The Odyssey: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

In the end, it wasn't much of an "odyssey."

       

The Odyssey

United States

Independently developed and published as shareware
Released 1993 for the Macintosh
Date Started: 20 July 2026

Date Ended: 3 August 2026

Total Hours: 25

Difficulty:  Hard (4.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

    

Summary:

   

The Odyssey looks like an Ultima clone with its iconographic interface and keyword-based NPC dialogue, but it plays like a Dungeon Master clone with its numerous mechanical puzzles and difficult combats. The combination creates a fairly unique shareware game. The game uses ancient Greek themes to tell the story of a lone guard who must defeat the chaos master besieging the city of Athenia. The total physical space through which the player must venture is far smaller than most titles of even the early 1980s, but because every room is a deathtrap that must be approached cautiously and repeatedly, it takes far longer than you would expect. There are few normal RPG battles here; almost every encounter requires some combination of skill, magical items, terrain exploits, and luck. Overcoming its challenges is usually satisfying, though a few areas are annoying or unfair. I would recommend it for players interested in something different and challenging, but not those looking for a traditional RPG experience.

        

***

    

The Odyssey is the sort of game that you'd only get from a lone author. No established game developer, working with profit in mind, would make a game so challenging. This reality has both good and bad outcomes. On the positive side, there is a hard edge that lasts from beginning to end. The player has to exploit inventory and mechanics (all the things I talked about last time) in the most optimal ways to make the most incremental advances. Overcoming each obstacle is personally satisfying. On the negative side, the game could have used some serious playtesting and feedback. "Are you sure you want to make the player click on this many wall tiles?" I would have asked.

      

The full crypt map. I did not map the other levels.

              

When I wrapped up last time, I still had about five rooms of the crypt and the entirety of the caverns to go. I'm not going to cover it blow-by-blow, but here are some highlights:

   

• One crypt room had an interior room with a ton of treasure, including two Scepters of Lordly Might (raising me to Level 7), two Scepters of Friendship, and a magic helmet that cast a permanent "Light" spell. That last item was perhaps the best inventory item in the game. I always love it when the developer decides that he's tortured the player enough with a particular logistical issue and eventually rewards him with an "out." Examples from other games include "Create Food" spells, fast-travel devices (earned ones, not those available at the outset), key rings, and Bags of Holding.

     

Some nice treasures behind this unkillable enemy.

         

• However, there was also an unkillable sphinx in this room, and a big part of this section was figuring out how to lure the sphinx out of the room and to a place where I could dodge around him and run back to what he was guarding. He was fast enough that I couldn't do it through normal movement. A Potion of Athletics was the answer—but I had to go back through the area where I left him several times, and ensuring that I didn't walk into his melee range was a problem for much of the rest of the game. He eventually disappeared, I think because I lured him into the lava maze, where he either died or got stuck.

• The northeast room had spider webs spelling out DOOM. Nearby, a sphinx asked: "What do the spiders weave?" This was the easiest riddle in the game.

• The final area of the crypt was a large "outdoor" room with a river running through it. Wild boars spawned in the trees, and a triton threw deadly spears from the river. While figuring out how to deal with them, I had to find two invisible wall switches to activate a bridge over the river. 

       

The triton cannot see me in this wooded square.

           

From this point through the rest of the game, escaping each area required me to find one or more hidden switches or secret doors in the wall tiles, sometimes even in the force field tiles. I watched someone else do it on video after I'd won. He seemed to be able to tell the differences visually. I never could. I just clicked on each tile with the eyeball until it told me something different about that tile.

       

Damn it, I actually see it now. There's a tiny white dot in the middle of the special wall tile. I never noticed it in the live game.

          

A key that I found somewhere toward the endgame opened the fourth crypt in the four-crypt room. There, I found a letter from Julia to her friend Cleo, talking about how much she loved Antiphos (not the current King Antiphos—an older, now dead, Antiphos). The ghost of Antiphos was at first glad to hear it and then cursed me with a pathos that you rarely see in CRPGs.

      

Ah, fool! You have not helped me! Ah, I will never escape my despair! Ah, what I have lost! Gods take pity on me, and cut off my wretched existence! Let me be blind to the horrible pain! [Looking at the statue.] Ah, her serene smile! It mocks me! Ah, her stone eyes! Where is the real woman?

       

Fortunately, the spirit of Julia showed up to escort him to the afterlife. Antiphos left me his armor (at 50 pounds, a mixed blessing), and Julia left a key to the caverns. 

   

The first enemy in the caverns was an unkillable minotaur. I had to trip a pressure plate to open a lava square in the middle of the room, then lead the minotaur into the lava. 

      

What is that key made of?

           

In a network of caverns, I found Xallas, whose disappearance from Athenia I learned about early in the game. She said Nok Hurthtu had been trying to get her to betray the city somehow, and that she was slowly turning into a monster like the other denizens of the area. These other denizens included a triton, a minotaur, and a medusa—all of whom had apparently once been humans. They weren't too far gone to talk.

     

"Thank you, Medusa." -- No other RPG protagonist before or since.

         

To free her, I had to find out her nickname from her parents. Even then, she wanted me to try to get her companions to return to the surface with her. The triton and medusa protested they were too far gone. The minotaur, who actually was too far gone, decided that Xallas was betraying Nok Hurthtu and that he needed to attack her. Since he was unkillable, I had to enlist the medusa's help. This took a couple of reloads, as the minotaur kept getting to Xallas (which ended the game immediately) before I could bring the medusa to protect her. Eventually, the minotaur was killed, and Xallas followed me to the surface via a convenient ladder that went directly to town (through a door that only opened from this side). That made returning to town from this part of the dungeon much easier.

 

What would that song even be? "Step up, everyone, and place your bets / Hear about how Theocritus ignored his debts . . ."

         

Xallas's parents were of course delighted to see her. Her father gave me a Scepter of Lordly Might and an old scroll that the Seer translated for me: "What is order but the perfect arrangement of disparate elements into a preconceived pattern? Thus the key to the destruction of Chaos lies in the 'ideal.'" Something about that last word in quotes seemed like a clue.

       

I still don't know whether this game is supposed to be taking place in actual ancient Greece.

       

Back in the dungeon, a large cavern network required me to find multiple hidden switches. While searching, I found a Bow of Apollo and two sets of Arrows of Apollo, a powerful missile weapon that I never used. Even better was a cache of treasure that included magic armor, a magic two-handed sword, and winged sandals that increased my movement speed and let me move across shallow water. That would have been awesome except the creatures in the rest of the game were balanced for a character who had all of these items.

    

The cache also had a Horned Amulet. Nearby, I encountered an unkillable Beast Master, in charge of three lions, who told me that the Horned Amulet was the only thing that Nok Hurthtu feared. Unfortunately, he wouldn't give me the key I needed to move onward unless I gave the amulet to him. I tried literally everything to kill him but nothing would even damage him. Eventually, I made a backup of the save file and gave him the amulet. Annoyingly, he didn't stop trying to kill me even after I had acceded to his request. Like the early sphinx, I had to keep leading him to remote places and ditch him.

      

I wonder if one of the lions is named Ruh.

        

A puzzle that followed was the most maddening one in the game. A sign indicated that I should throw a spear onto a hidden pressure plate in a square beyond the sign. I didn't have a spear at this point, so I had to trudge back up to the crypts to find one. When I returned, every time I threw the spear, it hit the sign on the way to the pressure plate and was destroyed. After this happened about 15 times in a row and I couldn't find any other solution, I looked at the one video series on YouTube, created seven years ago by Alex Diener. It basically showed that I had to just keep trying until I got a luckier roll and the spear survived. It happened on maybe my twenty-third try.

     

These are the moments I live for.

       

Eventually, I found my way to an enormous cavern with chaos spreading from the center like the void squares in Ultima VI. Nok Hurthtu, sitting in the center, looked like . . . I don't know . . . a funnel cloud? He hurled explosions at me that were too fast to dodge, even with a Potion of Athletics. Potions of Invisibility fooled him, though, and I ended up having to return to the surface to buy several of them. In the far corner of the room, a "cannonader" fired arrows at me even if I was invisible. Numerous force field barriers were strewn around the room, and the entire northern wall was blocked by force fields.

   

It took me hours to get through this room. I had to make my way to the cannonader while invisible, healing myself when I got hit with one of his arrows, and then kill him and get behind a barrier before one of Hurthtu's missiles reached me. Then I had to figure out what to do next. I was used to searching wall tiles for hidden switches at this point, but it took a while to occur to me that I might need to search all of the force field tiles, too. One of them showed a "strange energy disturbance," and I was able to open it to get to the room to the north of this area.

    

Any tile can have a secret, I guess.

        

That room contained a Temple of Athena. Before I could speak to the goddess, a statue forced me to answer a riddle: "What is AIHTRTRBE?" The answer was BIRTH RATE. Fortunately, commenter half had given me a hint a long time ago that let me solve it. I still don't know what it has to do with . . . anything, really.

     

Or, what this town is going to have to increase after losing most of its men to the demon horde.

       

The Beast Master had followed me into the temple area, so I was delighted when I spoke to Athena and told her about the amulet, and she said she'd kill him for me. This still took some effort for two reasons; first, the game is bugged so that Athena following the character causes the game to crash. And when this game crashes, it crashes bad. It brings down the entire OS. I had to force-quit the emulator each time. Eventually, I had to save after every successful move.

   

Second, when it comes time to kill the Beast Master, no matter how far away he is when the character asks Athena to do the deed, the Beast Master rushes in, closes the distance, and kills the character before Athena can act. I had to maneuver her into the right hallway configuration so that he was blocked from reaching me.

     

The Beast Master has a worthy ending.

       

The Beast Master finally died, and I retrieved the amulet. It said I could equip it in either hand and that I would need a major power source to use it. I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out what could serve as the power source. Nok Hurthtu at least stopped throwing his fireballs as long as I held it. I couldn't figure out what to do for a while, but I tried talking to Nok and got a text input box. I figured this was the time to say IDEAL. This somehow caused a key to fly from his robe, cross the void, and land in my hand.

     

This was a little cheesy.

       

The key "unlocked" another of those hidden wall tiles in the southeast corner, near where I killed the cannonader, which somehow activated a "strange whorl of energy" in one of the force field squares. That force field apparently served as my power source. When I clicked on it, a fireball appeared and streaked to Nok Hurthtu, killing him in the resulting explosion. 

     

A ball of energy kills the bad guy.

        

The game immediately brought me to King Antiphos's throne room, where he dubbed me Hero of Athenia and then threw a feast. I was hoping I might get to marry Xallas or even the medusa, but I guess fame is my only reward.

     

That really limits sequel possibilities.

          

That one definitely felt good to win. Overall, I had the same feeling playing it as I did playing the original Dungeon Master: I didn't think it was a great RPG, but I still enjoyed the puzzles. I don't know whether Dungeon Master had any influence on author David Larkin (he didn't mention it during our brief correspondence), but it evokes some of the same themes in an iconographic interface.

    

Here's the GIMLET:

       

Category	Assets	Liabilities	Score
1. Game World	A fun backstory using themes from classical mythology. PC's mission and place in the world are clear from the outset.	Fairly small, not well fleshed-out. No sense of larger world. No evolution of the world based on character progress.  Storytelling a bit lazy. A magic evil-killing amulet introduced at the last minute?	4
2. Character Creation and Development	Leveling up brings some rewards.	No character creation except a name. Leveling is based on finding scepters and not based on acquiring experience other ways.  Character never seems to be more powerful. Enemies always wipe the floor with him.	2
3. NPCs	Fair number of NPCs in town with personalities and sub-quests. Keyword-based dialogue.	No dialogue options; the game puts all words in PC's mouth. Keyword dialogue rarely invoked; each NPC only responds to a couple of words. Not much NPC interaction after opening chapter.	4
4. Encounters and Foes	Puzzles are the game's raison d'etre, and many of them are challenging and satisfying.	Many of the puzzles are also very frustrating. Monsters tend to come in two varieties: those that are hard to kill, and those that cannot be killed.	5
5. Magic and Combat	Combat is quite tactical, going beyond literal combat tactics and incorporating elements such as visibility, movement, terrain, and use of equipment.	Exhausting. Few straight-up battles. Almost every foe is a unique puzzle.   No magic except items.	4
6. Equipment	Head, body, two hands, and legs slots. Several upgrades throughout the game. Nice, detailed item descriptions. A number of usable items that are vital to survival.	Traditional RPG equipment doesn't matter much for success in the game. Items are all in fixed locations.	5
7. Economy	Strong throughout the game. An extra Wand of Friendship or Potion of Invisibility always helps in a pinch. Can also sell excess items.	Only one store, with hard limits on the number of necessary items that you can buy per day. Only ways to grind for cash deliver paltry cash.	5
8. Quests	Clear, multi-stage main quest.	What seem like side quests all collapse into main quest. No player choices. No roleplaying.	3
9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface	Iconographic graphics are fine. Unobjectionable sound effects.  Keyboard movement mostly works.	Would be nice if keyboard commands didn't require COMMAND key. Nothing particularly outstanding about graphics or sound. Icons are of that "cutesy" Mac type that I don't like.	3
10. Gameplay	Reasonable length. Hard difficulty, but that's really the point of this game.	Very linear. Despite author's intentions, game does get a bit too difficult and annoying at times.     Not much replayability.	4
Other/Total			39

    

Overall, The Odyssey is a strong, well-made independent game that satisfies its intentions well. I would not recommend it for players looking for a traditional RPG experience.

   

The Odyssey does deserve to be a bit better-remembered than it is. Aside from a Macintosh Repository entry, that YouTube series, and a few discussions on Usenet, there isn't much available online. I wasn't able to find any contemporary reviews. David Larkin asked $25.00 for the game at the time; registration came with a (probably much-needed) cluebook, but in recent correspondence, Larkin said that he no longer accepts payment or offers the cluebook. I don't believe he worked on any other games.

        

****

   

Previous entry in this series

   

For further reading:

   

• Ultima IV, the game that most inspired this one graphically (and in some mechanics, like secret doors and NPC dialogue).
• Dungeon Master, the game that seems to have most inspired this one mechanically.  

 08/12/2026