The Mystic Well: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

 

I wonder if they have Berenstein Bears books on that plane of "existance."

    

The Mystic Well

United States

Jing Gameware (developer); published as shareware

Released 1990 for Atari ST

Original version c. 1990 titled Mystic Mirror
Re-released as Daymare for DOS in 1992
Date Started: 3 January 2023

Date Ended: 23 January 2023

Total Hours: 19

Difficulty: Hard (4.0/5)

Final Rating: 26

Ranking at Time of Posting: 243/483 (50%)

    

This has happened so often that it should no longer come as a surprise: An independent or low-budget developer creates a simple game with simple graphics and yet enough innovation and spirit to earn a certain amount of good will. I enjoy it for what it is for about a dozen hours, not worrying about what I could be playing instead. And then, instead of continuing along that vein to a swift and satisfying conclusion, the developer decides to become a total knob for the game's last act. Finishing the game involves impossible creatures, new and confusing mechanics, and punishment for not doing everything perfectly along the way.

   

The road to this inevitability picks up where I left off last time. I had explored the bottom three levels of the dungeon, which seem to exist solely to help the player grind and find new equipment--with one key exception that I nearly missed. When I wrapped up last time, I had not yet used the teleporter found next to the mystic well in the underground temple (G-3). Fortunately, I decided to clear that up before moving on. It brought me to a small area in the southeast corner of G-2 where, after dealing with the enemies, I found a "strange key." I also found a special mace called The Iron Saint. Its special ability is to heal the user. I failed to notice a slot on the floor that would have delivered some vital equipment--more in a bit.

     

The strange key was necessary to reach the endgame; it opens all of the doors on G+5. But it also opened the final unlocked door on the ground floor, behind which was a pair of sylvan slippers (agility +3, plus resistances), a piece of "twisted mythral," and a cornucopia, which provides unlimited food. (If it ever runs dry, I didn't experience it.) 

   

At this point, I could have moved forward, as I had already found the necessary ruby key on the fighter's level. But at this time, I was still committed to mapping the entire game, and even if I wasn't, I figured that as a priest, I should experience the priest's level (G+2). It was pretty easy. Unlike the other levels, it didn't really rely much on the priest's unique abilities, although it did have a certain "clerical" theme. The western half of the level was organized into small cloisters with evil clerics occupying them and treasures strewn on the floor.

         

An evil cleric attacks me with some kind of fire spell.

     

The eastern half was presented as an outdoor area, just like the starting area, with a group of four mystic wells in a central courtyard. I found a second copy of the ruby key in just about the same square as on the fighter's level.

   

I started to explore the rogue and wizard levels, but my interest in the game was beginning to flag. The rogue level has numerous places where the rogue needs to jump over pits or teleporters using his special ability. Other players can mimic this with the "Enchantress" dagger, which casts the "Two-Step" spell, but at the time, I was under the impression that a weapon's magical charges were limited, like in Dungeon Master. Commenters had alerted me that the "Two-Step" ability was needed on one of the upper levels, and I didn't want to run out of charges.

       

The rogue's level had lots of pits to jump over.

     

Before I move on, let me cover a number of things I discovered, either on my own or from a video I watched later:

    

• Illusory walls, which are always dark, sometimes have items hidden within them. You have to pay attention to the automap and the various colors it shows.

• Turning in gems, gold, and other valuables to the wells (it doesn't matter which one) definitely does give you experience. I leveled up a couple of times while doing so. I guess certain items offer more experience and the mythral items offer the most.

• Some of the vials you find are special healing vials which not only fill your water meter but heal your wounds. These do not look any different than regular vials and are not named any differently. I must have left them strewn on the dungeon floors.

• Early on Level G+5, I found a "skeleton key." I don't believe it opens a single door in the game.

• I'd been taking up an inventory slot carrying the compass. It turns out that once you use it and the compass icon appears on the screen, you no longer need it.

• I guess magical items never run out of "charges." They deplete your food and water meters instead. I was thus probably a bit too conservative through most of the game.

• Some wells apparently deliver items when you click on them, including valuables that you can just feed back into the well. 

• Those green pools that cast poison fields are beatable--they're basically green versions of the water elementals--but it takes so many hits to kill them, and their poison fields kill you so fast, that it's almost impossible. Except for one other enemy I'll mention in a bit, I think they're the hardest regular enemies in the game.

• Vampires seem to come out of nowhere because some bats turn into vampires. That might be the coolest aspect of the game.

      

Moving on to G+5. It ramped up the difficulty so much that it was like playing a completely different game. The level was full of green slimes, blue dragons, blue probes, red balls of fire, and ghosts, and every one of them was capable of ranged attacks, often from so far away that I couldn't even see them. Any time I stepped into an open area, I got buzzed and blasted from four different directions and died nearly instantly.  

       

G+5, the last level I fully mapped.

      

Nonetheless, I mapped the entire thing. It took me three times as long as a normal level, and I had to make multiple trips back to the well on the ground level just to catch my breath. Upgrades included an elvin cap and a "Shield of Khan." There are a lot of items "of Khan" in the dungeon, but for the most part, they seemed to offer lesser upgrades than the "elvin" equipment. This might vary by class.

      

I'm getting hit by three things at once here.

         

The purpose of the level seemed to be to activate a pressure plate that opened the way to G+6. I have no idea where the plate was, but I must have crossed it at some point, because on one of my return trips, I noticed an open wall where there hadn't been an open wall before.

        

Lots of teleporters on the final level.

      

G+5 took so much out of me that I was no longer interested in the game. I knew from commenters that G+6 would be the last level, and I refused to even map it. I just said, "I'm going to follow the rightmost wall until I find the damned golden skull." This turned out to be a lot harder than expected, and frankly it probably would have been easier if I had mapped. In addition to teleporters, sliders, and pits, the game introduced three new elements:

   

• The need to use "Two-Step" (or the Enchantress dagger) to avoid pits and teleporters and, in some places, to jump through walls.

• Illusory walls blocked by enemies that you have to kill before you can go through them, only until you kill them, you don't know that it's not a regular wall unless you're checking the automap frequently.

• Enemies somehow embedded in regular walls. Again, you have to study the automap to find them. You then run up to the wall and attack what looks like a wall to kill them, but you never see what kind of enemy you're fighting, you can't actually tell when they die, and I don't think you can kill them at range.

     

There's some enemy attacking me inside this pillar.

       

The level also introduced a couple of new enemies. One, a flying blob with spikes, was capable of massive damage but at least had the decency to die in a couple of hits. The worst enemy--the worst in the game by far--was this blue guy capable of casting the same poison fields as the slime puddles on the levels below. Killing these guys took multiple reloads, 10 minutes of waltzing, and every resource I could muster. 

   

I was exploring the final level with several weapons: the mythral sword, which I think is the most powerful weapon I had; the Iron Saint for healing; The Enchantress for the "Two-Step" ability; and Flametongue to cast fireballs. I was also carrying the cornucopia and a water skin, as the use of these magic items depleted my food and water meters fast.

        

The worst enemy in the game.

      

Slowly--hatefully slowly--I made it to the final area of the game, which was a huge twisty maze full of the worst enemies the game could muster, including a bunch of those blue jackasses. I must have reloaded 30 times trying to find the final chamber. I eventually found it across from a pillar that read: "DEATH CAN WEAR A GOLDEN SMILE." I spent a long time and another dozen reloads clearing the enemies in the area around the chamber so I could have some breathing room.

   

I opened the chamber. In the doorway was "Khan's Ashes"---I guess the remains of the person who'd dropped all that equipment for me. I wish the backstory had said anything about him. There was a well in the center of the chamber. In the back, flying around, was the golden skull.

      

Looking into the final chamber. We now know what happened to Khan. We just don't know who he was.

    

It took me another half dozen deaths and reloads to figure out how to even approach battle with him. Sliders kept pushing me to the south side of the room, making waltzing impossible, and he was too fast anyway. He started blasting me with spells the moment he saw me and didn't let up until I was dead. I tried hitting him with various weapons and spells, but since the game gives you no indication of enemy health or the amount of damage you're doing, I had no idea what was successful.

 

After a series of failures, I turned to the Internet for help. I found it in only one place: a pair of videos by a YouTuber named Stuart Lloyd. Together, they were less than 90 minutes, driving home exactly how much of my own time had been spent mapping.

    

The fat blue dragons are worse than the fat red ones.

    

I watched the entirety of the videos because Stuart was clearly an expert on the game. I learned a lot from him, including some of the bullet points above. Stuart's experience was a bit different from mine, as he was playing a fighter. But he reached the final level at about the same experience level as me. The only major thing different about his character was that he had found a sword in that little room where I found the strange key and the Iron Saint. It was hidden in a slot on the floor. The sword is simply called "Iron Sword," looking no different from a regular iron sword, but it's apparently the best weapon in the game. Enemies that were taking me a dozen hits to kill he was killing in four or five. 

    

I didn't feel like going back and getting that sword, even if it would have helped a priest. His video showed him defeating the skull in about a dozen hits, but he had found one of the vials that acted as a healing potion, and he stood next to the mystic well, healing when necessary in between attacks. 

        

The Golden Skull blasts me as I attack.

       

Facing two options--obstinately beat my head against the golden skull, or reload an earlier save and go get that sword and find one of those vials--I naturally chose the former. I figured if he could kill the skull in 12 hits, I could do it in 30. It took me perhaps another dozen deaths and reloads to get to 30. I had to attack him until my health was low, then waltz out of the way and use the Iron Saint to heal myself, then re-engage--and I had to do all of this using the mouse instead of a proper set of key commands. Nonetheless, I eventually succeeded and got the anticlimactic winning screen, then managed to click off of it before taking a screenshot. So the shot at the beginning of this entry is from Mr. Lloyd's video. You'll just have to trust me.

   

You can keep playing the game after killing the skull. Lloyd does for another 10 minutes, using a "Teleport" spell (which I never found) to return to the opening area. I was surrounded by hostile enemies whose leader I just killed, so I decided to shut it down there.

   

Quick GIMLET:

    

• 1 point for a bare-bones game world. This game definitely needed more of a backstory. It wouldn't have been hard to write one. I have no idea why the documentation is so sparse.

• 4 points for character creation and development. There isn't anything original to the attributes and classes, but the author does a good job giving the classes different strengths and weaknesses (and fundamentally different games), and character development is well-paced and rewarding.

• 0 points for no NPCs.
  

• 3 points for encounters and foes. I can't complain that the game's bestiary isn't varied or challenging. I just wish the enemies had names and there were some non-combat encounters. I gave a point for a few Dungeon Master-like puzzles, but Well's approach to puzzles is pretty shallow compared to Dungeon Master.

      

I think the button count in this game was three: two on the first level and one on the last.

      

• 3 points for magic and combat. I can't give much to what amounts to just swinging away, although I allot some credit for the magic items inherent in items and in the wizard class.

• 4 points for equipment. The equipment system is a relatively strong part of the game (excepting the limited inventory). Statistics make it easy to determine what armor items are best, and I like that you have to experiment with some items to find their uses. On the other hand, the game is a bit too obtuse in the areas of relative weapon damage, and I don't like that items with the same names have different powers.

        

It's possible that I found rubescent pants on a previous level, not "pubescent" ones.

     

• 2 points for the economy. It's not a classic game economy, but scrounging treasure does offer an opportunity for some character development.

• 3 points for a main quest with some additional credit for the class-based floors that offer multiple paths to the mid-game.

       

Can't argue with that logic!

      

• 2 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics are at least functional, and there are some basic sound effects. The automap deserves a little credit. But I can never countenance an all-mouse interface, and the game skimps too much in some other areas. For instance, you can't see missiles or ranged attacks in transit (except, oddly, for fireballs).

• 4 points for gameplay. I give it credit for nonlinearity and some replayability (with the different classes), but the levels are too big, the game is too long, and the difficulty ramps up too much towards the end.

   

That gives us a final score of 26. When I first started playing, I thought it might make my "recommended" threshold, but the only way a game of such limited content could do that is to offer a more detailed story and balance itself better in the "gameplay" categories. Still, there's more to recommend here than the game suggested at first glance.

   

I spent a little time with the Daymare DOS remake. The changes are mostly unwelcome. The different experiences of the different classes is one of the few things Well had going for it, so it's a mystery why the author decided to do away with the classes and make every character a generic adventurer. Spells are cast by stringing together combinations of eight runes like in Dungeon Master. You don't have to have the spellbooks in hand to do so, making the books themselves more like Dungeon Master's instruction scrolls. The maps seem to be the same, although some of the objects have been replaced. In particular, blank scrolls now have specific spells on them.

        

The runes for the "Softens" spell (the use of which I never figured out) are shown with its name.

       

The signs leading up to the first four levels are unchanged. I'm curious how the rogue level works since the ability to jump doesn't seem to exist (I could be wrong; the version I downloaded comes with no instructions of any kind), but I wasn't willing to play long enough to find the necessary keys. The one good addition is a "Strike" statistic that tells you how much damage your attack has done. There also seems to be an encumbrance statistic; it's possible this played a role in Well and I just didn't realize it. There were times my food and water meters seemed to deplete faster than others.

   

Author Jim Todd followed up with Daymare 2 in 1993, which I've added to the list. His web site shows that his latest game is a multiplayer dungeon crawler called Myriad Maze (2022) which "features a unique loot and inventory system combined with a real POW cryptocurrency backed commodity" (his other major project is a cryptocurrency called Myriadcoin). Suddenly 2022 seems too close.