Star Trail: Siege Perilous

Won?

      

Well, I have to hand it to you: All of you knew what was coming, and you managed to keep the secret. All I can say is that there's a right way and a wrong way to do this kind of thing, and I'm not sure the game did it the right way.

     

When we last checked in with Star Trail, the party had found the Salamander Stone and was on its way to Lowangen to deliver it to either of the two parties who approached us at the beginning of the game and asked that we find it. One, Elusrion Starlight, wanted the artifact to unite the dwarves and elves against the orcs. The other, Sudran Alatzer, wanted it for . . . profit, I guess. Elusiron wanted us to deliver it to a dwarf named Ingramosch, Alatzer to a woman named Vindaria Leechbroon. Either way, the recipient was supposed to be in Lowangen.

       

Ambushed on the way.

       

The problem: Lowangen was surrounded by a besieging party of orcs. Approaching the siege camp produced a multi-stage encounter.

 

1. A description of the orc army. Here we learn that orcs are called "blackpelts" by the civilized races of Arkania. The options are to turn around or "walk on." Turning around sends us back along the last road segment we traveled.

 

2. The orcs don't seem to care about our presence. But suddenly, four orcs start walking towards us. Options are to keep walking, start running, or turn around. Turning around sends us back along the last road segment we traveled. Either of the other two options, to the best of my recollection, accomplishes the same thing.

       

Why are you besieging the city if you don't want to hurt anybody?

      

3. The four orcs come up to us and demand our "baggage and weapons." We have options to hand them over or say that we'll turn back. But at this point, it's too late. Even if we turn back, they take all our stuff. There's an option to fight, but it leads immediately to unavoidable death for every character.

     

While the orcs are stripping us of our stuff, a shaman approaches, says that our magic stuff is dangerous, and the orcs put them back. Thus, we arrive in Lowangen, with everything gone—weapons, armor, canteens, tools, sleeping bags, rations, lockpicks—missing. We keep our gold, base clothing, any magic items (including our Girdles of Might and Obsidian Daggers), and the Salamander Stone.

       

This is how the game explains the orcs taking our silverware but not our magic swords.

       

I tried everything to get around them. When I left off last time, the party was going up the west bank, but the trail pattern made us cross the river again before we reached the city. I tried coming from the south. I tried swinging east, then north, and coming from the north. I tried going far north past the city, to the menu city of New Lowangen (it had a temple and an inn; nothing special), across the river, and then south on the other side. That got the party mired in a swamp for about half an hour, and I ultimately reloaded.

        

I think we're here too soon.

       

A few things happened during my attempt to get around the orc siege. First, we fought a few random battles with orc patrols. These were enough to level everyone up to Level 4. Oddly, the characters didn't always gain levels immediately after a battle. Sometimes, they only leveled after a night's rest. Do I get experience for camping? I'll have to check next time.

   

Second, we ran into a friendly NPC named Antharon who was also traveling to Lowangen. We allowed him into the party, although his "rogue" class should have dissuaded us. I was convinced to keep him because he was Level 12 and thus a lot stronger than the characters.

       

Never trust a guy who doesn't shave.

     

Third, we kept getting messages saying, "the pursuers are getting closer." I don't believe there was any kind of encounter that explained who "the pursuers" were. When they finally caught up to us, we found ourselves in battle with a large party consisting of a dwarf, a couple of warriors, a druid, two hunters, and two magicians. It was a tough battle. We won through the usual tactics, including frequent "Lightning" and ganging up on enemies one by one. They mysteriously had no loot at the end of battle.

     

Are these guys just a plot device to force us to go to the right place?

        

Eventually, I had to admit there was no alternative without cheating. I did think of a way to cheat: I could create six new party members at the temple in North Lowangen and give them all the stuff. I didn't do it, first because I don't like to cheat unless it's necessary, second because it seemed like a pain, and third because I didn't know what way we'd be going when we left Lowangen.

   

I walked through the orc camp and handed over my stuff. The party arrived in Lowangen, and then got hit with the second "screw you" of the session: Antharon's brother Gavron came to meet him. The two brothers left the party after giving us all hugs—and stripping us of the Salamander Stone. I tried reloading and kicking Antharon out of the party before we reached the city, but it doesn't accomplish anything. Gavron still meets us and asks about his brother, then steals the stone and disappears into the crowd before we notice.

     

"And the Salamander Stone with him," the game concludes.

        

Fun.

        

Anyway, it's nothing we can change, so we start exploring the large city. We find, in rough order, the following. I should warn you ahead of time that this is a very long bulleted list. This is perhaps the longest bulleted list I have ever created. I didn't realize how big the city was until I was well into it.

    

• A lot of people who don't want us in their houses.

       

That seems unfair. We just got here.

       

• Taverns called Last Hour, Hammer and Anvil, and At the Canal. Ominously, they don't have any food available, just watered-down wine. In talking with the bartenders, I note that GAVRON is a keyword, but they don't know anything. One says that Ingramosch is trying to mobilize people against the orcs. We earn a couple of gold pieces with our "Acrobatics" skills.

• A house occupied by Raisha Rotenegger, who slams the door in our face.

• A house occupied by a guy named Pagon Droler. No matter what I ask him about, he says I'm babbling.

• Vindaria Leechbronn's house. She was the "evil" option for turning over the Salamander Stone. She slams the door in our faces. We force our way in and find ourselves in battle with a bunch of warriors and elves. It's a tough fight, as some of my characters are unarmed and all of them are unarmored. We loot a bunch of equipment and 50 gold pieces. Searching the building afterwards, we find a lot more equipment (including 40 rations, ropes, blankets, and water skins) and the Salamander Stone! That was a surprise. But as we leave, I realize that Toliman was killed, so I have to reload and do everything again.

      

Cramped quarters for this battle.

    

• Healers named Kysira and Pareinor Vormtann. 

• A smith named Roglima the Great. One of the nice things about having no equipment is you have nothing to repair.

• An inn called Trenchbog, run by a guy named Vitus Gullits. He says I can get the "best information" at the Orc Death in the Svelltwash neighborhood. He has no food and no lodging space available.

• Two merchants named Vistella Ebenborn and Ugo Plotz. They sell general goods. I don't buy anything right now, but I make a note of the places so we can stock up again before we leave town. They have no rations available.

• A couple of brothels. Even if we wanted to stay, the rate is insane. It would cost 96 gold ducats. We only have 64.

     

This is what people mean by hyperinflation during war time.

      

• A house occupied by a woman named Black Jandora. We ask for lodgings; she refuses.

• The Stronghold of the Grey Wands. I have no idea what they are. Again, we ask for lodging; again, we're refused. Same thing happens later at a place called Hall of Power, an academy run by Master Yendrion, and the Academy of Deformations.

• A healer named Jhaell Startrail. This game seems to enjoy doubling up its names. ("Salamander Stone" is also the name of an inn in town.) Everyone I ask about STAR TRAIL thinks I'm talking about her. She suggests we ask the dwarves in the Eydal neighborhood about Ingramosch.

      

Face-palm.

        

• An inn called The White House. When asked about INGRAMOSCH, she says that "Ailian Sevensprings set him up here a few weeks ago." Sevensprings supposedly lives in the area. She has a dormitory available, so we spend the night.

• Herb shops run by Farmion of the Kvill and Dimiona Adingor.

• A guy drops a bag in front of us. We pick it up and return it to him. Mysteriously, he denies being the owner before running away. 

• Parts of the city are connected by bridges. One has a guard who insists on 1 silver piece every time we cross. Another has a donation bowl. The amounts are trivial, but their existence keeps us from fast traveling across town. We have to stop at the bridges every time.

     

This town is full of thieves. Are we supposed to believe that they leave the donation bowl alone?

     

• A couple of houses where the game specifically says, "No one hears your knocking." That makes me think there's something important about them. 

• A note on a wall encouraging us to eat more cheese toast. 

      

You don't have to convince me.

        

• The town's fortress, to which we are barred entry by guardsmen.

• The north gate. If we try to leave, we have to fight like 20 orcs. At least it lets us try. On the way in, the game just assumed that any battle resulted in instant death. 

       

I should have listened to that gate guard.

        

• We're accosted by a party of beggars and thieves who demand our food. We refuse, but there are like 20 of them, and they kill us without much trouble. We reload, but there doesn't seem to be any way to avoid the battle. After multiple tries, we manage to kill them, but with many party members near-unconsciousness. In trying to recover from this battle, I discover that the game will let us just camp in the street.

      

In most RPGs, the choice would be obvious.

       

• The house of a man named Dragan Escht. He says he'll help me find Gavron if I can get "the Vinsalter" to visit his house to help him translate something. He lives in the Colorful Flight neighborhood. Since there's nothing in the game to tell us what neighborhood we're in, I don't know why the NPCs keep telling us the names of neighborhoods. "The southwest part of town" would have been so much more useful. I don't even know if it's worth pursuing Gavron at this point. I really just want to find Ingramosch.

• A female beggar asks for some money. We say yes, and she thanks us. The game doesn't offer an option for how much to give, or even tell us how much we gave. I think it was about 2 gold pieces. 

     

She is more to be pitied than censured.

     

• An old woman approaches and offers to sell a magic amulet for 10 ducats. I think we had the same encounter at the beginning of the game, and commenters said I should have bought it. I buy it, and it does increase the character's magic resistance by 5 points.

       

I think this exact scenario was in my corporate security training.

      

• An inn called Evdal House run by Elgor Onder has dormitory beds available but no food.  

• A shop called Thorescha has rations available, for 5 gold pieces each. Lockpicks are 24 gold pieces. That's price-gouging.

• Another battle with a party of beggars. Only six this time, so we do better. Still, this seems like it's going to be a recurring thing until we get out of here.

      

Doing our part to relieve the refugee crisis.

     

• At the temple of Ingramosch, Xobert Zornbrecht tells us that he thinks Ingramosch left town for the Blood Peaks "to take care of the orcs." 

• The Smithy of Ingerimm. The smith, Angroscha, doesn't want to let us in. She suggests we see Bromhead or Roglima for a weapon, but I know from experience that neither of them has any. They just repair. 

• At one point, I accidentally walk into the canal and discover that it's not a barrier. I guess those points I put into "Swim" were well-spent.

• At the Magistracy (town hall), we learn that not only is the town short on weapons for its defense, it's actually illegal to own more than one weapon. We offer our excess weapons to a councilwoman, and someone important (the game isn't clear on who he is) makes us honorary citizens of the city, which comes with a document and everything. The town took everything we didn't have in hand, including some magic Obsidian Daggers.

     

Thanks, random guy.

      

• More inns (The Inn, Svelltje Palace, The Little Prince, Bit and Ducat), taverns (Hammer and Anvil, Water and Wine, Klonballa's, Dark Eye, Orc Death, Salamander Stone, Little Fox Den), and temples (Tsa, Boron, Travia, Rahia, Hesinde) where they have no food, no lodging, and no information. 

• We find the house of The Vinsalter, but he doesn't want anything to do with Dragan. We plead and offer to pay him to no avail. One of the party members suggests we return tomorrow.

      

I actually have no idea. Could you tell me what a "Vinsalter" is? It sounds like a jackass who runs around ruining people's wines.

      

• The Exhibition of Art in Craftsmanship. It's closed. 

• We find Ailian Sevensprings's house. He gives us the unwelcome news that Ingramosch left town ages ago, headed for the Blood Peaks, through some kind of secret exit. He says Dragan knows where it is. I guess all roads lead to Dragan. He suggests that if Ingramosch has left the Blood Peaks already, it will probably be for the city of Tjolmar.

         

I really appreciated the ability to make map annotations during this session.

     

Finally, at this point, we've explored every building in the city—I think. Islands and clusters of buildings sometimes make it hard to explore systematically. We camp for the night and try the Vinsalter again. This time, in response to our "sorry story," he agrees to go see Dragan. He joins the party as an NPC and we take him across town, praying we don't get attacked by another beggar pack, as our hit points are almost gone.

        

Dragan is happy when we return. On the subject of TRAVEL, he suggests we talk with Black Jandora, who knows a secret exit. As for GAVRON, he wants us to do another favor before he'll tell us: Retrieve his brooch ("an heirloom that the town more or less stole from me") from the Exhibition building. 

     

Maybe I'll just call her "Jandora."

       

Jandora wants 300 gold pieces to get us out of town, or six times more than we have. We remind her of favors she owes to Dragan, and she lowers it to 100—still too much, but I have stuff to sell. I visit Vistella Ebenborn's shop and manage to get to 185 gold pieces with the extra Girdle of Might and the jewelry I looted from Vindaria Leechbronn's house. (I'm curious what would happen if I just spent it all on brothels. Would I be in a "walking dead" situation?) While I'm there, I load up on basic sundries again (no sleeping bags, alas), which cost 28 gold pieces.

       

This still annoys me.

      

We burglarize the Exhibition Hall in the middle of the night and steal the brooch. There were several opportunities to turn back during the escapade, and I don't know whether our ultimate success had anything to do with our statistics. I wish more games were transparent about when you make a skill check.

   

Back at Dragan's, he tells me that if I want to catch Gavron, I should ask around the Orc. Again, I don't know whether I want or need to catch Gavron—perhaps I should just head for Jandora and the secret exit. I have to wait nearly a full day for the Orc Death to open. I spend that time re-checking stores, but I can't find anyone who sells waterskins or sleeping bags, even at inflated prices. (On the subject of water skins, I note that my party members' thirst meters haven't budged while in the city, and the few water skins I have remain full. I think the game assumes we're drinking from the many wells in the city.)  I re-check the price of healing and deem it too expensive.

      

One-fifth of our money to heal one character.

      

When I finally get into Orc Death, no one can tell me anything about Gavron other than he occasionally comes into the place. But as I leave, I see Gavron poke his head in, then flee. The game gives me an opportunity to follow him, but of course since you can't see figures in the environment in this game, it's all done by menu.

  

When I catch up to him, I'm surprised that one of the dialogue options I have is, "Where is the Salamander Stone?" Didn't I find it? Is it fake? We interrogate him, and he tells us that he "delivered the [stone] to Vindaria." Where we already found it. So I guess this whole plot thread was in case we hadn't stumbled on Vindaria's house on our own. 

         

I feel like there should be more options here.

      

We return to Jandora and pay her the 100 ducats. She says to go to the castle of the knights' order at the north end of town, ask for Master Eolan, and tell him we want to "sweep the yard." I assume this is the place called the Castle of the Order of the Grey Staves on the map and the Stronghold of the Grey Wands when we knock on the door.

   

Master Eolan gives us unfortunate news: He'll only let us go if we find a missing member of his order first. The man is named Agdan Dragenfeld, and he got lost crossing the swamps to the west. Taking this mission will require us to leave two party members behind in the city. (I try refusing, but we end up in a cell and there's an instant "game over.") I leave Toliman and Lyra behind, and soon the other four members are outside the city.

       

I wonder if I should take the Salamander Stone or leave it with one of them.

          

I'm going to end here, but it occurs to me that I could reload from before visiting Master Eolan, drop off two party members at one of the temples, create two new party members, leave them with Master Eolan, and reunite with the original members at the temple in New Lowangen. I probably won't do this for role-playing reasons, but is there any reason this won't work? Or what if I just created two new members and headed directly for the Blood Peaks (assuming that's where I need to go next)?

          

Star Trail is hardly the first game to strip equipment or party members at scripted plot moments. I try to roll with the punches and not let it annoy me, particularly when it feels more or less organic. I generally hate these moments at the time, but when they're all over, I sometimes realize that I enjoyed the extra challenge. One of the later chapters of Fate: Gates of Dawn offered a notable example. Still, it annoys me somewhat that this game encourages the player to hyper-prepare with equipment and then steals it all.

      

I thought the developers did a reasonably good job depicting a city under siege, with a subsequent breakdown of order and lack of basic services. There are RPGs in which the party would literally solve all of this: find food, find water, restore order, and defeat the orcs all by themselves. I enjoy those types of heroics, but there's also something fun about the opposite sort of game, where six people can only accomplish what six people could reasonably accomplish. Will Star Trail hold true to this experience, or will we be confronting armies by its end? I guess time will tell.

      

Time so far: 29 hours

Game 569: The Cursed Chambers (1981)

 

I'm glad we eventually settled upon "role-playing game."

          

The Cursed Chambers

United Kingdom

Independently developed and published; later re-published by Kuma

Released 1981 for Sharp MZ-80; re-released in 1983 for Sharp MZ-80, 1984 for Sharp MZ-700 and Tatung Einstein 

Date Started: 2 March 2026

Date Ended: 4 March 2026

Total Hours: 5 

Difficulty: User-definable, but easy-moderate (2.5/5) in general.
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) 

       

A few years ago, I told the story of how I and some classmates developed War Plus, a card game based on War. My third-grade teacher banned War because it offers no strategy or decision-making, so it was in no way educational. My friend Hiram and I went home and worked out some new rules that would overcome the teacher's objections. It not only worked, but it spawned a brief craze in which practically every kid in the class came up with his own version.

   

I often think about War Plus when I encounter a game that has made an effort to adorn a much simpler base game. In the case of The Cursed Chambers, that base game is The Wizard's Castle (1980), which itself goes back to Star Trek (1971) by way of Hobbit (1975). Where Star Trek and Hobbit were mainframe games, The Wizard's Castle was widely disseminated as type-in code and thus spawned plenty of "pluses," including The Yendor's Castle (1986), Leygref's Castle (1986), Mission: Mainframe (1987) and Bones (1991). These games all share:

 

• A quest to recover a MacGuffin that has been randomly placed in the dungeon, usually an orb of some kind (the original is the Orb of Zot).   

• A game map consisting of a multi-leveled grid of rooms.

• Random encounters in each of the rooms, including monsters. 

• A small inventory to assist with those encounters.

• A short game time and limited or no saving. The game is meant to be highly random and replayable.

• Small inventories, including usable items. Basic RPG attributes that go up and down frequently.

    

The Cursed Chambers is another such Wizard's Castle Plus, this one earning its "plus" more than most of the others, with the exception of the roguelike-influenced Mission: Mainframe. Compared to most variants of this line, Chambers has a bigger inventory of useful items, more attributes, more complex combat, and a greater variety of special encounters. It is also the only version, and one of the few RPGs, released for two lesser-known platforms available in Europe in the early 1980s: The Sharp MZ series and the Tatung Einstein.

      

An ad for the game in the January 1982 Personal Computer World.

          

The goal in Chambers is to find the Almighty Sphere, hidden somewhere in a one-level dungeon. The dungeon is always 10 squares wide, wrapping, but the y-axis is player-definable, between 15 and 200 rows. Advertisements for the game say that it supports up to 4,000 rooms, but the Tatung Einstein version, at least, won't go that high.

  

In addition to the size of the dungeon, the player specifies a message speed and an overall difficulty of the game from 1 (easy) to 9 (hard). Based on my limited experience, I think the difficulty only affects the ratio of monster squares to other squares. It doesn't seem to affect the damage that monsters do or take, or if it does, the difference between even 1 and 9 is small. I felt that paradoxically I found more gold on higher difficulties, but I'd have to play longer to be sure.

      

Outfitting the character.

          

The player also has the choice of meticulously outfitting his character from a pool of 5000 gold pieces or starting quickly with an "ordinary" character. The ordinary character has 40 in each attribute (strength, IQ, dexterity, food, water, stamina), three flames, five arrows, a mace, a suit of chainmail, a lamp, and 500 gold pieces left over. A player who insists on outfitting his own character does not have enough gold to buy all these things; he's about 1,300 gold pieces short.

       

All the attributes are important. If any of them reaches 0, the character dies. Dexterity affects the likelihood of hitting in combat; strength affects the damage done; IQ affects the power of spells and magic items. Developing these attributes both initially and throughout the game is vital.

        

A mid-game character status.

         

The game always starts at coordinates (3,1) in the dungeon, and the player has to return here to exit with the Almighty Sphere. Each round, the player can choose to rest and restore some attributes (with a chance of some misfortune that causes attribute and gold loss), drinking an elixir, checking his statistics, and moving on. Unlike many games in this lineage, Chambers offers no way to call up a map of the dungeon. On the other hand, the game does give your coordinates every time you move, and there are no teleporters to fling you from one place to another as there were in Castle.

   

(The Wizard's Castle has frequent environmental messages that appear as the player moves from room to room: "You stepped on a frog"; "You smell monster frying"; "You hear a scream"; "You see a bat." Chambers has these, too, but oddly they only come up when you use the U)pdate command to check your inventory and statistics.)

            

Starting statistics for an ordinary adventurer. I wouldn't have known I slipped on a frog if I hadn't checked.

       

The dungeon wraps east/west but not north/south, so the player that insists on playing with a 200-row dungeon may face a long trek from the starting square to the Almighty Sphere. Each room that he enters may have one of several encounters:

   

• A monster. More on them in a minute.

• A random amount of gold.

• A gemstone worth a lot of gold. You can sell them to traders, and that gold is key to character development.

• A magical treasure: luckstone, ring, wand, or cross. The character can only carry one of these (each) at a time.

• Food, which might be poisoned.

     

Lesson learned: When exploring a dungeon full of monsters, bring your food with you.

     

• A random number of spells between 1 and 3.

• A random number of flares between 1 and 3.

• An elixir. Quaffing it immediately raises a chosen attribute to 100. 

• A treasure chest. There's about a 50/50 chance whether it has a positive result (potions that raise attributes, gold, a wizard who gratefully gives you gold for freeing him) or a negative one (a trap, a vampire whose surprise attack incurs a loss of gold and attributes). Two chests in every dungeon have an elf sword and elf plate armor, the best items in the game.

      

This sequence of events borders on slapstick.

       

• An almighty wizard. He tells you how many enemies you've killed and how many moves you've made. If you have more than 15,000 gold, he offers to sell you the location of the Almighty Sphere for that much. This is a poor investment for a small dungeon but perhaps a necessary one for a large dungeon.

• A trader. He sells the same stuff that you can buy at the outset of the game, but for a lot more money. 

• A stream that you have to negotiate. Failing a dexterity check may cause you to lose attributes.

• A wall that forces the character to move one square to the south if he does not have the sphere, to the north if he does.

• A pit that the character falls into. An orc shows up with a ladder, which he offers for all the character's equipment. Fortunately, there are few of these—maybe only one per dungeon. 

         

A partial map of one instance of the game. These encounters are randomized with each new game.

         

The lamp, which has 100 uses, can tell you what you'll find in each cardinal direction. Once you deal with whatever is in a particular square, it remains empty for the rest of the game. There are no wandering enemies.

     

Getting a hint for an adjacent room.

        

As for monsters, I discovered 14 types: devils, dragons, fiends, goblins, hobgoblins, horned devils, kobolds, medusas, minotaurs, orcs, rats, salamanders, serpents, and trolls. El Explorador de RPG, in his coverage of the game, says there are 20. The player has a variety of options for dealing with them, including the use of magic items (wand, luckstone, ring, and cross), casting a spell, shooting with regular or magic arrows, bribing, attacking with a weapon, fleeing, and using a "flame" to assess the monster's strengths and weaknesses when it comes to the right body part to attack.

        

This cracked me up.

        

For physical attacks, the player specifies the enemy's head, body, or arms. Each enemy has one sturdy part and one weak part. Success in all actions depends on attributes—IQ for magic items and spells, dexterity and strength for melee attacks. Some enemies cannot be hit or damaged at all without sufficient statistics. After the character makes an attack each round, the enemy gets to counter-attack, and I never once saw the enemy miss. The attribute damaged depends on what body part the enemy hits—IQ for the head, strength for the body, and dexterity for the arms and legs. Damage is reduced by good armor. Weapons can break during battle, forcing the player to flee and find a trader to purchase a new one.

         

Fighting a/an fiend. 

       

Werewolves and vampires die immediately when presented with a cross. If other enemies were particularly weak to certain items or attacks, I didn't play long enough to figure it out. Certain enemies are immune to certain items or attacks, including horned devils, who are immune to all items.

          

That's quite a hoard.

         

If you die, you get a second chance: The "almighty power of Myriah" causes you to be resurrected with 50 of each attribute, a dagger, and leather armor.  

   

Getting into battle too early in the game is a recipe for disaster. It saps attributes, takes forever, and results in gold rewards too paltry to make up for what you lost. I believe the key to victory is using the lamp to avoid early-game combats, stock up on items and treasures, and only start fighting when you've bought enough potions from a trader to raise your attributes to near-100, and ideally when you've found the elf sword and elf armor. Even then, games on easier difficulties offer plenty of gold in non-combat squares that you could avoid all enemies, get your attributes boosted to 100, and only fight the necessary enemies at the end of the game.

      

The Almighty Sphere, wherever the game places it, is surrounded in all four cardinal directions with horned devil, some of the strongest monsters in the game. They only respond to magic arrows and physical attacks, and you can't hope to hurt them without dexterity and strength over 50. If you defeat one, you can move past him and grab the sphere.

        

"The rain is Tess, the fire's Joe . . ."

     

Once you make it back to (3,1), there's a final battle with the Devil of Doomriyah (who must have some etymological connection to the goddess Myriah; the game does not explore this). Most of the options disappear for this battle; the player can only use a weapon. He's about as difficult as the horned devils. 

   

I won the game on difficulty Level 3 with a small dungeon of 20 rows. It would be quite a feat to win at Level 9 with 200 rows, particularly since the game doesn't allow you to save. I wouldn't start that game during a Maine winter. 

         

My final statistics. A dead vampire crashes my parade.

            

I feel about The Cursed Chambers pretty much the way I feel about The Wizard's Castle: It pleasantly occupies a couple of hours and offers a vague fantasy theme, but while it might technically meet my definitions of an RPG, it doesn't offer most of what I'm looking for in the genre. It gets an 18 on the GIMLET, about the same as I've given every Wizard's Castle variant; the "pluses" that they offer don't translate to a lot on a 10-point category scale. 

    

Cursed Chambers' author was John Wolstencroft, who had a near-monopoly of fantasy-themed output for these minor platforms, most elaborations of public domain or type-in games for other computers. He wrote two Crystal Cave Adventure-like text adventures for the same machines; Quest or Fantasy Quest (1981) and Castle Quest (1983). Jason Dyer covered the former on his blog over five years ago. He also wrote Zrim (1981) essentially a copy of The Devil's Dungeon (1978). I was planning to play it as a companion to this entry, but I couldn't get it to run. El Explorador de RPG's coverage shows that, like its source, it doesn't quite meet my definitions of an RPG, so I guess I'll let it go.

 

Star Trail: Plunder and Lightning

 

The party has displeased the gods.

       

I've started a number of newer RPGs or quasi-RPGs over the last couple of years, all for the Xbox (I don't spend time playing PC RPGs that aren't for this blog), including both Pillars of Eternity games, Avowed, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and The Outer Worlds. The part I enjoy least are the first few hours, when you're still learning the game's conventions. I'm not talking about its controls, which are usually easy to figure out, but rather more subtle aspects of gameplay. 

 

One of these days, I'll try to organize a comprehensive list, but here are some of the things on my mind as the game begins:

 

• Do health and mana restore automatically, or do you need resources to restore them? How precious are those resources?

• How do you distinguish important NPCs from generic background characters?

• Is this the sort of game where every item has potential value, or are there too many items in the world to possibly grab them all? Is it the sort of game where a thorough player can find every bit of treasure, or would that be insane?

• Is this the sort of game where when you see a valuable item, you take it, or does it have an ownership/theft system? If the latter, what are the consequences for violating it?

       

Just a break in the rhetoric to note that by the end of this session, I did have the Salamander Stone.

       

• What kind of karma meter does the game have? What are its consequences?

• Does the game have fixed classes, or does the player build a character through skill selection? Which skills are most valuable? By the end of the game, will the player have amassed almost every skill, or only a small percent? Does the game offer a way to dump selected skills and start over? 

• Do dialogue options have plot consequences or are they just a means of gathering information?

• Will NPCs keep saying the same thing every time I talk to them, or do I only get one shot at each conversation? 

• How much freedom does the player have to explore the world, outside the current questline? 

• How much control does the player have over the inventories and actions of NPC followers?

       

That is a very small sample of questions whose answers only slowly become apparent, sometimes not until well into the game. Many of the most amusing moments in my personal RPG history have occurred when I thought I was playing one type of game and it turned out I was playing another. Imagine bringing the morality of Ultima IV when it comes to opening a town's treasure chests to, say, Phantasy Star. Imagine coming off of Bethesda's Dishonored, where loot is so limited that you actually get a score after each mission with the percentage that you managed to find, and then trying to scoop up every item that you see in Skyrim. Imagine trying to just tromp off in your own direction during the opening chapters of Kingdom Come.

      

Because your goddamned manual tells me to.

         

In most of the period that his blog has covered, the need to answer these questions has been less acute. Very few games of this era have offered complex enough systems for role-playing, economies, NPCs, crime-and-punishment, and other such themes. But some of them are getting close, and Star Trail is definitely one of them. In recent entries, continuing into this one, we've learned that this is the sort of game where you sometimes need to talk to NPCs multiple times about the same subject. We've also learned that it's the sort of game where having a large inventory of utility items matters, and in which you don't necessarily want to loot everything that you see.

   

You can say that the manual warned me about this or that, or that NPCs warned me about this or that, but that's disingenuous. Manuals are full of what we call dicta in the legal profession. They often give weight to mechanics that barely exist in the game itself or fail to mention important elements. The same manual that obliquely warns the player to click multiple times on the same keyword also emphasizes things that play little role in the game. NPCs are no better. Some of their words may seem prophetic in hindsight, but there is no RPG player that, lacking such hindsight or a hint, operationalizes everything he's told by an NPC.

      

Have I shown the full-party death screen before? If not, here it is.

       

So, yes, I guess I shouldn't have taken so much loot from the dungeon. In my defense a) it feels abandoned; b) I've been trained by 30 years of RPGs that when you find a chest in a dungeon, you open it; c) some amount of looting in the dungeon is 100% required to finish it. Also in my defense—I went back to check the screenshots on this—what Inradon Xermosch specifically says is that no one should "be tempted to desecrate the halls of the Supreme and Most Ancient of Gods by stealing from Ingra's legendary hoards of gold." He doesn't say not to steal anything, just gold. I didn't take the gold.

      

Okay, I did, but just to see what would happen. I reloaded.

      

As this session began, we were about halfway through the Dwarven Pit. We arrived on maybe the fourth or fifth level. In the first room, we found a structure surrounding a well or pool. The structure had four alcoves with gargoyles in them, and as we approached, the gargoyles came to life.

   

It took me four tries to win this battle with no party deaths. The first time, we were at half-strength, and death was inevitable. (I appreciate that the game lets you reload from within the middle of combat.) Even at full-strength, they were obnoxiously hard. When I finally won, the party was in such bad shape that I needed to rest for about 48 hours. Other than experience, I don't think the battle earned us anything. 

    

Almost immediately thereafter, I ran into the level's second tough battle, against six undead dwarves wearing tattered leather clothes (this leather becomes important). After a couple of losses, I managed to win mostly by casting "Lightning" over and over. The spell, which blinds its target and makes him unable to attack or parry, seems to work against everybody. All three of my spellcasters can cast it. If there's a more useful spell in the game, I haven't mastered it yet.

       

My go-to strategy works again.

          

I still feel like I need some more experience with the battle system before I offer a detailed analysis. For now, I'll say:

   

• I generally like the number of tactics available, and the ability to do ranged things on the diagonal is a major improvement from Blade of Destiny.

• The axonometric view still makes it hard to see what's happening behind the figures, and it can make it hard to position characters in the right square. I wish there were functions to rotate and zoom, though I realize that's asking a lot from a 1994 game.

     

Try to parse anything going on in that cluster.

        

• I don't understand how the game determines the starting positions of characters and enemies. I wish there were more control over it.

• I wish there were a combined move/attack function. Clicking on an enemy ought to simply move the character next to him and attack with the primary weapon.

            

Auto-combat sometimes produces mysteriously horrific results, even with easy enemies.

       

I've experimented with auto-combat a few times. It's good when the party's success is 100% assured. But it doesn't make the best use of spells, in particular the aforementioned "Lightning." When victory is assured, I sometimes switch to the first type of computer control, where you actually see the characters and enemies acting on the battlefield. This can be turned off in an emergency. The few times I've tried the summary auto-combat, it's produced weird results with no explanation, such as my strongest party members mysteriously dead while my weaker ones are still alive, or one out of three spellcasters coming out with an empty mana bar while the other two never cast anything.

    

The battle with the undead dwarves gave us a Stone Medallion that turned out to be important. I think it was this level that had a giant wheel that we turned and produced "a gurgling sound" in the distance. I was never sure what this accomplished.

      

I assume this did something.

       

The next level had some rivulets of water. When I stumbled into one, the game said that the characters washed off the soot that they had acquired back on Level 1, restoring their charisma.

   

The next stairway went up rather than down, and we found ourselves in a new area of the earlier level. It had a walkway surrounding a deep pit, with stairways down. On the floor of the pit was a stone slab. The game gave me the option to try to lift it and then had the characters struggle in vain for three iterations of "do you want to try lifting the stone slab again?" before finally offering me the ability to use the crowbar I was carrying for just such a purpose.

   

If it's "no trouble," why not just offer me the crowbar option in the first place?

       

On the next level, we found another chest-that-I-was-not-supposed-to-loot, this one containing 3 Girdles of Might and a set of parchments that were key to solving an upcoming riddle, so I'm glad I looted it anyway. At this point, every single member of the party had a Girdle of Might, with one to spare.

   

I didn't record in which chests I found which parchments, but the totality of them suggested that Ingerimm had six apprentices, and those apprentices wore special leather boots, gloves, and jerkins. It was thus little surprise when I found a chest containing seven pairs of each. It had a plaque on the front that read: "Take the God's as long as you need it, though don't use it any longer than need demands."

        

Part of the clue that, I guess, I wasn't supposed to read.

       

Getting my party members clad in the attire took forever. I had to drop so much stuff that I nearly cried, including all my spare water skins (fortunately, the level had a fountain). The issue wasn't so much taking the leather pieces—I could have done that one at a time—so much as preserving my existing armor, pants, and boots for when I returned the leather pieces to the chest. (The game offers no option to temporarily drop items or store them in chests.) I thus had to clear at least 18 spaces. In the end, I think it was mostly unnecessary. The final area had no battles, so I could have split off one character and sent him ahead.

   

In fact, the game seemed to be hinting at that. After we donned the gear, we went down a corridor with a bunch of glowing floor plates, and a bunch of my characters peeled away from the party, not wanting to continue. I forced them back into formation.

     

I'm not sure I care what Gnomon prefers.

      

The corridor ended at a wall with a circular symbol. One of the bits of parchment had suggested that we hold up a torch to the symbol, and it was at this point that I discovered that I didn't have any torches. I had dropped them all after Lilii enchanted her wand to serve in the place of a torch.

        

I'm curious how anyone else solved this puzzle without opening any chests. Please comment.

       

Fortunately, I remembered a place on Level 1 where some torches and other gear were stashed in a corner, so I went back up there, grabbed one, and returned.

   

Holding the torch up to the symbol opened the way into a forge. We woke up a golem who asked for a "pledge." I assumed he was talking about the Stone Medallion, and I was right. A cinematic showed the golem tossing the medallion into a pool of lava and then operating the forge for a while. In the meantime, we could converse with him, and he had a bit to say about the Salamander Stone.

     

Part of the cinematic showing the golem forging a weapon that I didn't get to keep.

       

When he finished his work, he presented us with a magical sword made out of "asthenil." I was happy for about 30 seconds, and then it became clear that the game expected me to trade the sword for the Salamander Stone. Bastards.

    

I did the honorable thing. Not that it mattered.

     

A chest next to the one with the Salamander Stone was "filled almost to the brim with jewelry, gems, and coins." I had the option to take it or add some of my own coins to the collection. I did neither in the "real" game. On a reload, I looted the chest and got 5,000 gold pieces as well as a bunch of gems and jewels, but the doorway leading out of the area closed and wouldn't open again. Since the party shares all wealth, I think maybe you could steal the money by sending a single character into the area, looting the chest, and letting him die, but for role-playing reasons, I didn't try.

   

Back outside the forge, we returned the leathers and then made our way back to the surface. I didn't find the alternate exit that some commenters mentioned, but I needed to return the key to Xermosch anyway. When we emerged in the dwarven town, we found a very different situation than when we entered. Dwarves refused us entry to their houses and shops and openly threatened us on the street. Xermosch wouldn't come to the door and told me to "put the key on the hook." Clearly, even though it was necessary to take some items from some chests, I must have taken at least one item from a chest I wasn't supposed to loot. I hope it doesn't have any long-term consequences.

       

I got this message several times, but no one actually attacked me.

      

We hustled out of town and hit the road for Lowangen. Almost immediately, we ran into the priestess who we saved from orcs at the beginning of the game. She praised our progress but warned us that there were more challenging tasks ahead. She told us we could keep the experience and levels we had been granted previously—I didn't even know that was a question—but said that we'd eventually have to do things that "the goddess" wouldn't approve of, apparently in the name of ends that the goddess would approve of.

       

Your goddess needs a philosophy 101 course.

      

The next few days were fraught. We completely ran out of food on our third day out of the dwarven town, so we had to rely on nightly hunting, which I often had to try three or four times. Something kept sniffing around our backpacks in the middle of the night. Someone seemed to be stalking us on the road. Characters got diseased several times for no apparent reason. As we passed a crag, a mysterious stranger yelled at us to "take it to Lowangen!" A couple of parties of orcs attacked us.

        

This happened several times.

      

A large dwarf named Hagebar, son of Haralda, accosted us as we rounded a bend. He warned us that an Orcish army was camped on the east bank of the Svellt River, just outside Lowangen.

      

Eventually, we reached the (menu) town of Yrramis, on the Svellt River, south of Lowangen. It had a Temple of Tsa and an inn. The innkeeper, Haldara Alberg (probably Hagebar's mother, though a slightly different spelling), told us that Lowangen was completely besieged by orcs. We stayed a couple of nights in a suite, ate a couple of decent meals, and moved on.

     

"Young Svellt" sounds like a teen magazine.

                   

Miscellaneous notes:

   

• I want to emphasize again how good the automap is. It annotates doors, chests, stairways, and special encounters more clearly than any previous automap I can remember. It also lets you fast-travel on the surface. You'd think after all that praise, I'd have a picture of the automap to show you, but I forgot to take one, and my party is now in the wilderness. Next time.

• Commenters wanted me to mention the journal. I agree that it's cool. It records texts and major milestones so that the player doesn't have to. The player can enter his own notes in the journal, but the utility is limited since the game doesn't index the terms in custom entries.

      

I apparently did anyway.

       

• Gnomon, the dwarf, reached Level 3 at the end of the last session. No one joined him during this session.

• I thought Lyra was insulting the other party members every time I asked her to treat their diseases, but apparently there is a disease called "Numbskull." I don't know why they keep getting it.  

         

"Stop calling me that!"

         

I crossed the Svellt, hoping to travel up the west side before entering the city, but I don't know if it's going to be possible. The map shows Lowangen mostly on the east side of the river. We'll see. I'm anxious to be rid of this Salamander Stone and to see what the next phase of the game will bring.

    

Time so far: 23 hours