Die Drachen von Laas: Ausgelagert! (with Summary and Rating)

The in-game image of Tatzelwurm, one of the two dragons that needs to be defeated.

      

Die Drachen von Laas

Germany

ATTIC Entertainment Software (developer and publisher)

Released in 1991 for DOS, Amiga, Atari ST

Date Started: 14 October 2017
Date Ended: 31 October 2017

Total Hours: Buck spent 23 to win it; I spent 9 playing and interpreting what Buck sent me

Difficulty: Moderate (3/5); my best guess for a German-language player

Final Rating: 36

Ranking at Time of Posting: 199/267 (75%)

I had a couple of replies to my call for German assistance with Drachen von Laas, including one commenter named Buck who dove into the project, spent 23 hours on it, and sent me nearly 20 pages of text on his experience, with associated maps and images.

This isn't the first time that I'll be commenting (and, ultimately, rating) based heavily on someone else's experience (I previously did it with Time Horn); the idea leaves me a little uncomfortable, but it might have to become part of the reality of this blog if I ever want to reach the modern era. In any event, it bothers me less with this sort of game, since text adventures tend to give everyone a similar experience. That wouldn't be true if the game had more role-playing options, dialogue options, or combat tactics, but this one doesn't seem to.

Buck's experience belies what I said in my first entry about the parser. I had been hoodwinked by the manual's boasting and my own initial experiences to believe that the developers had thought of most ways that a player would approach a problem. This does not appear to be the case. For instance, once the characters accumulate 7 "gerfs" (the currency of Laas), they can purchase a sword and dagger from the blacksmith, Foroll, in Hyllok. But BUY WEAPONS or BUY SWORD doesn't do anything. You have to use GIVE FOROLL MONEY. Upon reaching a river, DRINK FROM RIVER doesn't work; you have to type DRINK WATER. To get some scales from a dragon, TAKE SCALES (NIMM SCHUPPEN) doesn't work but REMOVE SCALES (ENTFERNE SCHUPPEN) does. There were times that even Buck, a native speaker, couldn't figure out what the game wanted from him even though there was clearly something to do or find. For instance, early in the game, he found a stone cross with an inscription covered by moss. He could find no set of commands that would allow him to scrape, clean, or burn the moss so that he could read the inscription. (He offers the possibility, however, that perhaps there's nothing meant for the player to do with it.)

It's clear that I would have struggled even more finding the right words to use. What seem like minor asides in the area descriptions actually contain key clues, and in the process of translating I could easily have overlooked them. For instance, getting past a bridge troll requires running between its legs. To know that you have to do that, you have to note that in the description, the troll is standing breitbeinig (with legs spread). It never would have occurred to me to regard this as an important part of the description.

If you want to read Buck's full account of the game, I have made his document (with some light editing) available here. What follows is my summary and a mix of his and my commentary, but it's worth looking at his full account if only to see the excellent detail that he supplied me.

As we saw last time, the plot is fairly open-ended: two boys named Smirga and Aszhanti head out from their village of Hyllok, with their parents' reluctant blessings, with the general goal to "find adventure." Smirga is already an accomplished hunter, and Aszhanti has some experience with spells. The town itself has a few resources if you're careful about investigating every item and piece of furniture mentioned in the text. For instance, fiddling with a quiver in Smirga's house will reveal some coins hidden inside it; NIMM MÜNZEN AUS LEDERKÖCHER (TAKE COINS FROM QUIVER) allows you to take them. There are also a few coins in Aszhanti's room that the game doesn't seem to cue at all, but if you type NIMM GELD, you get them.

There are various items of food and beverage to take from the houses, too. You spend some gold immediately to obtain weapons from the blacksmith and the spells LEVI (levitate small things) and FEBR (create flame that can be used in combat or for ignition) from the town mage. Then, it's off to the adventure.
    

A pretty image of a fishing village.

     
Like most text adventures, Laas offers a relatively open world, though it's somewhat illusory in that the characters must find items or spells, or simply develop in skill, before they can progress in some areas. You feel this out in typical text adventure fashion, mapping until you hit a dead end or an unbeatable enemy, and then head off in a different direction. Success in puzzle-solving occasionally depends on having the right character active. Only Aszhanti can cast spells, for instance, and only Smirga can catch fish.

Some of the episodes Buck related include:

• The youths come upon some farmers bringing in the harvest ahead of a storm. HELP FARMERS results in some food and a safe place to rest for up to three nights.

      

The farmhouse.

      

• A bridge troll prevents passage and demands a goat. When asked for a goat, the farmers above complain that they've given all their goats to the troll. The youths must pass by scurrying between his legs.

• In a swamp lives a witch named Sabrina. She turns the youths into frogs the moment they enter, ending the game. Later, they run into a magician named Skeeve who gives them a quest to retrieve a stolen spell from Sabrina--and supplies them with a magic cape to help. Buck had to experiment a lot to solve the quest. The solution involved sneaking into the house when Sabrina was away, putting on the cloak to hide, and doing nothing at all while Sabrina returned, cast a spell, and left again. He was then able to pick up the spell scroll and return it to Skeeve for a reward.

     

This witch is definitely not teenaged.

     

• The boys come to an abandoned fishing village. The residents are gathered in a pub, discussing the troubles posed by a sea monster named Tuatara who prevents them from fishing. They offer 150 gerfs to the boys if they defeat the creature, and they equip them with a boat and harpoon. Tuatara can be killed, but the better way is to talk to him (he expresses surprise, as no one has ever talked to him before) and ask him to help the fishermen, at which point he rounds up a bunch of fish for them. The latter option confers an increase in reputation along with the gold, but it depends on saying exactly the right words to Tuatara, and Buck couldn't figure it out in his first pass.

      

Tuatara expresses surprise that someone is talking to him.

    

• The city of Scarbloom, largest city in Laas, offers several opportunities for the boys to increase their attributes by giving to a beggar and paying for training and spells. The king lives in a palace and is seeking dragon hunters.

     

An image from Scarbloom.

     

• Scarbloom also presents an interesting role-playing encounter, when a shopkeeper named Gultiba asks the boys to murder his wife's lover. He offers 700 gerfs for the act, which is enough to tempt even a player trying to play "good." Buck caught the lovers in flagrante but was unable to bring himself to kill the man, instead telling him to run away. The man flees, promising "never again with a married woman." This increased the boys' reputation. Later, Buck told Gultiba that the man was dead and got the reward anyway.

       

Accepting an assassination contract.

     
Some combats appear fixed, such as a troll that guards a cave entrance, some random, such as a goblin who wanders the roads. Enemies include the "robber fly" I described last time, goblins, trolls, boars, orcs, ogres, werewolves, slimes, and demons. Some do respawn, and it is possible to grind for both experience and gold. Zombies and werewolves are particularly dangerous since they can cause a wounded character to turn into them.

In combat, Smirga generally engages in physical attacks while Aszhanti supports with spells. The LEVI spell sometimes confounds enemies and gives Smirga an extra attack. Later, in Scarbloom, the player can purchase KUBL (ball lightning) and TOPA (confusion) to increase combat options. There are only five spells total. I didn't get the impression from Buck's account that any of the normal combats (i.e., the ones that don't require some kind of puzzle-solving) were particularly hard, as long as you take care to rest, eat, drink, and heal when hit points get too low.
       

Exchanging blows in combat, with the player specifying an action for both characters each round.

      
The characters are rewarded with gold and weapon and armor upgrades in some combats. Gold plays a significant role in the game, as many key puzzle items have to be purchased. Some of them can be sold to random NPC peddlers after the player is done with them.

Through combat, puzzle-solving, and practice with spells and weapons, the characters develop consistently through the game. The "strength" attribute, which acts more like a level title, progresses from "Mama's Boy" to titles like "Swashbuckler," "Muscle Man," and "Gladiator." Azhanti's "astral" skill goes through titles like "Illusionist" and "Mage." Fame goes from "Nobody" to "Barely Noticeable," "Notable," and "Well-Known."
      

You know you've trained as much as you possibly can when the cost of training keeps getting higher than your gold inventory.

     
As the characters wander, they must deal with hunger and thirst. The hunger level is shared by the characters and sated with various items of food found throughout the game. Thirst levels are individual. A river and a lake offer a regular supply of both water and fish. Eating and drinking also restore hit points.

Miscellaneous notes:
   

• At one point, when trying to go further west, guards stop the characters and note that they cannot proceed because of "orders from ATTIC" (the game's developer): the area isn't finished. The idea was further adventures could be found down that road; these, of course, were never developed.

       

Smart-ass guards prevent further travel west.

     

• The game re-uses much of its imagery. Images for the swamp and hill country are the same as the village center in Hyllok, for instance.

• There's a day/night cycle in the game. Stores are closed at night, and different enemies appear. At nighttime, the text descriptions stop telling you where the available exits are. You can SLEEP UNTIL MORNING, which restores hit points, but if you sleep in a dangerous location you'll get automatically killed. Scarbloom has a hotel.

• Buck never found a use for the UNSI spell, which turns items temporarily invisible. 

• You can't leave items on the ground because NPCs wander by and pick them up.

     
Winning the game involves getting strong enough to kill Laas's two dragons, Lindwurm to the north and Tatzelwurm to the south. Tatzelwurm breathes poison but is immune to fire; Lindwurm breathes fire. To defeat them, the player first has to solve Skeeve's quest and get as a reward a scarab that makes the wearer immune to poison. He then has to reach Tatzelwurm by using a rope (purchased in Scarbloom) to climb down a cliff. It took Buck a while to figure out how to do this because he missed the existence of a tree, to which the rope must be tied, in the area description.

Fanatics who worship Tatzelwurm attack the characters and smash the scarab, so you have to purchase a jug in Scarbloom to hide it. You also have to get it re-charged by the mage in Hyllok, which Buck only figured out by showing the scarab to a dozen NPCs.

Thus prepared, the scarab protects against Tatzelwurm's breath when the boys enter his cave. Buck defeated the dragon in a 10-round battle, but he'd engaged in enough grinding with the characters that they had plenty of hit points. After the battle, the player must remove the dragon's scales and pay the Scarbloom blacksmith 500 gerfs to create a fireproof shield to use against Lindwurm.
      

Lindwurm circles his abandoned fortress.

      
Lindwurm is a three-headed dragon, and killing him takes a bit longer because you have to cut off each of his heads. But the shield protects from his breath, and again all of Buck's grinding paid off when he was able to defeat the dragon on the first try. Killing Lindwurm causes the endgame text to appear, which Buck offered in translation.
      

We both grab a dragon's head and begin the descent to Scarbloom. Our fight did not stay unnoticed. At the base of the cliff we meet a small group of people who at first stare at us in disbelief, but then, as we show them the dragon's heads, cheer us in unison and carry us to Scarbloom on their shoulders, while a few of them running ahead to spread the happy news in the city. No surprise then that the whole city is afoot as we arrive with our victory parade. The streets are full of people who cheer us, amongst others we recognize Yarom and later Gultiba and Nichidor, too. As we reach the marketplace, busy hands have already erected a pedestal, on which King Dolmus is waiting for us. We climb, among cheers of the crowd and flowers thrown by young women, up to the king who raises his arms and asks the people to be quiet.

"People of Laas! Finally the plague of the two ghastliest monsters which have ever haunted Laas is behind us."

(Thundering applause)

"Smirga and Aszhanti, our two young friends here, from the far away village of Hyllok in the western hill country, were the ones to put an end to the dragons."

"Aszhanti and Smirga live long, long, long!"

"We are all indebted to them, and they shall receive a fitting reward!"

"Smirga shall become, in spite of his young age, trainer of our troops, because he has proven to be a better fighter than any other man in this country. And Aszhanti shall be mage of the court, that he may perfect his art further and noone will ever dare to challenge him to a magic fight"

We thank Domus for the recognition of our deeds, as at the moment a more peaceful task is quite welcome.

The festivities, drinking and dancing went on for a long time in this great night for Laas. We also don't want to keep it a secret that there will be some further incidents in the life of Smirga and Aszhanti, but this is another story. For now we close the annals of Laas. Who knows, maybe we'll see the two of them one day and accompany them through wild adventures and dangerous fights.

Buck's comment here--"Wait, I get rewarded with work?! I have plenty of that already."--seems apt.

Checking a walkthrough after winning, Buck found that he missed a few things. Apparently, it was possible to cut off Tatzelwurm's tail and bathe in his blood for some benefit. He thinks that if he hadn't killed Tuatara, his reputation would have been higher (it apparently goes to "Heroic"). Somewhere, he could have gotten a spear called "Zeron" that would have made the dragon fights even easier.
       

Buck's map of the overall game world.

     
Overall, the game feels a lot like an all-text Quest for Glory. Its footprint is about the same size, and it balances deterministic puzzle-solving with random combats and a few authentic role-playing options. I wish there were more text-RPG hybrids like this, and I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to play it directly.

Based mostly on Buck's narrative, and in consultation with him, I offer the following GIMLET:

• 5 points for the game world, a small but well-realized medieval setting with a realistic geography and evocative in-game descriptions. I also like that the plot is low-key.

• 2 points for character creation and development. There's no creation. The small set of attributes increases steadily throughout the game and has palpable results in combat, but it's a pretty limited system overall.

     

A mid-game character sheet for the two boys.

    

• 5 points for NPC interaction. This seems like a strong element of the game. Buck reports that the NPCs have character and some unique reactions to items and questions. The parser supports a relatively flexible dialogue with NPCs, and you learn a lot about the game world and its quests from them. Some of them wander the world and keep to a day/night cycle.

      

The shopkeeper Gultiba, a key NPC.

     

• 4 points for encounters and foes. The enemies don't seem special--D&D standards without many special attacks--but at least some respawn (unlike a lot of text adventures). Too many of the puzzles required fighting with the parser to get the right outcome, and most were simple inventory puzzles, but the few solid role-playing puzzles help boost this score.

• 2 points for magic and combat. The combat system is, alas, pretty simplistic. The handful of spells don't often do anything even in places where it seems they should solve a puzzle.

• 2 points for equipment. Smirga gets a couple of upgrades, from nothing to chainmail, and from a sword to an axe. Most of the items are utility or puzzle items.

• 5 points for economy. Gold (or "gerfs") remains relevant throughout the game for purchasing key inventory items (including the final shield) and buying spells and training. If you miss opportunities to make gold from side-quests, you can always grind for it. Most or all inventory items can be sold.

• 4 points for quests, including the main quest to kill the two dragons and several side quests that support character development and wealth and offer role-playing options.

• 2 points for graphics, sound, and interface. No text adventure is going to do great here. The images are mostly just window-dressing and do not offer clues for solving puzzles. There is no sound, and the text parser offers a few problems. Buck reports, however, that the descriptions are well-written.

• 5 points for gameplay. It earns them for being nonlinear and offering the right length of gameplay for the right challenge. 

            

A nice image of a hotel in the capital city.

      
That gives us a final score of 36, which seems about right. I would definitely recommend it for German-language speakers. It seems to offer enough RPG elements to be a true hybrid and not just a text adventure with a couple RPG nods.

German magazines tended to rate the game low from 60% (PC-Spiele '92) to 78% (Aktueller Software Markt), yet the text of the reviews are mostly positive, praising the language, the challenge of the puzzles, and even the parser. I think the scores ended up being so low because they were computed by a formula that included graphics as a key element. Many of the reviews mention that while this is a solid text adventure, text adventures in general are out-of-date.

As I mentioned in the first entry, Laas appears to have been written in the 1980s and only published in 1991 when the authors, Hans-Jürgen Brändle and Guido Henkel, created ATTIC Entertainment Software. They would soon be known for more enduring RPGs, including Spirit of Adventure (1991) and the Realms of Arkania trilogy (1992-1996). The company dissolved in 2001 when the founders were unable to agree on a future direction. Brändle died in 2005 in Las Vegas. Henkel moved to California, focused for a time on his music career, and later founded a mobile game company called G3 Studios.

I want to thank all the commenters who assisted, particularly Buck and Zardas, in making this review possible. I look forward to continuing the adventure soon with Spirit of Adventure.