Game 537: The Power Stones of Ard II: The Five Towers of Trafa-Zar (1990)

 

We were just talking about that. That's two obscure references in one title. What do you think?

     

The Power Stones of Ard II: The Five Towers of Trafa-Zar

United States

Three C's Projects (developer and publisher)

Released in 1990 for Tandy Color Computer 3

Date Started: 10 January 2025

        

I had curious feelings when I saw this game coming up on my list. Its predecessor, The Power Stones of Ard: The Quest for the Spirit Stone, was one of the most maddening games I've played for this blog. I got stuck and quit it about 15 times, but I kept finding (often aided by LanHawk) the next clue needed to move forward, if only for a few steps. But by the end, I had to admit that it was mostly fair (the more arcane things the game wants you to do are clued, if only obscurely) and competently programmed by a developer (Bill Cleveland of Hamlet, North Carolina) who had some original ideas. The Tandy Color Computer 3 was not exactly a well-served platform when it comes to CRPGs, and Ard would have given contemporary players a satisfying, if difficult, experience.

  

The manual for the sequel retcons the original story a bit. In the original, the three Power Stones were deliberately created to fight evil; in the sequel, we're told their creation was accidental, that they were physical representations of "good energies" that the wizards of the time were trying to cast. The original says they were never employed against the evil, that the wizards lost their nerve and fled to different areas, each taking a Power Stone with him. This game says they used the stones to vanquish the evil and then hid the stones in "great strongholds" afterwards. Whatever the case, this game concerns one of those strongholds, where the evil wizard Trafa-Zar keeps the Mind Stone. He can't use it himself—he can't even enter the room where it's kept—but he can stop anyone else from getting to it.

   

The sequel offers a revised interface and a vastly different setting, all indoors.

     

The PC is surprisingly not the same character from the first game but rather an apprentice of the good wizard Niz. Niz has learned that Trafa-Zar can be defeated by a staff that has absorbed some of the Mind Stone's energy. He asks the PC to help him prepare the magical powder for a teleportation spell that will take him (Niz) to the fortress to confront Trafa-Zar. But a cat jumps up on the table while the apprentice is preparing the formula. It overturns on the floor, activates, and sends the Level 1 apprentice to the fortress instead.

   

Character creation has you choose a name, race (human or elf), and sex for the character. The game then rolls five sets of values for strength, intelligence, dexterity, and constitution from a range of roughly 2-30, although there are modifications for race. You can select one of the five sets. Health points are derived from constitution and spell points from intelligence, and the game chooses a character portrait for you from a small library of them.

   

If you don't like any of these, you have to restart the program.

     

After a long loading time (loading times in general are excruciating), you find yourself in the pitch dark in the first tower of Trafa-Zar, carrying only a dagger, which you want to put immediately I)n Hand. This opening moment feels a bit like Dungeons of Daggorath (1982).

      

The game keeps some of the conventions of the first game while jettisoning others. The most significant change is that the sequel takes place indoors (at least, so far) in a 3-D view; the original had outdoor and indoor areas and used a top down "view," but the views were really just static screens that appeared as you moved from node to node. I guess the same is true here to an extent, but you can enter each square from multiple directions and see an appropriate image from that direction, so it has some of the same DNA as Wizardry or Dungeon Master. Icons along the top of the screen are highlighted as you cast various navigation spells.

    

The opening square, with my dagger in hand and my "Light" spell going.

     

Preserved from the original is the use of every letter on the keyboard for one command or another, including A)ttack, C)limb, J)ump, K)neel, M)ove, S)ay, and Y)ank/pull. The player encounters numerous puzzles that involve identifying the right command or set of commands to use in the appropriate place. It also has a strange movement system (although not unique) in which you turn and move as part of the same action. You cannot just turn.

   

Enemies do not appear in the environment; combat comes along suddenly when you walk into occupied squares. Enemies can move; once they become aware of you, they chase you around the level. The composition of each level is randomized (from a pool of monsters of appropriate difficulty) when the level first loads, but after that the actual number of monsters on a level is fixed, and when you clear it, they don't (at least, so far) return.

        

Getting attacked by four toad warriors at once.

       

When you meet an enemy party, the game tells you how many foes you face. You only have a second before they start attacking, so you either want to flee (by hitting a movement key) or start pounding A)ttack. Combat timing is . . . odd. I can't quite tell if it's real-time, or if it's turn-based, but the game registers a "pass" if you don't act within a certain (very short) time. (Again, there's a bit of a Daggorath feel here.) Either way, you really want to lay into the attack key. When enemies go, they all get to attack at once, so the more of them you can clear in the opening seconds of combat, the better. You can also cast spells here, but a Level 1 player doesn't really have enough spell points for offensive spells yet.

       

Bill Cleveland is a member of the "pig-nosed orcs" faction.

          

The game has 20 spells (to the first one's 9), and you have access to all of them at the beginning, although you don't have enough spell points for most of them. The five exploration spells ("Magic Shield," "Light," "Detect Door," "Detect Life," and "Direction") cost an initial bunch of points (from 3 for "Light" to 50 for "Magic Shield") and then continue to sap your spell points every so often as long as they remain active. Other spells (e.g., "Lightning," "Hold," "Knock," "Healing") just have a fixed cost. Spells are cast by hitting their appropriate numbers or CTRL and their appropriate numbers.

    

Unlike the first game, there's no permadeath here. You can Q)uit and save any time you want, although the game won't let you do it in combat or if there's an enemy hot on your trail. Once a level is clear, or you're at least a few squares away from an enemy, you can choose W)izard's meditation to restore your spell points, which you can use to restore hit points. Sleeping (with the "Z") key restores lost strength. Both "W" and "Z" are risky in areas with enemies still active because if you get caught in a vulnerable moment, you die instantly.

      

If the rest of the game is like the first tower, it is small, linear, and predictable, albeit with challenging puzzles. The five levels I experienced were all 5 x 5, each with four or five parties of monsters like goblins, orcs, trolls, and toad warriors. Each had a puzzle that required solving before I could get to the next level. The monsters are hard, and I restarted the game a couple of times to try different combinations of statistics. On my second pass, I got unlucky with the number of toad warriors on Level 2, and I couldn't kill them all. 

       

The game's first five levels.

         

Level 1 has mostly goblins, one of whom drops a short sword (to replace the starting dagger). There's a lever on one wall next to a sign that says ,"Earth and Water." If you pull the lever, you get dropped into quicksand and die instantly.

   

The level is completely open except for a single square in the northeast corner with a locked door. A square along the north wall notes that the ceiling is transparent and shimmering. You have to cast "Knock" to open the door. Inside, you find a bed and a trunk with a rusty lock. You have to B)reak the lock on the trunk to O)pen it and G)et its contents: a belt that increases your armor class by 2. You have to X)amine the bed to note that the mattress is extra springy, G)et it, haul it to the room with the shimmering ceiling, D)rop it, and J)ump on it. It's not a hard puzzle in concept, but it took me a while to get all the commands right and also to get used to the game's conventions. If it points out something particular, like a mattress, it's never just for flavor.

      

Overcoming the first challenge.

     

You come up through the floor on Level 2 and can't get back down. Enemies are a bit harder; in addition to goblins, you get orcs and toad warriors. One of them drops a red potion, which increases your might for a time. There's another lever on an east wall that says, "Earth and Fire," and if you pull it (technically, Y)ank it), lava flows into the room and kills you. A western wall has a brown "E" painted on it, and I never figured out what that was.

    

I'm starting to distrust levers.

      

The level appears at first to only be 5 x 4, but the bottom row is hidden behind a secret door that can be revealed with the "Detect Door" spell or just by walking into it. You want to avoid just walking into most walls, though, because you take a point of damage if you're wrong.

     

Note the secret door outlined in blue.

     

One of the squares behind the secret door has a black potion and a green scroll. The black potion restores all your attributes; more on that in a bit. I haven't read the green scroll yet.

     

I never found anything to do with the tapestries, which worries me.

       

An archway has words over it that read, "Show harmony by actions, then word." Two steps beyond is a room with a guardian who does not attack. If you try to attack him, you don't do any damage, and he destroys you. K)neeling before him gives you a sense that he's good. It took me a while to figure out how to operationalize the message. I tried N)odding at him, S)aying a variety of things, and giving him a variety of things. I was almost about to wrap up the entry here when I realized that I could "show harmony" by dropping my weapons. As for what to say, the image of the guardian himself made it clear.

      

VICTORY, of course.

         

Once I got it right, he opened a secret door and shoved me into a room with no exits except a ladder to the next level.

   

At some point on dungeon Level 2, I leveled up, reaching character Level 2. You get so many new spell points with each level increase that a lot of new options become available to you. This was good because I reached (dungeon) Level 3 with no weapons and lots of tough enemies, including large packs of giant fleas who sap dexterity with every hit. Your hands aren't very effective as weapons unless you also cast "Augment" for 5 spell points. It can be cast up to three times, each one building on the previous, making you a lot deadlier in combat no matter what weapon you're using. It lasts for a while, too, and I don't see any good reason to not always have it on. Unfortunately, unlike the exploration spells, there's no visual representation of it, so you don't really know when it disappears.

        

My least favorite enemy so far.

     

I emerged in the lower left corner. It was another 5 x 5, but with each of the corners hidden behind a secret door. A lever on the south wall read "EARTH," and expecting some other horrid death, I saved and then pulled it. Instead of killing me, it produced a diamond.

   

The northwest room had a barrel full of oil and a bone. The northeast had a battle axe and a clay tablet. The southeast had a hole in the ceiling, but it was too high to reach. There was a stone block in the room next to it, but it was too heavy to M)ove. I'll let you muse on the possible solution to that problem.

   

In the meantime, the clay tablet had this message on the front: "MTV QBFRKP M RDHRRNG JBC M KDZFM." The back promised, "Whom soever that breaks the code shall hold the key." I couldn't break the code. I tried for a while. I don't believe it's a straight cryptogram, and I tried it forwards and backwards. Lacking any vowels, it can't be an anagram. But cryptography isn't my strength, so maybe one of you can come up with something. In any event, I figured out how to leave the level without it, and even got a silver key in the process, but it could be referring to a different key or a later puzzle.

    

Oh, right. Air sharks appeared at some point.

      

Level 4 had a statue of a bird with the message "TURN BACK EVIL AND SPEAK IT." This is a classic crypto-crossword clue, and the answer was to S)ay LIVE. The bird came to life, flew into a hidden opening, and came back with a wand that says "BOLT" on it. I haven't had a chance to use it yet.

     

A lever on the north wall read "EARTH AND WIND," and pulling it caused a sandstorm that killed me. I guess maybe only the single-element levers are safe. A room in the center of the level had a statue of a dog with an open mouth. I intuited immediately that the solution to the puzzle was to give him the bone from Level 3, but again, it took a while to figure out how the game wanted me to do that. Simply H)anding it to him didn't work; neither did D)ropping it or P)utting it on the dog. The "Put" command always asks where you want to put the thing. It turns out you have to specify MOUTH. This causes a secret door to open behind him. It has a coin on the floor that you have to throw (using the V)olley command) into a slot, which magically teleports you to the next level.

   

Finally, Level 5 starts off seeming like a 3 x 3 level, but of course there's a secret door to the outer rim. The inner side has a pedestal glowing with a magic light and a picture on the wall of a man with a scar on his cheek, a black eye, and a missing tooth. I couldn't figure out anything to do with either of them. In the area beyond the secret door is a square with a riddle:

         

You can't make them all impossible, after all.

      

The answer was painfully obvious, and saying it transports you to the second tower, but I kept my save from before the transport while I try to figure out anything to do with the pedestal or painting.

   

Miscellaneous notes:

    

• Reloading is bugged. I often get the wrong character (a default character named Irac) or a weird mélange of the two, where the character is named "Chester" but has different stats and a different portrait than what I saved. I've thus been mostly saving and reloading with emulator save states, which is always an iffy thing to rely on in the long-term. 

• The game tracks both maximum values and current values for your attributes. Current strength occasionally drops a point from combat. Current dexterity was damaged by those fleas. Current constitution just drops periodically for apparently no reason; the manual says that food will restore it. Sleep restores strength. I don't know what restores dexterity except the single black potion I found, which restores all attributes once. I drank it on Level 5, before a bunch of fleas got me again, and I'm worried about when I'll find another.

     

My inventory late in the session.

    

• There's an encumbrance system, but I don't know when it becomes a problem.

• You can X)amine any object, including inventory, to get a brief description of it. I always like this.

     

It's not much, but I still like it.

      

So far, I've enjoyed Trafa-Zar. It's been challenging but fair, if a bit too linear. However, I have a feeling of dread that I'm going to run up against a puzzle eventually that I simply can't figure out, and the game is obscure enough that I don't think there are any online hints to help. I don't want to get to the point where I'm inspecting program code, as I did with its predecessor. I'll try to keep a sense of optimism.

   

Time so far: 3 hours