Game 487: Black Dawn (1993)

For a limited game, it has a relatively impressive title screen.

      

Black Dawn

United Kingdom

Independently developed; released as freeware

Released 1993 or 1994 for Amiga
Date Started: 20 February 2023

Date Ended: 20 February 2023

Total Hours: 5

Difficulty: Hard (4.0/5)

Final Rating: 14

Ranking at Time of Posting: 75/508 (15%)

   

I played Black Dawn over a long winter evening. The timetable of the experience went like this:

   

• 20:30: "Huh. Black Dawn. Never heard of it." 

• 20:40: "Doesn't seem like an RPG. No character development, no attributes. Not much to the game. I'll make it part of a "brief BRIEF."

• 20:50: "Hmmm. It does seem to have spawned some sequels, including a very recent one. I guess I'll give it a full BRIEF."

• 21:00: "This site says it only has three levels. I can do three levels. Might as well win it."

• 21:30: "WHAT THE #$%& is going on with this $#$&@ GAME!"

• 22:30: "That's it! I already decided it's not an RPG! I'm not playing anymore!"

• 23:45: "Okay. I have the stupid BRIEF written. Now I can . . . Argh. I can't let a three-level game beat me."

• 00:30: "That's it! I already decided it's not an RPG! I'm not playing anymore!"

• 02:00: Finally won the game. More obscenities at the "winning" screen and cursing myself, the developer, and all of you. I have to teach tomorrow!

    

Black Dawn is what it looks like: a freeware Dungeon Master clone with perhaps some Doom aesthetics. The setup is that you're on a space station of some kind and you have to make it down three levels, battling hostile aliens along the way. As the player transitions levels, a "mission" screen shows an elevator moving downward and the player is told a bit about the level. These screens seem to have been adapted from Alien Breed (1991), which otherwise has very different gameplay.   

    

Transitioning between levels.

     

To me, the two greatest sins of RPG development are: 1) Level caps that a normal player will hit before the end of the game; and 2) all-mouse interfaces. Black Dawn avoids #1 by having no attributes, experience, or leveling at all (which is why this started as a BRIEF), but it's the quintessential example of #2. Not only does the game eschew the keyboard, but its tiny GTFO cluster has buttons so close together that it's nearly impossible to click on them with any accuracy. To make matters even more fun, walking into a wall (which you do all the time when you accidentally click "strafe" instead of "turn") damages you.

       

The game's only "stats." Energy level is health.

     

Other than the lack of character attributes and development, the game feels very similar to Dungeon Master. You can hold a weapon in each hand--you start with a knife and a pistol--and click on either to attack enemies, after which you wait through a very brief cool-down period. Movement is tiled, but enemies attack in real-time. There are only three enemy types in the game.

    

The game's first enemy.

      

There are stores at regular intervals where you can buy weapon upgrades, armor, and medical packs. Enemies drop money, and you occasionally just find it on the floor. 

 

The levels have some balls that you can, sometimes must, roll out of the way. If you're not careful, you can block a corridor with them and find yourself unable to progress, so it's important to study the map carefully. There are no other puzzles in the game. Sound effects are well-done though sparse, so when you hear something, it's almost startling.

     

A room with a lot of moveable balls.

      

The game has only three small levels of 20 x 20 in worm-tunnel design. The difficulty comes from the fact that it's a completely closed system. There are a fixed number of enemies and a fixed amount of gold (with a little bit of random variance). You have to have exactly the right equipment at exactly the right time to survive, and you have to make no unnecessary purchases and lose no unnecessary health (including bumping into walls). Winning involves mapping each level carefully (there's an automap, but it doesn't note monsters or treasure) and then exquisitely choreographing the right set of moves to buy only what you need and to fight only the enemies that you need to fight (some can be avoided). The game doesn't allow for saving and reloading, though you could get a code at the beginning of each level to enter on a restart. It imperfectly restores the character, usually screwing the player on money. I only won with copious use of save states, and I can't imagine how infuriating it would have been to have to start over from the beginning of the level every time I died.

     

The automap of the level. You have to be careful where you push those balls.

    

If you want to try this one for yourself, this is my advice:

    

• Don't bother with the knife or the knife upgrade. Melee attacks do nothing. You'll lose more in health than they're worth. Buy the best guns you can and attack from a distance when possible.

• Use the backpedaling-while-firing strategy if you can, but enemy pathfinding is weird in the game. They sometimes won't follow you around corners. You may end up in a spot where you have to fight in melee range.

     

It's tempting, but you're better off buying more firepower.

   

• Prioritize weapons first, then medpacks, then armor. The secret to success is not getting hit at all, not trying to minimize damage.

• When there are multiple enemies in a row, try to dart forward quickly after you kill one and grab its money. If another enemy enters the square, the money is lost.

• The money you get from killing the tentacled beasts and the floating heads is worth the loss of bullets and health. The T-Rex looking things, on the other hand, should be avoided when possible.

      

Don't fight this guy unless you must.

      

• You have to return to the elevator on Level 3, so don't leave any enemies in your backpath that are blocking corridors. If you want to run around one of them, make sure you leave him in an open room.

      

The goal of the game is to find the "silica documents" on Level 3 and then make it back to the elevator shaft. Three times, I managed to get to the documents only to have some enemy block me on the way back, and each time I was just shy of the ammunition needed to kill them, the health needed to survive their attacks, and the money needed to fix both of those problems. Only with the strategies listed above did I finally prevail.

      

Finding the "silica documents."

     

When I did, I got this message:

    

            

So this version was just a "demo." I'm not sure if there was another version. There are confusing messages on message boards. One says that there were two versions, one "public domain" and one "shareware"; I guess I played the public domain version, but I can't find any other. Another message says that the other version was the same as the first "but with different levels taken from the novella disc," whatever that means. I downloaded ADFs from several sites, but they all seemed to be this version.

      

In any event, author Andrew Campbell must have gotten positive feedback because the demo launched a franchise. From what I've been able to assemble online, it includes:

    

• Black Dawn (1993 or 1994)
• Black Dawn II (1994)
• Hell and Gone: The Black Dawn Story (1995), AKA Black Dawn: Hell and Gone
• Legions of Dawn (1995), AKA Black Dawn III
• Thunderdawn (1996), AKA Black Dawn IV
• Dawn: A New Beginning (1996), AKA Black Dawn V
• Dawn VI: Hellbound (1996), AKA Black Dawn VI
• Champions of Dawn (1996), AKA Black Dawn VII
• Black Dawn Remix (unknown; I can barely confirm that it even existed)
• Black Dawn: Rebirth (2019), including Rogue expansion
  
• Black Dawn: Technomage (2022)

    

All of the entries, even the last two, are for the Amiga. I should note that some of the dates might be wrong. Web sites are all over the place, with Thunderdawn through Champions of Dawn listed as 1995 games in many places. There's even some confusion about this game: Most sites give it as 1994, some 1993. Given that the earliest reviews came out very early in 1994, I suspect 1993 is the more accurate date, but I'm not sure.

     

This is the third enemy type.

     

I'm not sure how Campbell managed to release four sequels in the same year, but I understand some of them vary quite a bit in gameplay. II and Legions both retain their Dungeon Master roots and seem like natural progressions from the demo. Hell and Gone is an electronic novella with no graphics or gameplay. Thunderdawn changes the interface to "behind the back" and offers a full-screen exploration window with minimal interface elements, but that seems to have been abandoned for later games. Thunderdawn and Hellbound both seem to have fantasy settings. 

   

With each title, the graphics have gotten better, but after watching the videos of gameplay, I think we might be all the way up to Technomage before any of them meet my definitions for RPGs. Until then, I don't see any specific evidence of attributes and leveling, just continuing improvements to inventory and action-based combat tactics. The character screen for Technomage shows that the character has strength, dexterity, and experience, however.

       

Andrew Campbell started as the sole developer of the series, but by Legions, he had a much larger staff helping with graphics, sound, and playtesting. By Hellbound, though, Campbell had amicably passed the series to Shaun Watters, who remains the primary developer through the two most recent titles. Campbell's lack of involvement may have been due to getting positions with some AAA developers, but I'm not sure that all of the Andrew or Andy Campbells that MobyGames conflates into one ludography are in fact the same person.

         

Thus, we'll see what happens with future games. I give this one a 14 on the GIMLET, but let's not focus on that. It did everything it could to discourage me from including it and I forced it onto my blog anyway.