The Fates of Twinion: Lines and Squares

 

What would happen if I "accidentally" clicked "on-line"?

       

I had an oddly enjoyable experience with Twinion during the holiday break, one that had little to do with the game itself. I played it in a couple of long sessions with a crackling fire nearby, a snow-covered landscape out the window, surrounded by holiday cheer and too much food, audiobooks or films in the background. I spent about half of each day doing things with Irene, including playing Frosthaven (which I'm starting to believe will never actually end) and scanning half a lifetime of photographs. Otherwise, Irene did Sudoku and crocheted, and I did crossword puzzles and filled in the squares on half a dozen 16 x 16 Twinion maps. A more complex, immersive game would have taken over the experience and disrupted the delicate balance.

         

I spent most of the first half untangling filling in parts of the three levels that I blogged about last time: Level 4: "Night Elf Ingress," Level 4: "a-MAZE-ing," Level 4: "The Armory," Level 5: "The Enclave," and Level 6: "Twinion Keep." When I ended the previous session, I was on the cusp of a few discoveries that simply required me to go in slightly different directions from the ones I had previously chosen. To wit:

    

• I retraced my steps through the invisible one-way wall area of "The Enclave," went a different direction than before, and found one of the map pieces that Queen Aeowyn asked me to find. Specifically, I found two men fighting over the map piece and managed to snatch it just as they fell into the lava. (I was just reading how despite the many film depictions of lava that show otherwise, a person would not actually fall into lava so much as on top of it, sinking no more than a couple of inches while catching fire and burning to death. I demand a new, traumatizing ending to The Lord of the Rings.)

       

The area that a later NPC calls "pandemonium."

      

• After an encounter in an unexplored region of "Night Elf Ingress," I found a set of Pipes of Enchantment. This powerful artifact turns some of an enemy party to my side. I don't know how many charges it has, but I've been using it sparingly. 

       

It's nice to make enemies attack themselves.

      

• A room behind a secret door on the same level gave me a M.A.Z.E. Key (despite the periods, I suspect it doesn't stand for anything). This key opened a door I hadn't been able to access on "a-MAZE-ing," where I found a second map piece. The M.A.Z.E. Key and the Stone of Awareness both disappeared at this point, having fulfilled their duties. I can't give Fates of Twinion much, but I'd love to see more games in which quest items automatically disappear when they've satisfied all useful purpose.

• The door that I was not strong enough to open in "The Armory" yielded when my strength exceeded 20. It led to a series of rooms, most of which I couldn't open. The one that I could open held a set of armor specifically for rangers. I gather that the other rooms would have opened to other classes and held armor specific to them. I'm getting the sense that a lot of locations are class-specific, accounting for some of the dead spaces on my maps. It's all the more shame that the authors didn't let a single player create a party.

         

The one door that I could open.

       

Combat ceased to be much of a concern after the last entry. I continued to experiment with a few tactics, but when you find multiple Potions of Heal All in your post-combat loot, plus you make enough money to be able to afford those potions topside, combat strategy becomes easy: Fight until you're down to a couple of hundred hit points, then get a dose of that potion. Most enemies didn't cause me to have to use the potion during combat, although vampire sorceresses, golems, and sleeths ("sleethes"?) remained rather dangerous.

   

Mostly due to experience bonuses from finding the map pieces, I made it to Level 19 by this point. I started to hit caps in my attributes and skills. The game wouldn't let me advance "Agility" past 8 nor any of my skills past 12. After one more level, unless I learn a new skill, I won't have anywhere to put my skill points.

     

Even my spells are nearing their maximum.

      

(Related question: What is the point of putting any points into the "Teleport" spell? It does one thing: teleport you out of the dungeon.) 

       

At this point, despite some existing holes in almost all the Level 4-6 maps, I couldn't find any place to go except a new map: Level 7: "Tipekans," which is of course "Snakepit" backwards. On my initial visit to the area, I could only explore its edges; the center of the map was walled off. A message noted that this was the clever work of the brothers Sneer, Smug, and Smirk.

    

Yes, they built walls. Diabolical.

      

Old enemies included golems and grey oozes. New ones were Marillian swindlers, Faenian sorcerers, guardian medusas, winged pythons, pincer pythons, enchantresses of Casille, and murderous thieves. (Again, no word on where any of these locations are.) Enchantresses of Casille had a lot of hit points but otherwise weren't dangerous. Only the murderous thieves posed any real challenge. I died the first round that I faced them and had to come back. Packs of them could easily wipe out my hit points in a single round. I mostly defeated them by using the Pipes of Enchantment to convert some of their members.

      

Encounters:

   

• Someone took my Tnepres Key and gave me a Welcome Scroll.

• A gremlin cleric exchanged my Emerald Lockpick for a Diamond Lockpick. (A note later suggested that without the Emerald Lockpick, visiting this map was pointless.)

• Behind a door opened with the Diamond Lockpick, someone exchanged it for a Sapphire Lockpick.

• A dwarf knight was searching for a temple to heal his wound. 

       

I've already been there.

       

• An exasperated halfling mentioned an area called "The Races" in which only certain races could open certain doors. I thought she was talking about the area I already mentioned at first, but later I learned otherwise.

• Behind a secret door, a sleeping thief woke up, picked my pocket, and fled. At first, I thought he just stole gold. Soon, I realized he stole my Sapphire Lockpick. Goddamn it.

   

Fortunately, I annotated where I got everything and did the loop again. This time, knowing that the Diamond Lockpick would be shortly replaced by the Sapphire Lockpick, I took a break in between to test the Diamond Lockpick in the safe on Level 5: "The Enclave." It worked. I got 100,000 gold pieces and three artifact items: a Staff of Justice, a bow called Crescent Moon, and Nero's Lyre. I ended up selling the staff. Crescent Moon seemed to do more damage than my existing bow, so I swapped it out. The Lyre apparently cast's "Fireball." After this detour, I returned to "Tipekans" and finished the circuit without visiting the thief this time.

     

"Somehow found their way into  your pocket?!" I earned those gold pieces.

       

All this key and lockpick-swapping made me realize I had some locked doors on Level 4: "Night Elf Ingress" that I hadn't tried in a while. One, near the entrance, opened with the Front Door Key. It took me to a fountain that taught me the "True Seeing" spell. It reveals hidden doors. This is particularly useful because I've been relying largely on my Ring of Thieves for that, which runs out of charges after about 10 uses. (It recharges when you leave the dungeon and return.) 

   

Other doors still wouldn't open, so I was stuck again. I hadn't checked all the walls of "Tipkekans" for secret doors, so I returned to do so. It's worth noting a few things about secret doors:

      

• The game often clues you to their presence with a vague note about "strange markings" on the wall or "construction" recently having been done in the area. Sometimes it only does this on your second visit to the wall.

• Some secret doors you have to detect with a spell or item that casts the spell. Others you cannot detect and must simply bash through.  

      

A typical hidden door message. This one didn't show the door after I discovered it.

      

• It's about 50/50 whether the game actually shows a door after you find a door.

• Your discovery of the door is extremely temporary. Your next action must be to walk through the door, or else the game will forget that you found it. If it's a locked door, your discovery must then immediately proceed to use of the correct key or pick, then immediately travel through the door, or else the game will forget that the door is both discovered and unlocked. 

      

This time, the Sapphire Lockpick revealed a door I had missed before. I followed a series of teleporters, picking away at the edges of the level, until it brought me to an unmapped area of Level 4: "Night Elf Ingress." Along the way, a bunch of signs indicated that I was headed for the "ballroom." At one point, some thieves waylaid me, tied me up, and stole the Sapphire Lockpick again. I was able to keep the rope when they untied me.

      

I think I have an idea where I could use this.

      

The "Key of C" opened the door to the so-called ballroom, which was just a 2 x 2 room. There, one fountain poisoned me and another taught me the "Bard" skill.

   

Yet another teleporter took me to a new map on Level 6: "Rat Race." I didn't get very far in the level, which featured false doors (or else I was the wrong race), damaging waters, and one-way walls. I ran into one NPC who said that she'd just found her fourth map piece and needed to find the way out. Ominously, the game mentioned that she had a Skeleton Key. A few steps later was another NPC: "Some doors here are to deceive, not to open. By the way, you did bring your reforged Skeleton Key with you, didn't you?"

      

Would rage GIFs be a good addition to my blog?

       

I soon learned that I was in a dead-end area of the level. I'd missed a secret door somewhere. 

    

Pop.

      

That was the bursting of the little warm bubble that the game had managed to build up. Now, in addition to obtaining the Skeleton Key again, I would have to re-obtain the Emerald Key, then re-exchange it for the Diamond and Sapphire Keys, then work my way all the way back to the level again.

   

When I got back to the outside, I hit Level 20, and the game asked me to make the choice depicted at the top of this entry, and for a delightful two seconds, I misunderstood and thought that the game wasn't going to continue to let me play unless I joined the online version.  

   

I finished the session by returning to an area of "Night Elf Ingress" that ended at some lava. The rope I got from the thieves swung me over. On the other side, I found a fountain that taught me the "Fencing" skill but nothing else.

   

My progress on Levels 4-7 so far.

         

While I was wrapping up this entry, commenter JoshNotCharles commented on an old entry called "Breadth, Depth, and Immersion." I remember writing that entry and feeling that the thesis needed a bit of refinement, but rereading it today, I think it holds up fairly well. Moreover, it gets at the heart of what's wrong with The Fates of Twinion that isn't wrong with, say, Wizardry. Twinion offers too much breadth—
too large a physical space—without enough depth or immersion. It's a line rather than a cube. 

    

The online version of Twinion must have at least been a square. Multiplayer interaction and the increase in combat tactics would have created greater depth. By making no adjustments when adapting the game to its offline mode (such as allowing party creation), the developers ensured that the solo player would face a far less interesting game. I suspect they didn't care; I think the screenshot at the beginning of this entry demonstrates that the developers always intended offline mode as an appetizer for the more lucrative online mode. 

    

I'll probably press on to the end of the map quest and then call it a day.

   

Time so far: 36 hours 

Game 564: Sword Dream (1993)

 

        

Sword Dream

And specifically, the "Spirit of Darkness" module 

Italy

Independently developed; originally published by VideoCOM, later released as shareware

Released 1993 for Macintosh

Date Started: 24 December 2025

 

Sword Dream is an Italian RPG creation kit for the Macintosh, published in several versions between 1993 and 1997. It was distributed first by a commercial publisher, then as shareware, and it found its way on a couple of shovelware packages. The kit allows for the creation of tiled, turn-based Dungeons & Dragons-style scenarios with some of the look and feel of the SSI Gold Box games. Version 1.0 came with a sample scenario called Spirit of Darkness. I should have played it last May, during our "darkness" phase.

    

This is only our second Italian RPG, after Time Horn (1991), although two earlier ones (1984's Buio! and 1985's L'isola dei Segreti) are on my backlist. Still, it's not a country that really churns out titles, so it's a fresh experience. The primary author, Luca Accomazzi (based in the Piedmont region at the time), was well-known in the Italian Macintosh community: he was a columnist for MacWorld and later wrote several books on OS X and iOS. He was joined by Eugenio Spagnolini for the graphics. When local distribution through a traditional publisher failed, they released it as shareware in Italian, French, and English. They updated it in 1997 with a 3D engine, which I have listed as a separate title on my master list. 

       

A shot from the tutorial that comes with the kit.

              

Unlike, say, Unlimited Adventures, there's not much evidence that it was successful in its primary goal as a kit. Almost no scenarios have survived. Documentation for a 1995 update of the kit mentions several scenarios (Return to Dawn Valley, Secret of Greywood, Nile Trial, Quest for a Paladin) that could be downloaded from a short-lived web site (too old for the Internet Archive, alas), but all but one (Nile Trial) were written with the involvement of the original team.

        

The title screen from Spirit of Darkness. Accomazzi had a relative in Boston collect his shareware fees. That relative is now the director of the NASA Astrophysics Data System at Harvard University.

       

Spirit offers no backstory except that a shadow is falling over a peaceful valley. The game starts, as apparently all scenarios do, with a "party" with no members. You can move an icon around the screen, but it comprises no one. Party members must be recruited from various buildings and institutions. Here, a nearby Wizard's Tower offers mages and a nearby town offers fighters (recruited from bank guards), rogues (found at the brothel), clerics (at the temple), and rangers (at the inn). Paladins are supposedly possible with the engine, but they don't appear in the sample scenario.

   

Inviting a character to join the party basically has you created him from scratch, with typical Dungeons & Dragons choices and limitations. Attributes are the classic D&D six (on the usual scale from 3 to 18); races are human, elf, dwarf, and gnome. Alignment is set by clicking in the right spot on a two-axis graph to make the character chaotic and good, plain good, order and good, neutral, chaotic and evil, plain evil, and order and evil. The character sheet has no explicit declaration of sex; the manual mentions both male and female characters, but all of the portraits look male to me. You can click on the portraits to cycle through features like mustaches and beards, but the main portrait stays the same.

     

Recruiting a rogue.

        

Once created, the characters can outfit themselves in an equipment shop in town. In addition to weapons and armor, they need rations to eat every day and lanterns to explore the dark dungeon. There's no way to trade money between characters, so you can't create a bunch of characters and then dismiss them to get rich.

 

The scenario comes with a pre-created party consisting of one of each character class. You can add more party members, up to eight, but the game warns you that the scenario is balanced for five. I originally created my own party but ended up reverting to the default party when a couple of my members were killed.

      

Buying items at the only shop.

     

Once the party is in order, the only thing to do is explore the only dungeon available—a mine at the north end of the 8 x 8 outdoor map. The mine and the outdoor area around it host typical first-level enemies like goblins, kobolds, giant rats, and giant spiders.

   

Combat transitions to a tactical grid on which characters can attack in melee range, use ranged attacks, cast spells, and flee. The only major difference from SSI tactical battles of the era is that you're timed in Sword Dream. If the character fails to act within about eight seconds, his turn is considered "passed." This is particularly annoying because it takes about that long to bring up the spell interface, select a spell, and target it.

       

The combat window. I've accidentally hidden the turn timer off-screen.

          

By now, you've noticed elements of the interface. Like many Mac games, Sword Dream doesn't take you away from the operating system and into the game's own world, but rather emphasizes the OS with multiple windows that the user can independently re-size and re-arrange and lots of cutesy icons and buttons. The "Finder" icon remains perpetually visible, and you can see the desktop (including other open windows and icons) beneath the game. This is because Mac users, no matter what else they're doing, always want to be reminded that what they're fundamentally doing is playing with their Macs.

           

(When taking screenshots of Mac games, I often forget, as you see here a few times, that the menu bar is actually part of the game interface and ought to be included.)

       

There simply is no way to construct a good layout of these windows, particularly since the game insists on having each character window appear separately. If you have five characters, there isn't enough room to display the entire card along one side of the screen, but if you overlap the cards, you can end up obscuring one or more of them depending on which card has the foreground. 

       

A reasonably good arrangement of the windows, except that I have 5 characters. The second character's index card is hidden behind Thor's. If I don't overlap them, however, there isn't enough space on the left side of the screen to show them all.

       

If you want to see the character's entire statistics sheet or inventory, you have to expand the card by clicking the box in the upper-right of the window. This action has no keyboard backup. The expansion messes up the order of the windows. Exchanging items between characters means expanding one window, dragging it out of the way, expanding the second window, dragging the item between inventories, then dragging both windows back to their original locations.

       

Trading. My window arrangement is now a hot mess.

                     

The interface offers both a "transcript" (a blow-by-blow of what is happening, particularly in combat) and a narrative window that gives a brief description of rooms and encounters. I rather like the latter, though I find it difficult to keep an eye on it. There are keyboard backups for movement and most actions, which is admirable, but a few key actions, like opening the character's inventory or targeting a ranged attack, must be done with the mouse.

      

As usual, I turned off music. The MIDI quality is fine, but the song selection doesn't quite fit the action. I only heard two tunes during the brief time I had it turned on. One, during regular exploration, was inexplicably "Jingle Bells." [Ed. As PK Thunder notes in the comments, it wasn't inexplicable at all! I was playing it during the week of Christmas, and the game must have been programmed to detect the date and insert the song accordingly. More on the music next time.] The other, during battle, I couldn't identify, but it was slow and contemplative and not something that you'd expect during combat.

 

Other sounds are mostly annoying. A satisfying "clunk" when a weapon connects in combat is always good, but not at the expense of an annoying honk whenever you hit the wrong key or the "coyote howl" whistle from the main theme of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that accompanies every pop-up message. (No disrespect to that masterful theme, of course, but the whistle without the answering trumpet call is like an itch you can't scratch.) 

      

The cleric's pitiful Level 1 spellbook.

      

If you've played Pool of Radiance, you remember how the first foray into the slums with Level 1 characters is quite hard. Mages can cast one "Magic Missile" spell and then they're out. Clerics are similarly weak, with maybe one "Cure Light Wounds," but at least they can wear armor and wield proper weapons. Any character can get knocked unconscious from an unlucky hit. Spirit of Darkness is the same, perhaps worse, in this regard. Mages are extra useless because not only do they get a limited number of spell slots, but most of their spells must be accompanied by material reagents, purchased in the mage's tower.

   

Meanwhile, many of the enemies you face (principally giant rats and giant spiders) are capable of poisoning the party, which saps damage every round, a condition that a Level 1 party has no ability to survive. You can fortunately save and load anywhere, but even still, during my first couple of hours with the game, I kept accidentally saving when my characters were poisoned or had been killed in the last battle without my noticing because of the inability to see all character statistics at the same time.

     

Time for a reload.

    

Also like Level 1 Gold Box characters, this party is looking at a lot of dead kobolds and goblins before they hit Level 2. Characters earn an equal amount of experience and gold after a successful battle, but not much of it. After a dozen or so, I had nearly 200 experience points, but the experience bar suggested that the next level wouldn't come until about 2,000. Presumably, there are treasures and special encounters that produce experience rewards. I just haven't found them yet. The manual for the kit describes a lot of higher-level character abilities and spells, but I don't know whether Spirit of Darkness offers sufficient content to reach them.

   

You see nothing in the top-down exploration interface. You slowly reveal squares as you explore, but you have to step on every one to trigger associated treasures and encounters. I don't know how large Spirit of Darkness is, but it's at least two large levels.

      

Starting out in the Valley of Dawn.

      

After a few false starts, I started with a new party consisting of two fighters, a ranger, and a thief. I figured I'd train up a mage once I got the other party members to Level 2. 

    

The scenario takes place in The Valley of Dawn. "Anyone with a sensitive soul can feel that something is amiss," the narration window says. "It is as if a dark spirit has invaded the valley, bringing gloom and evil in its wake." As noted before, the small 8 x 8 map consists of a Wizard's Tower, a mine, and the town of Smalltown. There's what looks like a corridor heading south along a river, but if you try to go that way, "the very air seems to reject your presence, and you are sent tumbling the way you came."

     

As for Smalltown, it used to be a wealthy, peaceful place, but "nowadays, most of the town is abandoned, ruins abound, and the inhabitants are nowhere to be seen." Despite this ominous narration, a bank, inn, temple, shop, and brothel all seem to be doing fine. The castle is abandoned, though, with a sign outside promising a "princely sum" to whoever can "free Smalltown from the Spirit of Darkness."

        

Moving around town. This party has no members yet.

      

Each of the buildings has a small interior to explore, but I don't think there's anything to find there. Instead, the player is meant to go right to the shop's special menu. However, some of the buildings have locked doors and inaccessible areas that indicate possible secret doors, so I'm not sure. The manual says nothing about doors, locks, or secret doors.

       

Some of the menu options in the Wizard's Tower.

     

The only menu options for the brothel are to recruit a rogue, buy rations, and spend the night. Spending the night has the same effect as doing so at the inn. Spellcasters can memorize new spells and everyone gets hit points restored. There's no indication that any hanky-panky is going on.

     

At the bank, you can deposit or withdraw gold and recruit fighters. The inn has options to stay the night, buy regular rations, buy weak or strong drinks, buy iron rations, recruit a ranger, leave a character temporarily, recover a character, and talk to the barkeep. Staying the night fully heals the party (whereas resting on the road only heals one hit point). The barkeep has a few tips depending on how many drinks you buy and of what type:

   

• Welcome, adventurer. Nice to see somebody looking healthy and strong. Care for some money? Try the mines. 

• Have you been to the temple? It's so old that we of the valley forgot the name of the saint.

• When you'll enter the mines from the main entrance, keep your left to reach the stairs to the second level. 

         

I love "Yeah" as the party's reaction to the tip.

       

At the temple, you can heal various conditions and recruit a cleric. The shop is unique in having no exploration area; entering just takes the party right to the buy/sell interface.

    

Outside, the Valley is generally a safe place, but if the party stands still long enough, they'll be attacked. Some of the attacks are odd. Whether through a bug or just sadism, giant ants are impossible for a Level 1 party to hit. You can also get "attacked" by a unicorn, the only response to which is to flee, which gets you a bunch of gold pieces, as if you had won a battle against a traditional enemy.

      

Are there other "friendly" encounters in the game? Time will tell.

            

"There's some evil lurking here," the game says as you enter the mines. It notes that the miners have all abandoned the area, but curiously there's still an old man passing out lanterns in a Level 1 room. The narration window flags several other "encounters" as we explore corridors and hit dead-ends.

   

• Many exhausted gold veins. 

• Someone has scribbled on the wall in blood: "Saint Cuthbert shall free us from the Spirit of Darkness." It looks fresh. 

• We find a couple of gems on the ground. 

• A bunch of rocks block a passage. Its placement seems to be deliberate. 

     

How do you purposely create a landslide in a dungeon?

      

We fight lots of battles against giant rats, giant spiders, goblins, and kobolds, except that every time I get infected by something, I have to flee combat and reload. Eventually, I just start proactively fleeing anything that causes poison or illness.

      

Hello, no.

    

Eventually, I find the stairs to Level 2, where Level 1's enemies are supplemented with skeletons and giant ants. It becomes clear to me that I'm going to have to engage in a bit of grinding to survive. I have no idea how many levels make up these mines, nor how long the scenario will take to win. I know we're all eager to get to 1994, but it's not Sword Dream's fault that it came last on the 1993 list, and I want to give it the full treatment before moving onward. My judgement so far is that it does a decent job replicating a typical Dungeons & Dragons module, but with a lot of cutesy Mac stuff I could do without.

        

Time so far: 3 hours 

    

The Fates of Twinion: Up and Down and Over and Out

 

Is he related to a sloth? If so, the "ice" part really makes a difference.

         

When I blog about games, I sometimes deliberately adopt a "summary" approach. Rather than narrating the blow-by-blow of a second of the game, I wait until its end, and then cover its major plot points, themes, and mechanics in a few paragraphs. Other times, I try to give a sense of the moment. Call this the "articulated" approach. If the game is long and takes up multiple entries, I like to vary these two approaches.

   

There are times, however, when I'm essentially forced into the articulated approach because I don't know how long it's going to take to finish a section and I'm writing on a deadline (admittedly a self-imposed one). That's what's happened with The Fates of Twinion. Eventually, I'm going to finish all of these interrelated maps on Levels 4, 5, and 6, and I'll be able to see the big picture and give you a summary. But if I do that, I don't know if I'll be blogging again this year. Thus, for the second time, I have to offer you a hyper-detailed account of my blundering through these levels, many clues uncollated, many puzzles unsolved.

    

The interconnected maps that make up this session.

     

This session begins on Level 6 of the castle-inside-the-volcano. The level is called "Twinion Keep." I'm in this section of the dungeon to find four pieces of an ancient map for Queen Aeowyn, but I'm just happy if I can find a way forward. I have numerous locked doors and unsolvable mysteries in my backpath. This whole area is supposed to be part of the Kingdom of the Night Elves, but I've barely met any elves.

   

I start at the north edge of the map, move forward, fight one battle, and immediately get killed falling down a pit. It's not that I didn't notice the pit; it's just that you have to try to fall down every pit in the game to make sure it doesn't lead you to a new area. (I thought RandomGamer had a sensible reaction to this mechanic in the last Twinion forum.) As a reminder, dying has no consequences in this game except that you start over from the outside menu.

   

The one battle is with a new enemy, raptors, and it's a curious one. I end up fighting them a few times to test it out. Each time, I meet a handful of raptors in one party and a single raptor in another. Each time, I swiftly wipe out the party of 2-4 raptors, sometimes with a single attack, and each time, the single raptor causes me no end of grief. I miss him 2/3 of the time and end up having to waste a couple of entire potions to heal the damage he does. Until now, I didn't realize that one enemy could have different attributes than another enemy of the same type.

   

Other new enemies include Maoelian Woodsmen and Mages of Tresmed, and as with the Mindarian zealots and Salosian zealots of previous sessions, it annoys me that I don't know what these things mean. Give us some lore, Twinion! Are we really only three years away from Daggerfall and its 94 readable books? 

    

Who is Tresmed? Where is Sularia?

        

Just as I think this whole area is going to be a bust, a message alerts me to a secret door. On the other side, I find another message: "There is a magical force that returns most quest items back to where they came should you accidentally drop them." That's good to know. A couple of squares later, I'm teleported to a new area with a couple of lava squares, and no, I'm not walking into each lava square to see if it kills me. If there's any puzzle in this game that requires walking into a lava square, tell me now so I can quit now.

   

Another teleporter takes me from here to a third section of the level, where I underestimate a new enemy called an "ice sleeth" and soon find myself on the starting menu again. Rarely have I met a game capable of imparting such a sense of despair, as you realize that the enemy is capable of damaging more per round than you're capable of healing per round, and now you're down to 300 hit points, and your fate is essentially sealed.

   

In a rematch, I kill the bastard and recover a life jacket from his body. Yes, I know that doesn't make any sense. Anyway, the life jacket is the artifact I needed to get through the Lake of Despair on Level 5. 

     

Was he wearing it or just carrying it?

       

Yet another teleporter brings me to an unmapped area of Level 4: "Night Elf Ingress," and so I start exploring around there. I find an excellent grinding spot where I'm attacked by a couple of wraiths and a couple of brown bats, neither of which survive more than one hit, and yet the battle gives about 600 gold and 1,200 experience points. I repeat it about 10 times and then move on.

  

Through another door, I interrupt some wizards and knights fighting over a key. Naturally, they turn on me. When we're done, I have a Front Door Key. 

  

The way I came has been closed off by a one-way wall, so I head north, turn a corner, and fall down a slope to Level 5: "The Enclave." I've been to this level before, but not this specific area, where I'm surrounded by lava. I make my way through a few doors and secret doors, get the "Lightning" spell from a magic fountain, and go through a teleportation door that puts me back on Level 6: "Twinion Keep." It's a good thing I'm not relying on automaps.

    

I thread my way past some pits—I'll have to check them later—and down a snaking corridor that winds south, then west, then north. I fight off a night elf warrior and a few raptors. One of the battles gives me a Heal-All Potion (worth 20,000 gold, so yay!) and a second Ring of Thieves. I meet a monk in a corner: "Search well, for there are places in the dungeon where your attributes can be enhanced."

   

Another teleporter takes me to the western side of the same level. I wind around a hallway of plaques, most of which are broken and unreadable, one of which advises me to "if given a choice, use the opal second." I get attacked a couple of times by jaguars and another ice sleeth. 

     

I'm not sure about "informative."

       

The only way out is via yet another teleporter which takes me back to Level 4: "Night Elf Ingress," this place to an area called "The Vineyard." I don't know why it's called that. A small room has a sheet of music with a song written in the key of C. "The lyrics tell of two areas where race is the key to discovering treasure." Another room has 5,000 gold pieces.

   

The only way out of here, at least into an area I haven't already explored, is to fall down one of two pits. I suspect they'll both kill me, but I've worked out a way to "cheat" in moments like this. There's a "Quit to DOS" feature on the menu that saves the character and quits the game, allowing you to pick up where you left off. The game confirms that you want to quit after saving the character's location, though, so if you then say "no," your position is saved. The next time you die, you can just click the lower "skull" entrance on the main menu to return to the saved position. I'm not abusing this exploit in general, but I don't have any ethical angst using it to test pits.

    

The note about walls altered by construction is a signal to search for secret doors. You usually only get these messages on your second time through an area.

        

One of the pits surprisingly leads me to an unexplored area of Level 5: "The Enclave." As I land, the game says: "Your confidence turns to alarm as you feel yourself approaching the Fringe of Madness." The large room is full of spinners and one-way invisible walls, and the automap refuses to show me where I am on the level. I feel my way through the room, through an illusory wall, and right into a pool of lava, where I die.

   

From back outside the dungeon, I re-enter, but this time instead of tracing my most recent path, I head back to the Lake of Despair (on L5: "The Enclave") with my new vest. It doesn't make the area much easier. The water still saps my hit points alarmingly fast, and there are still instant-death traps on the islands. What the vest seems to do is reverse which islands are safe and which lead to instant death. This is enough to get me to a door that I couldn't access previously. On the other side is a Storm's Bow, a Freedom Ring, and a Fellowship Key. I lose my vest in a scripted event. 

        

You ought to call yourself something else.

        

From the Lake of Despair, I head through a portal I haven't taken before to Level 6: "Twinion Keep." Down a corridor, a female dwarf offers: "The graveyard is very dark. You must rely on your wits and skills to get you through." I'm assuming I haven't found the graveyard yet and that the light I find at the end of this entry is important to navigating it.

         

I suspect my "Intimidate" skill won't come in particularly handy there.

      

It's getting exhausting narrating all of this in paragraph form. Let's switch to bullets.

   

• Another walkway, pits on the side, all leading to death.

• A scrap of paper: "Reward offered for the return of a jeweled lockpick to Tipekans." 

• An NPC who tells me there are secret rooms in the area, some accessible only by certain guilds. 

• A helmeted NPC: "Three clues are available for each race . . . You must read all three clues, or you will not be rewarded." I guess maybe I couldn't read the other plaques for racial reasons. I believe I have experienced two such types of clues at this point.

     

I seem to be hours away from having even one of the map pieces.

       

• I just realized I never re-equipped my breastplate after losing the vest. No wonder enemies have been hitting harder.

   

This area ends in a portal. "Dark Alley waits the unwary traveler," it says. "Step cautiously as you wander through the darkness." I enter and find myself back in another section of Level 5: "The Enclave," again in an area that the automap does not pick up.

    

The corridor in which I find myself is not particularly dark. Back to bullets:

   

• The entrance to Smug's Jewelry Shop is locked. I had previously found the "back door" to the shop on the same level, so that suggests this area is in the southwest. I don't know why all these doors are locked nor why none of my keys work.

• A female NPC also searching for the Emerald Lockpick. "I must find it and get to Tipekans." This is the third time Tipekans and the Emerald Lockpick have been paired in clues. I find the Emerald Lockpick in a nearby room, guarded by a night elf monk. I still don't know where to find this Tipekans. My quest items pack is completely filled with lockpicks and keys, by the way. Something is going to need to give.

• A portal offers to take me to "The Stables." Another suggests that it goes to "Cliffhanger."

• A knight says he dropped a Skeleton Key, which he needs to get into "the secret armory rooms." 

    

I enter what looks like a regular door, but I'm teleported to Level 4: "aMAZEing," to an area I've already mapped. Fortunately, there's a section of this level that I haven't finished, so I head there, pushing my way through random encounters. I'm finding a lot more "Heal-All" potions in battles, saving me from having to buy them.

   

A barbarian behind a door says that grave robbing can be hazardous to your health. A fountain restores my mana. These are the only encounters I get before a teleporter whisks me back to an earlier part of the level. I take some time to verify that none of my many keys and picks will get me through a locked door elsewhere on the level. They do not. 

    

I "Teleport" out of the dungeon and find that I've reached Level 16. While leveling up, the game won't let me raise my agility anymore, so I do the other three attributes. It will be 181,595 experience points—about 180 battles, at the rate I've been earning lately—before I see Level 17.

       

I wonder if the game has a level cap.

         

Back in the dungeon, I fall down a couple of pits to "The Stables" area of Level 6: "Twinion Keep." Here:

    

• Difficult battles with ice sleeths and night elves.

• A fountain heals me; another poisons me.

• An NPC knight says that there's a lantern needed to open a door in the dark.

       

I found the lantern at the end of this session. I don't know where the door is.

     

• A sign above a door says "Rangers Only." I nearly leave but then remember I'm a ranger. Behind the door, I find a Skeleton Key.

   

The only way out of here is a portal door to a new area of Level 4: "Night Elf Ingress." I'm not here long enough for any bullets, except that I find a back door to Sneer's Pawn Shop. None of my many keys or picks will open it. This is the second shop for which I've found both a locked front door and a back door.

    

Not long after that, I run into a door. The game notes: "The door to the Armory has seen many a traveler pass, each in search of the secret rooms inside." Entering takes me to a brand new Level 4 map called "The Armory."

      

How many of them, like me, have no idea why they're here?

      

• Enemies on this level: skeletal savages, hill giants, grey oozes, green slimes, night elves, night elf monks, ice leeches, ice sleeths, barbarian vandals, raptors, clay golems, ruthless thieves.

• A room with a message: "One of your party members must stay in the Armory until light is shed on your purpose. He who remains must at least lead once upon your return. Then, you may alter your formation." None of that seems to apply to a single-character game. 

• A door that says "Fellowship Meeting Hall." There's nothing beyond but a battle with three slimes. 

• A message at a t-intersection: "Do not proceed north unless you have disarmed the traps." This is good advice, as every square beyond has a trap, and healing does not work in this area.

• A locked door unlocked with the Fellowship Key. A teleporter leads to a new part of the level.

• A locked door that I'm not strong enough to open. None of the keys work. 

• Lots of one-way walls, one-way doors, illusory doors, and teleporters.

• In an alcove, I bump a shield off the wall. It falls against a switch, which disarms the traps and unlocks the doors, although not the door I wasn't strong enough to open.

• A message on a locked door: "When the wand is zapped, stay in the area until you open the door." 

      

I'll try, but this game has a way of yanking you from one place to another. I mean, check the subtitle.

     

• A knight: "The dralks . . . or some such thing, they are what these elves worship." 

• A couple of places in which my mana is drained by "miasmal gases." 

• A magical fountain teaches me the "Light Shroud" spell. Another one teaches me the "Shield" spell.

      

I think it protects against attacks from the undead.

      

• A troll cleric takes some gold from me and gives me a Spidersilk Helm. Later, a guard lets me enter a door because I'm wearing the Spidersilk Helm. 

• Behind a secret door in this area, I knock over a magic wand, which activates, unlocking the door that mentioned the wand. This door leads to a series of corridors in which I find the Luminous Lantern. A final teleporter tosses me back to Level 5: "The Enclave."

      

How do I "mark well," exactly?

           

I managed to explore the Armory in one go, but I'm out of healing potions at this point, so I "Teleport" outside the dungeon to sell my loot and restock. I'm a bit depressed that I've found none of the map pieces, but I do have a few new keys and lockpicks, so perhaps it's time to try all the locked doors again. 

   

The game is packed with content, which I normally enjoy, but one thing that's annoying about the hints is that they clue you into things that you don't need any hints for. You'll just inevitably reach the location that the hint talks about and do the only thing that you can do there. This makes it more difficult to identify the hints that you truly need.

   

Now that my winter break has started, hopefully I have more time to get ahead of this game and to adopt a more summary approach. 

 

Time so far: 31 hours