Dungeons of Avalon: Defeated (with Final Rating)

The party meets its demise at the well-drawn face of the Dark Lord.

   

Dungeons of Avalon

Zeret Software (developer); CompuTec Verlag (publisher)
Released 1991 for the Amiga in Amiga Fun; 1992 in Amiga Mania
Date Started: 2 August 2015
Date Ended: 5 August 2015

Total Hours: 16

Reload Count: 14

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5) until last few hours, then Hard (4/5)
Final Rating: 31

Ranking at Time of Posting: 108/195 (55%)

The other night, I made a pivotal decision to keep playing Dungeons of Avalon instead of writing another blog post about it. In some ways, it's too bad I didn't. You would have enjoyed the amusing experience of reading another complimentary post about the game, probably calling it "satisfying" and "well-paced," followed by a post full of wild, incomprehensible rage. As it is, you're going to get something in between.

I'll say this: the game is pretty good through the 5 dungeon levels. The dungeon continued to be well-constructed, full of navigation puzzles, riddles, and clues--probably not quite as good as Dungeon Master, but better than Eye of the Beholder. The developer showed a talent for testing the player's credulity in the direction of the dungeon corridors, snaking corridors through places that you would have insisted must be solid wall, suddenly opening up new areas when you thought you had a complete map, and offering buttons and pressure plates that didn't just open new areas but utterly changed the configuration of areas. A flick of a switch might turn a huge, open, 20 x 20 room into a twisty maze. It was fun to map and navigate.

Level 3 of the dungeon. The gray squares in the middle are walls that appear when a pressure plate is tripped. Unfortunately, one blocks the way back to the stairs to Level 2--unless you take a teleporter. But if you do that, you can never return and you have to reload or restart the game.

Throughout the dungeon portion, combat was moderately easy, particularly thanks to the game's liberal approach to saving and loading and the frequent placement of rest squares. Each new dungeon level provided two monsters, progressing through gnoms, worms, trolls, vultures, silver ninjas, gnom fighters, master trolls, gnom kings, spiders, and master gnoms. Bigger and bigger parties emerged, but they were still quite readily defeatable, especially when I started to get mass-damage spells like the monk's "Stormfist," the healer's "Flame Ball," and best of all the magician's "Air to Fire."

Spiders and their poison were menaces on lower levels.

 
The game offers a couple of "walking dead" scenarios, and I learned that it's best not to push any buttons or use any keys until you have the rest of the level mapped and are prepared to note the specific changes. To get back to the surface after you complete Level 3, you have to be sure to re-set one switch; otherwise, the return path is blocked. Level 5 has three keyed doors--two leading to the same area, so you only have to open one--and only two keys. I unlocked the wrong two doors and had to reload a much earlier save to replay the entire level again.

If I have one major complaint about the dungeon, it's the annoyance of having to trek back to the surface to get trained and increase levels. Temples and stores show up in dungeon squares, and you don't really need either, but the only training facilities are in the two towns. Because it's such a pain to retrace steps--twice!--to go get trained, I did it very rarely and ended up increasing multiple levels every time I returned to the surface.

I did have a period of major frustration on Level 4, when suddenly my characters stopped being effective against enemies. The combat scroll kept telling me that most of my attacks "failed," and only spells seemed to do consistent damage. I spent a lot of time sleeping at rest squares to restore spell points, and progress was maddeningly slow. Then I realized that the reason I wasn't having any luck is that all my characters were blind. The spell "Eyesight" restored them, and everything was all right again.
 

Level 4 had three ways to the stairs to Level 5, labeled "easiest," "medium," and "heaviest." I explored them all, of course. I think the "easiest" was actually the hardest. Anyway, note that two of my characters are (BL)ind here, but I didn't notice that until much later.

 
Other miscellaneous stuff about exploring the levels:

• In addition to the messages found in various corridor spaces, there were three "information scrolls" that imparted clues when read. I don't know why the developer chose to put these three pieces of information on scrolls; none of the clues were particularly important.

• The economy in the game is horribly broken. From the moment you complete the dragon's quest on the first level, you have more than enough gold than you need for everything.

• Shops never sell anything useful; in fact, they all have the same inventory of paltry starting equipment. One good thing: shops keep what you sell them, so you can use them as a kind of inventory-holding system if you're not sure if you need particular items.

• The "identify" command in shops was never useful. Every time I used it on a piece of equipment, I was told it was already identified.

• Huge attribute increases accompanied each level-up. My characters started with their best attributes in the 10-12 range and finished with many of them in the 80-100 range.

The lead character's attributes near the end of the game.

• I wasn't clear about this before, but only the first 4 characters can attack in melee range. The rear two can use missile weapons. If you equip such characters with daggers, they are somehow able to throw daggers every combat round. These rear characters didn't take any physical damage for the entirety of the dungeon; only in the castle, when enemies get their own spells, did they become vulnerable.

• Spell points remained conservative throughout the game. After a recharge, mages and clerics can maybe cast their most important spells 4 or 5 times. You can't just spend the endgame spamming nukes.

The healer's final list includes resurrection ("New Live") and the useful "Restoration," which returns everyone's hit points to maximum, as well as mass-damage spells like "Flame Ball" and "Frost Breath."

• Monsters never do respawn, so you never have to worry about getting attacked in places that you've cleared. It also makes the game a bit deterministic, but because of the level caps, there are way more experience points available than you could possibly need.

• Kham's face kept showing up before key areas, asking either standard riddles ("When you look in me, you see yourself") or bits of lore from mythology ("Tell me the owner of the sword Excalibur!"). There were no dungeon messages to help with the latter, except on one of the castle levels, and I thought a couple might have been a little unfair.

This isn't even correct. Charon ferries you across Acheron.

• Starting on Level 3, you find lots of artifact weapons and armor in treasure chests, including a whole set of stuff belonging to someone named "Ara." The loot is unbalanced towards knights and warriors, though. I never found a single magic weapon that my thief was able to wield.

• The monster portraits are so much fun that here's a bunch of them:

 

Does this one's name make any sense in German?

Level 5 required me to run around and find a series of six messages that, together, made up the phrase THE UNICORN IS ALIVE. I had to figure out a complex series of wall switches and pressure plates to open an area, find a key, then close the area and open a new area (but in the same general space) with a door. On the other side, I bellowed the phrase, opened a chest, and at last found the Rune.

Believe it or not, "Leave it" or "Go away" would have been better options.

         
I returned to the surface, shuffled through my equipment at the shop, and visited the training guild. Each character rose 4 levels, and then the game told me that they had achieved the "highest level." (This was Level 16.) I had a momentary pang here--you know how I feel about level caps--but I rationalized that it wouldn't be too bad if the game was over quickly.

This is never a message I want to see.

         
Now, when this all happened, it was about 07:00 in the morning. That's right: the game had kept me playing feverishly all night, and just about ruined my productivity for the next day. But I crawled into bed feeling good about Dungeons of Avalon in general. It had provided me with a decent challenge, and while it wasn't going to win any awards for combat or economy, I was confident in a GIMLET at least slightly north of the "recommended" level.

Khan gives me a scroll to defeat the Dark Lord at what I assume is the endgame.

      
So you're the developer of a game, and you've constructed things in such a way that brings your player and his characters to this point. You're 12 hours in, the player has had a moderate amount of fun, you've challenged him with a easy-moderate difficulty level, and you've level-capped him well below the sum of all the experience points in the game. What is it time for?

1. A single-level castle with a few memorably difficult combats, culminating briskly in the endgame.

2. Four castle levels! Combats nearly every step! New monsters capable of mass-damage spells! Hundreds of thousands of experience points that the characters earn for absolutely no reason! An impossible final battle!

If you answered #1, you have a better sense of decency than these developers. This is the danger that you find with independent games. Big game studios might sometimes play it safe in a way that leads to banal results, but at least they usually, for the sake of the market, insist on a reasonably winnable game.

The castle had some of the same navigational puzzles as the dungeon, but not as many, and by this time I had the "Eagle Eye" spell, so I was able to rely on it instead of mapping. That was the only small grace.

A well-done automap.

The battles in the castle were relentless. Some corridors had them literally every step. Quickly, I got so sick of them that I tried running from every combat, but it fails about 50% of the time, and when it does, enemies get a free set of attacks--in slow combat mode. That was less fun than fighting the interminable battles.

A typical party in the final areas.

Finally, after a good four hours of slugging, I made it to the fourth floor of the castle. The area consists of a few treasure chests, a store, a temple, and--tucked away in a nondescript corner--the final battle with Rhateph, the Dark Lord.

For the first time in CRPG history, the villain's smack talk is entirely justified. (Except that only one of us is a human.)

I've said this before and have been proven wrong, but here goes: the final battle is simply unwinnable. The Dark Lord is capable of killing one character every round, no save, but that's not the worst part of it. The worst part is his 13 "fire troll" allies, each of which either makes a devastating attack or casts a devastating spell every round. There is absolutely no hope of defeating them. I reloaded about 25 times, trying every strategy I could think of, but there wasn't a single combat in which the trolls didn't kill both my spellcasters in the first round--before the characters could even act--and mass damage spells are the only way that enemies like this will fall.

The Dark Lord's allies destroy my party in the first round.

In those 25 attempts, my entire party died within 2 rounds in 23 of them; the other two took 3 rounds. There are no spells to protect against the magic of either the fire trolls or the Dark Lord. There are no spells or potions to improve the initiative of the characters to ensure they act fist.

To defeat the Dark Lord, you're supposed to use the "anti-aura" scroll on him. Maybe 1/4 of the time, a character was able to do that before dying. So I tried battles in which I concentrated every attack on the Dark Lord, hoping to at least kill him before his allies killed me. No dice. I thought maybe I could slowly whittle down the enemy party, so I tried to concentrate on killing some trolls, then fleeing in the second round, getting everyone resurrected, and re-engaging. That didn't work, either. Not only did it take 5 tries before I could kill even a single troll, the entire party re-spawns when you leave combat and return.

Using the "anti-aura" spell, and hoping that the Dark Lord doesn't decide to kill this character first.

I don't think party composition is the issue. I looked at the spells available to the other classes, and none of them offer anything to resist the enemy's magic. The whole things is so ridiculous that I felt I must be missing something. A switch that turns off all spells? An alternate location to attack the Dark Lord, without his allies? Another search produced nothing. About this time, I heard from commenter Quido, who offered me his set of maps from the game. They showed nothing that I hadn't found. More important, he said that he was unable to win the game--despite fully mapping it--for the same reason.

If this was a DOS game, I'd do something cheesy like hex-edit the characters to godlike attributes, just so I could get the endgame screen. This being an Amiga game, I don't know how to do that. I'm left only able to say Gib ein französisch Kuss auf die Ziege von deinen Nächsten, Herr Akbiyik!, offer a $50 Amazon gift card bounty to anyone who can prove they won the game and explain how, and move on to the GIMLET:

• 4 points for the game world. There's a decent back story, a fairly clear quest, and a slightly-original approach with the spirit of the previous hero helping you along the way.

• 4 points for character creation and development. There's a somewhat standard, but still interesting, set of races, classes, and attributes. Leveling is swift and rewarding throughout the game.

• 2 point for NPC interaction in just a couple of places, plus the ability to add slain NPCs found in the dungeon to your party (I didn't really explore this).

• 3 points for encounters and foes. The enemies offered by the game are generally original, but not very memorable. Until the last levels, they can't do anything but engage in melee combat. Even those capable of spellcasting, towards the end, are only capable of a single, generic, mass-damage spell. The riddles get a point.

In a game where monsters were generally well-designed, this one is the exception.

• 3 points for magic and combat. There aren't really any combat tactics, but at least the battles last quickly. The magic system is pretty decently-balanced, with limited spell points keeping you from over-relying on it.

The end of a tough battle. Too bad all those experience points are worthless.

• 3 points for equipment, basically a standard set of weapons, armor, potions, scrolls, and such. It shares my frustration with Dungeon Master for not telling you anything about weapon damage and other statistics. Everyone gets a ring slot, but there's only one ring.

• 2 points for economy. While you need money for initial equipment, healing, and leveling up, a stash you find within the first hour keeps you going for the entire game. My party had tens of thousands of unspent gold pieces at the end.

Wasting money on healing in a temple, because why not?

• 3 points for a main quest and at least one side quest (the Level 1 dragon), plus lots of side-areas to the dungeon that you technically don't need to solve to progress.

• 4 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics are grotesque and beautiful--probably the best part of the game. I give a point for some limited sound effects. The controls suck a bit--you can move with the keypad, but everything else, even the combat screens, requires mouse navigation.

• 3 points for gameplay. If the game had just consisted of the dungeon section, with the difficulty encountered there, it would have earned a 5, maybe. The castle section ruins the good will that the brisk, moderately-challenging dungeon section built up.

The availability of so many rest spots makes the game a little easy--until the final areas.

Add them up, and we get a final score of 31, just below what I consider "recommended," but notably the highest score I've ever given to a diskmag game. Games you get with your monthly subscription aren't supposed to be epic, but this is a reasonably good dungeon crawler for the money. If only the developers had known when to quit.

There's not much else to say about a game that's gone mostly unnoticed by history. I found one review, in the May 1992 Amiga Joker, which starts off saying something like, "Never was a robust dungeon so inexpensive!" The review praises the quality of the game in a subgenre (diskmag games) that rarely delivers quality. I'll let my German commenters tell me if there's anything else notable in the review; the skewed angle is giving me headaches trying to OCR the page, and I don't feel like typing it all into Google translate.

Of the developers, it appears that lead designer Hakan Akbiyik's career lasted from around 1989 to 1994, with graphics and programming credits on a lot of minor games like this. His LinkedIn profile indicates that he transferred to web development in the late 1990s. The bigger success story is "monster designer" Frank Matzke, who spent some time as a graphic designer, transitioned to marketing and management, and now works as an executive for Bethesda Germany.

Doesn't being silver kind of remove the point of being a ninja?

"Monster graphics" are separately credited to Klaus Ehrhardt, who has a smaller graphics portfolio of 4 games. Rudolf Stember, responsible for the sound, went on to a very long career in sound design, joining the German company Factor 5 and moving with it to the U.S. in 1996. He still works for the company, now based in California. "Level designer" Thomas Jakowatz has only this and a game called Logical to his name.

Despite my dissatisfaction with the ending to the game, I'm mildly curious to see what the team came up with for Dungeons of Avalon II: Island of Darkness in 1992. Judging by images and videos online, it appears to be the exact same game with new dungeons. Even the town graphics are the same.

It's worth recapping where we are with German-published games. Legend of Faerghail: Couldn't finish because of a bug that made an entire castle disappear. Dragonflight: Couldn't finish because of a bug that kept the endgame video from playing. The Ormus Saga: Couldn't finish because I ran out of things to do. Dungeons of Avalon: Couldn't finish because of an unwinnable final battle. That's 0-for-4. Will Antares break the trend, or will it find a way to screw me, too?