Bloodstone: Gods and Monsters

 

I like the sentiment, but could you express it in just three words?

         

In the first session of Bloodstone, Danat McLagh ignominiously fled his home with four companions while his clan, the Asarene dwarves, were slaughtered by goblin-like "taldor." With a general goal of uniting the dwarven clans against this threat, the party went north to Haraza, where Torongo, chief of the Tanar clan, wanted us to bring a bunch of dwarven artifacts back to him in exchange for his support: a magic scarab, brooch, mitre, scepter, golden bowl, orb, crown, whistle, and Death Mask of Rohrkhad.

    

As we begin this session, the party is leaving Haraza to visit the Morin dwarves in the city of Kafari to the south. Those are the two major dwarf clans, but there are reports of minor tribes in the "wastes of northern Tarq." I don't know if we need their support or not. On the way to Kafari, we find a guy teaching "Trading," but I decline to spend money and time on it.

        

Arriving at Kafari.

     

Fighting a couple of miscellaneous combats on the way--more on combat in a bit--we eventually come to Kafari and begin our typical exploration pattern. Key notes:

   

NPCs talk of an ancient temple in the southwest corner of town filled with ancient "half-dead." But when we enter the building, we find a pretty temple to Ziphanu, the God of Air. The altar has a word: FURBIMBOR on it. I assume that, as in the Candle games, we'll use this word to wake up the god. He's rumored to be imprisoned in Hataan to the west. Rolg at the bar in Tulara knows more. 

          

This series knows how to stick to a theme, however odd.

       

• In the tavern, Emmera thinks the rivalry between Morin and Tamar dwarves is so toxic that not even Khamalkhad can unite them.

• Also in the tavern, Olga is looking for her husband, Atun. 

• A cook named Re tells me that when dwarves die, they go to the home of their god, Rohrkhad, who was banished when he imprisoned the other gods. Some "crazy old man up north" is said to have been to his castle.

• There's a school that teaches gemcutting, plus a gemcutter who needs help. There's a weapon shop, an inn, a wizard's retreat for those with spellbooks to memorize spells, and a place to learn archery. I don't do anything with any of them.

• A kid tells me about an old temple to the south.

• A dwarf named Shedara says that she once saw a fine platinum lyre in the hands of a traveling minstrel. If I ever meet him, I should ask him for the "Lay of the Death Mask."

• A man named Horatio sells musical instruments in his shop. I do want to explore music in this game, but none of my existing characters have much skill. 

      

Which one will lead to the most annoying and pedantic discussion of the number of strings?

       

• Notama tells me that Dablak, God of the Earth, is buried deep in central Tarq.

• Smorqa, the Mystic of Kafari, suggests I seek certain "wise people" to aid me with totems and tiles. Tiles are the key to instant teleportation. I should ask loremasters about COMBINATIONS.

• A trader named Ensule sells sealskins, which will let me cross rivers. I buy six, depleting most of my money.

        

Later: I guess they work.

       

• The Morin chief lives in a hut to the southeast of town, but I need to know his name before I can enter. It's late in the session before I finally find a dwarf named Pleitan, who gives me the name as RAKAN. He also tells me where I can find a magic orb buried in the Temple of Ziphanu.

• I meet Rakan in his house. He wants the same list of treasures as Torongo! I'm not sure what to do if I want both their support. Give half to one and half to the other?

       

There isn't a lot of variance in these dwarf names.

      

• On a later visit to the tavern, I find a wizard named Maxon. He tells me that all the best wizards have names that start with "M," and he gives me the teleportal combination to Asarene. Finally, he offers to join the party, and I accept. He comes with the "Chalta" book and lots of spells from other books memorized.

   

Shortly after leaving Kafari, I find a patch of Sermin mushrooms south of the city. I pick a few, taking care to leave some still growing. South of that, I find an "ominous gateway" that leads me to a dungeon with a very long, spiraling corridor. I try to explore it, but in the first room I enter, I fight some undead called "thamalques." Like undead in the other Candle games, they spring back to life in the round after they've been slain if you don't cast "Restsoul." I only have a couple of those memorized. I go back outside and memorize more (they're part of the Gimlai spell totem that came with Danat), but when I enter again, I get slaughtered by crossbow-wielding "dimelfs" in a different room. I decide to return to this dungeon when I am stronger and better-resourced, particularly with enough Nifts to avoid damage from attacks.

       

Slaughtered by the drow's less intelligent cousins.

     

Random combats in the wilderness replenish my gold. I start taking notes as to the game's original monsters and their special attacks. If I'm lucky, I fight monsters like taldor and pennari who have only physical attacks in melee range. I'm able to kill them with crossbows before they even reach us. More dangerous are magic-using creatures like taldormages. I've been reloading after each death because the party only came with about 5 "Resurrection" spells, and we have no way to get more until we buy the appropriate totem.   

      

An enemy approaches in the wilderness.

       

Notes on monsters:

    

• Taldor: Basic brutes, like goblins. Melee attacks only.
• Pennari: Dogs that accompany taldor. Melee attacks only.
• Hightaldor: Strong taldor. But still just melee attacks.
• Taldormage: Very dangerous. Cast spells like "Shatter" from afar.
• Tlatol: Taldor companions.
• Thamalque: Undead of some sort. Physical attacks only.
• Dimelf: Shoot with crossbows. Play on "dark elf"? 
• Bazards: Giant green lizards. 

        

Archery skill goes up from shooting a taldor.

    

The next port of call we reach, moving clockwise around the map, was the city of Tulara, still part of the Morin clan domain. Findings:

     

• A casino. I lose two rolls for small amounts and decide not to waste my money there.

• A metalsmith. He needs help and offers to pay 20 gold per day. I say what the heck and assign Volni, who has the highest skill in this art, to work with him. Even if I don't leave him here, we'll make 20 gold if we're in town for only one day, and I know I'll spend at least a day passing time in the tavern to see who shows up at different hours.

        

The series continues to allow some poor characters to work as wage slaves to support the party.

       

• Manteki has the Belfon totem for sale for 2,525, about 1,000 more than I have. I mark the hut for later return. 

• An armorer. I buy some leather for Maxon, who didn't come with any.

• A trader sells shovels, ropes, and picks. I think I'm all set there.

• A small temple has an altar with the word PLISTICAL on it. It's probably the secret word for waking up Dablak, the earth god, who lies in the ruins of Delqafi (information I got elsewhere).

     

"Let's get . . . plistical."

        

• Rolg shows up in the tavern at 19:00. He tells me about the land of Hataan, west of Tulara. The ruins with the Temple of Ziphanu are in a field, surrounded by a forest, east of a bridge, south of Rulaan, the female barbarian city.

        

Rolg tells me about the ruins of Hataan.

     

• Numerous NPCs tell me the lands to the west are overrun with dangerous monsters.

• I finally find a herb shop but can barely afford anything.

• There's a tailor, but none of my characters have any tailoring skill. Also a gemseller and a guy offering music lessons.

• A dwarf named Frozo upbraids us for killing "innocent monsters with families and children."

     

Always nice to get the liberal perspective.

     

• In the loremaster's hut, I get two teleportal combinations. Researching TALDOR, I learn they were created by Palelil, evil brother of Rohrkhad. Rohrkhad couldn't undo their creation, but he made it so when the taldor got drunk, they'd tell anyone anything. Unfortunately, even Maxon doesn't have enough "Research" skill to research the DEATH Mask of Rohrkhad, and I'm not sure how to develop this skill.

       

How do you suppose this translates in real terms? How much skill do you need to read things on stone tablets?

     

A warrior named Enric offers to join the party in the tavern, and I take him, filling the hole that Volni left. He's stronger than Volni but lacks Volni's magic. I decide to keep him for the time being and let Volni continue to work, mostly because I can't figure out how to temporarily park a party member in this town. If anyone had skill in tailoring, I could do it there, but there's otherwise no place to "assign" a party member temporarily in order to shuffle another one in. Since I need so many things that cost money, it strikes me that it might be more advantageous to keep a slot permanently open and put one of my other characters to work in one of the other towns.

      

I can believe a "Musical" skill that low. I once saw Enric Palazo absolutely butcher the national anthem.

     

As I contemplate that, I also contemplate our next steps. At this point, we've explored maybe the southeast tenth of the main continent. We have a lot of leads, but I'm hesitant to depart from what we might call the "tri-cities" area until we're better resourced--weapons, armor, mushrooms, bolts, spells. I think I might spend what I have on what I can afford, then try that dungeon a second time.

    

Miscellaneous notes:

    

• If I ever understood the reason for having a "Greet" command separate from "Talk," I've forgotten it.

• The game bifurcates NPCs into named ones, who always offer ADVICE or OTHER (enter your own keywords) as defaults, and unnamed ones, who offer NEWS, WEATHER, and PEOPLE. WEATHER never produces anything interesting. NEWS seems to pick from a databank of rumors. ADVICE often leads to other keywords, but NEWS never does.

• For a game that has so many input options--keyboard, mouse, and arrowing around to commands and hitting ENTER--I manage to flub whatever I'm trying to do a lot. I remember commenting on this several times in the Candle games. I can't put my finger on exactly what's wrong--on paper, this is just the type of interface I'm always demanding--but I'm constantly finding myself in sub-menus that I didn't mean to visit or on the verge of doing something like dismissing a party member or reloading a game, when I never meant to get anywhere near those options.

• As with the Candle games, my colorblindness doesn't work well with icons as small and detailed as this. I'm constantly talking to inanimate objects thinking that they're NPCs.

 

       

I'm having quite a bit of fun with this one. This approach is exactly what I enjoy: A distant goal, lots of lore to keep track of, a growing "to do" list, and a strong economy (at least for now). The poison pill of the Candle series has always been character development, and I sense some of the same potential problems here. I'll talk more about that next time.

   

Time so far: 7 hours

 

Ambermoon: Won! Technically, Anyway. Your Opinion Might Vary.

 

I have a feeling some of my commenters aren't going to be so happy.

        

To recap, my Ambermoon party has found that what's threatening the planet of Lyramion is not the return of a dark wizard--he's reformed and in the party!--but rather some lizard aliens from one of Lyramion's moons. We're not on that moon, though, but a different one--one occupied by dwarves, who were tricked by the lizard men into exiling themselves after building a machine back on Lyramion. We need to find a Navigation Stone to take our airship anywhere, and this dungeon by process of elimination was the only place to go.

   

We join the action on a level titled "Antique Area 3," where the party has found a bunch of teleporters, elevators, energy barriers, and switches to turn them on and off. We're being attacked by large groups of futuristic enemies called "Guardians." I suspect we're meant to trap them by turning off some energy barriers, leading them awry, and then turning on others. Alas, I have no such patience, and I just end up killing them all with "Iceshower," the most damaging mass-damage spell in the game. 

        

I guess I could have trapped them between the barriers? The movement interface doesn't work well enough for such tactics.

      

Another elevator takes us down to Antique Area 4. We soon find three receptacles on the wall that contain blue, yellow, and green "carved discs." There are a lot of them, so I only take a handful of each. In the next room is a pair of machines connected by glowing balls. One of them accepts one of the disks and the other accepts pieces of amber. They fuse them together and deposit them on a nearby pedestal. Every pair of disk and amber piece creates a Navigation Stone, in blue, yellow, and green varieties. I make three of each. 

     

Finally!

        

I'm about to head up back to the surface when I find another room with a dead teleporter and a machine connected to it. The machine looks like the one that takes the discs, but this one doesn't. I am able to feed it a metal globe that we find on a nearby skeleton. The teleporter comes to life. We enter, and find ourselves in a dungeon with plain gray brick walls and, as the game has it, an "impression of being somehow incomplete and unfinished." The level is titled, "Gadlon, Cellar 2."

  

We are soon attacked by a party of four floating balls with eyes. They are called "energieglobes." They're not terribly hard to kill, but they have a lot of hit points, and there are a million of the little bastards on the two floors of the dungeon.

        

You look familiar. Turn sideways.

      

I recognize the floating balls from Dragonflight, Thalion's first game, which I reviewed a lifetime ago in 2014, but I don't remember the name "Gadlon," and it doesn't show up in my search of those entries. Eventually, I reach the ground floor, where I meet an elf mage named Aderin. We cannot understand him until he gives us a piece of fruit that magically enables translation. Aderin sheepishly explains that they use the fruit to talk with animals. When we ask where we are, he says we're "in Gadlon, the old school of magic." When pressed, he says "we are near Pegana, on the main continent of Ontaflareth." "Pegana" does show up in my Dragonflight coverage. What seals the deal is the news that the school of magic is led by Rinakles, one of the party members in Dragonflight.

     

Nice title. Maybe lose the space.

      

It's a cute diversion, but Ambermoon doesn't really do anything with it. There are some chests in the area, but they don't have anything useful, just a little gold, a couple of potions, and weapons and armor worse than what we had in the 12th hour of the game. We meet Rinakles, and he summarizes the events of Dragonflight before powering up a teleporter to send us back home. I suppose the episode does accomplish a little world-building; clearly, this universe once had an ancient race capable of teleporting between planets, and multiple worlds were united in an "Amberverse." It gives Valdyn some hope, I suppose, that we might find a teleporter to his world.

    

I'm hoping that Rinakles's teleporter takes us to the surface of the moon, but no, it dumps us back on the same dungeon level, so we have to travel the long way to the surface. When we get there, I visit both dwarven leaders, show them our Navigation Stones, and try various keywords to alert them to the fact that we can now leave the moon. Nothing works. I guess they don't really want to leave.

       

Your loss.

     

Before we head off in the airship, I can't help but see if any more of the Forest Moon is used. I had previously noted that coordinates went from (0,0) to (300,300), but the places I've found have only used about half of that space. I save at the airship and then head off to see if I can find any more places. It takes a while, especially dodging all of the waiting insects. Eventually, the expedition becomes more about confirming that there is nothing to find than it is about finding something, at which point I decide to relax my rules a bit and look up an online map. Imagine my surprise when I find a tower in the northwest quadrant of the map. 

It takes a while to get there, because the tower is surrounded by impassable, dangerous plants (they lash out at us and kill us), and there are insect combats threaded throughout the area. Eventually, we find ourselves in a ruined tower with more puzzle doors, teleporters, and elevators. We're attacked by several parties of gizzeks. We find a lot of doors with colored circle, triangle, and square patterns. Finally, we find a corpse with a book that gives us clues about how to decipher the shapes and colors. I realize that I was supposed to find these ruins before the Antique Area, which would have made it easier to figure out the door combinations. 

      

I'm not sure what the lines mean, but I never had to decode a door with a line.

    

Finding nothing else in these ruins, I don't feel like walking all the way back, so I reload next to the airship and continue on from there.

   

I enter the ship and find the receptacle next to the sign that reads "LYRAMION." The blue Navigation Stone works here. In moments, we are back on our home planet!

     

Hello, Lyramion!

       

Then I think about it for a few minutes and realize that we have nothing in particular to do on Lyramion. So after taking a save, I re-enter the airship and use the yellow Navigation Stone next to the receptacle for "MORAG." Within moments, we land on Lyramion's yellow moon.

          

Bye, Lyramion!

        

Like the landing pad back in the Temple of the Brotherhood, the mooring here is surrounded by giant crystals. No sooner have we left this area than we disappear in a flash and reappear in a cell with an ailing lizard magician. He introduces himself as S'Riel. He explains that he teleported us from the hangar and he gives us a brief history of his people. They have long merged technology and magic to create marvels, but at the expense of their moon's environment. Somehow, they used up their water, and their world, always arid, became a desert. This is particularly bad for the lizard men, or "Moranians," because their bodies require water every day, or else they decompose into dust and bones. 

     

It's almost a palindrome.

     

They figured out inter-system travel and visited the Forest Moon, but its water is poisonous to the Moranians. They then visited Lyramion. Some of the Moranians wanted to work in harmony with the races of Lyramion and ask for asylum, but they were outvoted by the faction that wanted to steal Lyramion's water. They tricked the dwarves into building a machine that would siphon water from Lyramion to Morag. It will begin operation in "the very near future," and Lyramion will die.

   

The machine is hidden behind a crystal wall, "which can only be removed by certain sounds." To accomplish this, we will need to find seven crystal harp strings from seven palaces owned by members of "The Committee" on Morag. We'll then have to fit them to a harp and strum it at the crystal wall. (A quick check of my inventory confirms I still have the harp I bought ages ago.) He finishes by teaching us the Moranian language and casting a spell that disguises us as Moranians. He then teleports us to his own palace.

     

I know you're just the messenger, but this sounds annoying.

    

No sooner do we arrive than we're confronted by a mage named S'Arin and eight magic guardians in two parties of four each. He sees right through our disguise, leaves us to fight the guardians, and teleports away.

   

We fought magic guardians back in the Temple of the Brotherhood, mostly by blasting them with ice spells. It turns out that water-based magic doesn't work on the moon. Neither do many of the navigation spells like "Map View." Even the automap fails. So it takes us a while, and several resurrections (the guardians are very lucky with critical hits) to destroy the two parties.

       

Why? Someone just wanted to be a jerk.

   

Further into S'Riel's palace, we find a chest with his crystal harp string, a "map" that actually has a textual description of all the coordinates for the seven palaces and one town on Morag, and a key to "Palace S'Orel."

      

This is handy, but as we'll see, not handy enough.

      

The rest of the palace isn't very big, so we soon find ourselves outside on a desert landscape. I decide to head for the town before trying the palaces. Sand lizards attack as we move across the landscape. They attack individually, have a lot of hit points, and cast mass-damage tornadoes.

   

We reach the city of S'Angrila as night is falling, camp for the night, and enter in the morning. It turns out we were already at the city. It has the hangar with our airship plus the prison, where S'Riel is now just a skeleton. 

      

The desert is rather pretty.

       

Talking with NPCs in the town, it's clear that The Council is at odds with the populace. They hog water for themselves--the highest councilor even has a moat--and leave the common people to sicken and die. For being an alien city, it otherwise looks exactly like a city you'd find on Lyramion. It has an inn, a food shop, a repair shop, and a general store, where we spend some money on attribute potions and a pair of Lightning Boots. A bottle of water in the store costs 6,000 gold.

      

Things aren't well for the Moranians.

      

We then head out, following the coordinates to the Palace of S'Orel, fighting lizards along the way. We killed S'Orel a few sessions ago back on Lyramion, so we're not surprised to find it deserted--except for copious magical guardians. By the end of this palace, I'm thoroughly sick of fighting them, and I still have a lot to go. They typically attack in parties of four, and every battle is mostly the same: After one round of melee attacks, they're all lined up in front of my characters. I then hit them with five melee attacks and "Firestorm," my best "linear damage" spell. After four rounds, Qamara and Gryban are generally below half health, so I have to have Sabine stop attacking and start healing each round. After eight rounds, they're all dead. One battle in every two, I then have to leave the palace and camp so that Sabine can raise at least one of the characters who met the unlucky end of a critical hit.

       

My god, these guys are annoying.

        

We skirt some spike traps. The key we found in S'Riel's palace opens a door, behind which is a chest containing another chord, a bunch of spell scrolls, and the key to Palace S'Arin.

           

I lost patience with the game somewhere in the Palace of S'Arin, where there were hidden globes and number puzzles in addition to another interminable series of combats with magic guardians. Somewhere around hour 80, Ambermoon officially wore out its welcome. I had been hoping for just one big fight on Morag, not a linear, seven-piece "Dissasembulet of Yendor" quest right when the game should be coming to a swift end. Not to mention a pointless two-hour Easter egg.

     

I guess I actually met S'Arin, even. My mind was elsewhere at this point.

        

About this time, an Evil Thought occurred to me. It was one of those thoughts that, once you've allowed your mind to fully express it, you realize--sometimes to your despair--that you are now powerless against it. We've all had these thoughts: "Maybe I'll call in sick to work tomorrow" when you haven't taken a sick day lately; "Maybe I'll get a cheeseburger from Five Guys" when you're on a diet; "Maybe I'll sit on the couch all day playing video games" when you have a lot to do this weekend. Part of you thinks, "I should resist this!" but you know you simply don't have the willpower, and any attempts you make are just for show. Don't pretend you don't know what I mean. People who do have that kind of willpower aren't reading this blog.

   

My particular Evil Thought centered on something a commenter told me months ago. It involved making my way back to S'Angrila and the airship (after verifying that Morag is 200 x 200), flying it back to Lyramion, exiting the Temple of the Brotherhood of Tarbos, calling for the giant eagle, and flying it back to grandfather's house. I then rooted around my chests until I found Netsrak's Staff, which I had found behind the fireplace oh so many hours ago. 

      

"Netsrak" sounds almost dirty, but in a confusing way.

      

I took the staff to Spannenberg, found the dead-end alley with the message proclaiming "Karsten was here!" and waved the staff in front of the message. 

        

I think it's possible I would have found this even if a commenter hadn't spoiled it.

    

We were instantly transported to a top-down map called "Thalion Office." As I walked through the doors, a voice welcomed me to the "secret map of Ambermoon" but warned me that to avoid spoiling the game, I should play the game "without the help of this map." 

       

The brickwork is nice.

      

The map is of course a replica of Thalion's offices, including some in-jokes: A weak elevator, someone humming upstairs. You can meet:

    

• Karsten ("Netsrak") Koeper, the game's designer, a 26-year-old "Thalionic" mage.

• Erik Simon, the game's producer, a 500-year-old dwarf warrior. 

        

I guess Karsten was a bit of a workaholic.

    

• Christian Jungen, a programmer, a 29-year-old elf mystic.

• Jurie ("Mando") Horneman, a programmer, a 22-year-old elf thief. 

• Monika Krawinkel, the graphic artist, a 24-year-old human healer.

   

Any of them will join the party. They're all at their level caps of 50, and they all have maxed attributes and skills. I otherwise couldn't get them to respond to any keywords.

       

And they speak every language.

     

I wasn't here for them, though. I was here for the chests in one of the offices. Among them, they held a copy of every unique item in the game, including the elf's harp, the 7 harp strings, and a completed copy of the harp with the strings attached called the Crystal Harp. That's what I snagged. I noted that the bottle of water from Morag was one of the items in the chest. Is that actually used somewhere? I thought it was a joke. There were some other objects I don't remember, including a silver hand and a hill giant's head.

      

I could have cheated less by just taking the strings, I suppose.

     

I rode the eagle back to the Temple of the Brotherhood, entered, and stood before the crystal wall. I strummed the harp. The wall (in a text message) cracked and then shattered. A passage with a stairway lay beyond. I cast my buffing spells and continued.

          

Billiard parlor walls come a-tumbling down!

       

The passage beyond had battles with magic guardians and Morag dragons--tough customers, but I had access to all my spells again, plus some scrolls to burn. 

       

I got plenty more where that came from.

     

Finally, we came to the machine, which was . . . kind of stupid. For some reason, it had eyes and legs, and was capable of attacking the party on its own. It had more than 999 life points ("Monster Knowledge" just showed asterisks), high statistics, and a small critical chance. Its attack was 240, by far the highest in the game. But it was still just one enemy. It was resistant to magic but not immune. I kept up with healing, fed my spellcasters potions, and had Tar blast him with "Iceball" every round while Selena worked through a stack of 18 scrolls of the same name. 

        

This is going to take a while.

     

It took about a dozen rounds. When we killed it, we got 5,333 experience points. The party members hit their final levels: Qamara at 48 (two levels from the maximum) and the others between 36 and 42.

    

The death of the machine caused the chamber to collapse. We ran for a staircase behind it. 

        

Sabine is narrating the radio version of the drama.

           

Triumphant music blared forth. A long text scroll commenced over attractive graphic stills. I'll summarize it, but I'll show at least one shot from each graphic. In the ensuing narrative, we learned:

     

• The Temple of Tarbos exploded and collapsed, but the airship was thankfully undamaged. We escaped on the eagle.

     

Ah, the old load-bearing boss (someone needs to add Ambermoon).

      

• We brought elven and human leaders to the island to show them what happened.

• A lot of people wanted to go to war with the Moranians.

• But we convinced them that the Moranians already had enough trouble.

• A peace treaty was signed between Lyramion and Morag, the latter planet now represented by a new government since we (as far as anyone knows) slaughtered the members of the old Council.

       

Yep, they were all destroyed. In their palaces. None left alive.

     

• The ultimate treaty involved at least some water being sent to Morag by airship. There was no word on what we got in return. 

• A large airship was sent to Kire's Moon to retrieve the dwarves, but those residing in Dor Grestin decided to stay. The dwarves that returned repopulated Gemstone.

      

They could have come back with me. It would have been more poetic if they had destroyed the machine.

      

• Valdyn went to S'Angrila and worked with Moranian scientists to develop a way for him to get home. Eventually, they were able to replicate an orb that would send him back to his world. He returned home after a fond visit with his former companions.

       

Just "friendship?" We could have had a beauty-and-the-beast situation here.

       

• The party dissolved as members went off to "follow their personal desires and goals."

     

It was one of the better endgame narratives, satisfyingly cleaning up a number of loose ends. I would have liked to see individual stories for the other party members; Selena, for instance, needed to go home as badly as Valdyn did. What does Tar do with the rest of his life now that he's free of the demon? What will be Gryban's new purpose? 

     

Even though a sequel was planned, nothing ominous set it up during this epilogue. I remain confused about whether the technology we found on Kire's Moon and Morag belongs to the Moranians or some older race that predates all of us.

        

And this shot clearly shows that the Lyramonic Isles are only a small part of the globe. Why does the world wrap, then? Is the rest all water? If so, we can afford to be generous with the Moranians.

        

For the final entry, I'll do my best to collect information about what the third game (Ambercomet? Amberasteroid?) would have looked like, and I'll cover the things that I "evaded" in winning this way. I suppose I might be persuaded to reload and do it "right." Is anyone really bothered?

    

Final time: 82 hours

Game 496: Dungeons and Demons (1984)

 

There is, in fact, only one dungeon and one demon (a frost demon).

       

Dungeons and Demons

United States

Bytes and Bits (developer and publisher)

Released 1984 for Commodore 64

Date Started: 29 October 2023

Date Ended: 29 October 2023
Total Hours: 3

Difficulty: Very Easy-Easy (1.5/5)

Final Rating: 14

Ranking at Time of Posting: 81/508 (16%)

 

Dungeons and Demons is a very basic RPG from Phoenix-based developer Craig Thompson. It's manifestly based on Daniel Lawrence's DND, or some variant of it, but stripped down so that only the most basic elements remain. There are type-in games that offer more.

       

For character creation, the game randomly rolls numbers between 4 and 17 for maximum strength, wisdom, and dexterity. No re-rolling is allowed. The player chooses from dwarf, warrior, halfling, thief, elf, and wizard classes. I didn't try them all out. The big difference is that elves and wizards get spells to cast in combat and the other classes do not. Thieves get an option called "Attack from Behind." I suspect the other classes vary in their success and failure rates with the other combat options, as below.

       

My winning character.

        

After creation, the character is taken to a shop to purchase starting weapons and armor from a limited amount of gold.

       

The weapon list. It doesn't take long to save up for that great sword.

      

After the character is saved to disk, the game begins on Level 1 of a 12-leveled dungeon of 10 x 10 squares per level. Almost immediately, the player is attacked by a variety of enemies and finds random amounts of treasure. This DND game upholds the customs of its lineage in that physical position in the dungeon matters only for the stairways up and down. Everything else is random. Since exiting the dungeon is the only way to restore strength (i.e., hit points), early players can just stand beneath the hole leading upward and move back and forth. Every move into a new room carries a chance of a random treasure or encounter.

        

Exploring and fighting.

      

The game looks like it uses a 3-D interface, but it's a false one. The facing direction never changes. Using the IJKM cluster moves you in those directions instead of turning. One of the more annoying aspects of the game is that there's no way to tell without moving whether there's a door behind you (south). The layout is identical for every game.

    

The monster list has maybe 20-25 entries drawn from the standard Dungeons & Dragons bestiary: orcs, kobolds, bugbears, basilisks, carrion crawlers, gargoyles, werebears, medusas, green dragons, and so forth. I thought "thouls" were original to the game, but it turns out they come from D&D, too. One cute option on the main menu is the ability to view each foe and their statistics.

       

Studying the monster list.

           

Enemies are really just names and attack and defense statistics. None of the enemies that ought to have special attacks (e.g., ghouls, basilisks, green dragons) ever use them. They're just sacks of hit points to be depleted. The experience rewards you get for each kill are extremely variable and don't seem to have anything to do with the difficulty or length of the battle.

    

The result of a successful "communicate."

      

In combat, you have a variety of options depending on the class:

    

• Evade (flee)
• Attack
• Communicate
• Attack from behind (thieves)
• Cast a spell (elves and wizards)

   

The cutest little green dragon.

     

Spells are:

   

• "Teleport": Automatic escape from combat.
• "Magic Ladder": Automatic escape up to the previous level.
• "Charm Monster": Equivalent to a kill if it works.
• "Sleep": Equivalent to a kill if it works.
• "Magic Web": Equivalent to a kill if it works.
• "Magic Missile": If it doesn't always kill in one shot, I never experienced it.
• "Disintegrate": Instant kill
• "Fire Ball": Instant kill
• "Lightning Bolt": Instant Kill

            

Preparing to cast a spell against an enemy who's just asking for it.

      

Spells take their spell number minus one directly from strength (e.g., "Magic Web" costs 4 points; "Teleport" is free). Because of this, and since they have the same outcomes, I'm not sure why you'd cast "Lightning Bolt" instead of "Charm Monster" unless the latter has a lower success rate. I didn't play long enough as a wizard to get a feel for this.

   

The relative difficulty of attack actions and spells is moot because the statistics are overwhelmingly favorable to the player. Level 1 characters can get killed, sure, but not with the same malevolence as the typical DND derivative. You reach Level 2 at 2,000 experience points, Level 3 at 5,000, and so forth. Every level up comes with increases directly to the attributes. By the time you have a dexterity of 16 or higher, enemies hardly ever hit you in combat. By the time you have a dexterity of 20 or more, they simply never hit you. Late in the game, I actively tried to get my character killed so I could take a "death" screenshot, and not only could I not do it, I couldn't even get him to lose a single hit point. These facts coupled with the ability to reload a lost character makes the game incredibly easy.

      

The first dungeon level. The game advertises "1200 rooms," so you'd think those four squares in the southeast would have to be used, but I couldn't find any way in there.

       

The economy also ceases to be of any use about 10% into the game, when you have enough gold for the best weapon and armor that your class will allow (you can re-visit the shop when you exit the dungeon to heal and save). Most games in the DND line let you convert gold to experience, but this one does not.

    

The goal of the game is to find a Golden Chalice on the 12th and final level of the dungeon. I'm not sure if the chalice position changes for each game. I was already immortal before I even hit Level 2, so most of the game for me was just working my way through the levels and trying to find the stairs downward. It took me about 2 hours. 

    

Another win!

    

Bytes and Bits seems to have been owned by Craig Thompson and/or his brother Carl Thompson. They had a small selection of other titles, including an adventure game called Adventure Island, a platformer called Crazy Conveyors, and a dice game called Goombahtz. They must not have done all that well, as I can't find any mention of the company after 1984.

       

An ad in the June 1984 Compute!

          

I give Dungeons and Demons 14 on the GIMLET, a string of 0s, 1s and 2s. By 1984, the DND line had been surpassed by better games, and this is not even one of the better DND games. A $30 price tag was a bit steep for a game of such limited content, particularly for such a well-serviced platform.