BRIEF: Dungeon Quest (1990)

 

Despite the game saying that the quest is to clear the levels "without getting killed," the game does not feature permadeath.

        

Dungeon Quest

United States

Independently developed and offered as shareware

Released 1990 for DOS

     

Dungeon Quest is one of a host of early-1990s shareware RPGs for which, thirty years later, we have only the demo program. Like many other games of this description, we cannot even be sure that the full version was ever finished and released.

   

In the case of Dungeon Quest, that's probably a good thing. The demo version, labeled "Test Drive," confines the player to the first level only and lacks any sound effects. One level is more than enough. The game and its mechanics are competently programmed, but there's nothing to do but fight monsters, and I lost interest in that well before the end of the first 50 x 50 level.

     

Confronting a ghost.

     

The game--or the demo version, at least--gives you no backstory except that your mission is to completely clear the 8-level dungeon of monsters. You can choose from paladin, fighter, and mage classes and dwarf, elf, halfling, and human races. You set your sex and roll for the standard set of Dungeons & Dragons attributes, and the game begins in the northwest corner of the large dungeon. The positions of monsters and items are randomized for each new game. The game's primary influence seems to be Dungeon Master. Although movement is based on tiles, combat happens in real-time, with a brief "cool down" between attacks and spells.

         

Character creation breaks no new ground.

        

The interface shows all the game actions on a panel of 24 icons. The middle row shows the specific weapons that you might ready (dagger, sword, axe, mace, bow). The right side of the bottom row has the game's five spells: "Mage Light," "Fire Shield," "Flame Dagger," "Fireball," and "Lightning Bolt." All characters can cast spells, but fighters get the fewest spell points and mages get the most.

   

Much of the game is well-programmed. The textures, monster graphics, and spell animations are more than acceptable. The automap works better than 90% of commercial games of the era. One nice feature is that it maps everything you see, not just where you walk, so you don't have to walk down every dead-end corridor just to complete the map. Although there are a lot of options in the rows of icons, the game clearly outlines the ones you can currently use. And it does a cute thing with the numerous mirrors that you find in the corridors. Every time you turn and face one, you get a different image of something horrible happening to your character (even if it doesn't reflect reality)--and the character you see changes depending on your race and class.

     

The skeleton seems angry.

    

There are some exceptions, however. I didn't like having to click on the icons to activate them. Technically, the F1-F8 keys activate the first row; SHIFT F1-F8 the second, and ALT F1-F8 the third. That just replaces clicking with counting. None of the other keys are used except SPACE to bring up the automap. Why not map attack to "A," Fireball to "F", camping to "C," and so forth?

    

My character sees a skeletonized version of himself in the mirror.

      

The more egregious programming failure is that enemies can only attack you if you're looking at them. If you turn away, you can collect yourself as long as you need to or even sleep. Enemies also can't move from their starting positions, so unless they have a ranged attack, you can pelt them from a few squares away with impunity.

 

Sending a lightning bolt towards a hydra.

      

This is only one of several ways in which the game is fundamentally too easy. On its surface, this is supposed to be a game about carefully managing resources--conserving items, using the right spell on the right enemy, and so forth. In practice, you find so many Wands of Fire, Wands of Lightning, Potions of Healing, Potions of Magic Restoration, and other useful items, that there's no reason not just to blast away with "Lightning Bolt." I ended the level overflowing with gear. You also find armor, shields, and weapon upgrades, but my paladin hardly ever fought in melee combat. He had too many spell points and spell items.

   

Leveling up is also insanely fast. I ended the level at character Level 46. 

    

My character kills the level's final enemy . . .

      

If it isn't going to be hard, a game at least needs to be interesting, but here again Dungeon Quest fails. There are no challenges, riddles, puzzles (mechanical or otherwise), notes, dialogues, bits of backstory, or even interesting patterns in the walls. There are just dozens of featureless corridors teeming with bats, skeletons, green slimes, gargoyles, giant snakes, giant plants, ghosts, and hydras. 

. . . and maps the final square of the level.

     

Nothing happened when I killed the last enemy or mapped the last square. I never saw any stairways on the map. I'm going to assume that the full game is seven more levels of the same thing. The author was a John Stanley of Seattle, long since moved from the location to which we are instructed to send our shareware fees. I have some messages out to possible e-mail addresses, but let's otherwise not pull out all the stops trying to find a full version.