The Search for Freedom
Canada
Independently developed and published as shareware
Independently developed and published as shareware
Released 1994 for DOS
Date Started: 19 September 2025
Date Ended: 16 January 2026
Total Hours: 72
Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)
Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) Guest Post by AlphabeticalAnonymous.
Summary:
A high school senior’s self-created homage to CRPG classics like The Bard’s Tale and the SSI Gold Box games, The Search for Freedom follows a party of six adventurers as they set out to save the world from the threat of invasion by an evil lich banished centuries ago to the netherworld. The game provides a standard first-person, turn-based, multi-character CRPG experience as the party clears dungeons, explores new towns, constructs the ultimate weapon, and travels to the netherworld for their date with destiny. However, the adequate premise is marred by a linear quest line, limited graphics, and a game that drags on much longer than it should.
****
These are the times that try men’s souls. Here in the United States, people are celebrating the country’s 250th anniversary. Technically, it’s just the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, but this remains a visionary and inspiring document even a quarter-millennium after its writing. Whatever else you think of Americans then or today, their effort unquestionably involved people in search of a freedom of their own. Consider the injustices of Britain’s King George III that the document condemns: refusing his assent to wholesome laws; obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; obstructing the administration of justice; sending swarms of officers to harass the populace; kept standing armies among the people without legal authority; cutting off international trade; and transporting accused people overseas. And now we have another tyrant perpetrating many of these same injustices: I’m speaking, of course, of Kamazol, the main antagonist of this game. Our indomitable band frees not just the entire world from Kamazol’s bony clutches; we also free the land of the dead from his baleful influence. As soon as he and his supporters are defeated the world is a better place: new infrastructure projects spring up as bridges are built from one continent to the next; everyday people happily smile at each other in the streets; children are free to ask us for our autographs. Life is good.
These are the times that try men’s souls. Here in the United States, people are celebrating the country’s 250th anniversary. Technically, it’s just the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, but this remains a visionary and inspiring document even a quarter-millennium after its writing. Whatever else you think of Americans then or today, their effort unquestionably involved people in search of a freedom of their own. Consider the injustices of Britain’s King George III that the document condemns: refusing his assent to wholesome laws; obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; obstructing the administration of justice; sending swarms of officers to harass the populace; kept standing armies among the people without legal authority; cutting off international trade; and transporting accused people overseas. And now we have another tyrant perpetrating many of these same injustices: I’m speaking, of course, of Kamazol, the main antagonist of this game. Our indomitable band frees not just the entire world from Kamazol’s bony clutches; we also free the land of the dead from his baleful influence. As soon as he and his supporters are defeated the world is a better place: new infrastructure projects spring up as bridges are built from one continent to the next; everyday people happily smile at each other in the streets; children are free to ask us for our autographs. Life is good.
 |
| I'll admit; this was a nice touch. |
Almost exactly 85 years before I write this, Franklin Roosevelt spoke of four fundamental freedoms: of speech, of worship, from want, and from fear. In The Search for Freedom, there’s not much want: all the general stores, magic shoppes, and armories are well-stocked. Freedom of speech doesn’t seem particularly limited, since as far as I can tell we never meet an NPC who refuses to speak to us for fear of repercussions. There’s not much worship going on that I can see: clerics continue their usual business in their temples, and the only deity explicitly mentioned is Seth, the three-eyed god of death and evil, who our party kills in the afterlife. I wouldn’t claim that the people of this game’s world have nothing to fear but fear itself; yet you could do worse for a personification of Fear than an evil, undead lich sorcerer from the land of the dead.
I’m no CRPG addict, but I’ve played some of the highlights on this blog (Pool of Radiance, Ambermoon, Dark Sun, Betrayal at Krondor) as well as a few of the real dogs (Dragon Warrior, MegaTraveller 2). The Search for Freedom contains many of the essential CRPG fundamentals: leveling up is always satisfying; there’s a decent amount of equipment; it has a wide range of magical spells; combat occurs with a wide variety of enemies on a tactical grid; the overworld offers multiple towns and dungeons, each with their own ambiance and unique encounters, and opportunities to grind for experience or money when necessary. Nonetheless, it didn’t scratch all the same itches that some of these better games did.
Certainly, the game is too long. Caveat emptor: the manual warns of this, listing "a minimum of 60 hours to complete successfully." It took me 72, and I fled rather than engage in the game’s many, many potential combats. Had I fought them all, it might easily have taken 80–100 hours, and I certainly would have hit the game’s level cap of 13 (all my characters were Level 12 before the final battle). But when I say "too long," I of course really mean that it lacked sufficient depth for its breadth. The overworld is small (just two 32 x 32 areas, split into multiple continents), and it, the towns, and the dungeons all still somehow feel too empty. The game is mostly linear, with later areas gated off until you advance and then little chance of returning to areas you explored before.
I’m no CRPG addict, but I’ve played some of the highlights on this blog (Pool of Radiance, Ambermoon, Dark Sun, Betrayal at Krondor) as well as a few of the real dogs (Dragon Warrior, MegaTraveller 2). The Search for Freedom contains many of the essential CRPG fundamentals: leveling up is always satisfying; there’s a decent amount of equipment; it has a wide range of magical spells; combat occurs with a wide variety of enemies on a tactical grid; the overworld offers multiple towns and dungeons, each with their own ambiance and unique encounters, and opportunities to grind for experience or money when necessary. Nonetheless, it didn’t scratch all the same itches that some of these better games did.
Certainly, the game is too long. Caveat emptor: the manual warns of this, listing "a minimum of 60 hours to complete successfully." It took me 72, and I fled rather than engage in the game’s many, many potential combats. Had I fought them all, it might easily have taken 80–100 hours, and I certainly would have hit the game’s level cap of 13 (all my characters were Level 12 before the final battle). But when I say "too long," I of course really mean that it lacked sufficient depth for its breadth. The overworld is small (just two 32 x 32 areas, split into multiple continents), and it, the towns, and the dungeons all still somehow feel too empty. The game is mostly linear, with later areas gated off until you advance and then little chance of returning to areas you explored before.
 |
| The losing screen, if the party somehow manages to use up the allocated 1,000 days. I don't think this quite counts as a viable, separate ending to the game. |
The magic system feels unbalanced, though that’s hardly unique to this game. As with many other CRPGs, I ended it feeling that I had left most of the spells entirely unused. Spells for light are essential, and "Magic Lantern" (which also shows hidden doors) is probably too cheap. After that, I never had to worry about finding hidden doors again. Also too cheap for its utility is "Vision," which reveals a floor’s entire map including all special squares (but sans hidden doors). By the end, the game showed it was possible to have encounters on unmarked special squares; much more use of this (or just having all encounters unmarked) would have made mapping somewhat more interesting. And some sort of pre-combat "buffing" spells in the style of D&D’s "Bless," "Prayer," and so forth would have been welcome (if ultimately unnecessary given the overall difficulty).
As for combat (a critical component for any CRPG), the opportunity for fancy tactics certainly seems to be there. The Gold Box influence is unmistakable, though slightly different in the details. Yet for some reason combat quickly became unbearably tedious: the only real strategy for 95% of all combats was to allow enemies to approach, then engage in melee combat in pairs to allow multiple backstab attempts (any character can backstab, which does double damage and has a higher chance to hit). There are a few in-combat buffing spells available but none seemed worth using. One could use more combat weapons at the expense of resting more to recover magic points, but that would mean more combats that interrupt the resting periods. Thus I almost always defaulted to melee weapons for all characters. Finally, the enemy AI was poor. Even pathfinding was a challenge for enemies. Enemy spellcasters don't check for line-of-sight before casting, and they often pick obviously pointless spells.
But despite these negatives, let’s be clear: the games I listed above (both good and bad) were all created by teams of professionals, often with lavish budgets for both development and marketing. The Search for Freedom was written by a high school senior and released as shareware. So, let's compare it to its peers. This blog's Master List doesn't explicitly list games as shareware, but 11 games in 1992-1993 are listed as having both independent developers and independent publishers. Shadowkeep 1 is missing, and neither Fantasy Worlds of Tamrak nor Dismal Passages are really CRPGs at all. Angband v2.4 is a standard roguelike and Magus a graphical one. Of the rest, Defender of Boston is surely the most memorable (the others are Shape Shifter, Daymare 2, and Ultizurk I, II, and the Great Ultizurkian Underland). Setting aside Angband (arguably a fundamentally different type of "independent" game) and the non-CRPGs, they ranged in length from 4-22 hours and in GIMLET rating from 17-41 (Defender of Boston comes in at the top in both categories).
Let’s see how The Search for Freedom compares:
1. Game World. The setting and quest are generic fantasy: save the world from an evil magician. Bits of history and lore are hinted at, but not tightly incorporated into much of the game's action. For example, in the first half the Viper Alliance helps the party but we’re never sure why or who they are, and they never show up again. In a few places the party's actions affect the game world, but usually only in small ways. Score: 3.
As for combat (a critical component for any CRPG), the opportunity for fancy tactics certainly seems to be there. The Gold Box influence is unmistakable, though slightly different in the details. Yet for some reason combat quickly became unbearably tedious: the only real strategy for 95% of all combats was to allow enemies to approach, then engage in melee combat in pairs to allow multiple backstab attempts (any character can backstab, which does double damage and has a higher chance to hit). There are a few in-combat buffing spells available but none seemed worth using. One could use more combat weapons at the expense of resting more to recover magic points, but that would mean more combats that interrupt the resting periods. Thus I almost always defaulted to melee weapons for all characters. Finally, the enemy AI was poor. Even pathfinding was a challenge for enemies. Enemy spellcasters don't check for line-of-sight before casting, and they often pick obviously pointless spells.
But despite these negatives, let’s be clear: the games I listed above (both good and bad) were all created by teams of professionals, often with lavish budgets for both development and marketing. The Search for Freedom was written by a high school senior and released as shareware. So, let's compare it to its peers. This blog's Master List doesn't explicitly list games as shareware, but 11 games in 1992-1993 are listed as having both independent developers and independent publishers. Shadowkeep 1 is missing, and neither Fantasy Worlds of Tamrak nor Dismal Passages are really CRPGs at all. Angband v2.4 is a standard roguelike and Magus a graphical one. Of the rest, Defender of Boston is surely the most memorable (the others are Shape Shifter, Daymare 2, and Ultizurk I, II, and the Great Ultizurkian Underland). Setting aside Angband (arguably a fundamentally different type of "independent" game) and the non-CRPGs, they ranged in length from 4-22 hours and in GIMLET rating from 17-41 (Defender of Boston comes in at the top in both categories).
Let’s see how The Search for Freedom compares:
1. Game World. The setting and quest are generic fantasy: save the world from an evil magician. Bits of history and lore are hinted at, but not tightly incorporated into much of the game's action. For example, in the first half the Viper Alliance helps the party but we’re never sure why or who they are, and they never show up again. In a few places the party's actions affect the game world, but usually only in small ways. Score: 3.
 |
| A few unexplained anachronisms didn't help with the immersion. |
2. Character Creation and Development. The creation process is standard, but at least as detailed as for the Gold Box, Dark Sun, and similar titles. Characters primarily develop through combat but occasionally receive stat bonuses from quests, and the leveling-up process was almost always satisfying (up until near the end). The game only recognizes different classes in one or two spots, and all characters are assumed to be male. Score: 6.
3. NPC Interaction. Not a strong area for the game. There are technically a few NPCs with whom you can talk, and those conversations advance the plot or provide background. Unfortunately "info dumps" is nearer the mark than "conversations," as there are no dialog options. Again, only a small number of opportunities for genuine role-playing decisions and at most one mildly-memorable NPC (Dufrey). Score: 4.
4. Encounters & Foes. More for foes than encounters. Plenty of standard monsters but certainly unique ones too: the first pennagalaans and xanthropobls in this blog, among others. Detailed stats are available for them via the "Identify Monsters" spell, but it's not really necessary because so many behave the same: run toward the party, and/or cast random spells. There are both random (combat) encounters that can never be cleared and fixed encounters of various types that only occur once. Score: 4.
3. NPC Interaction. Not a strong area for the game. There are technically a few NPCs with whom you can talk, and those conversations advance the plot or provide background. Unfortunately "info dumps" is nearer the mark than "conversations," as there are no dialog options. Again, only a small number of opportunities for genuine role-playing decisions and at most one mildly-memorable NPC (Dufrey). Score: 4.
4. Encounters & Foes. More for foes than encounters. Plenty of standard monsters but certainly unique ones too: the first pennagalaans and xanthropobls in this blog, among others. Detailed stats are available for them via the "Identify Monsters" spell, but it's not really necessary because so many behave the same: run toward the party, and/or cast random spells. There are both random (combat) encounters that can never be cleared and fixed encounters of various types that only occur once. Score: 4.
 |
| The ability to fight more than two types of enemies at a time would have also created greater variety in the gameplay. |
5. Magic & Combat. I discussed this above. The combat options really come down to going for melee backstabs versus using a range of damage-inducing magic spells. Some sort of wands or other enchanted objects could have added extra variety here. Not as satisfying as I feel it could have been. I never felt that I understood how turn order was decided each round, and bows were never effective at any point in the game. Score: 4.
6. Equipment. The game features 12 types of weapons and 6 armor or shields, all with multiple levels of enchantment (e.g., silver, +1, +2). Damage and defense values are easily interpreted and items (even highly enchanted ones) can be found as spoils of combat. No descriptions or customization. Score: 5.
7. Economy. In the first 60-70% of the game, every coin counted . . . until I suddenly had 99999 gold and nothing to spend it on. More interesting items to buy, or fewer rewards in the later game, would have helped here. Score: 4.
 |
| Can a skeleton look mighty? Discuss. |
8. Quests. Another weak one. There is a generic main quest, which you can win or lose. There's perhaps one real side quest, given by the SwordMaster in the last town of the game. Score: 3.
9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. The drawn art is endearing, the icons fine, and most of the game is spent looking at featureless dungeon walls. The sound effects are a valiant home-wrought effort for 1994 and are ultimately on par with the graphics. The music is not necessarily bad (we heard "Greensleeves," Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor," Beethoven's 5th Symphony, Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy") but is far too repetitive. I'll never be able to listen to "Ghost Riders in the Sky" (the combat track) in the same way again. The controls are keyboard-only and just fine. Score: 3.
10. Gameplay. A highly linear game with too little content for its size. What would have been an enjoyable 20-hour diversion lasts 60–70 hours instead. The game would be only slightly replayable with a different party, and it's tough to imagine wanting to. Score: 2.
I'm forced to subtract one point for the crashes I experienced, as well as a few other bugs (e.g., "Cure Serious Wounds" always cost me zero magic points when used in town). That gives a total of 38. It feels a tad high, falling as it does right around the "recommended" threshold for its era, but maybe that’s right. If you love granular character development and repeated, mildly-tactical monster-bashing with a reasonable array of weapons and spells to choose from, this could be the game for you. It ranks higher than all but Defender of Boston in the independent games I listed above; what sets The Search for Freedom apart from all those others is its length, almost twice as long as the next-nearest contender. Regardless, the shareware portion alone (the first 30% or so, by playtime) could have been a welcome diversion in the mid-nineties, and even today the fully-registered edition will certainly give you your money’s worth in terms of hours of game time per dollar.
9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. The drawn art is endearing, the icons fine, and most of the game is spent looking at featureless dungeon walls. The sound effects are a valiant home-wrought effort for 1994 and are ultimately on par with the graphics. The music is not necessarily bad (we heard "Greensleeves," Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor," Beethoven's 5th Symphony, Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy") but is far too repetitive. I'll never be able to listen to "Ghost Riders in the Sky" (the combat track) in the same way again. The controls are keyboard-only and just fine. Score: 3.
10. Gameplay. A highly linear game with too little content for its size. What would have been an enjoyable 20-hour diversion lasts 60–70 hours instead. The game would be only slightly replayable with a different party, and it's tough to imagine wanting to. Score: 2.
I'm forced to subtract one point for the crashes I experienced, as well as a few other bugs (e.g., "Cure Serious Wounds" always cost me zero magic points when used in town). That gives a total of 38. It feels a tad high, falling as it does right around the "recommended" threshold for its era, but maybe that’s right. If you love granular character development and repeated, mildly-tactical monster-bashing with a reasonable array of weapons and spells to choose from, this could be the game for you. It ranks higher than all but Defender of Boston in the independent games I listed above; what sets The Search for Freedom apart from all those others is its length, almost twice as long as the next-nearest contender. Regardless, the shareware portion alone (the first 30% or so, by playtime) could have been a welcome diversion in the mid-nineties, and even today the fully-registered edition will certainly give you your money’s worth in terms of hours of game time per dollar.
[Chet here. This is the first time I've let someone else create a GIMLET, and I read it with interest. AlphabeticalAnonymous did a great job applying the considerations that I would have applied, although having read his previous entries in detail, I think I would have been slightly less generous in a few categories and likely landed at 33 or 34. The difference isn't enough that I want to make any changes, though.]
The Search for Freedom was the second and last game written by Dr. Howard Feldman in Canada. We heard about his first attempt, Quest of Kings (1990), on this site already. The Search for Freedom represents a clear advancement over that initial work, and Feldman was still finishing high school at the same time he finished this game. Though these were his only two CRPGs, he remains committed to the topic through his continued stewardship of the Museum of Computer Adventure Game History (MOCAGH). He describes MOCAGH as "an attempt to gather together every release of every adventure and RPG game ever produced, at least up until around the year 2000, and provide the complete contents of the game packages as high quality scans and PDFs." Fans of either genre should definitely check it out (and consider sending a donation).
The Search for Freedom was the second and last game written by Dr. Howard Feldman in Canada. We heard about his first attempt, Quest of Kings (1990), on this site already. The Search for Freedom represents a clear advancement over that initial work, and Feldman was still finishing high school at the same time he finished this game. Though these were his only two CRPGs, he remains committed to the topic through his continued stewardship of the Museum of Computer Adventure Game History (MOCAGH). He describes MOCAGH as "an attempt to gather together every release of every adventure and RPG game ever produced, at least up until around the year 2000, and provide the complete contents of the game packages as high quality scans and PDFs." Fans of either genre should definitely check it out (and consider sending a donation).
 |
| Just a small subset of the MOCAGH's full collection. |
I took the chance to ask Dr. Feldman a few questions about his game; an edited transcript is below.
Q: Please tell a bit about the history of designing and building The Search for Freedom.
Q: Please tell a bit about the history of designing and building The Search for Freedom.
A: I'd originally planned to do the Quest for Kings follow up on the C64, and made a start, but shortly after this I got my first PC, a 486-33 around 1993, so I switched to that. I'd learned Pascal in high school, so that was the language of choice for this project. I'd played a lot of RPGs by that point and thought I'd take the features I liked from the different series and combine them all into a single game. So the combat system I tried to mimic the gold box series, the puzzles I emulated The Bard's Tale, and so on.
Q: Were you influenced at all by console RPGs, such as Dragon Warrior (now called Dragon Quest)?
Q: Were you influenced at all by console RPGs, such as Dragon Warrior (now called Dragon Quest)?
A: I did not play console RPGs other than maybe NES Zelda 1 and 2. I would say the main influences were Ultima I-V, The Bard's Tale I-III, the SSI Gold Box series, and SSI's Shard of Spring and Phantasie series.
Q: Who did the art and sound effects, and what tools did they use?
A: The art, if you can call it that, is all by myself. For a lot of the images, I copied existing pictures from D&D or Fighting Fantasy manuals but everything was drawn using a paint program. I think it might have been called NeoPaint but I'm not sure. I also read Michael Abrash's Zen of Graphics Programming, which taught me some tricks about the different graphics card video modes and vsync, and how to do double buffering on only the top half of the screen because there was not enough video RAM to do it for the full screen! The voices are all me, except any female voices I got my mom to do. Other sound effects I either made myself or "borrowed" from existing sources.
Q: What musical numbers are included? I recognized Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and a few others—including "Ghost Riders in the Sky."
A: The music is all in .CMF format (Creative Music File) and was just stuff I had lying around. I tried to use classical pieces where possible since they were the easiest to come by, being royalty free and all. Aside from the ones you identified, I think there's "Night on Bald Mountain" and maybe "In the Hall of the Mountain King."
Q: Do you still have the game's source code, and do you have any plans for someday releasing it as free/open source?
A: Yes it is all in TurboPascal 7.0 or 8.0, I still have it. I suppose I could release it now without fear of taking away from my profits. Not sure anyone still uses Pascal though.
Q: Roughly how many people registered The Search for Freedom? How many have you heard from who beat it?
A: I'd say for sure under 100 registered; maybe 50 or so? But it did get included in several of those CDs with "5000 games" on them or what not, and has been on every major FTP site since the 90s, so distribution was good anyways.
Q: Are the game's characters and enemies named after anyone in particular?
A: I don't think so. If anything, they would have been inspired by books I was reading, or games I was playing at the time.
Q: Why Teddies?
Q: Why Teddies?
A: Well the obvious fourth race would be Hobbits, but I wanted to have something to make the game stand out a little bit. I'm not sure, but I think Ultima III had a race called a "fuzzy" without ever really explaining what that was, so I may have stolen the idea from that and morphed it into a teddy. [Ed. Dr. Feldman is correct about Ultima III.]
Finally, Dr. Feldman was kind enough to put his design notes for the game online here. These are certainly a must-read for anyone interested in this or similar games.
Finally, Dr. Feldman was kind enough to put his design notes for the game online here. These are certainly a must-read for anyone interested in this or similar games.
[Chet again. This was fun. Overall, I'm satisfied with the quality of AlphabeticalAnonymous's entries and the detail that they included. I know some purists think that I've abrogated my mission to play every RPG that ever existed; for those who feel that way, let's say that The Search for Freedom is still on my list, but I'll play it after every other RPG on the list.
I think it was a successful experiment, although not one that I want to repeat more than a couple of times a year. In the fall, we'll have some entries from Quirkz finishing my aborted attempt at Citadel: Adventure of the Crystal Keep (1989).]
****
For further reading:
- Quest of Kings (1990), this author's first game.
- Pool of Radiance (1988), the first "Gold Box" game, which heavily influenced this title.
- The Shard of Spring (1986), another influence according to the author.
- The Bard's Tale (1985), another influence according to the author.
- Dr. Feldman's official page for this game.
07/23/2026
As the hobbits came from Tolkien, so came the "fuzzies" from H. Beam Piper. The "emps" from U7 are about the same.
ReplyDeleteFor my two cents, I quite enjoyed the coverage. A bit more merciful in the rating, but the writing was close enough to the Addict's not to be dissonant.