Game 469: The Power Stones of Ard: The Quest for the Spirit Stone (1987)

 

The game was originally called the Power Stones of BilliARDs.

      

The Power Stones of Ard: The Quest for the Spirit Stone

United States

Three C's Projects (developer and publisher)

Released 1987 for Tandy Color Computer 3

Date Started: 23 August 2022

     

I've made so many passes through the 1980s that I no longer have any hope of finding a "hidden gem." The best I can hope for is a game that at least shows me something different. The Power Stones of Ard is such a game. It may not be a gem, but it's at least gem-like: a bit hard to dig out, and showing more than one facet.

   

Ard was developed by one Bill Cleveland for the Tandy Color Computer 3. It and its sequel seem to be his and his company's (North Carolina-based The Three C's Projects) only two games. A decently-written backstory sets the game in the world of Ard, where a cabal of wizards once sought to destroy all evil. Their efforts led to the creation of three power stones that apparently worked, but the wizards lost their nerve in the final battle, each fleeing in a different direction with a different stone. They were all eventually killed. Unable to destroy the stones, the forces of evil instead locked them up in heavily-guarded fortresses. You play a young, eager adventurer seeking to reclaim the Spirit Stone from Baron's Keep.

      

The kind of cover illustration that could only come from an independent developer.

      

In character creation, you choose your name, sex, and race (human, elf, dwarf, gnome) and then select from six sets of attribute scores--strength, intellect, dexterity, and constitution. You start with no equipment and only a little gold.

      

Character creation.

    

Gameplay begins inside the main gate of Baron's Keep. If you go north for your first move, the game interprets this as you choosing to leave the keep and abandon the quest. You otherwise change screens by hitting the arrow keys. You don't move on the little map in the lower-right; instead, this map changes as you move, reflecting new areas. 

      

My adventure begins.

     

Baron's Keep consists of 24 screens (5 x 5, but there's no way to access the center, at least not that I can tell), with a number of buildings to enter, including a weapon shop, an armor shop, a guild hall, a temple, a gypsy camp, an inn, a tavern, and several abandoned buildings. Most of the locations are safe, but a few of them reliably produce battles with enemies most times you enter. Combat is just a matter of putting your chosen weapon I)n Hand and then hitting A)ttack. Through these battles, you slowly accumulate gold and experience, allowing you to purchase some weapon and armor items and level up at the guild.

 

The world of Ard--at least so far.

 

      

In the southeast corner of the keep, you find a "maze" square, and I'm utterly baffled by it. You don't seem to enter or exit in any consistent way. You can't see where you are within it. Trying to move usually produces a message that says "that's not the way out," but sometimes you get this in any direction you choose. Still, if you just keep choosing directions, you eventually find your way "out." One of the exits leads you to a square called "Ruins." It's here that I assume you enter a dungeon (the manual talks about hallways and doors). Actually, I don't assume it: an "elder" in town told me that the ruins is the location of a powerful wizard's abandoned castle, and that the wizard hid the Spirit Stone in the dungeon. 

       

Fighting a giant spider in the odd "maze."

    

So far, it sounds like a pretty stock RPG, but there's an adventure game lurking beneath the surface, and it took me a while to uncover it. The manual lists a lot of commands that have no obvious use as you explore the map; these include C)limb, L)isten, P)ush, Y)ank, and even a S)pecial option that lets you type your own command. Most of the locations don't give you any indication that one of these special commands is called for; you just have to try them out. Through experimentation, I learned that:

    

• There's an empty house with a book stand where you can G)et a Red Book (my character couldn't read it). P)ushing the book stand reveals a brass key.

• E)xamining the stables reveals that one of the stalls contains a centaur. I couldn't get him to say anything interesting.

     

Asking him about his JOB accomplishes nothing.

    

• In an empty house in the northwest corner, L)istening results in a ghostly voice saying, "My name is Nephron; summon me." If you then T)alk and say NEPHRON, the ghost appears and warns you that he died on the same quest you're on. He suggests you pick up his demon-destroying amulet from beyond a door marked "enter here," but he warns that he got stuck because he lacked a silver coin.

• The barracks has a soldier, but I couldn't get him to respond to any T)alk prompt.

• C)limbing a tree in the woods lets you find a nest and a feather.

• C)limbing a tree in the field lets you find free apples to eat.

• There's a thieves' guild in the southwest with a trapped treasure chest inside. I can't find any way to disarm the trap. 

      

Exploring the thieves' guild.

     

• A hermit responds to T)alk with what seems like a riddle, but I can't even think of a good guess. Regardless of what you say, he recommends using SEARCH with the S)pecial command, and this indeed works in the ruins.

      

The riddle has stumped me.

     

Usually, I can tell a game's pedigree within a few minutes of gameplay, but Ard doesn't seem clearly inspired by any previous game. It has a lot of quirky mechanics and commands, some promising, some annoying. Examples:

   

• When you want to pick something up, you have to type the full name. This includes looting gold after combat. So after every combat, you have to hit G)et and then type GOLD and then the number of gold pieces you want.

• You have to pay to level up. To do this, you D)rop your gold (again, you have to type out GOLD) in the doorway of the guild, which puts it into a kind of bank. If you've banked enough gold when you enter the guild, you can level up.

• The game directly depletes your attributes. Strength depletes as you fight enemies. Constitution depletes from hunger and thirst as time goes on. Dexterity depletes when you type nonsensical commands. Intellect depletes if you ask for a H)int. Strength is restored when you sleep and constitution when you eat, but I accidentally knocked down my intellect early in the game, and I haven't found any way to restore it yet.

• The magic system involves paying a wizard 200 gold pieces each for the game's nine spells. The spells each have a material component, and the wizard tells you what it is when you buy the spell. For instance, "Knock" requires a lockpick and "Hold" requires a snail shell. These items are consumed when you use them, and you can only ever carry one at a time, which makes me think that spells in this game are more about puzzle-solving than using them in combat.

            

Buying spells.

    

Finally, I'm having three performance issues with the game:

   

• I can't get saving to work. You have to Q)uit to save. If I do so, the disk runs, but when I reload, the character is in the starting position in the main gate with no experience or other progress.

• The game repeatedly gives me messages that seem to have more text, but there's no key that I can find that makes it "continue" or advance.

• The game is slow at 100% speed. Excruciatingly slow. 

   

#1 and #3 have made choice of an emulator difficult. Since I can't get the game to reliably save, I need to use save states. That rules out VCC, which doesn't support save states. But VCC does support incremental speed improvements, whereas XRoar, which supports save states, doesn't seem to have any option between regular speed and maximum speed. I've been using XRoar for now, but having it constantly running at turbo means I miss some things. I should be happy it's working at all. Other emulators just booted to a gibberish screen. (Thanks to Jason Dyer and LanHawk for helping me get this far.)

   

At this point, I've gotten lightly stuck. Searching in the ruins produces a door with three slots, and the game asks me how much gold I want to put in each one. I've seen nothing that would provide hints to the right combination. But I probably haven't exhausted all my exploration and dialogue options, so I'll make another round of the screens to ensure I haven't missed anything.

   

Time so far: 3 hours