Game 448: Monsters & Magic (1983)

 

It's so efficient to make the title screen the same as the character creation screen.

       

Monsters & Magic

United States

Prickly Pear Software (developer and publisher)

Released 1983 for Commodore 64, TRS-80 Color Computer, and Dragon 32/64

Date Started: 5 March 2022

Date Ended: 5 March 2022

Total Hours: 2

Difficulty: Easy (2.0/5)

Final Rating: 11

Ranking at Time of Posting: 37/460 (8%)

     

I'm no programmer, but in the 1980s, I could at least hold my own in BASIC. I could have written Monsters & Magic. In fact, I may have. It's so simple that if I had, I probably wouldn't remember nearly 40 years later. It's all-text, mostly random, and pretty boring. Thankfully, it's also short.

   

The setup from the box is that you have to enter a dungeon to destroy the evil Dungeon Lord. To face him, you have to destroy the other monsters in the dungeon first. You get to specify how many monsters there are, from 1 to 50. This happens after a character creation process in which the game rolls between 6 and 18 for the standard D&D attribute set: strength, intelligence, wisdom, constitution, dexterity, and charisma. They didn't even change the order.

      

That's not a bad deal for a spear.

       

The game rolls for a random number of starting hit points and gold, which you can then immediately spend on weapons and armor, which the game presents to you one at a time. Might as well scroll through them once without buying anything just to check prices, as you can revisit the shop at any time from any room within the dungeon.

    

Once you enter the dungeon, everything is randomized to the point that you can visualize the data lines in the program. All the rooms go:

CHESTER HAS FOUND A (CAVE, GRAVE, LARGE YARD, FAR CORNER, COMMON CHAMBER, HIGH GATE, MONSTER LAIR, NARROW PASSAGE, NARROW PATH, etc.)

Then there's a random descriptor:

(TRIPS ON A HALF-EATEN ELF, SEES A LARGE JAR, TRAP DOOR IN FRONT OF HIM, HEARS NOISES, FALLS ON A HALF-EATEN DWARF, SEES LARGE CHEST, ANTS GOING INTO A HOLE IN THE FLOOR, THERE IS HOT FOOD ON THE TABLE, SILVER VASE ON THE SHELF, etc.)

        

Mmm...hot food on a table. In a grave.

           

The room may have a monster depending on how many you seeded into the dungeon. If so:

(BASILISK, OGRE, DISPLACER BEAST, BLACK PUDDING, HILL GIANT, HOBGOBLIN, RED DRAGON, etc.) ATTACKING!

      

There's no reason to be scared of the basilisk, as no monster in this game has special attacks.

      

You have the same 8 options in every room, including "Search." If the room's descriptor indicates something that can be opened, you get a second chance at a search with "Open It." The two actions otherwise draw from the same pool or similar pools of possibilities, an equal percentage good and bad. On the good side, you can find gold or magic items like a dagger, sword, or spear. A hidden pixie may kiss you to raise your hit points, or you may find a Staff of Healing that does the same. Several possibilities raise attributes.

      

An unfortunate roll on "Open It."

      

Negative possibilities including finding an evil cleric who turns your weapons to clay or your armor to paper and a "Rust" trap that destroys all of your equipment but the magical stuff.

    

When you choose to fight combat, you and the enemy first roll a 1d6 to see who goes first. Then you roll a 1d20 to see if you hit. If so, you then roll based on your weapon for how much damage you do. The enemy then does the same. Some powerful enemies get multiple attacks. Combat takes quite a while, especially when you and the enemy both require something like 17 to hit and have a few dozen hit points each.

     

I kill a displacer beast.

   

Winning combat gets you experience, extra hit points, and sometimes gold. Experience leads to leveling up, which allows you to add a damage multiplier in combat. Thus, a sword that normally does 1d8 does 3d8 at Level 3.

     

You see this, WarWizard? This is how you do character development!

    

Once you defeat all the enemies you specified during setup, you automatically enter into a final battle with what the box calls the Dungeon Lord and the actual game calls Expensor. (I'm guessing his villainy involves inflating his corporate travel reimbursements.) His difficulty is scaled to your level, so there's no particular point delaying the encounter. Once he's dead, the game ends with a victory screen.

        

A shot from the final battle.

Good game or bad game, it never sucks to win.

      

There's ironically no "magic" in the game (except magic items) and no real strategy except to flee from high-level foes until you have the best armor available and some magic weapons.

    

Applying the GIMLET to such games is a depressing, pointless exercise. A series of 0s, 1s, and 2s puts it at 11. The range from around 9-15 says "it meets my barest definitions of an RPG but offers nothing more."

 

There are some mysteries associated with the release of this game. It was published (and likely developed) by Prickly Pear Software of Tucson, Arizona, a mid-1980s company that marketed a little over a dozen simple games, many all-text, crossing several genres. Two others claim to be RPGs: Scepter of Ursea (1984) and Darkmoor Hold (1985). In the United States, the game saw releases for the Commodore 64 and TRS-80 Color Computer, which is fine. A game written in BASIC with no graphics can easily be ported to multiple systems. But somehow they also found a European distributor (Eurohard) who translated it to Spanish. I want to know what Prickly Pear executive looked at this and thought, "This--this shall be the new world's gift to the old."

        

This may be the first game whose cover artist deserved to be paid more than its programmer.

      

I can't speak for the C64 version, but the TRS-80 version retailed for $26.95, or a little over $70 today. Remember that next time your favorite streaming service raises the monthly price by $1.50.