Game 298: Doom Cavern (1980)

I'm issuing a $25 Amazon gift card bounty on the identity of "Morwe."

          

Doom Cavern

United States

Independently developed; published by Synergistic Software

Released in 1980 for Apple II

Date Started: 27 July 2018

Date Ended: 27 July 2018

Total Hours: 2
Difficulty: Easy (2/5)

Final Rating: 11

Ranking at time of posting: 14/299 (5%)

As a longtime Robert Clardy/Synergistic fan, I had been looking forward to Doom Cavern since a commenter named Keith first brought it to my attention back in 2015. From the "Campaign" series of 1978-1982 to the World Builder games of 1988-1993, Synergistic has always taken an unconventional approach to RPGs, freely mixing strategy, adventure, and role-playing elements. Players frequently go from moving armies across enormous landscapes one minute to one-on-one interaction with an NPC the next. I haven't always enjoyed the result, but they've never bored me.

            

The manual promises a computer version of tabletop roleplaying, and the game actually delivers. For a while.

           

Published in 1980, Doom Cavern came out around the same time as Clardy's Odyssey: The Compleat Apventure, which built upon his previous Dungeon Campaign (1978) and Wilderness Campaign (1979; links to my reviews). I rather expected something along the same lines: a basic maze game with lots of random combats and treasures. Thus, when I finally got it working (belated thanks to those in this thread for making that happen), I was shocked to find a fully-realized Dungeons & Dragons-style module in computer form, complete with NPCs, encounters with role-playing choices, and even the use of an adventure-style text parser.

             

A typical encounter on the first level. I can GET RUBY, GET CANDLESTICKS, say the magic word to transform the skull, or go back to the map.

           

None of these things are happening for the first time--the Dunjonquest games starting in 1979 followed a "module" format; we just saw a text/RPG hybrid in Dungeon (1979); and Eamon came out the same year--but it's still rare to find such depth in these early years. It's very different than Synergistic's usual titles, but then again, Robert Clardy didn't program this one. That distinction belongs to an unknown developer going by the name "Morwe," a Tolkien reference.

The backstory is amusing, insisting that the game is set in Norway in CE 1300, but almost immediately segueing into discussions of elves, the blood of Numenor, and an evil wizard from the "Moghul Courts." The setup is that the kings of Hammardoom reigned in peace and prosperity for centuries before an evil necromancer showed up and killed King Hammardoom XVIII. (Haakon V Magnusson is somehow missing from the story.) The kind wizard Rastgoft cast a protective spell around himself and the young prince, Theophan. The necromancer imprisoned them both in the Doom Cavern. He's been growing in power and will soon be strong enough to break the spell and finally execute Theophan. Enter the party.

          

I think the Vikings were gone by 1300, but that's hardly the worst offense against history.

        

You play with three characters assigned to magician, cleric, and fighter classes. During character creation, the game rolls random values from 3 to 18 for the standard D&D set of attributes (strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, and charisma), and you get four chances for each character slot to accept one of the rolls. Otherwise, you have to take the fifth roll, no matter what. After accepting the attributes, you assign the class and race. You don't have to choose one of each class, but it makes sense to do so. The characters don't have any explicit equipment at the outset.

            

I don't like this guy's chances in melee combat.

          

Clerics are told that they don't get spells until Level 2. Magicians can choose one spell from among "Sleep," "Read Magic," and "Read Languages." The selection can only be used once, so it's more like an inventory item for puzzle-solving than a classic D&D spell. Once you enter the dungeon, you can leave to rest, heal, and select a new spell (and delete slain characters to replace them with new ones), but the game warns you not to do this too often or there will be some negative consequence.

          

The assembled party.

       

Once in the dungeon, the game proceeds a lot like the later Phantasie, as you explore the structure and slowly uncover treasures and encounters. Each square has a quick description--often alerting you to more substantive things nearby--and may contain gold, an NPC, or a combat-related encounter. You use NESW to move and unfortunately have to hit (M)ap repeatedly to refresh the screen.

         

Exploring Level 1.

       

Unfortunately, successfully surviving the encounters requires you to hit them in a certain order, and getting through them is clearly meant to be a product of trial and error. Level 1's encounters, in a logical order, are:

         

• A piece of paper found near the entrance. The "Read Languages" spell uncovers the text, which is a warning from a party of Ents not to hurry to the room east of the entrance because its doorways teleport you to random locations, including one which causes instant death. 

• A couple of orcs are torturing an elven princess. Kill them, and the princess gives you a magic armband that, among other things, lowers armor class by 1. If you refuse the gift, the princess gets mad and randomly teleports you.

          

           

• A Holy Sword found at the end of a hallway. A cleric can wield it.

             

Note the rare graphic.

          

• A room full of skeletons with an evil cleric. The Holy Sword acts on its own, sweeping through the room and killing all the skeletons, leaving the cleric for the party. Once slain, he has a note on his body that can be read with the "Read Magic" spell. The note is from "Porru," another servant of the evil necromancer, whose first initial is identified in the note as "K." The note talks of a magic fireball disguised as a skull and gives the password to release it.

            

        

• A room with a fireplace with a skull mounted above it. An invisible warrior in the room retreats if a character has the magic armband. Saying the password PILGAMESH turns the skull into magic fireball. The characters can also loot some silver candlesticks and a ruby. In this one room on the level, the player acts by typing verbs and nouns rather than simple directionals.

• The central chamber with a frost giant. The only way to defeat him is to use the magic fireball. Doing so opens the stairs to Level 2.

         

Another chamber in the middle of the dungeon holds a "wizened old man" who gives you hints about the various encounters as long as you can answer his questions about the game's backstory. 

        

This was an easy one.

        

The characters fight only two battles on Level 1, and the combat system is pretty sparse. You get a grid with the character and enemies, and a series of random rolls determine damage done per round. It's very easy to lose a character in these early combats and have to exit the dungeon to replace him. There are no real options in combat unless the mage has the "Sleep" spell memorized. 

         

The combat interface.

         

I should also note that while the game is graphically sparse, there are some fun animations to accompany certain actions. In the skeleton room, for instance, a little graphic of the sword goes spinning through the room. When you fireball the frost giant, you get a red square followed by something that looks like a mushroom cloud.

            

"Nuking" the frost giant.

           

Anyway, I was having a lot of fun when I completed Level 1, and I was looking forward to what the other levels had to offer. That's when the game pulled the rug out from under me. Once I descended the staircase, I got a "congratulations!" screen that was about as elaborate as most game-winning screens. Then the game brought up a menu with options to play Level 1 again, quit, or "go on to deeper levels . . . [if] the dungeon-master's elves have finished deeper construction and the second disk is ready." Choosing that option brings up a message to enter a "continuation disk."

          

Okay, I got through a single level. Let's not overdo it.

         

I took to the manual, and sure enough it specifies that the disk only includes the first level. As far as I can tell, subsequent levels were never produced. I can find plenty of ads for the original game, but none for the second level and beyond. It appears that Doom Cavern was never a full game--just a tragic tease--a demo of a game engine that could have been authentically fun if it had actually been developed. As it is, the characters never even level up. Clerics never get any spells. More elaborate combats never occur. 

Perhaps to compensate for what is essentially a scam, Doom Cavern was bundled with a second game, Sorcerer's Challenge, written by Robert Clardy himself. It's a computerized board game in which two wizards battle for control of the kingdom of Thessalona. They take turns casting spells of various durations intended to trap their opponents. Unfortunately, I couldn't play because the game requires paddles and I couldn't figure out how to get AppleWin to emulate them. It's not an RPG anyway, although the map looks somewhat like the one used in Wilderness Campaign and Odyssey.

          

A lack of paddles prevented me from answering the question.

          

I toyed with not giving this one a number or rating, but screw it. I played and I "won." It scores 11 on the GIMLET, hurt by a lack of any equipment, economy (you find gold but can't spend it), character development, or main quest that you can complete. If the game had been finished and had featured some of these things, it could have easily crossed 20 points. As it is, it's bottom of the barrel.