Game 570: The Sword of Peace (1979) and Game 571: Cells and Serpents (1980)

 

How different would our world be if Dungeons & Dragons had taken its themes from L. Frank Baum instead of J.R.R. Tolkien?

       

The Sword of Peace

AKA Magic Labyrinth 

AKA Kingly Orb

United Kingdom 

Published as BASIC type-in code in the November 1979 Practical Computing 

Versions released for the Nascom computer in 1980 and the ZX-81 in 1981 

Date Started: 10 March 2026

Date Ended: 10 March 2026

Total Hours: 2 

Difficulty: Easy (2.0/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) 

       

This is the first game I can remember for which its original appearance does not give it any name at all. It appears in the November 1979 Practical Computing as generic BASIC type-in code under the heading: "Data - the sword of peace is yours." The article goes on to say that the program is a "version of the Kingly Orb." It was later titled Magic Labyrinth when republished (with acknowledgements and modifications) in the International Nascom Microcomputer Club's Basic Programs in March 1980. Finally, London-based Arctic Software published the commercial version that you see here in 1981 for the ZX-81.

     

The original type-in code from the November 1979 Practical Computing.

           

I spent some time, as did El Explorador de RPG, trying to figure out what "Kingly Orb" is or was. I can't find any references in the Internet Archive or Google Books. We don't know whether it was a previous computer game or a board game. 

 

Either way, the game is not really an RPG (no character development), but it's also one of those games that takes as much time to BRIEF as to fully play and number, so you get the latter.  

       

Killed on my first outing.

      

The framing story is that you're the crown prince of Oz, and that to prove yourself worthy of the throne, you must find, in a four-level dungeon, the Great Ring, the Kingly Orb, the Robes of State, and the Sword of Peace. Each dungeon level is 100 x 100, and at the start of each game, each item is placed at a random pair of coordinates on its respective level. Once you find it, you're automatically moved down to the next level.

   

Good, neutral, and evil monsters roam the dungeon. Evil ones attack you and must be fought or fled. Good ones give you benefits. Neutral ones may go either way.

     

A dragon gives me "Rain of Holy Water." The magic treasure on this level is somewhere on a line between (2,99) and (9,92) 

      

Combat is purely through the use of 10 numbered spells. Technically, spell 0 is "Run Away," but that's just an action using a spell code. The player only starts with the first three spells: "Landslide," "Wind," and "Fireball" (the world's worst folk music trio), but good monsters give him more as he meets them. Each monster (dragons, witches, wizards, vampires, rock monsters, mummies, golden horses, sand men, giants, and water worms) responds to some spells and not others, so you have to take notes. Fortunately, when you get Spell #10 ("Thunderstorm"), you find it works on anyone. Spells don't cost the player anything to cast, so you can just cast the best one repeatedly.

      

The full list of spells.

        

Each of the royal treasures also has a special spell that blasts certain enemies once you find it, but I never had to use them. 

   

The character starts with 500 strength points and takes damage from battle, but good monsters occasionally provide healing. 

     

This witch is not good.

       

Each turn, the player sees his current coordinates (e.g., 34,19) and moves by entering first the number of squares along the X-axis and then the number of squares on the Y. Either number can be negative. (There's a maximum of |20| in any direction, so you can do |20,0| or  |0,20| or |13,13| or any other combination in which the hypotenuse is 20 or less.) Fortunately, you do not have to search 10,000 squares for each item. The first time you encounter a good monster, it gives you a distance meter that tells you how many squares you are from that level's treasure. On a subsequent encounter with a good monster, you get a compass, which tells you whether the object is in a negative or positive direction on the X and Y axis.

        

I'm 9 away from the treasure, which is to my southeast. I try moving 5 along the x-axis and -4 on the y-axis.

        

For instance, you may be at (35,62) and the distance meter says that you're 23 squares away. The compass says (-1,1). That means that the treasure could be anywhere from (-1,22) to (-22,1). It's a bit confusing because maximum movement is given in a straight line while the Distance Meter simply adds absolute rise and absolute run. 

    

The "grid" is otherwise an illusion. The character doesn't actually move, and the cells aren't seeded with specific encounters. You get the same encounters in the same order no matter which coordinates you choose to input. Thus, once you work out which monsters respond to which spells, the only variables affecting your success are a) the luck of the draw when it comes to what monsters you encounter, and b) minimizing the number of guesses to get from your current square to the treasure square. You can work out the latter mathematically. Without the compass, you need a maximum of three guesses to triangulate the treasure; with the compass, you can do it in two. It's actually a bit better than that, because if you're exactly on one of the axes, the game gives you an annotation of 0 for directionality, so sometimes you can get it in one. It might take you longer to get there, of course, if you start more than 20 (diagonal) squares away. 

       

Triangulating the location without a compass. At the original position 1 (O1), the player was told he was 12 squares away. At O2, he was 10 squares away. At O3, he's 6 squares away, which allows him to nail it.

              

As you might imagine, it was more fun working out the formula than playing the actual game. It's a good programming exercise, nothing more, and even in the "dark ages" of RPG history, I think it was rather shameless of Arctic Software to try to sell it.

    

One of these days, I'm going to have to create a page listing all of the titles and honorifics I've accumulated.

    

***** 

      

      

Cells and Serpents

United Kingdom 

Published as type-in code for the Nascom in the December 80 Computing Today 

Republished as type-in code for the BBC Micro in the May/June 1983 A&B Computing 

Commercial versions released by Argus Press in 1982 for the Commodore 64, 1983 for the Atari 800, Dragon 32/64, ZX Spectrum, and BBC Electron, 1984 for Commodore VIC-20 

Date Started: 10 March 2026

Date Ended: 11 March 2026

Total Hours: 2 

Difficulty: Hard to say with no fixed goal. Moderate? (3.0/5) 
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) 

    

Speaking of type-in games that later saw inexplicable commercial releases (although I guess I'd play a few quid to avoid having to type it myself and then spend six hours debugging it), we have another non-RPG that sees the character wandering through a random dungeon with no goal except to escape with the highest score possible. 

    

Without any framing story or character creation, the character is dumped into Level 1 of the dungeon with 100 hit points. You're told that you're in a room and can go left, right, or forward. The game tells you what you see in those directions, a list that includes corridors, rooms, stairs up, stairs down, doors, blank walls, and, theoretically, an exit. 

      

Contemplating three options.

       

Doors and rooms are basically the same thing, since doors just lead to rooms. They usually have monsters, treasures, or both. If there's a door, you get a chance to listen first to see if you hear a monster. Running into a blank wall causes damage.

 

Don't bother to map anything: the things you see in each direction are randomly generated when you arrive at each new location. You can't go down a stairway, turn around, and go back up. In this sense, each "level" is infinite because no real geography exists.

    

The monsters are drawn from typical fantasy RPGs: orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, demons, undead, dragons, and so forth. They have no special attacks or defenses. In combat, you have the option to fight (which is resolved automatically) and cast (generic) spells, which usually do more damage, but you have a limited number. Monsters are harder the lower the level. The character has no strength score, so the only thing that determines success in combat is whether your hit point total holds out against the monster difficulty. The only real strategy is to retreat from monsters in rooms that don't offer any treasure.

     

Defeating an intellect devourer with a spell.

      

The hardest enemies are three demons—Demogorgon, Jubilex, and Orcus—and ten devils: Asmodeus, Baalzebul, Dispater, Geryon, Barbed Devil, Bone Devil, Erinyes, Horned Devil, Ice Devil, and Pit Fiend. I was still able to kill them without much trouble as long as I had a few hundred hit points. Incidentally, if the title of the game didn't give away the author's primary influence, that list ought to do it.

         

It's close, but I think the version of this battle in Baldur's Gate: Throne of Bhaal is better.

       

As for that treasure, gold pieces add to your score. Other items—like weapons, armor, or wands—just add directly to your hit points or spell total. The only exception is a "luckstone" that increases the amount of gold found.

     

A nice haul after a battle with a green serpent. The scroll and armor will add points to my health; the wand will add spells.

     

That's about it. You just wander the rooms, taking care not to walk into walls, fighting or slinging spells at the occasional monsters, and frequently checking your status. The C64 version offers the ability to save and reload, obviously not present in the original. When you're ready to leave, you find an exit and you're given a message that "you got out alive," along with your score.

     

My top score, sans the exit.

        

            

I spent a couple of hours with the game, fielded about half a dozen characters, and got one of them down to dungeon Level 16. I built a score of 538, which seems like a lot, but according to the type-in code, the creator was able to get to over 11,000. In any event, I never saw an exit, at least in the C64 version. The manual's language admittedly makes it seem rare ("should you be lucky enough to discover an exit . . ."). I tried to interpret the original code to determine the circumstances under which an exit appears, but I wasn't familiar with that form of BASIC. If you want to give it a try, here's the issue of the magazine. 

        

And here's the image.

         

[Ed. It took me a while longer, but I got out! As per the comments, the exit only has a 1/700 chance in appearing in any of the room slots.] 

     

       

Numerous sites credit the game to a "G. Lovell," but if you go back to the issue, I think he or she is being credited with the full-page artwork (repeated on the front cover) of the topless female barbarian (shown from the rear) confronting a dragon with a spear. Like many type-in games (e.g., The Wizard's Castle, The Devil's Dungeon) it has spawned a number of modifications and variants over the years. (I am once again indebted to El Explorador de RPG for tracking down some that I would have missed.) Both Argus Press and Forward Software issued commercial releases for multiple platforms. It continued to appear on public domain and shovelware disks into the 1990s. A programmer named Simon Goodwin ported it to the PDP-11 and from there to the EACA Video Genie, renaming it Troll Crusher along the way. An Englishman named Jim Davies wrote a variant called Orcs n 'Oles for DOS in 1994, which features quite a few more items and variables. Generating ideas for variation is, I suppose, the entire purpose of a type-in program.

      

A screenshot from Troll Crusher (1994). The score keeps going into the negatives for me.

        

****

      

Someone will ask about the GIMLET. I rated Sword of Peace an 8 and Cells and Serpents a 5. It's not worth going through all the categories for such primitive titles. 

 

I'm sure you were hoping to read about The Elder Scrolls: Arena today instead of a couple of type-in games. Don't worry; I'm getting there. In the meantime, this quick entry allowed me to finish off 1979 and 1980. Again.