Game 261: Heimdall (1991)

                

Heimdall

United Kingdom

The 8th Day (developer); Core Design (U.K. publisher); Virgin (U.S. publisher)

Released in 1991 for Amiga; 1992 for Atari ST and DOS; 1993 for Acorn; 1994 for Sega CD

Date Started:  1 September 2017

     

Here's a potentially-controversial question: Do the British deliberately avoid copying or adapting anything American? Even our best stuff? I wouldn't expect a show inspired by Jackass called Wanker, or a reality show called Mersey Shore, but come on--what about The Thameside Redemption? Barmy Men? It's Always Sunny in Leeds? God knows it goes the other way all the time: Three's Company, Shameless, Top Gear, Alfie, Life on Mars . . . why do we have an American version of The Office but no British version of Parks and Recreation?

I ask because among British CRPGs of this era (and, for all I know, any era) you see an almost conscious effort to avoid checking out anything happening on the other side of the Atlantic. There are a couple notable exceptions, including the Ultima clone The Ring of Darkness (1982) and the Dungeon Master-inspired Knightmare (1991), but once you get past them, you have a host of quasi-RPGs that seem to willfully shun conventions established by Ultima, Wizardry, the Gold Box series, or any of their tabletop parents. Check out my reviews of Seas of Blood (1985), Swords & Sorcery (1986), Heavy on the Magick (1986), Galdregon's Domain (1989), Dragon Lord (1990) Lords of Chaos (1990), HeroQuest (1991), or Moonstone (1991), and you'll find a series of games that are highly original, owing very little to any predecessor, but in ways that are more bizarre than admirable. And it's not like they weren't seeing American RPGs in the UK: every major title got a release on the Amiga and re-distributed through British publishers. But for some reason, British developers deliberately avoided any conventions and tropes from those games--and in my opinion, they were poorer for it.

Heimdall, from the short-lived developer The 8th Day, is a perfect example of an RPG that would have been better if it had been derivative rather than original. It has several things going for it, including a Norse theme, decent graphics and sound, and an isometric perspective--something that is still rare in American RPGs in 1991. (The game looks a lot like Cadaver, a contemporary release with an identical perspective, though not an RPG.) These elements could have been the foundation of a decent dungeon crawler, if only the developers had been willing to rip off Dungeons and Dragons for the character development system or Dungeon Master for in-dungeon puzzles or Might and Magic for the combat system. Instead, they half-assed the mechanics and ended up with a pretty but bland, trivially easy game that seems too long even though I suspect I'll win in less than 20 hours.
   

The visuals in the game are often impressive, but you don't find much to do in these landscapes.

   

The opening sequence and manual both recount the same backstory in relatively high-quality animated graphics (although in that exaggerated, cartoonish graphical style that I'm personally not fond of). Ragnarok is coming, and to tip the odds against the gods, Loki steals Odin's sword, Frey's spear, and Thor's hammer and hides them all on Earth. Fearful of stepping on Earth during Ragnarok lest they become mortal, the gods come up with a plan by which Thor impregnates a young girl named Ingrid, who gives birth to Heimdall, a mortal who can retrieve the weapons on behalf of the gods.
      

Apparently, Wilford Brimley should have played Loki in The Avengers.

Title cards narrate the action.

Heimdall's mother has an appropriate reaction to getting pregnant in one night.

     

At the beginning of the game, the player engages in three minigames, his success at which determines Heimdall's starting strength. A lack of a joystick (for which the game was principally designed) and confusing keyboard shortcuts meant that I had to play these games several times before I got any good at them. The first involves throwing axes at a board through which a young maiden has stuck her head, hoping to shear off her eight braids. The cursor is agitating throughout this mini-game, but it otherwise isn't too difficult.
      

She doesn't look thrilled to be here.

     

In the second one, Heimdall races against a timer to chase down and grab a pig. In the third, he has to make it from one end of a longboat to the other to grab a bag of gold, avoiding or killing various warriors who jump in his path.

You have the option to avoid these games and accept a standard, mediocre character. Otherwise, your performance is supposed to determine two things: Heimdall's starting attributes and which NPCs you can invite to join your party. As for the first one, I didn't notice any difference. Whether I took the stock character, performed horribly in the games, or triumphed at them, my Heimdall invariably started with 50 health, 50 strength, 50 dexterity, 45 luck, and 50 runelore. I wondered if someone hacked my version of the game to ensure that this happens, but I watched an Amiga LP of the character creation process in which Heimdall's starting statistics are nearly identical (luck and runelore are reversed), so I don't know.

Once Heimdall's statistics are established, you select five other people to bring aboard your party. Here, I did notice the number and quality of the available NPCs changing based on my performance. NPCs occupy seven classes--warrior, berserker, wizard, druid, shipwright, blacksmith, and navigator. (Heimdall himself is "chieftain.") You scroll through the available selections and pick, I guess, the ones with the best statistics. If you did poorly in the games, the ones with the best statistics are pretty bad.
     

Evaluating team members and adding them to the party.

    

As the game begins, Heimdall's ship appears on a map of Midgard. From this map, you choose the two characters (from your party of five) who will actually accompany him on his next adventure. The other three just sit in the boat.

Clicking on an island takes you directly to the island's dungeon; each island has one. Dungeons range in size from moderate to very small. None is so large that you have to map it. The party thwarts traps, fights monsters, and gathers treasure necessary for success on later islands.
      

The starting game world.

      

Controls manage to be confusing despite being simple enough that you can play the entire game with just a joystick. The keyboard is particularly vexing. Although you can move with the numberpad, the 7, 9, 1, and 3 keys do not move you diagonally. To do that, you have to simultaneously hold down combinations of 4, 8, 6, and 2; for instance, you hold down 8 and 6 to go northeast. If there is justice in the universe, the developer responsible for that gets kicked in the testicles every time someone fires up this game. The mouse is a safer option for moving, particularly since you have to use the mouse for combat anyway, but I have various problems emulating the mouse that make it difficult to forgive the failure to include a more robust keyboard alternative.

The main game interface is free of any icons and options, which is unusual for the era. That's mostly because all you can do on the main interface is move. No other commands do anything. If you want to open a chest, you move up to it. If you want to attack a monster, you walk up into his face. Right-clicking the mouse brings you to a separate "options" screen where you can manage inventory, cast spells, check statistics, and save or load the game.

Although two people are traveling with Heimdall, the game depicts the party as a single character. The F1-F3 keys scroll between the character icons for the three characters in the party. The theory is that you choose the character to fight each combat or solve each puzzle based on his strengths. The problem is, Heimdall starts with statistics so superior to his companions that it rarely makes sense not to just use Heimdall for everything. This, indeed, is what I've been doing. The other two party members become basically pack mules, and the guys on the boat are more than useless except for long-term storage. No special talents associated with shipwrights, blacksmiths, or navigators were needed on the first map, and I suspect they're never needed.
      

Heimdall enters a room with an orc guarding a chest.

     

Navigating dungeons is a process of avoiding traps and solving light puzzles, often involving pressure plates that you have to activate in a particular order. For instance, one of the earliest dungeons has three pits that you have to close. Each of six plates in front of the pits closes and opens a different combination, and you have to find the right order to get them all closed.
       

Not quite as hard as Chaos Strikes Back.

     
There are occasional special encounters, but because the only option is to move up to something, it's usually not too difficult to figure out what to do. In the shot below, for instance, I somehow saved this man paralyzed in space by drinking from the chalice on the altar. He gave me a "market pass" in return which got me into an area in another dungeon.
    

Weird. I guess I'll go belly up to the only object of interest in the room and see if that helps.

    

Traps include very visible bear traps and very invisible pit traps. If Heimdall falls in a pit, he gets right back out but loses hit points. Some rooms are full of them. "Detect Trap" scrolls help identify them, and "Disarm Trap" scrolls will generally deactivate them.
      

Heimdall "finds" a pit trap.

Other puzzles involve finding secret doors, using "Remove Wall" spells to strategically remove walls, and using "Revelation" scrolls to find hidden bridges. You often find a spell scroll right before the area in which you need to use it.
      

I had found a "Remove Wall" scroll in the previous chamber, so the solution was obvious.

      

There are between one and maybe six combats in each dungeon, all with one creature at a time. Combat takes you to a separate screen in which a list of all the active characters' weapons and magic scrolls are shown. The enemy immediately starts attacking, so you have to respond quickly. To attack with a weapon, you click on the weapon you want to use and then click "Attack" repeatedly. To cast a spell, you click on the scroll and then "Spell." "Run" is an option if you get scared.
      

Blasting some kind of beast with a spell.

     

There is a bit of a science to timing. If you attack while the image of the enemy is standing inert, there's a good chance that he'll block the attack. The best time to attack is just as he starts to make a move, although this is difficult to time well. You can use "Defend" to block attacks, but I think this just prolongs combat.

If a character dies, the next one steps up to take his place in combat. There are supposedly resurrection scrolls to restore slain characters, but I haven't found any yet. It's a moot point because Heimdall has never died except when I was screwing around just to see what happened.
       

Trading blows in real-time.

      

Slain enemies often carry gold and other items, and you find plenty of items on the ground or in treasure chests. Treasures include food, gold, magic scrolls of various types, weapons, scrolls with clues, keys, potions, and special items that you generally need to give to NPCs along the way. Scrolls are one-use items that make up the game's only magic system. The "Runelore" attribute determines whether you can cast or even interpret the scroll.

Each character only has 12 inventory slots, and they fill up fast, so it's a good idea to use healing items (food and scrolls) and offensive spells pretty much as fast as you find them. I haven't found it useful to carry more than one weapon, so I'm just keeping the best. (Good textual descriptions help determine how much relative damage the items do.) Keys and gold stack, so you want to centralize them on one character to save space. Even with these strategies, "inventory full" messages are a constant annoyance.
    

The three active characters and their jammed inventory.

     
Character development takes two forms. First, there are potions that you can find and buy which increase your various attributes by several points. Second, the game has levels, although I was 2/3 of the way through the first map before my characters leveled from 0 to 1. Only those in the active party leveled, not the ones on the boat. Small boosts in all attributes accompany leveling. Since there isn't a separate experience statistic, I'm not sure what causes leveling, but I suspect it's primarily combat. Enemies respawn in dungeons when you leave and return, so you could grind if necessary.

I explored the islands on the first map in a rough order from the southwest to the northeast. That basically worked, although there were times in which I had to leave a dungeon because I hadn't found a key item yet.
     

I solve a brief inventory puzzle by placing various items in tree branches.

     
A couple of the dungeons had shops, but only one sold anything I really wanted: a strength potion. Otherwise, they had the types of things I was already struggling to use up, like keys, food, and scrolls.
     

If you need a regular sword or axe by this point in the game, you've really messed up.

     
On the last island, I had to kill a serpent that guarded it. I had found a scroll with a "Serpent Killer" spell, but it's a testament to the ease of the game that I forgot about the scroll and had no problem killing the serpent anyway.
      

He looks more hungover than menacing.

      
The only really difficult fight was with a sorcerer in the final dungeon. I was supposed to give him six "Power rune" scrolls to bypass him, but I had only found five during the course of my adventures. The game gave me the option to fight him instead. He nearly killed me, but I was able to take him out with a combination of high-powered spells and melee combat.
     

Isn't accepting five better than getting killed?

      
I had to find a series of keys, rune stones, and gems to get through the later dungeons and ultimately to Thor's hammer. Finding it was graphically amusing--it was so large that my characters could walk on it. They had to use a "Shrink" scroll to reduce it in size to something they could take with them. Here's hoping the Æsir have a way to restore it.
     

I nearly missed the fact that I was walking on the hammer here.

      
Having reclaimed Thor's hammer, I was taken to a new map where I suppose I have to find Frey's spear. The game is boring and easy enough that I was tempted to just watch a video of the endgame and move on, but I'll give it a chance and see if things liven up on Map 2.
      

The game acknowledges my partial victory.

       
Time so far: 6 hours
Reload count: 0, except a couple deliberate times to experiment 

I welcome your comments and hints as always, but I should mention that I had already won the game and scheduled the second entry before this one posted, so don't waste a lot of time with hints and suggestions.