Multi-User Dungeon: Multi-User Perspectives

My only PVP kill.

          

On Saturday, 20 June 2026, about a dozen CRPG Addict readers and I signed into the Multi-User Dungeon on British-Legends.com for a few hours, hoping to replicate the early MUD experience, when players raced around the world, interacted with each other, and frequently killed each other. We were joined by a small number of likely-baffled veteran users who were nonetheless good sports. They gave us hints, allowed us to FOLLOW them on tours around the land, and came to our rescue when we were lost in the dark, stuck in cupboards, in need of particular equipment, or threatened by difficult foes.

   

We probably did not recreate a 1980s player's experience. We were much more polite, for one thing. Nobody attacked me unless I begged them (thanks to Kalieum for killing me!), and I didn't attack anyone without clearing it with them first (thanks to Coriarcin for allowing me to kill him or her!). I didn't hear any PVP stories from any of the participants.

         

Players shout and talk to each other.

         

After the session, I spent another five or six hours with the game on subsequent days, trying to complete my map. It was a futile enterprise. Every unmapped square led to dozens more; every puzzle I solved created two new ones. It's interesting how the incentives for puzzle-solving differ between MUD and its inspiration, Zork. In Zork, you have to get every one of a list of treasures to win. MUD doesn't care whether you ever find its most expensive treasures or visit its farthest reaches. You could spend an entire career logging on and circling the area nearest the starting square for the same set of treasures, dumping them in the swamp, logging off, and waiting for the next reset. And as I discovered, when you're alone on the server in the middle of the night, you get to determine the next reset. Also, as Kalieum pointed out to me, since you can string together commands with periods between them, you could write a script that accomplished this exploration and ensured that you got n points in a single command line. In the game's original days, the primary motivation for unlocking the most difficult and hard-to-reach places is that other players may not get there first, or ever, but that's not as much of a concern with fewer players.

     

From my limited experience, it appears that after each reset, veteran players can be expected to clear out a couple of locations very quickly. First, the woodsman's axe almost always disappears immediately. It's a good weapon; it has several utility uses; and it's close to the entrance. Second, veteran players race to the mausoleum for the firestone (lets you see in the dark without a torch) and other treasures almost immediately. The door puzzles are quite difficult to solve, but once you have the solutions, they never change. There's no incentive not to rush to the location, type in all the answers, and loot each of the chambers as quickly as possible.

        

If you don't get the axe right away, you can always steal it.

        

Since exploration depends heavily on having a light source, characters who miss the firestone will almost always head to the forest to find a stick, then go to the cottage to light it in the fireplace. Mischievous players may run around picking up all the sticks to deny this resource to their fellow players.

   

Both during MUD Day and in my other experiences online when there were multiple players, I found some oddities. There's an onyx lion found in the forest that, when you take it into the cemetery maze and DROP it, points you in the direction of a particular tomb where several treasures are to be found. The treasures are worth a reasonable number of points, and yet I often found the lion in its original location hours into a new session. The winged horse also has a lot of uses (and can be swamped for a few dozen points), but I still often found it in its starting square.

       

Because I thought I had already mapped the game reasonably well, I was startled to find even new players running around with objects that I never found. Even including the six hours I played after Saturday's session, I still haven't found the saber, the epee, or any one of the several cats that I frequently saw in other players' inventories.

      

The users playing at one point, minus the invisible wizards.

        

I asked the other players to email me their impressions and experiences. The overwhelming theme of the comments was how odd it was to share an adventure game space with other players, constantly finding the monsters already killed, doors already opened, treasures already looted, and puzzles already solved. Players arriving from the CRPG Addict did not generally have my experience of visiting the site when the rest of the world was in slumber, finding the rooms and puzzles in their original states. This makes it hard (as it would have been in the game's heyday) to ever learn what the original states are. How would you know to race for that axe if you've never found an axe in that location? In this regard, though, we have to give MUD the benefit of the doubt for being an early game, and one of the earliest multi-player adventure/RPGs that wasn't hosted exclusively on a closed system. The authors built it on what they knew, which was Zork. If they'd had exposure to the PLATO multiplayer games, perhaps they would have used a different design philosophy.

     

(MUD may actually be the first multi-player RPG not housed on a closed system. For my final entry, I have to untangle the timeline between it, PLATO's Drygulch, and Island of Kesmai. All of these games started on closed systems and were opened to the wider world at around the same time.)

        

Commenters also said that they had expected more classic CRPG enemies to fight. They thought they'd go wandering in the woods and meet orcs or slimes, kill them, and level up. Instead, the game's monsters are mostly fixed and unique: an ogre in a cave, a giant spider in the ruins, a zombie in the aptly-named "zombie room," a bunch of rats at the bottom of the cellar stairs, and so forth. While these enemies do supply experience, at lower levels, combat is barely worth the risk (most players won't have weapons for a while, if ever), and at higher levels, it's barely worth the time. But when combat is too risky and more experienced players have swamped all the treasure, the novice player is left somewhat bewildered about what to do.

        

I haven't yet figured out what this is about.

      

Some commenters wrote to me, during the game and afterwards, asking for help with some of the puzzles. I was mostly saved from any ethical conundrum by not knowing the answers. It astonishes me that nearly 50 years into the game's history, there is no comprehensive spoiler site online. Indeed, there are hardly any hints beyond the answers to the easiest puzzles, spoiled on the British Legends FAQ and via the HINTS command in-game. (If someone does find such a source, please do not link it in the comments.) I'm proud to say that I solved all of the mausoleum riddles, but if I Google "Multi-User Dungeon" and any of the answers, I get nothing, not even in the Internet Archive. That's a sign either that MUD has curated a community of players with shared values or that nobody cares. I like to think it's the former. It's almost too bad because I'd really like to be able to discuss the mausoleum puzzles with you. They're a lot of fun. Some of them require impressive knowledge of literature, history, and art as well as basic cryptographic skills. 1980s players, without the Internet, would have had to hit the books in the library. (Current MUD administrator Viktor Toth confirmed with me that the mausoleum puzzles have been updated a few times over the years, but they would have been similar in the original.) 

     

Overall, not being able to discuss puzzle solutions tamps down a bit on my interest in solving them in the first place. Again, by the game's own rules, solving puzzles isn't necessary to succeed in the game. There's no endgame waiting on the far side of the ocean, no "game over" screen when you open that final door.  

      

Killed by a girl.

       

Some other comments from MUD Day and my follow-up experiences:

     

• I must have died a dozen times from accidentally bringing my torch into the swamp (it ignites marsh gases and creates an explosion). It was just like riding my horse into the shops in Yendorian Tales. It's why I always tried to get the firestone and almost never got it.

• It turns out that almost every (non-hostile) animal in the game can be picked up and carried with you, including the winged horse, a couple of cats, a seagull, an ox, a rabbit, and a goat. I would give a lot to know what you're supposed to do with the goat. ShaddamIVth somehow managed to get killed by it. Kalieum: "Killing the cat didn't seem to do anything and I felt bad."

        

I get a goat.

       

• Several puzzles require multiple players to cooperate in solving them. There are a few doors or grates, for instance, which can only be opened with two people pulling at once. There's apparently a maze in the swamp, leading to one of the most valuable treasures, with the directions randomized every time the game resets. Since anything dropped in the swamp vanishes, you can't leave objects like breadcrumbs. You have to get a bunch of players to act as "breadcrumbs," occupying valid squares in the sequence to the goal. Only one player can obtain the treasure, so this has to be negotiated ahead of time. 

• In an email account, ShaddamIVth described the anguish of turning a lever in the mine, which leads to the mine being flooded, and then seeing the numerous screams of drowning characters. (He rushed to undo the action.) I'm sure there are other players who take joy in this.

• I created my map by trying every possible direction from every square before Sleazyd clued me that typing X tells you all the available exits and where they go. 

     

This would have been nice 12 hours ago.

        

• Everyone seemed to appreciate the game's literary quality and humor. 

      

That was a fair hit.

         

• A couple of times, we heard the "thunderous roar of a finger of death" in the distance. I still don't know what that's about. 

• There are sometimes a lot of zombies running around. I think that the wizards can trigger extra enemies. 

• When there are wizards in the game trying to help you, it makes it hard to determine which items are in the environment naturally and which are a product of their intervention. Sometimes, they like to whisper hints to you, too, which are indistinguishable from the game's own descriptive text. 

• One of the wizards was online during MUD Day and assisted several players, including me. I asked him for some background information. While telling me a bit about the game, he used his powers to whisk us around the land and show me some different locations. One of them had a large diamond, clearly worth a lot of points. I think he wanted to see if I'd (unethically) snatch it. I didn't, but mostly because I sensed it was a test. 

      

Morpheus tests me.

       

• Since British-Legends went online, 123 people have "made wiz." 

          

At this point, I want to transition to some of the experiences submitted by other players.

    

SleazyD

       

The game is very obviously the first MUD because much of what a "modern" (post-'95) player expects is missing. This is especially noticeable in combat where it's super-simple with no strategy and no parties/groups. You type "kill" with a weapon and you wait for it to resolve--no spells, no special attacks, no choosing targets, etc. There's just single combat with "kill" and "flee".

Despite the only combat I saw between players being people testing it out, I still felt I was competing with them more than some other non-PvP MUDs because of how the puzzles reset. During the peak time every item was taken, every door unlocked, every puzzle solved. Some other MUDs have timed item respawn and puzzle resets which mitigate this (but again those are from a decade plus later).

Exploration was fun. The Land definitely had that goofy humor everyone had back then. But there was definitely a lot of typing "x" at every location to figure out where to go next. The drawn map you posted on the blog was surprisingly helpful in maintaining my bearings.

For these reasons, I think I actually had more fun when most of the people got off the game after 4 EDT. Then it was just like I was playing Zork with occasional combat. Items were plentiful, I could find some monsters to kill, the puzzles weren't all solved, etc.

Overall, I had fun and I'm glad I played it. I might even play again, but if I do I will definitely be treating it as a text adventure where I run into people, and not a multi-user RPG. (If anything, it makes me want to code my own up!)

    

ShaddamIVth 

           

My impression of the world in which I found myself was positive from the get-go. The developers had utilized the text only interface to its fullest, and the description of the world felt lively. Venturing forth was fraught with much anxiety. I felt intimidated at first, the world seemed very large and very mysterious, but this feeling would diminish with time. After an hour or so of exploration I felt more comfortable in my new surroundings. I was by no means as well versed as a true native, but the world had formed an overall impression and I navigated much by feel and less by map. As you have ascertained already, a map would be a brave undertaking.

      

Others of course also roamed. And very friendly some were, with many offers of assistance from seasoned veterans for the newcomers. I had undertaken to experience the world as the novice I was however, and politely declined their offers after wrangling the correct commands from the parser. Initially some advice was touted and shouted to all who would hear but this soon quietened down, as many of the new explorers found their feet and used them.

     

Like most games with a text parser, you occasionally fight it.

       

My overall impression was more of a world of adventure than one of role-playing. And yet the interaction with many of my fellows again leaned my opinion towards a role-playing experience. Certainly, the social element was most definitely in the realm of the RPG, but many of the actions and expectations from the world were decidedly of an adventuring flavor. If asked if I thought it an Adventure game or an RPG, my answer would be decidedly vague. I would not hesitate to point out that it most certainly fulfills enough of the requirements for an RPG to be considered as one. But as to how the world FELT it was decidedly in the flavor of an adventure instead. The many items scattered about that had very specific intended uses reinforced this feeling excessively. The feeling of wandering like a lost sheep with an even more limited useful vocabulary did not help shake the adventuring flavor.

       

And herein lies the biggest problem for a novice. There is undoubtedly a system and expectation for combat, but to reach any meaningful stage whereby a traveler is prepared and equipped to undertake warfare on any scale, several hoops have to be jumped through. To acquire a weapon, and sufficient skill to be considered more than a novice would require the traveler to know the answers to many brain teasers strewn about. And finding these answers is no mean feat for a novice, with the presence of other more experienced travelers making this an even more arduous task. When setting out, many of the items required for the solution of many of these conundrums are very quickly assailed by those more experienced and knowledgeable in the ways of the world. I say this with no malice or ill feeling towards the others inhabiting the world, [but] conditions must have been brutal for new-comers in the years yonder. The assistance offered by the wizard Morpheus would undoubtedly have removed much of the sting of my initial faltering deaths, but as I have previously mentioned I  wanted to approach the system anew. I am a man of limited time, unfortunately ,and thus shortly afore the stroke of midnight my patience dwindled into despair, I declared DROP ALL, returned to the physical world, awoke the cat, and retired to my bedchamber.

        

I do confess these words paint a picture of confusion and frustration, and while this is not untrue there were many positive experiences to report. I absolutely marveled at the depth of the experience with the limited technology. The prose was of high quality, and the way the world could be affected by others with the technology of old astounded me. A moment that shines bright in my memory was finding a valve in the mine. I was surprised to discover I could simply turn it with no additional warfare being waged upon the parser. Following the code of adventurers (take all not nailed down, converse with whatsoever has a mouth or ears, press all that can be pressed) I proceeded to turn the valve. I moved on, but moments later anguished cries arose. "We are drowning," they pleaded, and, realizing myself to be the culprit, I quickly retraced my steps to undo my actions. The few conundrums that I did manage to solve swelled my breast with pride. Brutal the world may be, hard the path of progress, but oh so sweeter than the taste of success. It is an art oft overlooked in modern offerings. The fact that hard labor and deep thought bring their own rewards. But the level on which this was implemented is perhaps better left to the times of its origins, when entertainment was scarce, evenings long and rewarding experiences hard to come by. Had I no other distractions I would have certainly invested more time in such a pastime, meandering a weekend away bashing my head against the "cliffs to the east." Alas for us and our overcrowded schedules.

       

You have my gratitude for organizing the expedition. I am a lover of history, and gaming history in particular. That is of course what attracted me to your writings initially. To have been part of such an extraordinary endeavor was an honor and a privilege, to glimpse into the past, recreated so faithfully a rare treat. I give my thanks to you and all the others who participated, and will gladly do so again should the occasion arise.

    

Kalieum

    

Pre-MUD Day

I gave the game a go to try and get familiar with it in advance of MUD day. I want to know what I'm doing so I'm not losing time muddling around aimlessly, and I also want the upper hand should any of the other people there be the "kill other players on sight" type. I know that's part of the MUD experience, but if we're only doing this for a few hours as a one-time thing, I'd rather be able to spend that time delving into the game's mysteries.

      
On starting, I'm in the tearoom, which I understand to be the game's one truly safe space that you can't return to after leaving. Initial exploration leaves me confused. With time I'm getting better at finding my way around, though some of it is still "if I muddle around in this direction enough I'll get close enough to somewhere I recognize?"

     
So the goal of the game is to score a large amount of points, which are achieved by killing enemies, killing other players (or forcing them to flee), and "swamping" items—going to the swamp and dropping them. Different items have different values, some positive, some negative, some zero. I'm not yet sure about the significance of negative value items other than "really don't swamp this," but zero-value items appear to typically be tools, or sometimes valuable items that haven't yet been made valuable. 

      

Killing me from Kalieum's perspective. And, apparently, the cat's.

            
My initial session ends with me being attacked by a "blind, deaf, dumb, and lame beggar." How he even detects me to attack is one question, and a better one is how he manages to kill me in a fight, but regardless, I am slain which marks the end of that character.
     
I try again. I find a few treasures and swamp them, but it feels like I've run out of places I can go to with the tools I have available. There are some enemies blocking some places, but I can't seem to beat them. At the end, I find a stick, which becomes a "brand" [when I light it on fire]. This promptly explodes swamp gas when I go there to swamp items, killing me, but as it wasn't a stamina-point related death I'm able to re-enter without having lost any progress beyond dropping all my items. I end with around a hundred points scored; the second rank comes at 400 points and my goal for MUD day—the third rank—at 800.
     
I keep at it a couple more times and start to flesh out my mental map of the game world. There's the swamp to the south, with a forest to the southwest with a few interesting locations in it. To the west is a cliff that I could jump off if I had a parachute of some sort. East-ish is a cave you need a light to enter, with a few chambers I can't do much in yet; one contains an ogre that I'm sure I can't beat yet while the others are probably item-based puzzles. For a while I thought this was everything before I stumbled through the forest to the north, revealing a winding mine with tin deposits and an entrance to a dwarven kingdom, a mausoleum containing several puzzles, and a beach.

     

I also encounter a problem: while I can initiate fights with my lit brand as a fairly effective weapon—killing rats and a zombie with no problem—if they attack me first, the RETALIATE command that's supposed to let me specify a weapon to retaliate with just tells me "you must retaliate with a weapon," and I'm stuck fighting bare-handed, which I nearly always can't win. This leads to the situation where if I get the drop on a rat I destroy it handily (for 40 points), while if it attacks me first—which it can do the same instant it moves to my location—I have to flee, which as it turns out costs me 100 points. A couple of counters like this —trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong with the retaliate command, and getting jumped when I go back to recover my items (you drop everything when you flee), a nanny goat that attacked me when I tried to milk it, and I've lost all the points I've accrued from my multiple sessions so far.

    
Finding the mine helps with earning points, but I still hit the issue where once I've got everything I know how to get safely and can't go elsewhere without risking losing it all—at least until I understand why RET W BRAND doesn't work—I seem to run out of options. Apparently the game automatically resets when most of the treasure in the world is gone, but it would be arrogant of me to assume I'm even close to that point. Still, I've got a few places of interest that I'll leave well enough alone until MUD day itself, I've got enough scoped out I can hit my 800-point target assuming the game passively resets every so often, as it seems to. Summing them up for my own benefit as much as anything else:

    

• Dwarven kingdom past the mine.
• Several narrow passages in the mine.
• Locked door in basement behind bookcase (didn't respond to regular keys).
• Hole in wall in rat basement.
• Cave beyond gate.
• Mausoleum.
• Hole in the ground in foothills near gate between lands.
• Empty lobster pot on jetty.
• Spider web.
• Nanny goat.
• Badger sett.
• Bandstand.
• Shrine.
• Golden bolt on railway track. 

      

It’s at this point that MUD Day is postponed for a month, so I guess I’ll just keep playing and see what I can achieve by then. I find something pretty quickly—a grate that I need a second player with me to open. And then I get a magic egg glued to my hand that prevents me from doing any inventory interaction, and I am trapped in my little part of the land. I quit out, then reconnect maybe 30 minutes later with something in mind to check, and discover the world has already reset—maybe this happens the instant there are no players? In which case I expect you could "make wiz" (get 102400 points and "win") just by swamping the junk in and around the house plus the ore in the mine over and over and over. It’s roughly 400 points for doing this, so that’s only 256 times. The game allows you to queue commands, so I’d wager you could figure out one long string of [something like] . . .

   

IN. W. GET COAT. E. U. U. N. GET PARASOL. UNFURL PARASOL. S. D. D. OUT. etc. etc. 

     

. . . and just paste that into the terminal to autopilot these ~400 points. Not the spirit of it though, and I do actually want to figure out the secrets the game is teasing.

      
At some point while messing around with the mausoleum puzzles, the text "you start to think it's harder than you think" appeared on my screen. Initially I thought it was something that appeared automatically when you spent long enough in the location, but with later messages I realized it was most likely a wiz sending them. I didn’t expect to encounter anyone else online at all outside of the scheduled MUD Day. Alas, this happened right as I was running out of time that day, so I didn’t get to see this interaction through further (or make any progress with the mausoleum).

    
I logged on during the originally scheduled time for MUD day just in case, and happened upon another actual player. I was apprehensive (are they just going to kill me on sight?), but they turned out to be very friendly and helpful. It was genuinely a pleasant experience. I’ve played a couple more times since then, encountered other players though none who spoke to me. I also run into what I guess could be considered a silly trap of sorts; the sorcerer’s room was locked and the keys that normally unlock it weren’t on the way, so I wound up stuck in there with no way out. Judging from the other items present that aren’t usually in there, I don’t think I was the first person to fall victim to this.

         

Some of Kalieum's notes to himself.

MUD Day Itself 

     

I’m on early, trying to get back to superhero(ine) before the appointed hour, Chester and some Legend are already on. I’m not really sure what the etiquette is; on the one hand I could run around grabbing everything ASAP and ensure I get to resume my now slow explorations (I have a lot of questions, but not much in the way of coalescing answers), or I could not do that so the even newer players get to experience a bit more, but then what am I going to achieve during the session? Well, so long as I get the longsword and a firestone I’m probably good to explore the dwarven realm, which I haven’t yet, so I can leave everything else. 

      

MUD Day begins properly. There’s a lot more activity than usual, and a bunch of items I’ve not seen before. I want to get the longsword, but both the umbrella and parasol are taken. I ask the parasol player if I can borrow it, but they don’t respond and soon WHERE tells me "wouldn’t you like to know," so I assume it’s swamped. The random legend seems to be holding the umbrella.

     
At one point, I use the bow [which teleports the user to the location of the baton] and find myself in a caved-in section of the root tunnel, with several valuables there. Later I decide to get them so they can be swamped for the treasure total, and in that time someone else picked up the bow and went sailing around, leaving me completely trapped underground. Fortunately, they have a boating incident and I am able to escape when their stuff washes ashore.

    
“In the distance, you hear the thunderous roar of a finger of death!” rattled off three times in quick succession. Then a wizard told everyone to quit and restart; I’m going to listen to them. Post reset, we’re told to: “Complete Dwarves, woe, ship, isles, druids, goblins and main for the next reset.” I know what about half of those are. While playing, I realize I can push for Enchantress rank with a bit of effort. I’m curious if anything is tacitly different at the spellcaster-y ranks. I try to feed the apple to the winged stallion, only to be told the context is "feed CREATURE with FOOD."  I correct my input, only to be told the same. I guess it’s the wrong food, but I’d appreciate clearer feedback on that.

     

Chet here. *I* found the goblins. This is the highest rank I've achieved so far.

        
I do wonder how many of the items I regularly swamp without a second thought are actually puzzle items for something. I know an item having a positive value doesn’t preclude some other use. The multiplayer aspect means I can’t leave things alone to experiment with [lest] someone else get them. I find someone’s stash of items in the cupboard in the house. Could just take everything; No idea if they are still online.
    

Post-Session    

    

It was a fun experience, even though it was mostly the same as the solo experience plus passing other players from time to time. Sometimes this clued me into parts of the game I hadn’t picked up on and things to try (e.g., seeing players with goats, horses in their inventory), as well as the existence of several items I’d never seen before (sabre, pin, bouquet, epee, worthless jade statue of an ox, horse, shiny keys, bow, libram were all new to me). Some of it I wonder may have been wizard intervention. At one point when I was stranded on the beach by the waterfall due to the rain, a cutlass seemed to suddenly appear. Given the pirate-y association, I wondered if this allowed me to sail in the rain without randomly dying, and that the wizard had spawned it for me as such. I was still carrying the umbrella though, so if I tried it and drowned and my stuff washed up on that same beach I’d have no way to get the boat back, so I waited it out anyway.

     
I tried to balance out not being greedy with getting treasures anyway, aiming for the things a little farther afield. Having specific requirements for a reset from the wizard felt weird. Of “Dwarves, woe, ship, isles, druids, goblins and main,” I know where the Dwarven realm is but have never actually explored it yet. "Woe" I think is one single treasure. "Ship" I know; "Isles" and "Druids" I thought would both refer to the NW island—either way I’m not sure I want to go back there even though I now know the syntax of the hinted command. I’ve never even seen a hint of the existence of goblins, and "main" is probably everything mainland/surface. With most players being new, I think that it's pretty unlikely that we’d ever meet those reset conditions.

      
I’m curious what was going on past the wolf room. I successfully removed the wolf (for the first time), the text hinted whatever was behind the (locked) door was very hot, so I left to get some keys and the stupid egg, and come back to both Chester and the wizard just hanging out there, who both immediately left. Felt like I’d stumbled onto a clandestine meeting. [Ed. It was, kind of. A wizard was giving me some information, and he brought us to a place with (then) no other players, so he could tell me in privacy.] I then promptly jumped into the pit of burning and destroyed a bunch of useful items. Pretty sure the sea is completely inaccessible until a reset unless the wizard intervenes.

                

Kalieum's attempts at a hand-drawn map.

       

I had a good experience in the end; trying to help someone lost in the dark led to me finally managing to recruit someone to help me with the portcullis above the idol. We found some treasure in there and chatted for a bit, and it was just a pleasant experience. I was struggling to come up with more things to do (I don’t want to explore the dwarf realm without a decent weapon), so decided to call it there. Around this time someone shouted “woohooooo, prey” and someone else shouted “NO”, so I’m a bit concerned for the players still playing, but presumably they can send their own viewpoints in if anything happened from that. [Ed. Nobody did, and I'm curious what this was all about. I was off by then.]
     
I figure I’ll try imitating [Chet's] rating system, but as there’s no way I’ll rate things similarly enough for this to be directly comparable to a GIMLET rating, I’ve used a thesaurus to twist the acronym into something new: Kalieum’s (appropriated) Test of Innovation in the Game, Engagement, Revelry and Sunniness, or TIGERS. Let’s see how grrrrrreat the game holds up. [Ed. Kalieum ran through the entire GIMLET at this point and came up with a score of 22.] I’m tempted to add a point simply due to the fact that there’s a decent amount of the game I’m still oblivious to, not to mention whatever the wizard experience is. So that makes 23 points. It’s meeeediocrrrre! Well, that’s a pretty good score for its time, actually. 

    

Thanks to everyone who offered their recollections. We'll wrap this up next time! 

    

****

   

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 07/03/2026 

Realms of Arkania: Star Trail: Summary and Rating

 

What moment from the game do you think this box image was trying to recreate?

      

Realms of Arkania: Star Trail

Original German name: Das Schwarze Auge: Sternenschweif ("The Dark Eye: Star Trail")

Germany

attic Entertainment Software (developer); Fantasy Productions Verlag (original publisher); Sir-Tech Software (U.S. publisher)

Released 1994 for DOS

Date Started: 8 January 2026

Date Ended: 21 April 2026

Total Hours: 60

Difficulty:  Moderate (3.0/5)

Final Rating: 51

Ranking at time of posting: 552/582 (95%) 

   

Summary:

     

This sequel to Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny (1992) uses the same interface —first-person dungeon and town exploration, overhead world exploration by menu, combat on a grid with an axonometric perspective—with a few improvements. Thematically, it's quite a bit different, requiring the party to visit only a small number of locations in its small world, offering only a couple of side quests and dungeons.

   

The plot concerns the recovery of an artifact called the Salamander Stone, which will help unite the Elves and Dwarves against the orcs, who seem to be conquering everything. The plot seems to lose its way a few times, and both it and the game world are difficult to interpret without external sources covering Das Schwarze Auge setting. The game has a lot of logistical considerations, particularly when it comes to overland travel, which sometimes created satisfying moments strategically and sometimes just annoyed me. In general, though, the game offers a full, sophisticated set of RPG elements, including detailed character creation, meaningful NPC interaction, tactical combat, inventory logistics, and a meaningful economy. In each of these areas, it regrettably has a number of negatives that balance its positives.

    

****

    

On a reload, I was able to win the final battle without losing anyone. I chose the quickest option, just re-fighting that battle, this time understanding how it worked. (It helped that one of my warriors had the Dragon Slayer equipped, which did a lot of damage.) My characters were still dying of thirst as I exited the dungeon, but I trust that doesn't carry into the next game or, if it does, that I'll be in a city when the game begins.

     

"All of you, this time."

       

As for the rest of it, there were a lot of things that worked well and a lot of things that didn't. The game has solid RPG elements, including its use of skills, the utility of leveling, tactical options in battle, a number of special encounters with role-playing options, and the survival elements. On the negative side, I think it was a bit sloppy in the way that it revealed story and lore to the player; inventory upgrades are few and far between; the translation from German is a bit wonky in places; and I never really warmed to traveling across the game world by menu.

      

You have my comments on combat from the last entry, and with apologies to those who disagree, I simply don't think the spell system works very well. It has the same problem as skills, really: Until you've played for a while, you don't have a strong sense of what will actually be useful. With skills, you get so many points that it isn't as much of a problem. With spells, so many start deep in the negatives (and in many schools, you can only advance by one per level) that you really need some experience or spoilers to know what to focus on. On the plus side, I do like that many spells have out-of-combat uses.

       

My mage's spell values at the end of the game. That's a lot of negatives.

         

Then you have a bunch of stuff that's simply weird, annoying, or both:

      

• A party created in Star Trail spends the entire game getting to the same experience level as an imported party. 

• You're told not to loot anything in the first dungeon, which would be absurd if taken literally, since the Girdles of Might are practically essential. Plus, I think you need to take some items to get through the dungeon.

    

There are only about six recipes in the game, and here are two of them—but, apparently, I wasn't supposed to take them.

     

• You can create new characters at any temple but can only add them to your party if you go all the way back to Kvirasim. (Some reviews made it sound like it was possible to create and add characters elsewhere, but if it is, it never worked in the places that I tried it.)

• The subtitle of the game refers to a side quest that cannot be completed. 

• The party irrecoverably loses all its equipment (except magic items) midway through the game.

• The main quest is for the Salamander Stone. After finding it, the party has it stolen in scripted encounters at least three times.

          

Adding insult to injury, I still don't know who this jackass was.

        

These are just the major ones. I think my entries documented a lot of minor annoyances, such as a chest that could only be opened with a specific interface setting, a series of deadly traps that there is no way to avoid, characters throwing tantrums and injuring themselves on locked doors, and an encumbrance system that's absurdly punishing given all the stuff the game wants you to carry for survival purposes. 

      

I've played plenty of games with difficult doors. This is the only one where my characters were this uncool about it.

          

But I'll end with some miscellaneous pluses: an excellent automap, a helpful diary (that I under-used), a welcome auto-combat option for easy battles, and an economy that never stops being relevant, particularly with the ability to donate to temples for favors. 

         

The game manual's screenshot of the diary makes a joke about reading the manual. This is getting too meta.

        

I don't know what the GIMLET will show, but it feels to me that Blade of Destiny was a better game. Star Trail makes definite interface improvements, particularly in combat, but Blade had a more sensible plot, more side-dungeons and side-quests, and better reasons to explore its large game world. I would expect Star Trail to come out a couple of points behind.

   

On the GIMLET, I give Star Trail:

   

• 4 points for the game world.
• 6 points for character creation and development.
• 5 points for NPC interaction.
• 6 points for encounters and foes.
• 5 points for magic and combat.
• 4 points for equipment.
• 6 points for the economy.
• 4 points for quests.
• 6 points for graphics, sound, and interface.
• 5 points for gameplay.

   

That gives us a total of 51, which to my surprise is 7 points higher than Blade of Destiny. Looking through my final entry for that game, I guess I had more complaints about its mechanics than I remember.

          

This doesn't strike me as the most competent of ads. You really have to struggle to see the name of the game.

       

If you have any experience with my GIMLET, you know that a score of 51 puts it in the top 10% of games rated so far, which may seem to be at odds with the tone of some of my entries. This has happened before, and it generally happens when the game could have scored higher in some of its categories if not for an equal number of flaws. "Character creation and development" is a good example. I'd love to give the game an 8 in that category. Classes are well-differentiated; class composition truly matters; leveling up feels rewarding; the large variety of skills gives you the chance to create unique "builds" for characters; there are (albeit limited) class-specific dialogues and encounters. All very positive. But then you have things like arbitrary caps on the number of times you can allocate skill and spell points per level, the chance of "failing" each allocation and wasting half your skill points, skills that aren't used, random rolls that give you only 2 hit points per level, and numerous irrevocable choices about swapping points that can't possibly be understood until you've already played the game. And so the game gets the same score (6) as, say, one of the Gold Box games, which don't do anything particularly spectacular in character development but also don't give me anything to complain about. Some games, in short, reach a 6 by simply adding; some reach it by adding and then subtracting. Those latter games are going to offer more sources of complaint.

        

Those fans upset with my coverage of the game would really take issue with some of its contemporary reviews. Here's Petra Schlunk from the December 1994 Computer Gaming World: "To say that I had fun would be inaccurate; to say that I cursed and raged against this game, yet could not stop playing it, would be closer to the truth." She goes on to complain about encumbrance issues, getting kicked out of NPC conversations, boots that always wore out, and the length of combat. ("Actually hitting an opponent or successfully casting a spell is a rare thing," she says in a nice moment of solidarity.) In the first star rating I can ever remember seeing in CGW, she gives it 3/5 stars. "Extremely aggravating in spots . . . For the hard-core only."

      

These bastards are going to live in my head rent-free for a while.

         

I don't know why I still bother to consult Dragon magazine, which never knew what it was doing with computer game reviews. It would stop reviewing computer games entirely within a couple of years, and at this point in its life was offering them in an "Eye of the Monitor" section that featured an annoying back-and-forth between two reviews (Jay and Dee) instead of a single coherent review. Here, they thought it was too logistically complex and difficult, but they praised aspects of the interface and combat system. I'd like to hang my hat on some choice quotes (""Why can't a game be challenging without being whimsically evil?"), but it's clear they didn't make it far out of the starting city, and it's hard to respect that. 

      

Before moving on to the European reviews, I should mention that at least one western source, the February 1995 PC Gamer, felt a lot better about the game: "Everything diehard roleplaying enthusiasts have been waiting for." While it allows that the game might be confusing to newcomers, and that "its complexities can take a bit of practice to master," it promises real rewards for players who "invest enough time to master its wonderful subtleties."

      

A wonderful subtlety.

      

German sources rated it generally more positively, including 86% from the June 1994 issues of both Play Time and PC Games,  87% from the May 1994 Power Play (which also gave it RPG of the Year), 90% from the November 1993 PC Joker, and 92% from the July 1994 ASM. It's impossible not to suspect a certain amount of native pride in those reviews, but they probably also benefit from playing the game in its native language with a baseline understanding of Das Schwarze Auge setting. There's also the stereotypical German affinity for logistics, to which this game particularly caters.

    

The Dragon reviewers mentioned playing with the cluebook. I was interested in taking a look to see whether, as with many games of the era, it provided a bit more lore and background. It doesn't, alas. It's a very workaday cluebook, with maps of all the areas and a "walkthrough" that gives simple instructions without explaining anything. It elides most of the optional areas and encounters in the game, although it does take the party through the entire Star Trail episode, which I believe was optional. However, the cluebook does have an interesting interview with attic co-founder Guido Henkel. He relates how he,  Hans-Jürgen Brändle, and Jochen Hamma founded the company in 1990 after their previous company, Dragonware Games, folded. Their first productions were Lords of Doom (1990), Die Drachen von Laas (1991) and Spirit of Adventure (1991). As fans of the tabletop Das Schwarze Auge, they dreamed of developing a computer game in the setting but were too nervous about approaching the owners of the rights. Eventually, those owners came to attic rather than the other way around.

     

According to MobyGames: "The image [of the] Elvenking during the end scene was inspired by David Bowie. There was a contest about this image. The first player who would send the correct answer to the designers could win a prize."

          

Henkel seems to regard Blade of Destiny as particularly flawed and is proud of the ways that his team fixed its problems in Star Trail. He is also particularly proud of the automap and in-game journal. The company went with Sir-Tech for American distribution on the strength of the Wizardry history; Henkel was playing Crusaders of the Dark Savant (1992) at the same time they inked the deal.

  

We are early in the life of the Dark Eye setting. Realms of Arkania III: Shadows over Riva (1996) will be with us in a couple of years. I don't think we'll be seeing a group of mobile-only games in the early 2000s (e.g., The Dark Eye: Nedime - The Caliph's Daughter, The Dark Eye: Secret of the Cyclopses), but assuming I survive that long, we'll definitely see The Dark Eye: Drakensang (2008). In the 2010s, there are several games under the Blackguards label, Demonicon (2013), some titles that MobyGames classifies as adventure games, and of course the 2015-2017 remake of the first two Arkania games using the Unity Engine. As of 2026, the latest PC game in the setting is The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes (2020). There's a later iPhone game called Forgotten Fables: Wolves on the Westwind that sites list as part of the universe.

       

Combat in the 2017 remake of Star Trail. It keeps the tactical grid, but you can zoom around and rotate it.

           

Alas, attic Entertainment Software wasn't around for this resurgence. Shadows over Riva was their last and only game after Star Trail, although they did publish games from a few other developers, including one that we may see: Druid: Daemons of the Mind (1995). In interviews, Guido Henkel said that the licensing costs for The Dark Eye prevented the series from being profitable for the developers. He left attic in the late 1990s, and the company closed in 2001.

      

Henkel went on to work at Interplay, where he produced Planescape: Torment (1999) and apparently modeled for the cover art of the Nameless One. He reportedly lives in California now. He dabbled for a while in mobile games and now works as a film restorer. Johchen Hamma remained in the games industry. He was the executive producer of ArcaniA: Gothic 4 for Spellbound Entertainment. He's also listed as a consultant on the Blackguard titles (2014-2015). Hans-Jürgen Brändl went to work for Blue Byte Software and worked on the Settlers series of city simulators. He died in 2005.

 

Despite my rocky experience with Star Trail, I am authentically looking forward to its sequel, and I don't think there's any chance I won't select it for the primary list in 1996.  

      

****

    

Previous entry in this series

 

For further reading:

     

My coverage of attic Entertainment Software's other titles:

    

• Lords of Doom (1990) 
• Die Drachen von Laas (1991)  
• Spirit of Adventure (1991) 
• Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny (1992) 

07/30/2026 

Sword Dream: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

 

Note the "winning text" just above the trash can.

        

Sword Dream

And specifically, the "Spirit of Darkness" module 

Sogni & Spade ("Dreams and Swords") in the original Italian version 

Italy

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

Released 1993 for Macintosh

Date Started: 24 December 2025

Date Ended: 4 January 2026

Total Hours: 14

Difficulty: Hard (4.0/5)
Final Rating: 25

Ranking at time of posting: 272/571 (48%)

     

A kit lives and dies on the strength of its sample scenario. The best sample scenarios make you glad you bought the kit even if you don't intend to construct any adventures of your own. "Rivers of Light," the sample that comes with Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set (1984), is a worthy game in its own right. So is "The Heirs to Skull Crag" from Unlimited Adventures (1993). When a sample is boring, poorly balanced, or simply unplayable, it makes you wonder if the kit simply isn't capable of anything better. This was my reaction to The Bard's Tale Construction Set (1991). 

   

So all I can say is that to the extent Sword Dream is a good construction kit, its assets are poorly showcased by "Spirit of Darkness." The default scenario is small, simplistic, confusing, and far too difficult and grindy.

   

I gave you the setup last time: an unidentified evil has settled in the Valley of Dawn, driving out most of the residents. The valley contains a mage's tower and a town (Smalltown), which together offer the usual CRPG services. The one dungeon is a nearby mine. The mine consists of three small levels: upper level, mid-level, and lower level. The upper level has two separate sections, depending on whether the party moves to the mine entrance from the square to its west or from the one to its southwest. The mines are swarming with random encounters:

     

• Upper level: Giant spiders, giant rats, kobolds, goblins
• Mid-level: Goblins, skeletons, giant spiders, giant ants
• Lower level: Skeletons, giant spiders, giant beetles, evil monks

      

Battles on the mid-level had an annoying bar in the middle of the screen.

      

These enemies are ridiculously hard against a Level 1 party, which has no defenses against a giant spider's poison or a giant rat's disease, and which doesn't make enough money to have those conditions healed in town, even if they could make it back to town in time. The only solution to those particular enemies is to flee from them, every time.

   

Regular enemies are hardly any easier. They can kill Level 1 characters with a single lucky blow. If you get wounded, the cleric has one "Cure Graze" spell, and then it's back to the town for any healing beyond that. If resting worked in the dungeon, you could heal 1 hit point per day, but it doesn't work (you're awakened by a noise). If a character dies, you can't afford to raise him. The only completely honest solution is to grind in the doorway to the mines, returning to town frequently to rest and heal. The less honest solution is to reload every time a character takes a major blow.

       

At higher levels, the cleric has a few more spell options.

        

I went with the less honest solution. I explored all three levels, fleeing from every battle that looked too hard, attempting the ones that looked winnable, reloading if I lost more than I gained. When I had done everything but win the game's few fixed battles, I grinded Level 2 like a chump and then tried again. When those battles proved impossible even at Level 2, I hex-edited my characters to Level 3. I wasn't about to grind to Level 3. It would have taken, conservatively, 500 winning battles. I would have been playing the game for more than an entire work week. There are no encounters in the game that provide extra experience boosts.

   

I took the opportunity to enlist a wizard as the sixth character so I could check out a little magic. Just as in Dungeons & Dragons, Level 1 and 2 spells are underwhelming, and the wizard has very little to do once they're cast. Casting spells is needlessly annoying, first with the material reagent requirement ("Magic Missile" requires glass lenses), second with the interface. When you cast a spell, the casting character's "index card" window comes to the forefront. You then have to expand it to see the list of spells, double-click on the right spell, and then click on the appropriate place on the map to target it. Doing this before the timer runs out is difficult, unless you just leave the character's expanded window open all the time.

       

Nailing a kobold with a "Magic Missile."

       

Here's a rundown of the three levels:

 

Upper level - Main section 

 

• Exhausted gold veins.
• An old man who hands out lanterns. 
• A message in blood: "Saint Cuthbert shall free us from the Spirit of Darkness."
• A couple of gems.
• A passage blocked with a landslide, seemingly on purpose.
• A ladder to the mid-level.

   

Upper level - Alternate section 

   

• A storage area with nothing in it.
• A kitchen area with a dagger. 
• A corridor with a trap that a rogue can identify and disarm (this happens automatically). 
• An illusory wall leading into an ancient temple with the statue of a saint.

       

Finding an illusory wall.

       

• A fixed battle against three skeletons in the temple's chapel. Killing them nets a suit of plate mail, a shield, a long sword, a bow, and arrows. This was the only one of the three fixed battles that I was able to win on Level 1.

     

The first of three fixed battles in the game.

         

Mid-level

 

• Exhausted gold veins. 
• A square where the game says we found a knife, but we didn't get a knife.
• A square that teleports the party back to the upper level, but in a wall space.

     

This feels like it should have hurt more.

       

• A little poem written on the wall before the fixed encounter below: "Unbeliever, go back and shiver. Go ahead if you dare to meet Saint Kildere. Saint Charlemagnette's might you'll meet on your right. Saint Cuthbert, male and proud, to the left singing aloud." Going forward at this location reveals the encounter below. Going left brings you around to the same encounter, though you just have to defeat one of them. Going right takes you to the aforementioned teleporter. I wonder if there are some bugs here, and the left and right options were meant to lead to different encounters.

• A small room with a fixed encounter with 9 skeletons. This battle is so weird that at first I thought it was bugged. The battle map is turned upside down so that the party cannot flee without going past the skeletons. Some of the skeletons start in what ought to be inaccessible wall space. About 50% of the party's attacks do no damage, instead producing the message, "The weapon rebounds!" Once all but one skeleton is dead, you get that message for every attack, and the skeleton will not die. The manual says that the message is indicative of enemies that must be killed with magic, but I don't think the game gives you any magic weapons. You have to kill him with spells. It's a good thing I trained up that wizard. (Throwing holy water at him may work, too). I killed him with three castings of "Magic Missile." 

       

I was very confused by this encounter.

      

• A ladder to the lower level. 

    

Lower-level 

   

The lower level has only one fixed encounter, with two evil monks. As the battle begins, the game explains that: "The Dark Monks are an evil faith, and are known to worship Mistress Death." I couldn't defeat them until I cheated up to Level 3. Killing them nets 400 gold pieces, a gem, and a lantern.

      

I love how they were doing nothing more nefarious than mining gold.

        

That's it. I don't know whether "winning" means defeating all of the fixed encounters or just the one encounter with nine skeletons, which is the last one that I did. Either way, when I returned to the Valley of Dawn, I got the victory message:

      

A hooray for you! Today is a great day for the inhabitants of the valley. The spirit of darkness was defeated, hope restored, and the pass can be walked again by honest men. The mayor of Smalltown is here with most of the citizens, and a feast will be held in your honor.

     

The pass leading out of the valley is now open. I stepped on it, and the party got 500 gold pieces. A few more steps, and I was prompted for the scenario file that the party was departing to. It's one of the oddities of the kit that character files cannot be saved separately. Instead, characters are transferred between scenarios when you literally walk out of one and into the other.

        

This came out of nowhere.

           

Until I won that final battle, I was so sure that I must be missing something that I used the "Search" command on literally every square of the dungeon. It never once produced anything. 

    

The question for us now is: Is the kit capable of a better game? Probably a little. It would be interesting to try a higher-level scenario with the full complement of wizard and priest spells. I like tactical grids, but they're always boring at early levels. On the other hand, the documentation doesn't give any indication that the game is capable of NPC dialogue, puzzles, interactive encounters, side quests, or the rewarding of characters based on anything other than combat or treasure. The inventory system is simplistic, lacking rings, helms, boots, belts, etc. In sum, it seems capable of creating only very basic games, and the only thing that recommends it is that I don't think there was anything else like it for the Macintosh. On my GIMLET, it scores a 25, with mostly 2s and 3s across the board. It does all the things that an RPG should do, but without quite enough depth.

     

I would be remiss if I didn't cover a few interesting features that partly redeem the kit:

   

• It supports voice-based controls using Apple's PlainTalk software. I don't think I've seen such an option in any previous CRPG.

• When a character picks up two of the same item with a limited number of uses, the game offers to "merge" them into a single item. For instance, a lantern with 60 minutes of light and a lantern with 30 minutes of light becomes a single lantern with 90 minutes of light.

       

I guess it makes sense. You're just pouring oil from one to the other.

       

• If you missed the addendum to my last entry, all of the compositions are original to the game except "Jingle Bells," which was indeed checking the current date and substituting for normal exploration music. 

• Inspecting each item gives you a detailed set of facts and statistics. 

      

Checking out a suit of plate mail.

        

• I appreciated the somewhat limited textual narration of the corridors and rooms. It was well-written, with no major translation issues, and did a good job evoking a Dungeons & Dragons module. I would have liked to see more of this narration to truly flesh out the world. I think the game could have earned a 5 for "Game World" this way. 

• I also like the idea of a "Place" menu that lets you make common transactions within a business without having to go and find a specific counter or NPC. Daemonsgate operated this way as well. 

         

In an email to me, Accomazzi acknowledged the debt to D&D, which he mirrored in the name of the original Italian version of the kit, Sogni & Spade ("Dreams and Swords"). He says that he did play Pool of Radiance, but "did not particularly love it." He did love Ultima III-VI and "appreciated Wizardry." Ironically, I find Sword Dream closest to Pool of Radiance among these titles, though I see how the tactical combat might have been inspired by Ultima instead. 

 

The original Sword Dream went through several releases between 1993 and 1995, and new scenarios became available on a web site donated by a U.S. fan. These additional scenarios include "Return to Dawn Valley," "Secret of Greywood" (also spelled "Graywood" in some documentation; also sometimes "Darkwood"), "Quest for a Paladin," and "Nile Trial," all but the last created by the original team. ("Paladin" at least had input from the original team, though the primary author was Nicolas Meyer, a Swiss fan who helped with the French translation of the kit.) I haven't been able to find any of them, alas.

     

Sword Dream 3D. It manages to look a bit like Ishar.

            

In 1997, the team released Sword Dream 3D, an update to the kit that changes the main interface from 2D to 3D. Original team members Luca Accomazzi (design) and Eugenio Spagnolini (graphics) were joined by Alessandro Raccuglia (3D graphics). The new engine is supposedly backwards-compatible with scenarios created for earlier versions, although the 3D version comes with a new default scenario: "Heroes of the Black Tower." Accomazzi has made the kit and the scenarios available on his GitHub page, but the compiled version is available only as a CD-ROM disk image, and I'm having the worst time getting it to work with Basilisk II. (I'm aware that there are folders on his page for some of the scenarios that I said I could not find, but they are empty or have 0KB files in them. I have written to Mr. Accomazzi to see if he still has them.) In any event, I would regard the 3D version as enough of a change to be a fundamentally different game, and I've listed it separately on my master game list.

     

Accomazzi, already a columnist for the Italian MacWorld, continued to be Italy's resident Mac (and general Internet) guru for the next two decades, with publications like Da Terenzio a Internet: La Tecnologia Raccontata a un Profano (2005), iPhone e iPad Sotto il Cofano: Per Tutti i Dispositivi iOS (2010), Mac OS X: Sotto il Cofano (2010), OS X 10.9 Mavericks: Guida All'uso (2013), and Cuore di Mela (2016). He currently runs his own company, Accomazzi.net, specializing in Internet-based security and e-commerce solutions. Spagnolini entered the gaming industry, worked 13 years for the Walt Disney Company, and is now the CEO and founder of Gamyth, a startup working on its first persistent-world RPG, Narramor.

    

Except for what I decided to do with The Fates of Twinion, this entry brings us to the end of 1993, so we'll have the traditional transition before moving on.