BRIEF: The Tower of Druaga (1984)

 

Although not officially released in the west until the late 1990s, all versions of the game have an English title.

          

The Tower of Druaga

Japan 

Namco (developer and publisher) 
Released 1984 for Arcade; 1985 for NES, Sharp 800 series; 1986 for Sharp X1, FM-7, MSX; 1990 for Game Boy.

Remade for TurboGrafx-16 in 1992 

Rejected for: Insufficient character development

            

When one speaks in absolutes, an exception almost always appears, so I would be cautious about saying that it's impossible for an arcade game to be an RPG. I would also be cautious about saying that no RPG has "lives" instead of hit points. Despite this caution, I suspect both statements are true. Wikipedia, GameFAQs, and several other databases offer The Tower of Druaga in response. For that matter, so does the early documentation for the game.

     

In The Tower of Druaga, the player controls a character named Gilgamesh ("Gil" on platforms that can't support a name that long) who has to ascend a 60-floor tower, defeat a demon named Druaga, rescue a princess named Ki, and find a magical blue rod that somehow keeps the peace in the unnamed kingdom.

   

Each of the 60 floors offers a maze with a key and a door. The maze structure is fixed but the key and door locations are randomized. The player must find the key and open the door while avoiding (or slaying) the level's randomly-moving enemies. He must do this within a time limit or face an assault by rapidly-moving, unkillable balls of energy. Each level also has an unannounced secret treasure revealed through a scripted combination of actions, some of them easy to stumble upon, some nearly impossible. The player has three lives, and any interception by the enemy ends one of them.

          

A bunch of monsters stand between me, the key, and the exit door.

         

The original arcade game does not appear to have been offered in a dedicated cabinet; instead, it ran on a conversion kit for Namco's Super Pac-Man (1982). This lineage has caused my authors to dub it "fantasy Pac-Man," which I find an apt description. You move the character through a Pac-Man style maze. You spend more time avoiding enemies than slaying them. The items that you find feel like "power-ups." And yet when the game was released in 1985 for the NES, the instruction manual called it "a new kind of action game that incorporates role-playing elements." What is it talking about?

         

The manual for the game's original NES release.

       

Namco (Bandai Namco since a 2005 merger) goes back to 1955, when Nakamura Manufacturing Company began as a maker of amusement rides and mechanical games. In 1975, it purchased the floundering Atari Japan and entered the arcade game market. It enjoyed unprecedented success with Galaxian (1979), Pac-Man (1980), Galaga (1981), Pole Position (1982), and Xevious (1983), a vertical-scrolling shooter written by Masanobu ("Evezoo") Endō. At this point, the story I found repeatedly is that Endō made a business trip to the United States, bought one or more Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks, and became interested in role-playing games. (Stories also say he was exposed to Wizardry around the same time but neglect to say how; however, later in the 1980s, he would executive-produce the NES conversions of the first five Wizardry games, minus The Return of Werdna.) He set out to create Quest, a fusion of an action game with an RPG, but grew dissatisfied with the RPG elements, scaled them back, and ended up with Druaga.

   

I'm not sure this standard story is quite true. After consulting original interviews with Endō (particular thanks to the anonymous translator that owns this site), I think the actual narrative is this: Endō became fascinated with role-playing games, tried to develop one called Quest, got frustrated, realized it would never work as an arcade game, shelved it, and wrote Druaga instead. The same sites also say that Quest was later released as Druaga's sequel, Return of Ishtar (1986), but as far as I can tell, Ishtar isn't an RPG either; it's Druaga with a larger map and two players. The idea that there's any Wizardry lineage in either game is simply absurd.

   

The best I can figure, the "RPG elements" that other writers (and perhaps some of the original players) are seeing in Druaga is that (a) the hero is a recognizable human, not an abstraction like a space ship or a construct like Pac-Man; (b) as a human, he has a mission and framing story; and (c) there are a bunch of items to find and use. I don't see (c) as being much different than Pac-Man's power-ups or Galaga's extra ship, but there are clearly more of them. As for (a) and (b), I guess I can see how your mind might turn to RPGs if your only experience with gaming was from arcade games, but the computer and console worlds by 1984 had plenty of examples of storied protagonists who were not RPG heroes, not to mention plenty of examples (including in Japan) of actual RPGs. My overall point here is that authors who try to fit Druaga into a history of RPGs are relying heavily on Endō's and Namco's own limited experience outside the arcade world. 

       

I've completed the level's secret quest, so the treasure has appeared.

       

Druaga's legacy is far less about any pretensions to RPG status and far more about its hidden secrets and the improbability of any one player stumbling upon all of them. The first winner certainly had to stand on the shoulders of thousands of predecessors. Of course, players shared tips and tricks for getting high scores in Pac-Man, Asteroids, and Pitfall!, but for none of these games is collaboration an absolute necessity on the road to mastery. Accounts tell of spiral notebooks left on Druaga's arcade cabinets, each player logging secrets as he discovered them, creating a community out of a single-player game.  

        

Playing the game without these collaborative hints is an exercise in frustrating, unfair trial-and-error. There are legitimate RPGs that take such an approach; I think of Sword of Kadash from the same year, which strikes me as a lot closer to the sort of game that writers think Endō made when they're writing about Druaga. One is tempted to draw a line from this kind of gameplay to Dark Souls or Elden Ring, but isn't every arcade action game an exercise in such failure, frustration, and learning?

    

I played the MSX version for no particular reason except that I like the emulator and it seemed closest to the original arcade version. As I started Level 1, I spent about a dozen lives trying to figure out how to kill the slimes on the level. The character's default position is holding a shield in front of him, his sword ready just behind it. Hitting the action button causes Gilgamesh to swing the sword. There were a lot of "game over" screens before I realized that the swing is just an animation: if you want to kill enemies, you have to hold down the attack key and keep the sword permanently pointed in front of you, then charge into them.

           

You don't swing your sword in this game; you charge with it fully extended.

       

Ah, but not so fast. Charging into them only kills them if they're still. If the slimes are moving at all when you touch them, you die. Since all enemies seem to stop and start at random intervals, you have to be exceedingly careful. You want to hit them just as they've come to a stop, and even then only if you must. If they're not blocking your path, there's no reason to risk it. (This is my experience with the MSX version, anyway; others might be more or less forgiving.) On later levels, Gilgamesh's shield blocks missiles fired directly at him when held in rest position or from the left when brandishing the sword.

    

Level 1's secret mission is just to kill 3 slimes, so it's not so bad. When you've killed the third one, a treasure chest appears. Walking over it gives you a pick-axe that you can use three times per level—twice before you've found the hidden treasure, once after—to open one of the maze walls and thus shorten your journey. If you try to use it more than that, it disappears. You "use" the pick simply by facing a wall when you hit the attack button; I found it extremely easy to use it accidentally and lose it.

     

Level 2 introduces black slimes as well as green ones; killing two of these is the key to unlocking a pair of boots that speeds up the character's movement; this is not a treasure that any player should overlook. 

   

Level 3 offers a couple of armored characters in addition to the slimes. They're paradoxically easier to defeat; as long as the character has his sword readied, he just needs to pass through them a few times. (Unlike the slimes, it doesn't matter if they're moving.) Killing one of the pair unlocks a healing potion that acts as an extra life.

       

I kill an armored guy and a slime.

       

It's important to reiterate that during your time on these levels, a countdown clock is constantly running. If you defeat the level before it runs out, you keep what remains as bonus points. If the clock gets to 60, it turns red and begins counting down in seconds. At this point, one or two "wisps" might appear and start flying around the map. They cannot be killed and kill Gilgamesh instantly. I'm not sure it's possible to survive 60 seconds with the wisps on the map, but if you do, and the clock runs out, you die.

   

Level 4 is where things get hairy. It introduces a mage enemy who teleports around the level firing missiles. The missile kills Gilgamesh unless his shield is in front of him, which is contrary to the way the player has learned to move around on the previous three levels. Worse, finding the hidden treasure—a bell that chimes when you face in the direction of the level's key—can only be found by going to the door before you've found the key.

       

I've run out the clock and the wisps are searching for me.

        

Level 5 has half a dozen of those wizards, popping up all over the place, and the only way to find the secret treasure—a sword that doesn't do anything but is needed for a later treasure—is to block three of their missile attacks while moving towards them. 

   

You get the idea. Some of the steps needed to get the special treasure are ones that I never would have come up with on my own. Even if I had, I probably wouldn't have realized what triggered the treasure:

   

• Level 7: Deliberately break the pick-axe to get a stronger pick-axe that can be used more often.
• Level 20: Open the exit door without defeating any enemies first.
• Level 24: Swing the sword as soon as the level begins. This gets you a gauntlet that you need to later collect a better gauntlet.
• Level 30: Walk over the same (invisible) point on the map three times.
• Level 39: Press a particular sequence on the directional pad or joystick to get a ring that is absolutely necessary later on.

       

The upper levels of the tower have individually difficult enemies who require specific treasures to slay, some of which must be assembled from multiple individual treasures found on lower levels.

         

A wizard jumps around firing magic bolts.

       

I was relying on walkthroughs to tell me the hidden treasures by Level 4. Even worse, by that same level, I had reloaded save states probably 20 times. It naturally didn't make sense to me to expend any more effort on a non-RPG that would have required several types of cheating to win.

       

I can tell from online sources that the steps necessary to defeat Druaga, recover the rod, and save Princess Ki are quite specific. You first have to not find a fake blue rod on Level 57. The real one is on Level 58, and to find it, you have to pass through three random points in order. On Level 59, you have to kill a few wizards and a dragon before Druaga appears, slinging spells.

      

On Level 60, the player has to first touch the goddess Ishtar, then stop and brandish his sword in a couple of precise places to make two candles appear.  Finally, he grabs Princess Ki from the end of a corridor, returns to the middle of the screen, and the winning message appears. I wonder who reached that point for the first time, when, and after how many cumulative hours of previous players' frustrations.

       

The final level, courtesy of YouTube creator World of Longplays.

              

Druaga's ports vary in maze sizes, colors, movement speeds, graphical detail, and several game mechanics. Some of them offer secret alternate towers whose puzzles aren't fully cataloged online. The NES version, perhaps the most forgiving, lets the player start a new game on the highest completed floor from previous games. The 1990 Game Boy version removes "lives" and gives Gilgamesh hit points, including some objects that increase maximum hit points. This version starts to border on an RPG, but of course by 1990, the games that Druaga supposedly inspired—including Hydlide (1984), Dragon Slayer (1984), Deadly Towers (1986), The Legend of Zelda (1986), and Ys I (1987)—had all done the same thing.

       

The winning message, courtesy of YouTube creator World of Longplays.

          

The 1992 TurboGrafx-16 version is unquestionably an RPG. Gilgamesh finds a full set of RPG-style equipment, and the player can spend accumulated experience points on boosts to his attributes. It is also the most advanced graphically, with a tilted perspective and much more detail on the various objects. This version is different enough that MobyGames considers it a separate game—a remake rather than a port—and I'm inclined to agree.

         

A shot from the TurboGrafx-16 version. Note that Gilgamesh has 78 hit points.

       

Druaga kicked off a series of games known as the "Babylonian Castle Saga"; sequels and prequels include Return of Ishtar (1986), Quest of Ki (1988), Blue Crystal Rod (1994), and some later 1990s and 2000s spin-offs. (Curiously, game databases are less likely to apply the RPG label to them than Druaga despite those games having a better claim.) Related media included a theme park ride and two anime series: The Tower of Druaga: The Aegis of Uruk (2008) and The Tower of Druaga: The Sword of Uruk (2009). 

    

So: Influential game? Yes. RPG? No—or at least not until it had been around so long that its ports were drawing features from other games. As to whether any arcade game or any game with "lives" could be an RPG, I leave that to your discussion. 

 

 

Sandor II: A Midsummer Night's RPG

 

My party stays up all night in a forest.

                

Since I was teenager, I've tried to adhere to the tradition of staying up all night on the Summer Solstice, which isn't at all that hard given my natural circadian rhythm. I'd like to say that I'm usually doing something interesting during that time—gamboling in a forest outside Athens, for instance—but I suppose most of those 35 years have been spent on a computer or in front of a television set. This year, I spent it playing Sandor II. There was a time I wouldn't want to admit that, but I'm old now and have no one left to impress.

       

It became clear this session that the game is a lot larger than I thought. What I took for the entire game world in the automap was just the portion that I was able to see based on my current "Cartography" skill. When I pumped that skill up to 100% and saw the entire thing, I realized it's more than a dozen times as large as the small, walled-in starting area in the northwest.

      

The full world map. In this session, I didn't go further east than Column D or further south than Row 4. The opening area is basically A1:A4.

           

A second revelation was that there was more to the interface than I realized. Thanks to Buck for cluing me in. Right-clicking while in dungeons brings up some options, including the ability to see the current time and to wait. I tried it in the dungeon with the three fountains, and the same NPC who I had met outside came along. He told me of the importance of two words. "One word opens the fortress, but the other you must tell the gatekeeper! Now listen carefully. Whoever forgets the 7th letter of my first name gets one. Whoever swaps the first 4 gets the other. Well, farewell to you."

   

The NPC is named FLORIAN, so one of the passwords is FLORIA and the other . . . well, "swaps the other four" could mean several things, and I would have saved myself 44 guesses if I had realized that it meant "put them in reverse order." Instead, I interpreted it as "changed the order" and I listed all 23 possibilities—but really 46 because I didn't know whether I should keep the IAN or not. When FLORIA didn't work on the guard at the gate surrounding the starting area, I tried FLRO, FLROIAN, FORL, FORLIAN, and so forth, before getting it at the end of the list with ROLF.

       

Waiting until midnight in the dungeon.

           

Unfortunately, while ROLF let me through the gate, it didn't work when trying to get back. I left some undone stuff in the starting area. That was particularly unfortunate because I had a third revelation in the first dungeon I found on the other side of the gate: Dungeon doors haven't been locked. What I took for "locked" doors could be opened with an "open" command on the same screen as the clock. Some of them require forcing the door or picking the lock, and you have multiple tries to do so. I still think there is some door that's going to require stones (as per one of the tavern tips), but I haven't found it yet.

       

Exploring the island kingdom.

      

I didn't explore this first dungeon very far. Instead, I hopped a ferry across a channel to another walled-in area. Eventually, I came to a house with a woman who offered to ferry me across yet another river. There was no river nearby. I said yes anyway and found myself on a couple of islands connected by a bridge, with no way back. I wandered to the southern island and met a mage who said I was in the Island Kingdom of Bramos and that I had to pass a test; specifically, this riddle:

      

German	English
Ein Glanzmetall steht hier am Anfang. Ihm folgt in tiefem Schwarz ein Anhang. Ein Mensch mit einem Angebot. Man wählt. Er schleppt herbei, was Not. Wir aber sehen bei der Verschmelzung der beiden schließlich nur noch Rot.	A shiny metal stands at the beginning here. It is followed by an appendage in deep black. A person with an offer. One chooses. He brings what is needed. But when the two merge, we ultimately see only red.

     

I couldn't get anywhere with it; fortunately, commenters matt w and Michl figured it out: ZINNOBER, or CINNABAR in English. The shiny metal is meant to make you think of tin (zinn) and the person with an offer is meant to make you think of a waiter (ober). "When the two merge, we ultimately see only red" refers to the vermilion color of cinnabar. I'm not sure what the "appendage in deep black" is about.

    

As a consequence of answering the riddle successfully, teleporters bounced my party around several islands before we met the "representative of the King of Bramos," a cyclops, who gave us Kotalan's Ring. I assume that becomes vital later. (Kotalan is the evil wizard who has kidnapped the three princesses.) A ferry took us back to where we came from.

       

That is one ugly cyclops.

         

Other findings in this new area were cities called Lunosa and Terosa; schools offering to train "Cartography"; "Hunting"; "Negotiation"; and "Trap Removal"; and a spell school. At this latter location, my spellcasters learned "Strength 1," "Ninja 1," and "Flame Jet 1." "Flame Jet" turns out to be awesome, damaging every enemy on the screen.

     

As I continued to explore, I kept getting trounced by the enemies in the wilderness, so I returned to the dungeon near the entrance to this area. Amidst a few battles, I met an NPC who told me that I'd left the "Old Land," and that to get back, I would need a different password. He gave me instructions to go to a grove of trees to the southwest and wait, which I did. A voice gave the password as GORF.

      

I guess technically I wasn't supposed to wait after sundown, but it didn't seem to have any negative effect.

       

I had picked up a fifth party member, Iain, in one of the towns. In the dungeon, two more offered to join the party. I only had room for one, and I took the one (Bridget) who had better spellcasting statistics. That gives me three fighter characters and three mage characters.

         

The last character.

         

Now that I had the password back to the starting area, a full party, and a better sense of how the game worked, I felt better equipped to explore things comprehensively. I broke the world map into quadrants and began exploring them starting in quadrant A1. Most of these places, I'd already been, but here we go anyway:

 

• City of Kolono (A1). Trainer. Tavern tip is about the king's daughters.

• Cartography School (A1). I pumped Sirus up to 100%.

• City of Malonga (A1). Has a guild (where you level up). Tavern tip is also about the king.

• King's Castle (A1). Already been here, got the quest to rescue the princesses from Kotalan.

• Cave that's looking for a 4-symbol combination on the door (A1). No clues yet, but see below.

• Dungeon (A1). Wolfsstein Ruins. I thought it had a locked door when I entered before, but it didn't. I find no enemy parties in here, just a lot of adventurers who offer to join my already-full party.

      

If Sirus had entered this dungeon first, he could have completed his party all at once.

       

• Dungeon with the Three Wells (A2), as described above.

• Cartography School (A2).

• Locksmith School (A3). I trained Iain up to 50%. 

• Ferries (A3/A4).

• Cave with the Mosaic (A3). I can't get in until I figure out the pattern. I later found a mosaic picture in the B4 dungeon, but it doesn't seem to be the one that this cave is looking for.

• City of Paradiso (A4). Guild. Training. Tavern tale is about putting stones in a gate to make it open.

• City of Kassada (A4). Red and platinum gems for sale. Tavern tale is about creatures whose charms are irresistible to men but not to women.

• Magic School (A4).

• Dungeon (B4). This is the one with all the traps. A spiral hallway ended in a door that wanted 3 symbols out of 5. That's only 10 possible combinations, and I got it on the first try (the first 3 buttons). Beyond was a message and a picture of a mosaic, but not the one for the cave in A3.

      

Actually, I may be wrong. The top image shows the mosaic in the dungeon; the bottom my (nearly complete) attempt to replicate it in the cave. I just realized that I had the top bar in the second glyph wrong. I'll try again before the next entry.

       

The message in that last dungeon was:

      

There is a gate and a secret mechanism that opens it, there in the temple of the deceased. Whoever solves the riddle will receive his legacy as a reward and my help in the fight against the hordes of the Kotalan. He who can see, let him SEE.

       

After this, I got thinking: assuming no buttons are pressed twice, and the order doesn't matter, how many possible combinations can there be of 4 buttons out of 8? (I didn't know for sure that no button was pressed twice and the order didn't matter, but my experience in the last dungeon made me suspect it.) The answer is 70. I decided that was just on this side of "too many," returned to the cave in A1, and got to work. The door opened after a couple of dozen guesses.

      

I still wonder how I was supposed to do this "for real."

          

The dungeon beyond the door was the largest in the game so far, with numerous combats and messages:

      

• In many great vaults there is nothing but nothing.
• We've already been there and took everything! Signed, Olaf the Red.
• You have a choice: Take the short road or the long road. Both will lead you to the Realm of Madness. It's not worth turning back!
• You have chosen the long road. You will starve.

      

The only other encounter I found was with a guy who demanded all my food. I gave it to him and he laughed about how much of an idiot I was and disappeared. I reloaded and said no, and nothing else came of the encounter. I don't know whether I missed something, but I found nothing else in the dungeon; perhaps those first two messages were meant to be taken literally.

         

Note from the automap the size of the dungeon level.

          

Except when I got ahead of myself and started meeting Level 6-7 enemies, combat has been relatively simple so far, but that's partly because I learned an early trick. The party always goes first. All characters get 5 movement points. Moving a space costs 1; attacking costs 2 unless you have only 1 point left, in which case you can attack for 1; spells cost 2. Characters can move and attack in the same round, but it doesn't appear that enemies can. Thus, you're safe from melee enemies as long as you don't end a round next to them. Spellcasters and missile enemies can hit you from wherever, though, and some spellcasters have the equivalent of "Flame Jet." Other than "Flame Jet 1," "Firebolt 1," and "Healing 1," I haven't experienced much with spells myself.

       

Conleth blasts the enemies with "Flame Jet 1." The game cycles through each enemy and gives the damage done.

        

There are two tedious parts of playing the game. The first has to do with equipment. Trying to identify everything after combat (you often get 8-10 items), figuring out what's more powerful than what I already have, then testing to see which characters have the strength to equip it, takes so long that I know I've been overlooking potential upgrades. The second tedious part of the game is having to click on everything. I would pay good money for the numberpad to control movement. 

     

Like most Motelsoft games, though, there's something charming about it overall. Character development is palpably rewarding, and there's a minor thrill that comes with overcoming each puzzle and challenge and opening up a new area, perhaps heightened for me because I also have to struggle with the language. Something will probably block me permanently before the end, but I'll do my best to get there.

   

Time so far: 14 hours 

    

BOSS: Beyond Moria: Summary and Rating

The most generous that this game ever was with the economy.

        

BOSS: Beyond Moria

United States

Independently developed and published
Released 1990 for VMS, 1993 for Macintosh, 2000 for Linux, 2010 for Windows

Date Started: 30 May 2025   

Date Ended: 16 June 2025

Total Hours: 8 (not won)

Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

        

Your comments on my first BOSS entry were useful. First, I figured out the backup issue, thanks primarily to Kalieum's thread. I was stupid when I was first playing. It turns out that I actually have two "System" disks attached to Basilisk, one with System 7.0 and one with System 7.5. It was booting from the 7.5 version but still showing the 7.0 version in the interface, and of course that one was where I had been hunting for the preferences file.

   

Backing up both the character and the file worked—usually. It wasn't a good long-term solution. I kept messing it up, either by forgetting to create a new copy when restoring or deleting the wrong file. There were times I didn't think I did anything wrong and the game still saw through my ruse, refusing to reload the slain player. Nonetheless, I got a few reloads out of each character and thus got farther in the game than I would have gotten if I'd been forced to play it a lot safer.

         

Creating a new ninja character.

       

I also adopted P-Tux7's suggestion of using an alien character, agreeing that the improved statistics were worth the longer time between level-ups. I continued to roll random numbers for the class. I burned through a warrior, thief, wrestler, and scientist before having my best luck with a ninja. Ninjas don't learn any magic, so I assume that they lose potency later in the game, but they're great starting characters. For one thing, they have one of the few actual weapons (a katana) at start; most characters begin with hairbrushes or walking sticks or tennis rackets. They also come with 8 scrolls—sorry, disks—of identification. 

    

Some other things I noted as I played:

   

• All stairways in the game take you a random number of levels. You can get to the bottom level with just a couple of stairways if you're lucky (or unlucky). 

• I feel like a lot more things cause attribute drains in this game; for instance, insect swarms somehow reduce charisma. 

• The economy feels a lot tighter. There were times I spent hours trying to save up enough money for a single potion to restore an attribute. Buying higher-level weapons and armor during the first few hours never crossed my mind.

• "Beam-Me-Up" disks do indeed act as Scrolls of Recall. But the computer eats the disk so often that you need to adventure with three or four of them to ensure you can actually get back to town.

         

One shop's armor list.

        

• And "Research Points" are indeed akin to magic points.

• About half of the monsters in the game poison the character. I get why spiders and snakes do, but pygmies? Stairways? A lot of stuff blinds you and splashes acid on you, too.

• Money doesn't just come in the form of arcade tokens, as I reported last time. You can find it in the form of nickels, dimes, trinkets, blank disks, postage stamps, and coupons.

• Speaking of coupons, you can find coupons that give you discounts at the various stores on the town level, but they have to be identified first.

   

And because I have little else to report, here's an exhaustive list of creatures slain by my ninja character. See how many references you can get: Action Jackson, automated steamroller, berzerk construction drone, Blip gang member, blue Jarwangian mold, confused psionicist, crazed ferret, creeping pennies, Crud gang member, crude dude, drooling trekker, excuse for birth control, floating orb, giant green frog,  greedy little guy, green walking fungus, grey ectoplasm, grinch, Jarwangian bully, kamikaze attack droid, large grey snake, large white snake, major insect swarm, mechanized Dust-Buster, Milli, minor insect swarm, mumbling scientist, mutant cookie monster, mutant Keebler elf, pit bull, remote laser camera, Scorpion gang member, scruffy hermit, secret agent, seeker orb, short pygmy, shrieker slime, sleazy thief, slurged mutant, small spider, snapping turtle, stairway, studly hacker, Tigger the tiger, Vanilli, Vogon scout, Walter the Wrestler, wasp swarm, white walking fungus, wasp swarm, yellow ectoplasm, yellow Jarwangian mold, Zippy the zapping pinhead. I remember reading "Zippy the Pinhead" strips in the Boston Globe back in the 1990s. I could never understand them.

        

You won't find this one in the D&D monster manual.

         

My ninja eventually made it to dungeon Level 10. While still randomized, it's a bit different than the others in that it feels a bit more hand-crafted. It is a large rectangle, outlined in straight walls, with numerous buildings in the interior. For a while, I kept getting killed on the level, or had to flee back to the town level because I was about to. Eventually, I was attacked by the Seattle Mob Boss. I defeated him in a couple of blows and got a message that I could take the bus to the next city from the hotel. Shortly thereafter, the character was killed by a swarm of remote laser cameras while trying to find a stairway.

           

About to win the first dungeon.

       

I was about ready to wrap this one up, but I hated the idea of yet another Moria variant with a "No" in the "Won?" column. Instead, I fired up the most recent edition (3.2) of the Windows version by Richard ("PlunderBunny") Drysdall. I played an alien soldier and managed to get to the same place I got with the Mac version: killing the boss of Seattle. I even returned to the city and boarded a bus for the next city on the list: Boise.

         

I wonder if any of the cities have ever been mentioned in an RPG before.

      

Drysdall's version is recognizably the same game, but it has a host of minor tweaks. Some of the ones I noticed:

     

• The random city layouts are more imaginative, with buildings of different sizes and sometimes multiple shops in the same large building. There's even the possibility of water along one edge.

       

If we imagine that left is northwest, the "F" is in the perfect spot for Pike's Place.

      

• Other more imaginative screen layouts (see the death and character screens below), often with the use of color. Color is used for functional purposes, too; for instance, the PC character changes to something (green?) when he's poisoned and something else (red?) when he's low on hit points.

        

Of course, there's a new title screen. This version isn't "beyond" anything.

     

• Slightly different keyboard commands.

• Potions are now pills, which are E)aten instead of q)uaffed.

• Reloading gives you a recap of what happened in the previous session.

       

California slang makes a comeback in Seattle in the future, apparently.

         

• There's a time limit of 99 days, which the author promises is generous. It took me almost 2 days to defeat the first boss and get to Boise.

• There's a clock on the screen and stores close at night. Given how slowly time passes and how often you need stores, these closures pose a major strategic challenge that the player has to prepare for. 

• Doors open automatically when you move into them.

• A lot more of the game map fits on the screen.

         

Here, I can see nearly a third of the level.

       

• The dungeon has semi-permanence. I didn't experiment enough to figure it all out, but I think maybe the game remembers the levels until you return to town. When you go down a flight of stairs, a set of stairs remains on the new level to take you back up. The game is otherwise less generous with stairs as you explore. 

• There are a lot of new enemies. I think at least half the bestiary is different. The enemies in this version are significantly harder than in the Mac version I played. I also didn't note any self-replicating swarms of enemies in the Mac version, and this version was rife with them. (I spent over an hour trying to get through a swarm of kamikaze droids before concluding that it just wasn't possible.) The enemies seem to have a greater variety of special attacks and defenses, which I'm guessing is intended to force the character to make more thorough use of inventory options. 

 

!Zarg is a new enemy who shoots you from afar.

        

• Most importantly, the Windows BOSS does not delete your character when you die. 

        

The greater enemy difficulty meant that it took me longer to complete the first dungeon. My character was Level 13 when I killed Seattle's boss. But if the game had featured permadeath, I think it would have taken me until at least Level 20.

    

If I were going to continue with any version, it would be the Windows version, but of course that's a 2025 game and not a 1993 game. I don't dislike either version, but just as with Moria and Angband, I don't have the time for them. BOSS might be a quicker version of Moria (and the gods know, it needed one), but it's still not quicker than Rogue or NetHack.

   

BOSS earns 39 on the GIMLET, and I was surprised to see it rating a few points higher than Angband (36) and even one point higher than Moria (38), both of which I liked better, except for the length. I gave BOSS 1 point for the game world, even though its post-apocalyptic, futuristic "setting" is deeply unconvincing, and I significantly prefer the implicit fantasy worlds of the previous two games. This is one of those times in which my GIMLET fails to account for the fact that the absence of a variable is sometimes preferable to a bad version of it.

       

They could have at least told us what "Jarwangians" are.

         

Where this branch of roguelikes does very well is in "equipment" and "economy"; in these entries, I barely touched upon the huge variety of weapons, armor, disks, potions, wearable items, usable items, regular guns, ray guns, and so forth, allowing the player a lot of tactical and strategic options. Returning to the surface with a pack full of loot to identify, distribute, and sell never gets old, and I often ache for the simplicity of Moria's system when I'm playing NetHack and individually dropping items to analyze their sale prices while getting attacked by mimics.

    

So we'll leave BOSS to the Roguelike Addict and move on. It has been a long time since I felt in such an utter slump, and I really need to push past it. 

Sandor II: Already Stuck

 

An unknown encounter looms in a dungeon.

       

Well, that was unfortunate. I'd avoided having to take a break since the beginning of the year. I really hoped this year would be the first one that I never broke stride. Alas, something always happens.

   

I'm blogging about Sandor II because I promised I'd be back today, but I can't seem to get anywhere with it. I gather that it's going to offer the same type of experience as the later Magic Tower I: Dark Stone Ritual (1992), where a somewhat open world contrasts with very linear movement within that world. The player can find multiple dungeons at the outset of the game, but he needs a key from Dungeon 1 to open Dungeon 2, and so on. I spent most of this entry trying to figure out how to get started.

       

An NPC raises more questions than he answers.

      

Only a few steps after the game began, I had a random encounter in the wilderness. An old man appeared, identified himself as Florian, and asked for a "small donation." When I said yes, the game took me to my inventory screen: Florian wanted an item rather than gold or food. Fortunately, I had an extra axe that I had bought for McCann but wasn't strong enough to equip. In response, Florian said: "I'll give you a hint. To get into Roce Fortress, you need a password. If you want to find out, first go to the ruins near Wolfsstein. Go to the middle well. Wait there until midnight. Tell whoever shows up my name. I hope you still remember it. We'll see each other again. Hahahaha."

   

I hadn't found anything specifically called the Roce Fortress or Wolfsstein, but then again, the game doesn't tell you dungeon names. Eventually, I returned to the dungeon completely surrounded by mountains that has a top-down interface rather than a first-person interface. An early message says: "The jug goes to the well until it breaks." Later on, there are three patches of water, which I figure are Florian's three wells. There's an obvious "middle" one, even.

          

What am I meant to do here?

      

The problem is waiting until midnight. There is no indication of time on the dungeon screen, or on any screen that I can access from the dungeon screen. Neither is there a way to tell time on the outdoor screen. The only screen that mentions time at all is the town screen. So I don't know how to wait until midnight. I tried just sitting there for a while, then sitting there for a while with the emulator on "fast forward," but nothing happened. If the "jug" message is supposed to be telling me something, I can't figure it out.

    

On the rest of the map:

   

• I kept returning to the Cartography School to give Sirus a few points in the skill. It took about 20 points before I could finally map a dungeon.

• I thought to make money from trade goods, but in the starting area, towns only sell tobacco and buy tea. 

• A dungeon south of a lake has a locked door only a few steps from the entrance.

• I related last time that when I tried to leave the first town, a guy appeared and asked for help with someone chasing him, but I was unable to win the battle. I encountered the guy outside of a town and, because I had more characters and better equipment, agreed to help him. The game then went directly to him thanking me and giving me a 500-gold-piece reward. 

This guy asked for help, and then didn't really need it.

• I still don't know what to do at the location that wants me to input a sequence of buttons.

• Or the one that wants me to make a mosaic out of various tiles. 

• A dungeon at the bottom of the map has a trap every few steps. 

          

Taking trap damage.

         

As I explored the map, I fought a random combat every once in a while. It would be hard to "grind" in this game since combats are comparatively rare. None of them have been hard. I noticed that the combats didn't get more difficult or more numerous as I added more characters, either.

       

Four characters take on three enemies in battle.

     

The monetary rewards from combat would have been just enough to keep up with my food usage. Fortunately, you sometimes find equipment in addition to gold. This equipment sometimes sells for quite a bit of money. Also, I found that food prices are extremely volatile. You might visit the pub and find that they're selling 15 provisions for 45 gold pieces, exit, return, and get an offer of 45 provisions for 15 gold pieces.

   

I spent quite a while logging every piece of equipment that I'd found on enemies and that I found for sale in towns or traders' wagons. The game gives you an associated weapon and armor class for each item, but it's such a nuisance to equip, assess, unequip, and trade that I've been assuming (I'm sure incorrectly) that the most expensive items are the better ones. My characters don't have the strength to wield most stuff anyway. 

          

Some of the game's equipment.

       

The game likes to put nonsense words in some of its equipment; for instance, I've found Gorf Sandalen, Toco-Platte (Eisen), Kotalan Stab, and Uta Schild. German speakers, tell me if I'm missing anything, but I don't think the words Gorf, Toco, Kotalan, and Uta actually translate to anything. My understanding of German is that they're not possessive, either; that would be Gorfs Sandalen, Utas Schild, and so forth. There's nothing wrong here, of course—Toco and Uta are maybe the game's equivalent of "Mithril" or "Daedric"—but it does add some complexity to figuring things out.

 

Adding to the mystery, there are three gold-krone (gold crowns) I can buy called "Ubu," "Kobu," and "Jacoco," and a gold chain called "Trinak." I have no idea what to make of these. 

     

Lacking any other ideas, I decided to just force my way through the trap-filled dungeon, but then, having pushed past the first three traps, I got destroyed by the first truly difficult enemy party the game has thrown at me. 

    

I didn't even come close.

      

I reloaded, limped back to town, and found that I had earned enough experience points to get my first level-up. Leveling up comes with fairly significant attribute boosts; some of my characters doubled their previous values. I decided to grab two more characters while I was at it, looking in particular for someone with a high trap-disarming ability. I didn't find such a person, but I did add a fifth character (Iain) with strong spellcasting skills.

       

Leveling up. That big boost in kraft means I can equip more items.

        

While looking for more party members, I remembered the option to listen to fellow patrons in taverns. It appears that you only get one "tavern tale" per town. Across all four towns I've discovered:

   

• A hint that the king is looking for some adventurers to "rescue him from a difficult situation." We learned what that situation was last time.

• Amidst a bunch of background chatter, some mentions of the king's daughters being missing. Again, we learned about that directly from the king.

       

A "tavern tale."

        

• A drunk claiming that "I put a few stones in there and whoosh, the gate opened." This might be a clue to getting past a locked dungeon door. I haven't found any stones, though.

• A woman going on about creatures that are "supposed to be so devilishly beautiful that you can't help but look at them," but that women are immune to the enchantment.

       

So either I've overlooked something or the solution to move forward is to keep grinding until I can take on the enemies in that southernmost dungeon. Either way, I definitely need a different game to get some momentum going again. The two on my active list are absolute killers.

     

Time so far: 6 hours