. It's been so long since I played Tunnels & Trolls: Crusaders of Khazan that I no longer remember what I'm doing. I'm thinking it makes sense to start the game over with a new party; I'm also motivated to do this because my characters seem to have suffered an irreversible loss of attributes. But I don't want to do that right away, so I'm temporarily removing the game from the active list and moving on to Lord of the Rings, Vol. I to the next position. I'll come back to Khazan later in the year.

Sorry for the long silence, everyone. I can't promise it won't happen again, but I'll do my best.