Game 566: Tower of Alos (1982)

A pointless game begins.

        

Tower of Alos

United Kingdom

Independently developed; published by A&F Software

Released 1982 for BBC Micro

Date Started: 13 January 2026

      

Tower of Alos is yet another example of the tedium that early CRPG players were willing to put themselves through just to get the faintest hint they were inhabiting a world similar to Middle Earth. If you don't get a tingle at just seeing the word "orc," this is not the game for you. And it's plagiarized, too—from The Valley (1982), a game that also fits my opening description but at least has the excuse of being a type-in game published in a magazine. The Valley had more features than Alos, though, meaning Alos was simplified. Imagine being the kind of developer who has to simplify a type-in game.

     

The Valley originally appeared as code for the Commodore PET in the April 1982 issue of Computing Today. It was advanced for a type-in game, offering multiple character types, multiple dungeons, a long backstory, and winning conditions. The magazine updated it for the TRS-80 and Sharp MZ the following month, and other variations followed over the next year. Meanwhile, Computing Today's publisher, Argus Specialist Publications, issued disk-based releases for multiple platforms in 1982 and 1983. (Thanks to El Explorador de RPG for much of this background research.) Clearly, ASP owned the rights to the game. It was created by their own employees: Henry Budgett, Peter Freebrey, Peter Green, and Ron Harris, themselves inspired by another early UK RPG: Halls of Death (1981).

      

The world map as a new game begins.

     

These rights did not stop Manchester-based A&F Software from publishing its own adaptation (Alos) for the BBC Micro within a couple of months. Games for this minor platform are only recently being discovered and cataloged (mostly by frequent CRPG Addict contributor Dungy), and I now have a handful on my backlist. Other "adaptations" of The Valley include Kayde Software's The Kayde Valley (1982) and Numenor's The Amulet (1983).

     

The basic features of these games include:

   

• A single-screen game world with at least one "safe" location.
• Multiple indoor locations.
• A multi-stage quest that involves exploring each of these indoor areas.
• Random encounters as you move across the screen. 
• Very limited RPG mechanics 

          

One of the indoor locations.

      

Other copies of The Valley mostly kept the action in a valley, Alos moves it to a large, wooded area, though it still references "the valley" in the backstory. It was once ruled by "a fair but not-perfect king" named Alos. He built three strongholds and gave one to a dragon named Temadra ("your mother"!?), one to his brother, and one to his soldiers. Finally, he built the titular tower, 13 levels high. Soon, his experimentation with black magic corrupted his nature and led to an invasion of "an army of evil beings."

     

Some time later, it is up to a hero to reclaim the land. To do this he, will need to get to character Level 7, clear Temadra's Den, clear the Temple of Bragi, clear the Tower of Alos, collect four magic items along the way, and finally return to the "safe castle" (the one Alos gave to his brother).

         

The in-game backstory.

     

Gameplay starts at this "safe castle," once the player inputs a name. You start with 20 hit points and no other resources, although you're assumed to be carrying a sword.

  

There isn't much to the game after that. The Valley had half a dozen or more things that could happen to the character as he explored the map. Alos reduces it all to combat, then makes combat more annoying by having the game take you to a separate screen. This is not the "tactical" screen of later games that use separate combat interfaces but rather a poor facsimile of it. It begins by showing your enemies (e.g., 4 orcs, 5 ogres, 6 kobolds) scattered across the region, which briefly tricks the player into thinking he's going to be moving around the "map" to engage them. The player icon doesn't move on this map at all, however. As many as four of the available enemies immediately surround the player while any excess wait in the wings. 

     

As combat starts, it looks as though the enemies are scattered across the map.

        

The player's only "choices" during combat are 1) whether to participate, and 2) once it starts, which direction to attack. You pound the directional arrow in one direction until that enemy is dead, then switch to a different direction, timing your keystrokes so that you don't end up with too many attacks in one direction in the buffer. There was no reason not to just do all of this on the main screen like The Valley did. The Valley also had spells.

      

But before you can react, they've surrounded you.

     

You can check your statistics during battle with the "S" key, and you can drink a potion with the "D" key. If you find yourself losing, you can just hit ESC to save the game, and when you reload, you won't be in combat anymore. 

     

You get a few dozen experience points per enemy killed, plus gold. Leveling comes first at 2,000 experience points, then 4,000, the amount needed roughly doubling with each level. New levels give you an extra 10 hit points (from a starting value of 20) and more attack power. 

           

Once you have enough gold, you can head for the village, marked with a "V." No need to find a route through the trees; none of the environmental symbols are obstacles. The town sells exactly one thing: healing potions, or hit points you can take on the road with you. A Level 1 character can possess up to 10. For every level gained, the potion maximum reduces by one.

       

Buying the only thing you can buy.

            

If you don't need any potions, you want to periodically deposit your gold in the hoard, shown on the map as an "H." Once you cross 1,000 gold pieces, you start losing combat effectiveness. 

       

The instructions outline seven conditions for winning the game:

   

• Get to character Level 7.
• Clear Temadra's Den (D on the map).
• Clear the Garrison (* on the map).
• Clear the Temple of Bragi (# on the map).
• Clear the Tower of Alos (II on the map).
• Collect four magic items (one in each of the previous locations).
• Return to the safe castle. 

 

The game lets you save and reload anywhere, which is great because the early game is nearly impossible for the player. Each enemy party consists of between 1 and 10 kobolds, orcs, dwarves, gnolls, or ogres armed with fists, axes, or pikes. It takes several deaths to learn what types of battles you can survive. A level 1 character might be able to defeat up to four kobolds armed with fists, three orcs armed with axes, and so forth. Any gnolls or ogres armed with anything are probably too much. By the time I was level 5, I could defeat maybe five dwarves with axes, but large parties of gnolls or ogres still killed me unless I wasted a lot of potions.

       

This will be okay.

       

But if random battles on the surface are tough, the indoor locations are damned near impossible. In each of them, you face successive waves of 10 monsters, including some not found on the surface (skeletons, lizard men, troglodytes). With a full stock of healing potions, I've been able to survive five or six waves of orcs or skeletons, but they just keep coming. It feels like I'm going to have to grind all the way to Level 7 on the surface before clearing any of the indoor locations is truly viable. That's about 45,000 experience points more than I have, at a couple hundred experience points per battle.

      

Not much choice at this point.

         

Thus, this Dark Age knock-off, which by all rights ought to take only one entry, has to be stretched into two. I'll catch up on the Fallout TV series while grinding.

    

My Googling for information about this game turned up some interesting background on the source of the title. Tower of Alos is the title of a 1950 Basque novel by Jon Etxaide, based on an old legend that I found recounted in several 1800s sources. In the legend, the lord of the tower of Alos, Beltran, goes away to fight a war, leaving behind his second wife (his first died in childbirth) and his young daughter. While he's away, apparently for many years, his wife gives birth to a son who clearly was not sired by Beltran. Eventually, Beltran fakes his death and has his "body" returned home. As his family stands around it on the funeral bier, the bastard boy attempts to murder the legitimate daughter. Beltram jumps to life, prevents the murder, and kills the boy. I don't know what moral we're supposed to take from that, but it's at least more interesting than this game.

       

Time so far: 3 hours