Game 476: SOTE: Shadow of the Evil (1993)

I'm glad they put this disclaimer. I have a friend who went into a cave with his girlfriend and got sucked into another dimension where he had to battle orcs and ghosts, and I was thinking the authors might have based the game on him.

       

SOTE: Shadow of the Evil

Hungary
Ultraforce Software Team (developer); Markt und Technik (publisher, via 64'er magazine)

Released 1993 for Commodore 64

Date Started: 24 November 2022

      

SOTE: Shadow of the Evil is an unfortunately-named diskmag game from Hungarian authors Csaba Tóth & Viktor Szenczy. Working out the title twisted me in knots. The German language version gives it as Der Schatten Des Bösen ("The Shadow of Evil"), which makes a lot more sense. But the acronymic main title and the English title screen don't give us a lot of room to maneuver. The magazine in which it appeared, the December 1993 64'er, calls it Shadow of the Devil on the cover.

       

Shadow of the Devil frankly makes more sense.

          

I originally found two versions of the game, one labeled "English" and the other labeled "German." The English version had an odious "cracktro" screen (I hate to validate it by even using that stupid term) but gives the option to go to a configuration menu after you click past it. But I couldn't get the introductory cinematic to load. The German version had the cinematic but was in German. Thanks to Busca for helping me realize that they were in fact the same version, and you just need to hit SPACE during the loading process on the "German" version to switch to English. 

             

The cinematic starts with someone surveying the landscape from a castle rampart.

     

The cinematic offers a modern-day framing story. You play Troy Perkins, who has accompanied his girlfriend, Eve, to a dinner party at the house of their friends, Bob and Sheila, somewhere along the English Channel. After dinner, Troy and Eve decide to go for a stroll along the beach.

         

Ah, yes, the snow-capped peaks of the Kentish coast.

     

A ground tremor forces them to seek shelter in a cave, where some kind of whirlwind picks them up and carries them away. Troy awakens on a dirt floor at the feet of an old man who introduces himself as Larome Lan L'Ore ("the arch mage of the northern half"). He explains that the lovers have been sucked into the world of Corlon by Harcon, "arch-mage of the southern half." Larome has managed to interfere and rescue Troy, but Eve is being held prisoner in a castle. Harcon intended to sacrifice the couple to his god, but apparently his god will only accept a double sacrifice, so Eve is safe for now. Larome teleports Troy to the castle with instructions to rescue Eve and return with Larome's stolen Ring of Power, which he can use to send them back. Larome teaches Troy a few spells, then teleports him to the forest near Harcon's castle, instructing Troy to blow a whistle when he's found Eve and the ring. Troy walks to the castle and squeezes in through a crack in the stones.

        

My confusion often kills my acts.

           

Gameplay begins in a niche on the other side of that crack, which mysteriously doesn't appear from this side. Immediately, you are confronted with the absolute worst interface in CRPG history. On the right-hand side of the screen are all the game's commands, including some intriguing ones like "Hide" and "Disguise." To activate these options, you don't use keyboard commands. You don't arrow through them and hit ENTER on your chosen selection. You don't use a mouse (which is rarely required for C64 games, though the platform did support it). Instead--I can't believe I'm actually typing this--you use the joystick to move the cursor over the commands and hit the button. Yes, it's just as difficult and annoying as you might think it is for buttons that small. The only saving grace--and the only reason I'm even writing about this game--is that you can map movement and inventory to keys of your choice. [Ed. I owe the author an apology here. Although the joystick is the default interface, as Busca points out, it's possible to change to a mouse in the "Settings" menu. I just overlooked it.]

        

You'd better believe it.

      

Once you get past the interface issue, you seem to be in a boilerplate Wizardry or Bard's Tale knock-off with maybe a couple of nods to Dungeon Master. You explore a textured environment. You don't see enemies until combat begins. Combat is turn-based. Yada yada. But slowly, the game reveals some innovations that make it at least slightly more intriguing than the average clone. These include:

   

• A long set of interesting options in combat. In addition to the standard regular attack, aggressive attack ("Fiercer"), and defensive attack, plus spell options, you get "Frighten," "Mock," "Mislead," and "Talk," as well as a "Measure" option that gives you a summary of the creature. I wonder if the game was at all influenced by Fate: Gates of Dawn (1991) and some of its similar encounter options.

         

The "Measure" option tells you something about your foe.

      

• The game brings up the "combat" menu for non-combat encounters, too, so you have full access to dialogue and persuasion options even with NPCs. Or you could kill them if you're of such a bent.

• The aforementioned options to "Disguise" and "Hide" while exploring. Admittedly, I haven't found any use for them. There's also a "Switch" option, which I assume will be used to activate wall switches and such.

• You can look (straight) up and down. So far, all this has shown me is ceilings and floors, but I didn't try it on every square.

      

Looking down at the floor.

      

• Even though you can't see enemies in the exploration window, it appears that the game spawns them at fixed locations and tracks them from there. You can "hear" them (via textual alerts) as you get close. If they catch your scent, they'll move to intercept or chase you.

• There are hints of more interesting puzzles than the usual clone. So far, there have been no generic messages on walls. Instead, there have been unusual encounters with clues.

• The resting system. The game asks you how many hit points and spell points you want to recover, then makes you wait as time ticks by. You recover points at a rate of about one every six seconds at normal speed. Full recovery from starting hit points takes about two minutes. I like this. Too many games make resting and healing too easy. If you're going to offer such a mechanic, it ought to come with some kind of risk or penalty. Usually, this is done through risk or penalty to the character; I'd like to see more games that make the player suffer the penalty. Of course, emulating the game, it's easy enough just to "Warp Mode" through it, but I'll try not to do that.

• The message window keeps an ongoing log of everything that happens from the moment you load or reload a game. As long as you don't have to reload, you can scroll backwards and re-check messages and dialogue that happened hours ago.

        

The first level is 18 x 25--at least, the initial part (see below)--with a fair amount of dead space. I bashed most of the walls around the dead space for secret doors, but I don't even know if the game has secret doors that can be found that way. Maybe I'm supposed to "Search" every square instead.

       

The first level--so far.

      

There are maybe a dozen enemies of three different types: things that look like monstrous guards, things that look like wolf-men, and dark one-eyed things with catlike ears. I mostly used physical attacks on them, but I tried a couple spells. You start with "Shield," "Read Magic," "Flame Column," and "Magical Violence." I assume you get more later. None of the enemies is individually difficult, but you need to rest after two or three.

       

I think the authors meant "phew."

      

Slain enemies drop items, and one of the game's quirks is that you have to watch the little rectangular symbol between the two scroll arrows to the right of the message window. When it changes from blue (or whatever the regular color is) to white, that means there's something on the floor. You go to the inventory window to see and distribute it.

     

The inventory window is designed in a way that I've never seen before. It has four major sections. The top left shows items on the floor. The bottom left shows equipped items, like helmets, boots, gauntlets, armor, and cloaks, each of which adds to your defensive rating. There are five "belt" slots below the equipped items, but the only thing I've been able to put into the slots are keys. In the upper-right, you have your left and right hands and a "bags" slot for any backpack or bag you find. The items in containers appear in the "Carry" section in the lower-right. Moving items between the areas is accomplished the same way as using the menus: Use the joystick to move the cursor over the item and hit the "fire" button to pick it up, then move and hit the "fire" button again to put it down.

        

My inventory about halfway through the game.

       

You start the game with only a lighter in your right hand and a whistle in your left. For a while after the game starts, you have no bag, so you have to drop those items somewhere if you want to pick up a weapon or shield. I did find a single bag on the first level, which allows for eight inventory slots. There's more space in the window, so I wonder if different containers offer more slots. Besides weapons and armor, items I found on the level include a stick, a bag of 5 gold coins, a needle and thread, two unknown potions, a flask of water, and a hammer.

    

The level is full of locked doors, most of which open to simple gray keys. I found at least three of them on the bodies of monsters. One door required a gray key of a different design. I also found a gold key but I didn't find a use for that yet. There's a "doorbreak" option with an unfortunate message when you attempt it, but I couldn't get it to work on any door. There's a chance it may break your weapon.

       

Well, the door is to the east.

           

There were a few interesting encounters on the first level. At the end of one corridor, I found a plaque with some glyphs. The "Search" menu allowed me to read the plaque, and it gave me an odd little poem:

   

The way is double

Somewhere else,

Ohh! You can't know

How to go,

Use your brain to 

Find which tells

"Worthless is

the better, so."

   

I don't know if that's deliberately cryptic or just bad English. As you've undoubtedly noticed, English translation wasn't the strongest skill of the developers.

   

Another corridor ended in a mosaic of symbols. It was dark at first but activating the lighter with the "Use Item" menu lit it up. It depicts a 5 x 6 grid of symbols, many of them repeating. 

          

It could be a giant version of Concentration.

           

In a locked room at the top of the map (although the game offers no sense of orientation), I met an old man in what looks like a prison cell. He introduced himself as Woford'Ne'Lions, former prince of Bergisa. He thanked me for his release and gave me a number (25) to "use where [I] can."

    

Note that I have all the same options as in combat.

      

There are three exits from the level. In what I mapped as the southwest corner, there's a pentagram that will teleport you to a new area. In the northeast corner is a gateway to a new area. And in the southeast corner, there's a door for which I haven't found the key. It may open a new section of this level or lead to a different one.

    

One of the three ways out.

        

Overall, I found my first session intriguing and relatively satisfying. I haven't had the best of luck with German diskmag games, but I'm willing to play it as long as I can find things to do. I still don't know if there's any real character development, however. You have five attributes--attack, defense, magic, speed, and body (hit points)--but the only thing to affect their maximums has been finding new equipment. There's no hint of experience points or any other type of leveling. However, the "Rest" menu lets you specify more hit points than you start with for healing, so I assume max hit points must increase eventually.

    

The authors of the game are given as Csaba Tóth and Viktor Szenczy. There are a couple of plausible Csaba Tóths out there; I've reached out to two, but with no responses yet. I know I've asked a lot of my German readers this month, but if any of you could read over the three pages in 64'er from the game's original release and let me know if I've missed anything vital, I would appreciate it.

     

Time so far: 3 hours