Game 551: BOSS: Beyond Moria (1990)

I wish all authors so clearly documented the historical trail leading to their games.

       

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  

       

There are so many variants of so many roguelikes that it seems arbitrary which ones get catalogued in various game databases. BOSS, as its subtitle suggests, is a variant of Moria (1983), and a fairly rare roguelike ported to the Macintosh but not DOS. It promises an easier, shorter experience, which is music to my ears after my attempts to win Moria and Angband (another Moria variant) refused to yield success after frankly absurd investments of time. The original BOSS was written by Robert Gulledge and Jason Black, two University of Washington students; the Mac version was ported by a University of Linköping (Sweden) student named Mark Vesterbacka. In 2024, Richard Drysdall released a new version for Windows, Linux, and Macintosh, but RogueBasin calls it a "major rewrite," and I thought it was thus best to play the 1993 Mac version.

       

The authors changed the theme to a post-apocalyptic, science fiction setting, but in the type of superficial way that means I have to waste a bunch of time learning that "disks" are the same thing as "scrolls," "skills" are the same thing as "spells," and K-Mart has taken over the general store, and despite all of these so-called differences in setting, I still end up fighting with a sword and chugging potions. I suppose if they hadn't made those changes, though, I might find the game too undifferentiated from Moria to play it at all.

    

(If you're new to the blog and unfamiliar with games like Rogue and Moria, "roguelikes" are a sub-genre of CRPGs that go back to 1980's Rogue; Moria was the second. These games feature simple, ASCII graphics; complex inventories; randomly-generated content; a large array of commands that use almost every letter of the keyboard; and permanent death. See my entries on Rogue and Moria for more.)

     

Some of the many commands available in this game.

      

Where Moria has you specify a name, race, sex, and class during character creation, in BOSS, you specify a name, quality, sex, and class. These "qualities" give boosts to certain attributes, the same way that races do in other games. The qualities are: elite, hefty, mad, wise, lucky, healthy, sexy, and alien (major bonuses but need more experience to gain levels). Classes are wrestler, scientist, guru, ninja, soldier, wanderer, con-artist, thief, and journalist. Attributes haven't changed (strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, charisma), but some skills have: "Fighting" is now "Melee Fighting," "Bows/Throwing" now "Guns & Grenades," "Magic Device" now "Weird Device." The rest are identical.

       

Assigning points during character creation.

      

The player gets 100 points to seed among the various attributes and skills (each upgrade costing a variable number of points). In a mechanic I don't remember from Moria, one of the character attributes is "experience factor," which is a multiplier against the normal amount of experience the character needs to advance a level. The player can increase this to gain more starting points.

   

The game continues Moria's tradition of giving you a little random backstory:

 

• "You are the rejected child of a Jarwangian scientist. You have made many enemies among the humans. You have orange eyes, straight blue hair, and a plastic complexion" (this for a character with the "alien" quality).

• "You are one of several children of a thief. You are the hero of your town. You have dark brown eyes, wavy brown hair, and an average complexion."

• "You are one of several children of a chimney sweep."

           

I rolled a random class and ended up with a ninja. As the game begins, it depicts the character riding a bus to Seattle, which is the consequent top-level city that he ends up in. The game apparently offers 8 such cities, each with a dungeon beneath. As usual with Moria games, NPCs roam the city and are easy to accidentally bump into and kill. They've made it annoying here in that killing some of them is a crime and may get you attacked and killed by police.

      

Starting out in "Seattle."

      

BOSS is a bit half-assed in its pretensions towards futuristic sci-fi. The weapon shop and temple are completely intact from Moria, the temple selling magic rings, holy books, and amulets as if it were a fantasy game. The general store becomes a K-Mart, selling raincoats, umbrellas, purses, lanterns, and crowbars (among others). The magic shop becomes a computer store and an "alien artifacts" shop, with disks taking the role of scrolls and ray guns taking the role of wands. The alchemist becomes a bar and grill but still sells potions. The armory is now "Leather & Chains." There's a club where the bouncer says I'm too poor to enter, and a guild where you have to bump into the exterior walls to find the door. An inn and a bank round out the city's offerings.

          

Shopping at the computer store. We have technical manuals instead of spell manuals, disks instead of scrolls.

        

The ninja starts with a katana, 2 throwing stars, a bathrobe, a set of leather gloves, 8 floppy disks of Identify, 2 potions of Cure Critical Wounds, 10 k-rations, and 5 flashlights. I figure that will get me through the first level and head down. There are two stairways down, and it turns out that one goes to Level 1 and one goes to Level 2.

    

Just like Moria, the dungeons are huge, sprawling, randomly generated, and impermanent (e.g., when you leave and return, a completely new level is generated). The instructions promise that there are seven cities with 10-level dungeons and a final city with a 25-level dungeon, making for a 95-level game. I don't think you have to explore all the levels. The instructions suggest that you have to "finish" each dungeon before moving on to the next, which includes killing each town's "local mob boss." I don't know what it means to "finish," but if the local boss is always found on the bottom level of the dungeon, I suppose that would make sense.

    

There's a certain variety to the levels that I don't remember from the DOS version of Moria at least. In my first game, Level 1 had proper rooms and corridors, like a game of Rogue:

 

Finding a secret door on Level 1.

       

Level 2 was more cave-like, with completely irregular wall patterns.

         

The less predictable Level 2.

        

Level 3 was completely open. Although unlit (I had to get close to enemies and objects to see them), its wall contours were completely sketched out at the start.

     

Fighting a pygmy on Level 3.

     

And so I began exploring, bashing into sleazy thieves, Scorpion Gang members, short pygmies, white fungi, mechanized Dust Busters, and mutant Keebler elves instead of the usual orcs and kobolds. I guess the game is easier than Moria, as I was up to Level 3 after only two victories (it slows down after that). The game likes to get cute with its attack messages, so in addition to things like "the pygmy rabbit bites you," you get silly messages, often customized to the specific enemy, often making pop culture references:

    

• "The short pygmy moons you." 
• "The Vanilli lip syncs you." 
• "The slobbering pygmy recites poetry at you." 

     

Like Moria, the game makes a distinction between inventory and equipped items; equipment slots include head, hands, body, footwear, rings, an amulet, a computer, and a light source. Obviously, improving your items over the starting gear, by either finding or buying, is a key way to get ahead. There isn't a lot on the early levels, though, and I don't know what to make of some of it (e.g., bloody baseball cards, corpses, a hat rack). Instead of just finding money, for some reason you find "arcade tokens worth $5" or whatever.

      

Skills (spells) seem to be specific to certain character classes. The thief comes with a "Manual of Tricks," for instance, which includes such skills as "Spit Ball," "Evasion," and "Stink Bomb." The journalist's "Beginning Tech Manual" has options like "Find Story," "Interview," and "Flash-Photo." So far, these have all just resolved to mundane counterparts from Moria; for instance, "Find Story" is the same thing as "Detect Monsters." I'm not sure how the game decides how many of these skills you can use, and how often, since there's no equivalent to magic points or spell points.

         

My journalist's "skills." from one book.

      

Miscellaneous notes:

   

• As I noted, the disks take the place of scrolls, but you have to equip a computer to run them. I could only afford a Commodore VIC-20, and it ate about 40% of the disks I tried to run on it. When you find unidentified disks, instead of nonsense words like in Moria, they're titled with nonsense phrases like "Puzzles to Repair Trapped Eyes" and "Reasons to Maim Your Traps."

• The game offers a potion-mixing mechanic that I haven't explored yet.

• It adds the ability to get diseased. I had a pit bull give me a "social disease," which I had to have cured in town.

• I was poisoned a couple of times but it wore off in a few rounds. 

• I checked the stores several times but never found anything like a "Scroll of Recall," so I suspect there's no way to fast-travel back to town. 

• I got attacked by stairways a couple of times. I imagine they were mimics but the game didn't specify. I've seen mimics take the forms of treasure chests and doors in RPGs, but not stairways. 

       

I didn't trip! The stairway hit me!

      

• Current hit points—the most important statistic in the game—is buried among the overall list of statistics and hard (for me, at least) to find when I need it. Moria had a break afterwards to make it easier.

• The game has an explicit "Speed" statistic that was hidden in the early versions of Moria. 

• In addition to selling things, some of the stores offer "special training" to increase attributes and skills. 

           

Some of the options in the thieves' guild.

        

My ninja got to Level 6 before I pushed down too far too fast and got swarmed by pygmies. I created a journalist character called Nellie, but she didn't get very far before she accidentally killed a vendor on the town level (they just walk right into your path) and got shot and killed by the police in retaliation. 

     

The authors really had it out for pygmies.

     

Next character: A thief named Renaud. As he starts, the game says he can gain a skill, and he has a skill book, but for some reason, the key doesn't work. He also comes with 5 throwing knives, 10 K-rations, 2 points of Restore Charisma (which hasn't really been a problem so far), a bath robe, a set of black leather gloves, a towel, and 5 disposable flashlights. The towel is supposed to be his weapon. No sooner do I have him equipped with some better stuff than I accidentally slaughter a street beggar and get killed by police again. Aaargh. 

      

Next: A lucky female wanderer named Zigwena. Wanderers apparently have access to prayers rather than skills, and they really are indistinguishable from a fantasy version: "Detect Evil," "Cure Light Wounds," "Bless," and so forth. She comes with 5 frisbees (missile weapons), 10 K-rations, 2 potions of Restore Wisdom, a bath robe, a pair of Nikes, a walking stick (melee weapon), and 5 disposable flashlights. The Nikes appear to be Nikes of Slow Descent. But before I even get out of the town, I manage to wield a cursed hairbrush (another melee weapon) and can't find anything in town that will remove it for me. To compensate, I sell my potions of Restore Wisdom and splurge on riot armor.

      

Zigwena's inventory after a short time.

       

She makes it to Level 5 before I repeat my mistake of going down too far and getting swarmed. Oh, and she also kills someone by accident on the town level—I swear, it is way too easy—but I manage to get to a stairway before it happens, which resets the level and kills the APB. 

         

That's about as far as I've gotten for now. I'm not really in the mood for this game, as should be obvious by the fact that I keep getting characters killed when it's not that hard to stay alive. I'd punt it down the pike for a later time, but I never want to get into the habit of doing that, as I'll just end up with a huge pile of unwanted games at some inevitable point. But if I can't at least beat the first couple of bosses for the next session, I'll probably put it on simmer and move forward with something else.

   

Here's a mystery to occupy us until next time: It's too early to be cheating, but my mind started thinking about how I could cheat if I got to the point that it was more important to show the endgame than adhere to permadeath. My first thought was, of course, backing up the character save file, but the game is on to that trick. It must write the character names to some other file and record that they've been killed. I don't see that file, but I don't know anything about how Macs store anything. In any event, if I try to restore the save file for a slain character, the game just gives a message that "this game file seems to be invalid."

        

How does it know!?

       

Thus, my next thought: Back up the entire emulated hard drive. I store all my Mac games on a 500MB file called Game.dsk. While Zigwena was still active, I made a copy of that disk. When she died, I deleted the original drive and renamed the backup to the original's name. I launched it again, fired up BOSS—and it still somehow knew that I was cheaating. "This game file seems to be invalid," it said. Just for fun, I tried again with a new character (Jake). I saved him right after creation, then closed the emulator and duplicated the hard disk. I fired up the original. Jake loaded just fine. I saved and quit. I loaded the backup. Jake loaded fine. Saved and quit. Returned to the original, got Jake killed. Deleted the original, loaded the backup. The game somehow knew that Jake was dead. So there's no confusion, the game itself and all its directories are on the hard disk being backed up. I am truly baffled. Any ideas?

   

Time so far: 3 hours