Game 570: The Sword of Peace (1979) and Game 571: Cells and Serpents (1980)

 

How different would our world be if Dungeons & Dragons had taken its themes from L. Frank Baum instead of J.R.R. Tolkien?

       

The Sword of Peace

AKA Magic Labyrinth 

AKA Kingly Orb

United Kingdom 

Published as BASIC type-in code in the November 1979 Practical Computing 

Versions released for the Nascom computer in 1980 and the ZX-81 in 1981 

Date Started: 10 March 2026

Date Ended: 10 March 2026

Total Hours: 2 

Difficulty: Easy (2.0/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) 

       

This is the first game I can remember for which its original appearance does not give it any name at all. It appears in the November 1979 Practical Computing as generic BASIC type-in code under the heading: "Data - the sword of peace is yours." The article goes on to say that the program is a "version of the Kingly Orb." It was later titled Magic Labyrinth when republished (with acknowledgements and modifications) in the International Nascom Microcomputer Club's Basic Programs in March 1980. Finally, London-based Arctic Software published the commercial version that you see here in 1981 for the ZX Spectrum.

     

The original type-in code from the November 1979 Practical Computing.

           

I spent some time, as did El Explorador de RPG, trying to figure out what "Kingly Orb" is or was. I can't find any references in the Internet Archive or Google Books. We don't know whether it was a previous computer game or a board game. 

 

Either way, the game is not really an RPG (no character development), but it's also one of those games that takes as much time to BRIEF as to fully play and number, so you get the latter.  

       

Killed on my first outing.

      

The framing story is that you're the crown prince of Oz, and that to prove yourself worthy of the throne, you must find, in a four-level dungeon, the Great Ring, the Kingly Orb, the Robes of State, and the Sword of Peace. Each dungeon level is 100 x 100, and at the start of each game, each item is placed at a random pair of coordinates on its respective level. Once you find it, you're automatically moved down to the next level.

   

Good, neutral, and evil monsters roam the dungeon. Evil ones attack you and must be fought or fled. Good ones give you benefits. Neutral ones may go either way.

     

A dragon gives me "Rain of Holy Water." The magic treasure on this level is somewhere on a line between (2,99) and (9,92) 

      

Combat is purely through the use of 10 numbered spells. Technically, spell 0 is "Run Away," but that's just an action using a spell code. The player only starts with the first three spells: "Landslide," "Wind," and "Fireball" (the world's worst folk music trio), but good monsters give him more as he meets them. Each monster (dragons, witches, wizards, vampires, rock monsters, mummies, golden horses, sand men, giants, and water worms) responds to some spells and not others, so you have to take notes. Fortunately, when you get Spell #10 ("Thunderstorm"), you find it works on anyone. Spells don't cost the player anything to cast, so you can just cast the best one repeatedly.

      

The full list of spells.

        

Each of the royal treasures also has a special spell that blasts certain enemies once you find it, but I never had to use them. 

   

The character starts with 500 strength points and takes damage from battle, but good monsters occasionally provide healing. 

     

This witch is not good.

       

Each turn, the player sees his current coordinates (e.g., 34,19) and moves by entering first the number of squares along the X-axis and then the number of squares on the Y. Either number can be negative. (There's a maximum of |20| in any direction, so you can do |20,0| or  |0,20| or |13,13| or any other combination in which the hypotenuse is 20 or less.) Fortunately, you do not have to search 10,000 squares for each item. The first time you encounter a good monster, it gives you a distance meter that tells you how many squares you are from that level's treasure. On a subsequent encounter with a good monster, you get a compass, which tells you whether the object is in a negative or positive direction on the X and Y axis.

        

I'm 9 away from the treasure, which is to my southeast. I try moving 5 along the x-axis and -4 on the y-axis.

        

For instance, you may be at (35,62) and the distance meter says that you're 23 squares away. The compass says (-1,1). That means that the treasure could be anywhere from (-1,22) to (-22,1). It's a bit confusing because maximum movement is given in a straight line while the Distance Meter simply adds absolute rise and absolute run. 

    

The "grid" is otherwise an illusion. The character doesn't actually move, and the cells aren't seeded with specific encounters. You get the same encounters in the same order no matter which coordinates you choose to input. Thus, once you work out which monsters respond to which spells, the only variables affecting your success are a) the luck of the draw when it comes to what monsters you encounter, and b) minimizing the number of guesses to get from your current square to the treasure square. You can work out the latter mathematically. Without the compass, you need a maximum of three guesses to triangulate the treasure; with the compass, you can do it in two. It's actually a bit better than that, because if you're exactly on one of the axes, the game gives you an annotation of 0 for directionality, so sometimes you can get it in one. It might take you longer to get there, of course, if you start more than 20 (diagonal) squares away. 

       

Triangulating the location without a compass. At the original position 1 (O1), the player was told he was 12 squares away. At O2, he was 10 squares away. At O3, he's 6 squares away, which allows him to nail it.

              

As you might imagine, it was more fun working out the formula than playing the actual game. It's a good programming exercise, nothing more, and even in the "dark ages" of RPG history, I think it was rather shameless of Arctic Software to try to sell it.

    

One of these days, I'm going to have to create a page listing all of the titles and honorifics I've accumulated.

    

***** 

      

      

Cells and Serpents

United Kingdom 

Published as type-in code for the Nascom in the December 80 Computing Today 

Republished as type-in code for the BBC Micro in the May/June 1983 A&B Computing 

Commercial versions released by Argus Press in 1982 for the Commodore 64, 1983 for the Atari 800, Dragon 32/64, ZX Spectrum, and BBC Electron, 1984 for Commodore VIC-20 

Date Started: 10 March 2026

Date Ended: 11 March 2026

Total Hours: 2 

Difficulty: Hard to say with no fixed goal. Moderate? (3.0/5) 
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) 

    

Speaking of type-in games that later saw inexplicable commercial releases (although I guess I'd play a few quid to avoid having to type it myself and then spend six hours debugging it), we have another non-RPG that sees the character wandering through a random dungeon with no goal except to escape with the highest score possible. 

    

Without any framing story or character creation, the character is dumped into Level 1 of the dungeon with 100 hit points. You're told that you're in a room and can go left, right, or forward. The game tells you what you see in those directions, a list that includes corridors, rooms, stairs up, stairs down, doors, blank walls, and, theoretically, an exit. 

      

Contemplating three options.

       

Doors and rooms are basically the same thing, since doors just lead to rooms. They usually have monsters, treasures, or both. If there's a door, you get a chance to listen first to see if you hear a monster. Running into a blank wall causes damage.

 

Don't bother to map anything: the things you see in each direction are randomly generated when you arrive at each new location. You can't go down a stairway, turn around, and go back up. In this sense, each "level" is infinite because no real geography exists.

    

The monsters are drawn from typical fantasy RPGs: orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, demons, undead, dragons, and so forth. They have no special attacks or defenses. In combat, you have the option to fight (which is resolved automatically) and cast (generic) spells, which usually do more damage, but you have a limited number. Monsters are harder the lower the level. The character has no strength score, so the only thing that determines success in combat is whether your hit point total holds out against the monster difficulty. The only real strategy is to retreat from monsters in rooms that don't offer any treasure.

     

Defeating an intellect devourer with a spell.

      

The hardest enemies are three demons—Demogorgon, Jubilex, and Orcus—and ten devils: Asmodeus, Baalzebul, Dispater, Geryon, Barbed Devil, Bone Devil, Erinyes, Horned Devil, Ice Devil, and Pit Fiend. I was still able to kill them without much trouble as long as I had a few hundred hit points. Incidentally, if the title of the game didn't give away the author's primary influence, that list ought to do it.

         

It's close, but I think the version of this battle in Baldur's Gate: Throne of Bhaal is better.

       

As for that treasure, gold pieces add to your score. Other items—like weapons, armor, or wands—just add directly to your hit points or spell total. The only exception is a "luckstone" that increases the amount of gold found.

     

A nice haul after a battle with a green serpent. The scroll and armor will add points to my health; the wand will add spells.

     

That's about it. You just wander the rooms, taking care not to walk into walls, fighting or slinging spells at the occasional monsters, and frequently checking your status. The C64 version offers the ability to save and reload, obviously not present in the original. When you're ready to leave, you find an exit and you're given a message that "you got out alive," along with your score.

     

My top score, sans the exit.

       

I spent a couple of hours with the game, fielded about half a dozen characters, and got one of them down to dungeon Level 16. I built a score of 538, which seems like a lot, but according to the type-in code, the creator was able to get to over 11,000. In any event, I never saw an exit, at least in the C64 version. The manual's language admittedly makes it seem rare ("should you be lucky enough to discover an exit . . ."). I tried to interpret the original code to determine the circumstances under which an exit appears, but I wasn't familiar with that form of BASIC. If you want to give it a try, here's the issue of the magazine. 

    

And here's the image.

        

Numerous sites credit the game to a "G. Lovell," but if you go back to the issue, I think he or she is being credited with the full-page artwork (repeated on the front cover) of the topless female barbarian (shown from the rear) confronting a dragon with a spear. Like many type-in games (e.g., The Wizard's Castle, The Devil's Dungeon) it has spawned a number of modifications and variants over the years. (I am once again indebted to El Explorador de RPG for tracking down some that I would have missed.) Both Argus Press and Forward Software issued commercial releases for multiple platforms. It continued to appear on public domain and shovelware disks into the 1990s. A programmer named Simon Goodwin ported it to the PDP-11 and from there to the EACA Video Genie, renaming it Troll Crusher along the way. An Englishman named Jim Davies wrote a variant called Orcs n 'Oles for DOS in 1994, which features quite a few more items and variables. Generating ideas for variation is, I suppose, the entire purpose of a type-in program.

      

A screenshot from Troll Crusher (1994). The score keeps going into the negatives for me.

        

****

      

Someone will ask about the GIMLET. I rated Sword of Peace an 8 and Cells and Serpents a 5. It's not worth going through all the categories for such primitive titles. 

 

I'm sure you were hoping to read about The Elder Scrolls: Arena today instead of a couple of type-in games. Don't worry; I'm getting there. In the meantime, this quick entry allowed me to finish off 1979 and 1980. Again.

 

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.