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| The game had no title screen, so here's the cassette cover. |
The Oracle's Cave
United KingdomDoric Computer Services (developer and publisher)
Released in 1981 for the ZX-81; remade in 1983 for the ZX Spectrum, 1984 for the Commodore 64
Date Started: 19 April 2026
Date Ended: 19 April 2026
Total Hours: 2
Difficulty: Very Easy-Easy (1.5/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)
Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) This is one of those early games that isn't technically an RPG under my definitions, but at the same time, I'm not sure what I'd call it. My general policy is that if the game ends while I'm still trying to figure it out, it's not worth worrying about. That's what happened here.
The setup: "You are an adventurer trapped at the entrance to the Oracle's Cave complex." To win, you have to gain at least 40 units of treasure, defeat your chosen monster, recover the treasure that he guards, and finally, defeat the Oracle himself. The four potential monsters are a giant, a spider, a dragon, and a knight. Every new game (which randomizes the dungeon layout) includes all of these enemies, and they're all guarding their respective treasures, so the only thing that changes is which one the player must kill.
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| The four quest options. |
The player (represented by a "0") starts in a top-row room in a dungeon that fits on a single screen and has a maximum of 8 x 4 rooms. The player starts with 12 energy, which depletes as he moves and engages in combat. He starts with a combat skill of 18, which goes up and down with energy but can be increased with weapons and other means. Finally, the player starts with 0 wounds. If he reaches 6 wounds, he dies.
Each round starts with either (M)ovement, (U)sing an item, or (R)est to restore either energy or wounds. Movement can be (U)p, (D)own, (L)eft, (R)ight, or (S)ecret door. The latter option only works in some rooms, but it's the only way to reach rooms that are disconnected from the rest of the map.
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| I've met most of my goals, but if I want to defeat the oracle (southeast corner), I'll need to find a secret door to that area of the map. |
If the character moved, and the movement brought him to a room with an enemy, he fights one or more rounds of combat. Energy and strength determine damage done to the foe and the damage the player takes. It's possible to run out of energy in the middle of battle and to have no recourse but to flee. If the player wins, he gains the treasure and items the enemy was guarding.
If the character doesn't meet an enemy or doesn't move, then his initial selection is followed by a random event, which might include:
- Finding a magic item.
- Finding a weapon.
- A friendly wizard comes along and boosts strength.
- The player gets an offer to automatically move to one of the boss rooms.
- A passing dwarf offers a sip of a potion that restores energy or wounds.
- An annoying gnome chases the character and causes him to lose energy.
Magic items to be found include ointment (heals wounds), balms (heals wounds), potions (restores energy), ropes (create paths for movement when they're otherwise blocked), food (restores energy), and magic invisibility rings (automatically win the next battle). You can only carry three at once. Of these items, the rings are the most useful. They work even on the boss enemies and the oracle, so there's little reason not to hang out in a safe room, repeatedly resting, until you have a couple of them.
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| Having defeated the spectre, I pick up a sword, my first weapon. The "RFM" means that I have a rope, food, and magic ring—or maybe that The Oracle's Cave is upset about my Star Trail entries. |
Weapons are daggers, axes, and swords, which increase combat skill by 1, 2, and 3, respectively. You can carry two weapons, so the maximum bonus (6) is from holding two swords.
That's about it. It only takes the defeat of a few regular enemies to amass at least 40 treasure points. You then head to the room of your chosen foe, defeat him, and gain the treasure he guards. Finally, you head for the oracle's room (marked with an asterisk), defeat him, and exit to win the game. The only "winning screen" you get is a message that "Player 0" has escaped.
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| I defeat the oracle with a magic ring. |
A few other notes:
- The game supports two players who alternate rounds and compete to win. In a single player-game, the second player (the "9") just sits there, doing nothing.
- For some reason, the program doesn't work if you try to RUN it. Instead, you have to type GOTO 1 after it loads. I'd love for a ZX-81 expert to explain this difference.
- Any errant keypress sends you unapologetically to the system prompt.
- You can't back out of a selection. If you choose (M)ove and then decide you don't want to move, tough. The game won't accept any input except a movement direction.
- A couple of times, the game inexplicably froze on me.
It earns an 8 on the GIMLET with a string of 1s in everything except "Game World" and "NPCs" (0s).
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| The only winning message you receive. |
The game was created by a Chris Dorrell of Leicester-based Doric Computer Services, later Dorcas Software. His only other game is The Runes of Zendos (1984), a Valhalla-style adventure game.
A couple of years later, Dorrell remade The Oracle's Cave for the ZX Spectrum. The interface is the same, but the screen has been redesigned to minimize the map and to show a side view of the adventurer wandering through caves. The battles have some cute animations with the character running up and engaging the enemy in what TV Tropes calls a "Big Ball of Violence."
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| The title screen of the remake. |
The boss monsters have been re-designated as mummy, centaur, fiery dragon, and black knight. Other than that, the game is as much (or as little) an RPG as its predecessor. It's possible The Oracle's Cave influenced the later Volcanic Dungeon (1982), which also kept track of inventory as a string of letters.
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| Facing the Black Knight in the remake. |
And with that, I have again finished 1981. Until someone discovers even more.
****
Mark your calendars: 16 May 2026 is MUD Day!
On Saturday, 16 May 2026 from 18:00-22:00 UTC (14:00-18:00 EDT in the U.S.), maybe longer depending on how things go, I will be playing the original Multi-User Dungeon (1978), as hosted on British Legends.
(I will subsequently post an entry about it.) You will find me in the game as "Chester" or maybe some obvious variant. Please, no one be a jackass and confuse things by creating similar names or pretending to be me.
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| The modern iteration of a 50-year-old game. |
MUD was created by two students at the University of Essex on a DEC PDP-10, inspired by Zork (1977). Starting in 1983, players from around the world could access the game remotely. It was licensed by CompuServe in 1987 and renamed British Legends. It lasted until 1999. In 2000, Viktor Toth registered the domain british-legends.com and rewrote the game from its pre-CompuServe source code.
While MUD is not the first CRPG or even the first multiplayer CRPG, it is notable for going a slightly different direction than the multiplayer games that preceded it, predominantly the PLATO-based dungeon crawlers like Moria (1975) and Oubliette (1978). It mixed CRPG-style attributes and experience with the interface of a text adventure and spawned a subgenre of games that players enjoy to this day.
Here's all you have to do to join the game from a Windows computer:
1. Type Windows-R, then "CMD," then ENTER.
2. At the prompt, type:
TELNET british-legends.com 27750
3. Enter a user name.
The game will then ask you for an email address. Once you type it in, it will send you a password. Then just repeat Steps 1-3, enter the password, and Jack's a doughnut, you're in the game!
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| Logging in to MUD. |
Of course, you'll want to read some information about how to play the game first. The site has a "How to Play" page, a more elaborate "More Advice" page, and a "FAQ."
I've been in touch with Viktor Toth, the owner of the site, and he doesn't anticipate any problems. He warns that if there are more than 36 players, the server will create a second instance of the game, so you may end up in a world in which I'm not participating.
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| A long and ultimately tragic battle with a zombie. |
Since MUD is a multiplayer game, let's make this a multi-author entry! Record your notes and thoughts about your experience with the game, take screenshots, and either send everything to me within 48 hours of our playing session, or post your experiences to the comments after my entry is published.
And let's try to recreate the original experience. Take notes, make maps, avoid spoilers. Provide hints (but not outright spoilers) to other players. Hang out in the tearoom in chat. Yell! And of course kill each other (and me) to harvest our treasure and points.
Let me know if you have any questions; otherwise, I look forward to seeing you there!
Is this even an RPG game? There's no XP or leveling.
ReplyDeleteMy rules don't require XP or leveling specifically, just "development." You could make an argument that the energy and combat scores are a form of development. I wouldn't make that argument if the game lasted 30 hours, but see my first paragraph.
DeleteTelnet! Muds!
ReplyDeleteI lost basically my first year of Uni in telnet chats. I still have a card somewhere with all the IPs and ports I needed to connect to. Oh, when internet was a mean to know people in real life! Paradise.
And yeah, I don't think you will ever find a Spectrum game that more or less satisfies you.
There may be something from xUSSR scene, non-commercial, and for curiosity only.
DeleteSpectrum had a distinction of being the only home computer that Soviets successfully cloned* by late 80es; as a result, it was orders of magnitude cheaper than anything Western through the 90es, which translated into Spectrum-specific homebrew scene.
*Technically, I think, it was not the only one; there were 2x86/EGA clones, but I think that it was the only one that was radically cheaper than anything else.
Unrelated to MUDs, but just wanted to say that I miss playing ADOM over SSH on the ancardia servers while at work :p
DeleteThe difference between RUN and GOTO is that GOTO just goes to the line you reference and starts executing the commands while RUN also resets variables and generally cleans up the environment before starting.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing that however you loaded the game (either from a virtual tape or a snapshot) left some variables in memory which are needed. That would explain why GOTO works and RUN doesn't.
However, if GOTO works after you've already tried RUN (without reloading) then my theory goes out the window!
I have the feeling this is something like RUN starting from line 10 by default.
DeleteSo many hours wasted in goto and gosub and for what. I ask heavens. FOR WHAT.
Reading a bit more, it starts with the first instruction. So maybe there is a line 0 that is botched? I don't know, I cannot remember anymore
DeleteRUN without a number starts at line 0 or at the first higher number that exists. A way to test this would be to try RUN 1 - if that doesn't work, it's very likely the variable reset. Or an emulator issue. Or the time of the day ...
DeleteI should have provided more info. 1 is the first line of instruction in the code, and it's a REM. Line 490 is the first line of real code. Typing GOTO 0, GOTO 1, or GOTO 490 all run the program just fine. RUN causes it to crash. So does RUN 1 or RUN 490.
DeleteI don't think it's an emulator issue as the original instructions also say to type GOTO 1 instead of RUN.
My google-fu suggests that Robert is correct. It is somewhat common for ZX games to require GOTO instead of RUN, precisely because RUN clears out a lot of stuff from the system that the game might not want cleared.
DeleteVery good. Thanks, guys.
DeleteIn the choice of directions, what does "E" stand for? (E)xit the dungeon = the game = quit?
ReplyDeleteAnd when it reports the Oracle as defeated, that's followed by "(N/L)" =?
The black knight in the remake looks like a tall order compared to the player's size.