Telnyr III: The Four Runes
Australia
Independently developed and released as freeware; republished in Loadstar 193 in 2000
Released c. 1993 for Commodore 64
Date Started: 13 December 2025
Date Finished: 13 December 2025
Total Hours: 3
Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)
Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)
Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)
Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)
Australian Peter Boothman (1944-2012) was best known as a guitarist in the Sydney jazz scene. (See here for an album of his music.) But in his 40s, he developed an interest in computer programming, selected the Commodore as his machine of choice, founded Brunswick Publications, and released several games and utility programs through a local newsletter for Commodore enthusiasts. He put a copyright of 1990 on his first game, The Stone of Telnyr, but did not do the same for the two sequels. They may have been written and released all at once or spaced out by 1-2 years. We only know that all three games were available by 1993.
The Telnyr titles are all afternoon quasi-RPGs with similar mechanics. Boothman experiments a bit with screen sizes and layouts throughout the series but otherwise doesn't make many advancements. I found Telnyr III easier and shorter than the first two.
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| The king gives me a mission. |
Telnyr is once again in trouble—monsters roaming the land and such—and the solution this time is not to find the Stone of Telnyr or the Golden Chalice but rather the Four Runes (Air, Earth, Fire, and Water). Character creation consists of only a name; all characters start with 250 hit points, 250 food, a +5 sword, and 0 crystals, herbs, potions, gems, or spells. The interface uses the joystick along with a few keyboard commands that the game always displays at the appropriate time.
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| Starting out on the main continent. |
The plot takes place across five islands, four accessible from the first via a ferry, all of which fit entirely in the exploration window. As the character moves about, he gets attacked every few dozen moves by rogues, thieves, orcs, ghouls, et cetera. There are between one and six in each party. In combat, the player can choose to manually attack, automatically attack (make manual attacks until the battle is over), cast a spell, take a potion, or run away (works about half the time). Potions increase the number of the character's attacks to three per round for the duration of the battle. When there is more than one enemy, they attack individually, so facing six enemies is the same thing as facing one enemy six times in a row.
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| Battle with a bunch of ghouls. |
Enemies drop gold, food, potions, crystals, and gems. These same items are also found randomly as you explore; their icons pop up nearby, and you have a limited amount of time to go and collect them before they disappear.
There is no experience or character development. The only way to get stronger is to buy better weapons, buy spells, amass potions, and to cast "Heal" or "Revive" (like a double-"Heal") repeatedly to increase current hit points (if there's a maximum, I never reached it). Weapon upgrades (Sword +10, Sword +20, Sword +30) come in the king's castle on the first island, but before long, you find a Sword +40 in a treasure pile and that remains your only weapon for the game. In the previous two Telnyrs, spells were inventory items, purchased individually. Here, you pay to learn them and spend crystals to cast them. On Tropicania, you find a shop where you can pay money for crystals, uniting the two parts of the economy. The game is dangerous in the beginning, before you've found this store, and before you've found some other lodes of crystals. You can easily lose more health than you have the crystals to restore.
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| "Exploring" Telnyr Castle. |
The starting island has the king's castle, a dungeon, and the ferry terminal (these, like all locations in the game except the dungeons, are purely menu locations). The castle offers the opportunity to visit the king, a grocer, a weapon shop, and a library. On your first visit, the king gives 15 crystals and asks you to bring the runes back to him for further reward.
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| The ferry terminal. One of the caches has a ferry pass that makes travel free. |
The weapon shop sells not only the aforementioned swords but also a sextant, which is necessary to identify your coordinates on the various islands. This, in turn, is necessary to find three treasures whose locations are given in three library books. It must not be a public library because you have to pay for them individually. They give the coordinates to three caches on three different islands, one of which has the Rune of Earth.
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| One of the books. I guess I didn't care about the plot. |
The other three runes are found in dungeons. When you enter a dungeon, the perspective switches to a side-view showing multiple levels with ladders, like a game of Donkey Kong in which the challenges have mysteriously vanished. You get the same encounters every few dozen steps like on the outside, except with harder enemies like vampires, ghosts, and demons. The dungeons on the main island, Forest Isle, and Lamentia have two levels; the one on Devils Peaks has three. All have a treasure at the bottom; three of them are runes.
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| Finding the Rune of Air at the bottom of a dungeon. |
As you return runes to the king, you're rewarded with crystals and gold.
Forest Isle has a magic shop along with a dungeon. Here, you can buy "Strength," "Confuse," "Heal" (50 hit points), and "Teleport," the latter of which gets you out of dungeons without having to crawl back up. It's vital. Lamentia's magic shop offers "Nutrition" (creates 20 food), "Revive" (heals 120 hit points), "Flee," and "Missile." "Missile" is the equivalent of "Banish" in the previous games; it kills most of an enemy party, leaving just one or two for you to finish off in melee combat. But it's expensive, and I found that I needed most of my crystals for "healing," which is a bit of a misnomer in this case, as the spells just add hit points to your total regardless of how many you started with.
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| My inventory late in the game, when I have all the spells. |
Tropicania has a potion shop (hardly necessary, given that enemies drop them a lot) and an outpost with a jeweler, a grocer, and a casino. The jeweler sells crystals for gold or gems, the latter of which you almost never find. The casino lets you bet between 10 and 50 gold on a moronically simple game in which you roll three numbers between 1 and 20 and win if the third number is "between" the first two (including the first two). So if the first two rolls are 5 and 15, you win if the third roll is anywhere within that range, and lose if it's 1-4 or 6-20. The obvious strategy is to bet big if the range is greater than 10 and less otherwise, but in practice, the casino shuts down after a few wins, so it's not a huge factor.
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| Tropicania. Note that a bag of food has appeared next to me. |
I found that the island near the outpost was a good place to grind, since I could trade looted gold for crystals and then heal the damage.
The last two dungeons are difficult, delivering multiple combats with demons who swat away over 100 points per round. I didn't even attempt them until I had my hit point total well above 1,000 and plenty of crystals in reserve for the "Revive" spell, the "Flee" spell (works 100% of the time in case fleeing regularly does not), and the "Teleport" spell to get out.
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| This is a time to run away. |
After I found the third rune, the game said a pack of ghouls followed me out of the dungeon. They apparently continued to tail me as I made my way home, because from that point, every grocer got scared and closed his shop before I could buy anything.
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| Navigating the multiple ladders of the final dungeon. |
Once you bring the fourth rune to the king, you get some fireworks while the central icon quickly cycles through all of the enemies you faced. The king says, "Thanks a million." You can keep playing if you for some reason want to.
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| The second game had chalices appear everywhere, so I guess maybe these are runes. |
The game gets a 16 on the GIMLET, doing best (3s) in "Magic and Combat" for its variety of options and spells, "Economy" for its continuing relevance. It gets a 0 for NPCs and 1s and 2s for everything else. This rating is consistent with the 15 I gave to the first game and the 17 I gave to the second. These were quick diversions that came on free disks—appetizers for more elaborate titles. To which we will now return.
A sword +40... how's that for inflation!
ReplyDeleteThe two Xanadu games for PC Engine have inflation like this. The first weapon is power 12, the final weapon is power 598,000.
DeleteDisgaea takes this to ridiculous new heights, with damage numbers in the billions. (The game is both hardcore and not very serious)
DeleteStuff popping up at random and then disappear and the dungeon layout could maybe be inspired by Zelda 2 or similar games.
ReplyDeleteDoes the main continent look like a whale to anyone else?
ReplyDeleteAlso is there a reason not to just cast all those HP-increasing spells as soon as possible? I guess you might not know how many you'll need.
It absolutely looked like a whale to me, too.
DeleteAs soon a game switches to a 2D side-scrolling view, I can't consider it a crpg by any circumstance.
ReplyDeleteWell, the only examples with sufficient rpg ingredients I can think of are all jrpgs.
DeleteI can think of two side-scrolling computer RPGs: "Xanadu" and "Sorcerian", both by Nippon Falcom.
DeleteThe Spirit Engine 1 and 2 are a pair of fairly well-regarded indie computer RPGs from the 2000s, but they have relatively simple progression mechanics and aren't what's commonly referred to as a 'CRPG' these days.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete@Static444 Yeah, both I would consider being JRPGs.
DeleteCouple of proper RPGs off the top of my head that use side-scrolling view are Darkest Dungeon and the Android series Tales of Illyria. Some of the more complex Metroidvanias - e.g. UnEpic - would also qualify due to having extensive RPG systems.
DeleteI hear you, VK, but in 'Darkest Dungeon' it's just the arrangement of the combat system as in 'Star Traders' for example, while hmm, the others are called metroidvanias for a reason, regardless of how many different progression systems you put on top of them.
DeleteJust defending my point, I always respect your opinion, VK :)
"Exploration" in DD (moving through the hallways between the rooms) is also done in a side-scrolling perspective.
DeleteRemembered another one (well, two): the Loathing series (West of Loathing/Shadows over Loathing). That one is as RPG as they go.
Child of Light was also 2d, although some of its elements are quite similar to what JRPG's are doing.
Delete"2D side-scrolling" is an interesting distinction to make. Plenty of CRPGs are 2D, just with a top-down view instead of from the side. Perhaps there aren't many side-scrolling CRPGs because they inevitably turn into some flavor of action-based platformers. I think one could plausibly set one underwater or in zero-gravity, though, without changing too much of the old-school top-down feel -- cases where gravity doesn't have such a dominant effect on movement.
Delete2D side scrollers usually end up classified as Metroidvania and/or Soulslike games instead, yes. Many games in those genres also qualify as RPGs by Chet's standards.
DeleteArena on the Horizon. I'm curious what you'll make of it. I played it last year for the first time ever and think it's a great achievement in a way but deeply flawed. Bethesda clearly still had a ways to go until Morrowind.
ReplyDeleteIt's more like apples and oranges kind of thing - lots of Daggerfall fans considered Morrowind a step in the wrong direction and the beginning of decline for Bethesda. But we'll surely get to that debate when we get there.
DeleteInteresting. I still have to play Daggerfall to make that destinction myself. However since I really like Morrowind to Skyrim I'm probably already in that team.
DeleteThe only Elder Scrolls game that was straight-up more complex than the predecessor was Daggerfall, and that's mostly because the tech wasn't there for Arena to not be fairly primitive.
DeleteEvery game since Daggerfall has been stripping away elements (and even Daggerfall took away a couple of things like the Passwall spell).
For most people, their first Elder Scrolls has the perfect level of complexity, with everything after it being too simplified and everything before it being too complex.
I feel like the most common complaint about Daggerfall I've heard from Morrowind fans over the years has been more about the vast amount of same-y procedurally generated content than about game complexity as such.
DeleteI do not feel Daggerfall was more complicated than Morrowind. And having only played Daggerfall recently to completion (having loved Morrowind), I'm surprised how well Daggerfall held up. It was a pretty good time.
DeleteMy first ES was Morrowind. No, Daggerfall was not too complex. It was painfully simple. Just big. But a great time to get lost in.
Daggerfall was called Buggerfall back in the day for a reason: bugs.
DeleteI, for one, am sure glad that is the reason.
DeleteUnfortunately, there's a good deal of gratuitous nudity in the game as well.
DeleteIs there some ungratuitous nudity in the game?
Delete"Lots of Daggerfall fans considered Morrowind a step in the wrong direction and the beginning of decline for Bethesda"
DeleteAnd it cost them dearly.
I mean, I still prefer Daggerfall over Morrowind, but they're truly both outstanding games (the 2 only ones in the Elder Scrolls series imo) and both quite distinct from each other.
DeleteThat complexity theory is hooey, based solely on procedural elements. Skyrim added all sorts of mechanics in the crafting and progression systems that added complexity... just in a very mainstream, extrinsic reward type of way.
DeleteFallout 4 added town- and base-building which I guarantee you the next Elder Scrolls will also have. That game will be a mess of trend-following systems with mediocre writing and content that nobody likes.
B: Maybe, but my guess would be Bethesda will have learned by the mess that was Starfield, where they mixed multiple systems and it felt like a subpar result
DeleteI too, would say that the complexity theory is hooey. I really only have played Morrowind and Daggerfall for any length of time, and my lesser fondness of titles before Morrowind has nothing to do with complexity. (Heck, pretty sure most of the systems that make the game more complex are easily overlooked anyway, nobody is mourning the language thing outside of people who are looking to go after later games) Instead, it has a lot more to do with how the first two games put you in a dungeon where simply getting out is an incredible struggle, constantly screaming at the game to let you rest, and when you finally get out of the dungeon, get murdered by thieves because you're in a town at night. Nor would I say that Oblivion's issues stem from a lack of complexity, considering that the one that turned me off playing it is the aggressively bad rubberbanded levelling system where everything is tied to your level, including ancient artifacts.
DeleteThose ghouls are flippin' adorable! Like sleepy little chicken nuggets in their nightgowns...
ReplyDeleteSometimes you just need that afternoon RPG. I appreciate this game for doing that.
ReplyDeleteBut I do love the way you state "To which we will now return", though!