Game 435: Quenzar's Caverns (1993)

 

      

Quenzar's Caverns

Canada

Pulse Ventures (developer); published as shareware

Released 1993 for Windows

Date Started: 10 October 2021

Date Ended: 10 October 2021

Total Hours: 1

Difficulty: Easy (2.0/5)

Final Rating: 25

Ranking at Time of Posting: 213/444 (48%)

      

There's a class of short shareware titles that I call "afternoon RPGs." Quenzar's Caverns isn't even that. It's a "coffee break RPG." It took considerably less than an hour to win it. It takes longer to read the instructions than to play the game. That doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. In creating it, author Peter Lok seems to have been going for a new type of product: an RPG that would feel at home within the little "Games" folder of the new release of Windows. In both style and length, Quenzar nestles perfectly next to Minesweeper and Solitaire.

   

To play it, I had to emulate Windows 3, which itself took longer than the game, even though LanHawk had set me up with a basic configuration to play GayBlade. Depending on when they were released during the year, either GayBlade or Quenzar could be the first CRPG that requires Windows 3 to run. I hope it's Quenzar. As we'll see, it feels more like a Windows-specific game.

   

In a typical Quenzar screen, I'm in a room with a goblin chief and a table to search. I'm in Row 0, Column 5. There's 1 trap in the squares around me.

The game borrows elements from Minesweeper, which was included with Windows 3.1 the previous year.

      

The game takes inspiration from both the grid exploration system of The Wizard's Castle (1980), the mechanics of roguelikes, and a couple elements of the aforementioned Solitaire and Minesweeper. It takes place on a single "map" of 100 squares, each representing a room in a dungeon. Each room can have some combination of monster, treasure, and trap. One square has the stairway down to the sanctum of the evil wizard Quenzar, but entering requires a gold key from another square. Your mission is to build your resources, find the key, and defeat Quenzar.

     

At the beginning of the game, you specify a character name and only a few other options. You can choose between a "basic" and "advanced" difficulty levels, though I didn't notice much difference. You can also specify a number between 0 and 20,000, each representing a unique dungeon configuration, much like the later FreeCell (1995) did with the initial configuration of cards.

     

Setting up a new game.

    

Starting equipment varies on whether it's a basic or advanced game. Each character starts with one or two healing potions, a sword or short sword, a backup dagger, a small shield, and one or two--sigh--holy hand grenades. (To me, the mystery of why so many developers think it's clever to include the device is eclipsed only by the mystery of why anyone thought it was that funny in the first place.) Starting characters have maximum strength and dexterity set to 14 (basic) or 12 (advanced), and maximum intelligence set to 10. Strength serves as both an attribute, determining damage in combat, and a hit point reservoir. Dexterity determines whether you hit or get hit in combat; it is lowered with armor. I'm not sure intelligence does anything.

   

There's a surprising amount of content packed in the little rooms. Monsters include goblin guards and chiefs, blood wisps, giant snakes, trapper plants, and skeletal guards. You have several options in combat, including fleeing, attacking all-out, attacking defensively, tossing a hand grenade (which usually results in instant death), and talking to the enemy to attempt a bribe or intimidation. The game aggregates your armor class, weapon class, strength, and dexterity into a "PV" value that you can compare with the monster's to determine what strategy is best.

   

Negotiating with the goblin chief after I already exchanged some blows with him.

    

Rooms may also have a variety of searchable objects like desks, hidden doors, and pools of water. Each may yield one or more items, including weapons, armor, rings, potions, scrolls, and hand grenades. From roguelikes, the game takes the convention of assigning colors to potions and metal types to rings. You can either risk quaffing unknown potions or donning unknown rings, or you can wait for a Lens of Identify, after which all your stuff is automatically identified. There are other special magic items. A Compass of Guiding tells you where to find the gold key and the entrance to Quenzar's sanctum; a Helm of Reflection greatly increases your armor class; a Pack of Carrying increases your encumbrance from 15 items to 25; and an Amulet of Shielding protects against magic attacks. A Dragon Sword and Dragon Shield are the best weapon and shield in the game, and are of particular use against the one dragon.

    

A mid-game inventory and character sheet.

       

Rooms can have traps, which you have a small chance of detecting and disarming. The game helps you avoid them with an element drawn from Minesweeper: When you step in each room, a number tells you how many adjacent rooms contain traps, the same way that Minesweeper tells you how many adjacent squares have mines. (This is attributed in-universe to a magic tattoo the character has.) With careful analysis of these numbers, you can skirt the traps, although the game is easy enough that you could still win after blundering into almost every one. It is relatively generous with healing potions, for instance, and there's even a room where a "magically imprisoned healing spirit" will trade gold for hit points. The game is relatively stingy with gold to keep you from abusing this resource; combats deliver only 0-3 gold pieces (I suspect it's 1d4-1).

     

Encountering the helpful healing spirit.

       

There is, alas, no character development except by inventory. (You can find potions that increase maximum attributes, so I suppose that slightly qualifies.) The game was short enough that I didn't mind.

  

Once you have the Dragon Sword and Shield, gold key, the Amulet of Shielding, a couple of hand grenades, and maybe a healing potion or two, it's time to take on Quenzar. Quenzar's guardian is a dragon, which you can kill in regular combat or take out with a couple of hand grenades, as I did.

    

I reached the endgame with five grenades, so using two to kill the dragon was a no-brainer.

     

After the guardian, you face Quenzar himself. He's immune to hand grenades, so you just have to duel with your Dragon Sword and hope for the best. The Amulet of Shielding protects from his magical attacks (if you didn't waste it on a trap). I got lucky with a critical hit my first time. Killing Quenzar nets you a victory screen and a laughably high amount of gold.

    

I thought the goblet was on fire for a few seconds.

    

We've had short games before, but usually because of programming limitations or quirks that allowed for a quick finish. I think this is the first game I've seen deliberately designed as an "applet," offering an RPG-themed experience in a solitaire-like time frame. This creates a very lopsided GIMLET:

   

• 1 point for a bare-bones game world.

• 1 point for character creation and development; there are limited creation options and no development.

• 0 points for no NPCs.

• 3 points for encounters and foes. I'm giving some credit here to the trap-sweeping mechanic.

• 3 points for magic and combat. There's no magic, but there are several combat options.

    

Quenzar is magically protected against grenades.

   

• 4 points for equipment, the primary means of character development.

• 3 points for a useful economy, as you can bribe enemies and pay for healing.

• 2 points for a main quest.

     

Finding the key to the sanctum.

     

• 2 point for graphics, sound, and interface. The interface is arranged well, but there is no sound and the monster graphics are nothing special. I oddly didn't mind the lack of keyboard backups to the game's commands, probably because it was so swift and short.

    

The death graphic is perhaps the best one in the game.

     

• 6 points for gameplay. I know that seems high, but it hits most of the marks here, including replayability, length appropriate for its content, and appropriate challenge level. I wouldn't call it "nonlinear."

   

That gives a final score of 25, but this is one of those cases where rating the game alongside Dark Sun and Quest for Glory IV doesn't make a lot of sense. It does its intended job well.

  

Pulse Ventures seems to have been a sole proprietorship of Calgary-based Peter Lok, who asked a modest US $6 for registering the game. I can't find any other specific titles that he released, but a bio on an author site says that he "created numerous shareware titles." He has since used Pulse Ventures as a self-publishing imprint for books like Tales from a Yellow Star (2012) and Neo Ace (2014). 

   

I love that one of the first Windows RPGs required none of the advancing technology of the era and yet still feels like a 1990s Windows game. Between this and Dark Sun, we really seem to be turning a corner.