Game 583: Escape from Ragor (1994)

Motelsoft co-owner Harald Breitmaier is given exclusive credit for this title.

      

Escape from Ragor

Germany

Motelsoft (developer and publisher)

Released 1994 for DOS 

Date Started: 11 July 2026

Date Ended: 14 July 2026

Total Hours: 8

Difficulty:  Easy (2.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

        

This is the same game we've seen from Motelsoft before, in the form of Arcan (1993) and Walls of Illusion (1993): A Dungeon Master-inspired dungeon crawler with lots of mechanical puzzles. When I played Illusion, I remarked that the RPG elements, which are already flimsy in many Dungeon Master clones, seemed like afterthoughts. Ragor goes even further in that direction by giving the player control of only one character, and with significant limitations in equipment and combat options.

      

The only "character creation."

           

Ragor is the industrious developer's first RPG for DOS; all its previous efforts had focused on the Atari ST. Perhaps that's why they stripped so many elements. To start, the only character creation decision is whether to take a male or female character. (I rarely choose a female protagonist, and I didn't like the look of the guy, so I went with her here.) The character is presumed to be trapped somehow in the dungeon of Ragor, ruled by someone named Megrim, and he or she must escape. "Megrim" was a character race in both Seven Horror's (1988) and Sandor (1989), but notes in the dungeon make it clear that it's a personal name here.

      

The opening. A pit lies ahead, a message to the left, an item to the right.

        

Let's deal with the RPG parts first, since it won't take very long. The character has no wearable inventory and only two weapon slots, one in each hand. I have no idea whether a second weapon in the off-hand made any difference. I'm not even sure which slot is the primary hand. The manual warns the player that weapons are so inferior to spells in this game that when you click the only "attack" button, the game assumes you want to cast a spell as long as you have any magic points. Weapons only come into play when mana runs out.

       

The character/inventory screen. You'll notice two "hand" slots but no armor or other wearable items. The main inventory has 19 additional slots, but the chest (right) has hundreds of slots. You never really need to put down anything you find. The spell is set to "Ice Ball."

        

There are, meanwhile, only three spells found in the game. Early, the player finds a basic fire spell, followed a few hours later by a basic frost spell, followed a few hours later by an advanced fire spell. That's it. As I said, there's only one "attack" button, which automatically fires the selected spell if the character has enough mana points and uses the equipped weapon otherwise. The best weapon (the sword, which you get for about 30 seconds) does about 1-10 damage, whereas the spells do roughly 1-30, 1-60, and 1-120 damage, so getting to the point that you're actually using a weapon is bad planning. It happens extremely rarely, particularly since if the character rests more than six or so squares from the nearest enemy, he or she restores all health and magic points. So even the most difficult battles involve the player attacking until health or mana get too low, rushing off in any direction with at least half a dozen tiles, resting, and then re-entering combat. 

         

Destroying a monster. The number at the top of the screen is how much damage I'm doing to him. I like the way they explode.

          

Enemies are unnamed and mostly minor annoyances. They all have ranged attacks. They have no facing direction other than forward, so they can't be combat-waltzed as in most Dungeon Master clones. The attacking and running away trick works for most of them, although there are a few battles in cramped quarters in which the player has to rely on potions. The character gains experience and levels from kills, but enemies mostly keep pace with the character's level. Wherever you are in the game, killing an enemy basically involves 30 seconds of furious mouse-clicking.

     

Attacking a rare pack of foes. Fortunately, these late-game enemies are curiously easy.

       

The other major simplification involves the control system. Every part of the game is controlled by the mouse, with the sole exception of four occasions in which the player has to enter the answer to a riddle with the keyboard. I thus had to spend 8 hours clicking around with the GTFO panel, which isn't exactly huge. It's very easy to turn when you intend to move or strafe, and to move when you intend to attack (attacking is the little gem in the center of the panel). There is music in the game, but no sound effects whatsoever.

     

The dungeon is around 10 or 12 levels of 30 x 30 each, although not all the space is used on all levels. Like Arcana and Illusion, Ragor is no level-by-level dungeon crawl. The character starts somewhere in the middle and must immediately drop through a pit to a lower level, and for the first quarter or so of the game spends a lot of time negotiating a maze of chutes and ladders, often returning to the starting area via a new wall section that opens from the other side. Eventually, the game stabilizes a bit, with the character going all the way to the bottom and then working his or her way up to the top levels using the level space that wasn't previously explored. The whole thing is very linear; rarely does the player have more than one major direction to go.

     

All or at least most of the enemies in the game.

        

The game features one of the most detailed automaps we've seen in RPG history, recording just about all of the dungeon's features. It is so detailed, in fact, that it spoils many of the game's challenges. There is no need to hunt for buttons, test for secret doors, or worry that you've missed a treasure; the map tracks all of that for you. If you press a button that opens up a new area, you can see it on the automap even if it's far away from you.

       

I agonized about whether to create my own maps, a process that I enjoy and often use to annotate puzzles that are still in need of a solution. Eventually, I decided it would be a waste of time, which I think turned out to be a good call. 

     

The automap clearly shows explored and unexplored squares, illusory walls, ladders, pressure plates, pits, levers, buttons, and keyholes.

              

Dungeon Master clones live and die by their navigational puzzles, and honestly, they're not very impressive here. You've seen them all before: buttons, switches, pressure plates, pits (both visible and hidden), teleporters, illusory walls, invisible walls, switches for keys and coins, and so forth. Rarely are the puzzles more complicated than finding a key in one place to open a door in another, or pulling a lever to open a nearby wall. In Dungeon Master and its best derivatives, you don't necessarily activate every switch you see because it might cause something to happen that you're not ready for. Or it might do something subtle, and you need to finish mapping the rest of the level before you'll be able to detect its effect. There's none of that angst here. You see a button, you press it.

     

Using a key to turn off a force field.

       

A gem goes in this lion's mouth.

That button might be hard to detect if it didn't show up on the automap.

A pressure plate activates a trap.

        

The few stand-outs wouldn't be stand-outs by most standards, but they livened things up here. There are a couple of levers that have complex effects, such as rotating which secret door is open among a group of four. There are a couple levels that make extensive use of spinners, always annoying but even more so when you can't quickly correct with a keypad. There are some pressure plates that launch you forward in your facing direction, so if you want to go through an adjacent wall, you have to sidle into them. (In what game did I first encounter these? I remember feeling that it violated a ton of rules. I was really offended by it.) There are a couple "conveyor belts"—sequences of pressure plates that move you along a particular path, and you have to carefully time your exit.

      

Lever puzzles sometimes introduce additional complexities.

        

I did not find any "walking dead" moments or dead-ends, which is to the game's credit. In a game as fond of pits, one-way ladders, teleporters, and snaking up and down levels as this one, it must be hard not to occasionally trap the player. 

   

There were three absolute nightmare puzzles involving futuristic-looking panels. They require the player to insert colored diodes in a sequence. To figure out which colors to use, you have to interpret the colors of flashing lights. Or something. Irene figured it out, but I didn't understand her explanation. All I know is that if you put in the wrong colors, the machine blows up in your face for significant damage.

     

I never really understood this puzzle.

        

There are four places in the game in which the player meets a "Guardian of the Passageways" and must type a word to lower a force field. The first time, the guardian just asks for a "magic word." I tried several things like BITTE ("please") to no avail. I never found the answer to this one, and it bothered me for the rest of the game that there might be something vital on the other side of that field.

         

I even tried OPEN SESAME. I don't think I tried ALAKAZAM.

       

The other three are all in a row, and they're accompanied by message squares which provide a little riddles:

   

• It brings death to many a tree. It helps humans in their time of need. If you want to have it, you must tell me its name. 

• What is being sought here isn't difficult. After all, without this thing, there are no more new knights. 

• Sharp is the thing, and small to boot; it rests quietly upon the belt. Its name is sought here—you rogues, tell it to me.

            

I got the first one (AXT) without much trouble and found an axe in the room beyond. That made the other two (SCHWERT und DOLCH) even easier to figure out. The middle puzzle got me the only sword in the game (previous weapons had been dagger, club, and axe). Even though weapons play essentially no role in combat, I was pleased with the upgrade. But almost immediately afterwards were a series of slots on the walls that demanded the axe, sword, and dagger, busting me back down to a spare axe.

     

One final riddle that I liked said: "One person hauls it off to the pub; another piles it up in their socks. Some hide it at home, while others throw it out the window." The only thing that made sense to me was money, which I had in the form of a single silver coin. But there was no way to type the answer to this riddle, and no nearby slot for the coin. Eventually, I realized the solution was to literally throw the coin out the nearest window.

      

This was clever.

       

Other than the title, the text is entirely in German, which for me made its verbose attempts to introduce some kind of clumsy plot rather annoying. In the first room is a message from your captor:

     

I, Megrim, Ruler of Ragor, am truly no monster. You may go wherever you wish. But as long as you remain within my walls, we play the Game of Games. WITH YOU! By *my* very special rules, of course! The game is called . . . Don't Lose Your Head. And the best part is: the one who loses will never remember it. HA HA HA!

      

If Megrim sounds like a bit of a dick, he certainly is. Later, you get this message in front of a pit:

      

I, Megrim, ruler of Ragor, wish to show you how generous I can be. Everything you need to leave my walls lies ready down here! A master key. A very good weapon. 2,500 gold pieces. An exciting partner—just for you alone! Trust me. Take the leap, and you will have reached the goal of all earthly happiness.

     

There is nothing but snakes on that lower level. 

         

Sigh. Back to Google Translate.

       

Other messages come up frequently as you explore, most offering unnecessary hints ("TRAPPED! WHO HASN'T WALKED THROUGH WALLS?") or unnecessary encouragement ("The courageous person lets nothing stop them. DON'T STOP!") "Beware of pitfalls" appears right before a room with illusory pits. "Step back safely to reach your new goal" appears near a teleporter that lets you bypass a lot of traps. I got annoyed that the game kept making me translate messages that were duplicative at best, spoilers at worst. The messages dwindle by the halfway point of the game, however, and are entirely gone by the end.

   

Meanwhile, a mysterious female NPC shows up a few times in the early levels. She emphasizes: "Forget about conventional weapons like daggers and swords. In Ragor, they are nothing more than fancy ornaments—otherwise useless against the creatures that dwell here!" The second time I met her, she exhorted me to: "Climb up and get the Blue Stone. It is the only effective remedy against Megrim and his daughter! But then come back quickly, because the creatures up there are still a bit too much for you to handle!" A sequence of ladders took me all the way to the top of the dungeon, but through very small spaces; I would later revisit those levels in more detail and fill in the rest of them. Anyway, I found the blue stone, but I never knew what it did for me.

     

A woman tries to be helpful.

       

The woman appears one more time as the player starts the final ascent from the bottom level to the top. She gives a key to an area that has food, water, and potion fountains (places to refill potions). Then she disappears with no clue as to who she was.

     

As for Megrim's "daughter," introduced out of nowhere, I guess maybe she's the final enemy: an indistinguishable form in a dark cloak. The player meets her on an upper level of the dungeon on which the auto map mysteriously doesn't work. It's not very big, though. She has thousands of hit points and takes forever to kill; maybe she would have been impossible without that blue stone. Fortunately, as with every other enemy, you can just run half a dozen squares away and rest, even in the middle of battle. Even though I employed every "power orb" I found in the game against her, doing about 5,000 points of damage right at the beginning of the battle, it still took me another 10 minutes and multiple rests to kill her.

        

Blasting the daughter with a power orb.

      

Killing her brought up the final screen: "You have successfully defeated Megrim's daughter. You have taken the FIRST STEP towards FREEDOM; now, the CONTINUATION awaits YOU." It promises the follow-up game as Escape Megrims Rache or maybe Escape: Megrims Rache; when it came out later that year, it was just Escape from Ragor II: Megrims Rache ("Megrim's Revenge").

      

Hey, where did that guy come from?

        

Miscellaneous notes:

   

• The README file jokingly suggests that the motel in the company's name is the "Norman Bates Motel."

• The game has a food/water system but both are so plentiful that it only occasionally plays a role. Sleeping to restore health and mana does not make any extra time pass for hunger/thirst purposes.

• One of the foods that you find is a kraftei, which I can tell translates literally as something like "power egg." It indeed looks like an egg. I was a bit startled when Google translated it to "rocket-powered aircraft." I understand why now, but I still thought it was funny. 

• Speaking of translation, I found a few bags of whatever this is. I couldn't figure it out from the word, and I never tried to use it.

      

Something about a little sack?

       

• You find a lot of potions, plus a number of places in which potions can be refilled. Antidote potions are crucial, as there are several places where you're unavoidably poisoned, and you can't rest while poisoned. Healing and mana potions are useful, sure, but it's so easy to just sleep in between every combat that I mostly did that. Oh, and here's another colorblindness complaint (I know you never get sick of those): the color of the healing potions is indistinguishable to me from the color of the background behind the potion jars; this means I can't tell the difference between healing potions and empty jars unless I look really hard and notice that I can't see the tile texture behind the full jars.

       

A "potion fountain."

        

• Some of the item graphics were clearly stolen from Eye of the Beholder. The axe, for instance. 

• My character reached Level 12 by the end of the game. Since enemies do not respawn, I don't think it would have been possible to go any higher. 

    

My final character sheet.

       

The game took about eight hours, and I could have gotten several entries out of it, but I don't think I would have had much to talk about. Since AlphabeticaAnonymous's work on The Search for Freedom gave me enough breathing room to get ahead of the game, I decided to finish it in one entry. I give it a 16 on the GIMLET, the worst score I've given to a Motelsoft game, three points lower than Walls of Illusion and seven points lower than Arcan. If the company keeps going in this direction, they'll eliminate equipment and enemies completely for the next outing and just offer a first-person game in which you run around pressing buttons. I ended up giving nothing for the interface, its excellent automap balanced by the tragic horror of a mouse-only control system.

   

I didn't put Escape from Ragor II on my 1994 playlist, but I fired it up for a few minutes just now. It appears essentially unchanged from its predecessor, but there's an opening narration that gives a more detailed backstory and answers some lingering questions from Ragor. It says that the PC is a vassal of Prince Markus III. She has just finished delivering a message from Markus to the Count of Huckenberg. "Since the prince had permitted [her] to take a leisurely pace on [her] return journey," she decided to see the sights. Asking around town, she was directed to an abandoned castle which was supposed to have the coolest stuff in it. Arriving, she found that it was not abandoned. Armed men seized her and hauled her before Megrim, the castle's ruler. Megrim ignored her pleas and threw her in the dungeon. "If you manage to find your way out of this castle, you may go wherever you please! But beware: we are going to play a game with you. A game unlike any you have ever played before." The narration also says that Megrim's daughter was named Bramenia and that the woman who helps the character (and appears early in the sequel to provide some hints) is named Lara. There's still no word on who Lara is in relation to Megrim or why she is helping, but perhaps that's explained later.

       

A shot from the sequel. There were no doors like this in Ragor.

            

For some reason, Motelsoft changed its name to "Nine Red Shoes" for the sequel and for their two RPGs in 1995: Dark Side of the Sun and its sequel. They were back to "Motelsoft" for Dark Side of the Sun III (1996) and from then on. The Dark Side series, which includes Trauma (1996), all seem to be Dungeon Master clones that use some variation of the interface seen in Ragor. It looks like it might be as late as Darkstone: Necromina (1998) before we see something truly original from them again, barring any surprises in the 1995-1996 games.

    

****

   

For further reading:

    

• My page of "Index of Games Played by Lineage" has all of the Dungeon Master clones so far.
• Motelsoft's Official Page for Escape from Ragor and its sequel.
• My coverage of previous Motelsoft titles:
• Seven Horror's (1988) 
• Sandor (1989) 
• Sandor II: Kotalan und die drei Schwester'n (1991) 
• Magic Tower I: Dark Stone Ritual (1992) 
• Arcan (1993), the starting point of going all-in on Dungeon Master clones. 
• Walls of Illusion (1993) 

 

08/04/2026

The Odyssey: One Step at a Time

My map of the dungeon so far. Click to enlarge.

        

This entry concerns the dungeon map at the top of the screen. It's large, but not enormous, right? In a typical RPG, say The Bard's Tale, a level like this might take 30 or 40 minutes. But in The Odyssey, which has a completely different design philosophy, this partial level took me about six hours.

   

Let's break it down:

   

I arrive via a ladder at Point 1 (northwest corner). Door 2 is a rare unlocked door. In the chamber beyond, I find a statue of a beautiful woman (3) and a ghost moping around it (4). I talk to the ghost. He introduces himself as Antiphos. He mourns for his lost love, Julia, the woman depicted in the statue. "Once I was a proud warrior, one of the strongest in the land. And she was queen of one of the Thebikan cities." Julia agreed to marry Antiphos after his battle against "the Derondae," but he died in the battle. His spirit cannot move on without knowing whether Julia truly loved him. He asks me to bring him some proof. By the end of this session, I have not found any. This is the least complicated encounter on the map.

     

All love is unrequited.

      

There's nothing but to move on to the east chamber. The wall at Point 5 is closed when I first arrive, but it opens when I step on the pressure plate at Point 6. The door at Point 7 is not here initially; the corridor is open, and a cannonball fires down it repeatedly, instantly killing any character caught in its path.

   

Meanwhile over in Room 8, we have a wraith and two goblins in the far corners. I can't see them when I round the corners where the wall used to be, but they can see me, and just a few of their arrows are enough to kill me. I try gulping a Potion of Invisibility, moving up to the goblins, and attacking in melee range, but that just puts me amidst three tough enemies when I become visible again. Since enemies with missile weapons never come to you, the only way that I get through this is to spend the last of my money on flasks of Greek fire and toss them into the room. Even then, I have to get lucky and not get hit by some of their arrows.

     

When in doubt, fill it with fire.

      

(To save time, "I have to get lucky" is a common theme this session. Even a successful strategy usually comes after a dozen failed attempts, and success is only achieved because the enemy misses me several times in a row. There are times—I'm not proud of this—in which I saved after every move if it was successful and reloaded when it was not.)

      

A pressure plate at Point 9 opens the wall at Point 10, releasing a ferocious lion. I'm convinced the lion is unbeatable in regular combat. He kills me in a single hit. The only way I can figure to defeat him is to lead him to Point 6, where he'll get hit by the cannonball coming down the corridor. This takes precise timing, and we end up looping around this area several times. 

      

Back in Chamber 11 is another goblin archer. To get into his melee range without dying to a hail of arrows, I have to swallow a Potion of Invisibility. Potions of Invisibility will be the key to a lot of these puzzles. Even then I have to get pretty lucky in the ensuing melee, but eventually he dies, dropping a quiver of arrows and a tomb key.

      

Saving after each time I hit and he misses.

       

The tomb key opens Door 12, after which I am immediately slain by a murderous sphinx at Point 13. On a reload, I talk to the sphinx from a distance. "The ignorance of mankind fills me with rage," he says. He then asks his famous riddle: "What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening." I know the answer, but my character does not, and I don't get a text box this time. Since I can't get past the sphinx, I move on.

     

Answering your riddle doesn't show "knowledge" so much as "cleverness."

       

There's a patch of packed earth at Point 13 amidst marble flagstones. I have no proof that it means anything, but it makes me suspicious.

   

I turn my attention to the cannonballs coming down Corridor 7. I later found out they're being shot from a cannon at Point 14 (the path they take is highlighted), but I can't see that cannon yet. There's also another cannon a few squares to the north, and I can't remember what path its cannonballs took. I disabled it before I started taking detailed notes.

  

It turns out that there's a "fast movement" option if you move with the mouse and hover the cursor farther away from the character, near the edge of the screen. This is the key to just getting down the corridor and then to one of the adjacent squares in between cannonballs. Of course, then you have to deal with the two goblin archers in the corners and the lion. This lion isn't any easier than the last one. Oh, and Door 7 closes and locks once you get through the corridor, so there's no going back.

         

The situation in this room.

       

After a lot of dying, I decide that the Potion of Invisibility is once again the solution. It gets me past the archers and lion and into the southern corridor around Wall 16. With the right timing, I get the lion killed by one of the cannonballs, then rush up and kill the southwestern goblin while the northwestern one can't see me. To kill the northwestern one, I again have to resort to throwing bottles of Greek fire. All in all, surviving this room takes me about two hours and lots of false starts. When I'm done, I loot a couple of ancient coins, a miner's helmet (it has a flashlight that replaces torches) and a key to Door 7.

    

The southern corridor ends in lava, so I can't go that way. Across the lava, I can see a pressure plate at Point 18, with two more cannons to the north. The switch on the wall at Point 17 opens the grey walls its east (Points 16 but not 19). All that does is expose a wraith at Point 20 who sends a howling attack at me every single round. It's as hard to time and dodge, and just as deadly, as the cannonballs. I also die instantly if I get next to him; like the lions, I don't think he can be killed in regular combat. I should mention, too, that all the enemies have unique names. This wraith is a "screaming wraith" to differentiate it from the "fell wraith" I met earlier.

     

The screaming wraith releases an "ultrasonic scream."

         

I discover that if I throw my dagger at the pressure plate at Point 18, leaving me temporarily weaponless, it opens the wall at Point 19. If I then go through the wall, I get killed by fireballs thrown by a salamander in the lava pool at Point 21. Again, a Potion of Invisibility saves the day (you have to imagine me running back up to Mr. Jones's shop quite often). It gets me around to the pressure plate, where I can pick up my dagger. The cannon to the north of Point 18 is shooting south originally, but the switch south of the pressure plate turns it to shoot east, which takes out the wraith. Yay. Meanwhile, the salamander disappears at some point; I can only assume he was killed by one of the wraith's attacks or a stray cannonball. Either way, I'm not complaining.

      

Tossing my dagger across the lava.

        

There's a vampire at Point 22 who kills me instantly when he sees me coming, so I go the other way. I move past Point 20 and head down the corridor, only to be killed by the arrows of two orcs lurking at Point 23. That's a lot of steps to advance under sniper fire, so again Mr. Jones's exploding flasks save the day. The orcs were guarding a garlic bulb, and I think I know who's not going to like that.

   

In the meantime, I continue into the next room (Point 24), where some treasures are to be found amidst piles of rubble, but the rubble tires me out when I walk over it. I think maybe I find a quiver of arrows and a magic bone (induces friendship with animals) here. There's a scroll with someone ranting about the sphinx.

  

Point 25 has a Wizard Eye Potion, and a nearby sign encourages me to "save this potion for your next trial by lightning and fire." The problem is that it's surrounded by force fields, and the only way to it is through a square of lava. I have to go in, taking massive damage, grab the potion, rest and heal, and go back out, taking massive damage again.

     

Is there going to be more than one of those?

      

With the garlic bulb in my left hand, I return to the vampire at Point 22. Pleasingly cowed, he gives me two pieces of information: (1) there's a secret behind the altar; and (2) the answer to the sphinx's riddle is MAN. My character says: "I ought to kill you anyway. A foul bloodsucking creature like yourself lives only at the expense of others. But you have helped me, and I cannot ignore a debt. Goodbye, vampire." Before I leave, I grab a Scepter of Friendship from the ground next to him.

         

My character can be a bit of a dick.

        

Back to the sphinx (Point 13). He accepts my answer and calms down. I move down the corridor to a couple of unlocked doors and enter the area around Point 26, where I'm immediately attacked by invisible warp demons. They hit hard, but they also die quickly if I can hit them with my dagger. I target empty squares until they're all dead. Beyond them at Point 27 is at last a proper weapon, a "perfect sword." There's also a pair of leather boots at Point 28.

        

I have no way forward at this point, so I try the Scepter of Tomb Teleportation. It takes me to a new area. I land in an 8 x 8 room full of cobwebs (Point 30) and am immediately killed by an invisible stalker. I reload and try again, swinging my weapon at empty squares, but another stalker kills me; there are apparently multiple stalkers in here. On a third try, I use a Potion of Invisibility and make it out of the area into a single-square corridor. I wait for the invisibility to wear off and then try taking them on one at a time. It works. I ultimately kill four stalkers: "unperceived," "invisible," "unseen," and "horrible," all distinguished from the "shadowy" stalker I faced the last time. Each drops a new Potion of Invisibility.

     

I move down into an old chapel. "Fires mysteriously burn behind the altars—perhaps the gods still live here. Murals and frescoes adorn the walls and ceiling, portraying the struggles of men and gods for freedom." Mindful of what the vampire said about the altar, I inspect all the tiles behind it and discover that there's something odd about one of them. I have to walk through the fire, taking significant damage, to access the tile, which opens a secret door to the east. This leads to a room with another key and a shield. Unfortunately, I don't have the encumbrance for it. I've been gaining 10 pounds of carrying space every time I level up, and I might need to wait for the next level.

      

I'm curious who the gods are struggling for freedom from.

       

The key opens the southern door in the chapel. The moment I step through it, I'm slaughtered by an arrow. On a reload, a Potion of Invisibility shows me that it's a large room with a fountain in the center and a door on the south wall. There's a pressure plate in front of the door and six boulders lined up on either side of the pressure plate. Four goblins (master, overlord, hero, and king) lurk against the eastern and western walls, two on each side. A single arrow from any of them kills me instantly at full health. The water prevents me from reaching them or the pressure plate and door. I think that maybe I can throw my dagger onto the plate (it's the only thing so far the character can throw), but the moment I throw it, I become visible and get killed with an arrow.

      

The level I can't get through. Yet.

        

Aside from figuring out this room, there's one way to go: east along a corridor between the arrival room and the chapel. It turns north and dead-ends at a pressure plate (Point 35) which opens a wall to the west. I find myself in a familiar place, near where I found the boots. This level, which I had originally pegged at about 30 x 30 (same as the surface map) is instead currently 60 squares on the vertical axis—and the door I cannot yet get through shows that it extends even farther in that direction.

       

Whew. It's six hours later, and I am exhausted. Here are some other things I didn't cover along the way:

   

• I'm barely keeping up with food. Mr. Jones's inventory restocks only once per day, and I have to visit almost every day to buy the two portions of meat that he has.

• I leveled up twice in the first session, both times by finding Scepters of Lordly Might. I did not find any scepters this time, and did not otherwise level up. I suspect there is no traditional experience and leveling in this game. 

• Encumbrance is an issue, so I've designated a corridor to store the stuff I'm not using at any given time.

     

My growing collection.

      

• Equipped items can be damaged or destroyed if the character is hit hard enough.

• There are five locked doors that I can't find the keys to open yet: At Point 29 on the map, on the level above (in my "extra equipment" corridor), two on the same building to the northwest of the palace, one inside Sarah's house. Plus the jail, I guess, but I don't really need to get in there. I have one "city key" that doesn't go to anything, as far as I can tell.

• The "Read Me" file promises that each key opens only one door, so there's no reason to keep them in your inventory unless you think you might want to lock it again. I've thus been dropping them near the doors that they open. I hope the file didn't lie about that. 

      

When I was writing to David Larkin, I asked about his influences. He has some experience with tabletop gaming, which makes sense, as The Odyssey feels a bit like a Dungeons & Dragons module, each room with its own backstory and special encounters. I also wonder if he played the Stuart Smith games, which like this one tend to eschew generic "monsters" and to blur the line between monsters and NPCs, but he said he had no exposure to them. He also didn't mention Dungeon Master despite the pressure plates and mechanical puzzles. He said his primary influences were Ultima and Wizardry.

           

The Odyssey is satisfying when I finally pass one of its challenges, but it's also pretty exhausting. And it's quite poorly named; I don't think I've traveled more than 100 tiles since the game began.

   

Time played: 9 hours 

     

****

   

Previous entry in this series

     

Next entry in this series 

    08/02/2026 

 

Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse: Summary and Rating

 

That horse is false advertising.

            

Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse

United States 

Cyberlore Studios (developer), Strategic Simulations, Inc. (publisher) 

Released 1994 for DOS

Date Started: 23 June 2026

Date Ended: 24 July 2026

Total Hours: 24

Difficulty:  Easy-Moderate (2.5/5) on default, but user adjustable

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)  

   

Summary:

     

Al-Qadim is an action RPG with minimal RPG elements drawn from the short-lived Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting of the same name. The PC is a young corsair (one of the character "kits" in this setting), engaged to his caliph's daughter, looking at a bright future. But his family is disgraced (and his bride kidnapped) when the family genie goes amok. To restore his family's honor and save his betrothed, he must discover the shadowy cabal that is freeing genies from their oaths.

    

This single-character game has fairly minimal RPG elements and plays more like an action/adventure than an RPG. Character attributes are fixed; inventory is very limited; dialogue options all seem to vector to the same conclusion. The character gains experience and levels up, but leveling doesn't make a palpable difference in battle except that the character gets a couple of additional sword moves. The titled orthographic viewpoint (single axis only) and many of the graphics (as well as the desert setting) are reminiscent of Dark Sun: Shattered Lands (1993), while the plot, Arabian setting, and some of the action sequences evoke Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire (1990). It's a fun game for its length, but not a great RPG experience, and it doesn't feel much like a Dungeons & Dragons title.

   

****

   

Well, I never did hear back from Herb Perez. It's too bad because one of the first things I would have asked is whether Al-Qadim started as a Dungeons & Dragons game or whether they grafted the name onto a product already in development. My guess is probably it did start with D&D in mind, given the histories of the companies and the principal authors, but Al-Qadim seems to have been given more leash than any D&D title I can remember since Hillsfar. Among the oddities:

   

• Leveling only makes the character stronger to the extent that it conveys extra maximum hit points. (The "extra sword moves" are only really valuable to the extent that you stupidly let the character get surrounded by enemies.) 

• Attributes don't matter at all. I don't think the game even knows what they are. I inspected the save game files and while I found values for experience, max hit points, and current hit points, I did not find any of the attributes.

• The corsair class is supposed to be able to dual-wield, use thief skills, and employ numerous non-weapon proficiencies, none of which appear in the game.

     

Why would anyone pay for healing when you can get healed for free on your ship?

      

• The Al-Qadim setting makes extensive use of social status, which is quantified. It isn't even mentioned in the game.

• Experience points are doled out quite liberally for solving puzzles and quest steps; little of the player's experience total comes from enemies. 

• Only a couple of the other Al-Qadim-specific classes make any appearance in the game, principally sha'ir, and they don't behave like sha'ir in the manual. I didn't see any familiars, for instance.

• Zakhara is supposed to be a melting pot of races. While there was a mention of dwarves (in passages that could have easily been CTRL-H'd), I saw no one but humans in my explorations. Admittedly, the graphics perhaps aren't detailed enough to differentiate some of the races.

• Nowhere in the game does it actually confirm where the action takes place. No map appears. You sail from island to island by menu. The official map of Zakhara does have a lot of archipelagos, but none of the names match up (admittedly, many of the islands are unnamed).

        

The "game world" in list form.

         

• "Shards" seem to be purely an invention of the game. 

• What we learn about genies, the way they are called, and what they can do don't quite seem to align with the rules in the Arabian Adventures sourcebook. 

• A "Zaratan," as has been pointed out in the comments, is a giant sea turtle in the sourcebooks.

• Many of the other creatures that you would expect based on the sourcebooks make no appearance. In particular, there isn't a single camel or Arabian horse.

          

The authors made the cyclops Arabian by putting the word "desert" in front of it. Also: what does he narrow?

        

So even though "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition" is displayed prominently on the box, I don't really see it. That isn't necessarily a complaint—I'm hardly a D&D purist—but it does hint at why the RPG elements of this one are so under-baked. If it had started as a Prince of Persia sequel, I'm not sure I'd be surprised. 

        

Curiously, I find myself lamenting the absence of the social status system the most—not because I like such systems, of course, but because from a role-playing perspective, I enjoy defying them. While I was in the middle of Al-Qadim, I wrote a paean to American faith in individualism and individual progress. Such faith is a core part of my own ideology and identity, and thus I always enjoy stories in which an individual comes up against a rigid system and refuses to kowtow to it, leaving pompous nobles to sputter at his insouciance. I understand that Robert Jordan was planning to write a series of novels set after The Wheel of Time in which Mat Cauthon would travel to the Seanchan Empire; that's the kind of story I would have enjoyed.

     

You get some "sassy" options with the caliph, but they don't lead anywhere.

       

As I head into the GIMLET, my feelings about the game are relatively neutral. It was easy to play and write about; it moved along at a good clip; and it offered a more complex plot than the typical RPG. On the other hand, it didn't really have any of the things I like about RPGs, so it felt like I was doing something that was modestly fun but otherwise unrelated to this blog. I would expect the GIMLET to hover just at or below the "recommended" level (say, 35-40), but with such low scores in the core RPG categories (2, 5, and 6) that it doesn't really qualify for that label. Let's see: 

         

Category	Assets	Liabilities	Score
1. Game World	Setting in Arabian mythology is rare among RPGs.  Strong story. Character's place in the world is clear. NPCs generally react to plot developments.	Not a lot of lore to the setting explained in the game. Some major elements left enigmatic, such as the basic nature of the human-genie relationship.  Game world is small and limited.	5
2. Character Creation and Development	Standard experience and leveling. Some levels come with a new sword move.	Only character creation choice is the name. Attributes not used. Character does not get intrinsically much more powerful.	2
3. NPCs	Large number of NPCs, many with strong personalities. Talking with them advances the plot and fills in the lore. Full-sentence dialogue options with some minor role-playing choices.	Dialogue options are mostly illusory.	6
4. Encounters and Foes	A few original monsters. D&D bestiary is always well-varied. Light navigation puzzles and a few role-playing encounters.  Can encounter as many enemies as you want via traveling.	Game does not incorporate most special attacks/defenses. Puzzles are mostly facile and role-playing encounters are rare.	5
5. Magic and Combat	A couple of combat options: sling, sword (with different attacks), shards.	Not nearly enough options. Battle is not tactical; just a lot of running around.	2
6. Equipment	Sword, sling, Ring of Protection all get some enhancements. Potions and shards.	Very under-developed. No armor, wearables, choice of weapons. Many of the potions don't seem to really work.	2
7. Economy	It exists, and there's a gambling game. Potions and shards are a money sink.	No complexity. Far too generous. Only really need it to buy quest items.	3
8. Quests	Clear, multi-stage main quest. Some side quests and side-areas. A couple of places where the player has multiple ways to approach a quest or quest-stage.	Quest path is generally linear and does not offer many choices. No ending choices or alternate outcomes.	4
9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface	Nice graphics. Not "immersive" but definitely pleasant. Adequate sound effects. Support for keyboard, mouse, and joystick.	Mapping both attacking and other actions to the same key was a bad decision. Menu does not adequately differentiate selected and unselected options.  Sound effects relatively rare. No background sounds.	4
10. Gameplay	Good length. Flexible difficulty.	Very linear. Not much replayability.	5
Other/Total			38

       

Longtime readers will know that I don't include music in category #9, and I usually play the game (as I did here) with the music turned off. However, I took the time to listen to the soundtrack later, and there are some unbelievably good compositions on it. I don't know a lot about eastern music (other than the double-harmonic scale, quarter tones, etc.), so I can't tell you what references it makes or what traditions it evokes, but it's complex and subtle, with beautiful MIDI work that really draws out the individual instrumentation. You can listen to it here; I particularly recommend Track 6, with its complex drum rhythms. Credits go to Eric Heberling, Rob Wallace, and Nada Lewis; Heberling also did The Elder Scrolls: Arena from the same year and is currently working on The Wayward Realms, a forthcoming game from Arena's developers.

       

"Al-Qadim whisks away traditional role playing on its magic carpet" is how Petra Schlunk's August 1994 Computer Gaming World review begins, which is an accurate sentiment. The review echoes everything I've said about de-emphasizing exploration, character creation and development, equipment, and combat tactics in the name of more streamlined action gameplay. She liked the originality of the setting, as I did. "Some might appreciate the attempt to lighten up role-playing," she concludes. "But many hard-core fans won't be amused." She lumps the music in with sound, though, in saying that they "could be a bit more robust." I think that's fair for sound effects but not the music.

       

I don't think much of "a complex, pre-generated character," and "tightly-woven storyline" just signals there are no player choices. But they're right about "grand cinematic musical themes."

          

I looked over Wikipedia's and MobyGames's summary of other reviews, which average around a B-/C+, but the general theme is that it's an inoffensive enough action game but not much of a CRPG. I gather it generated the same type of discussion as the simplification of character attributes and the move towards more action-oriented combat in Skyrim or Fallout 4. Some reviews worried that the game was a harbinger of the future, and they already started to lament the loss of more traditional titles, both RPG in general and D&D in particular. Many who think that RPGs hit a major slump in the mid-1990s (I don't have an opinion on this yet) will find common ground in these reviews. But, honestly, it's a bit obnoxious to blame an individual game for an industry-wide trend. Al-Qadim did well with its own intentions.

          

Despite it selling nearly 100,000 copies, my sense is that Al-Qadim didn't leave much of a legacy. Any influence it had is impossible to detect among hundreds of console games that were already offering the same approach to gameplay. I don't think there was an explosion in Arabian fantasy among CRPGs in the later 1990s. It certainly didn't do anything to prop up the Al-Qadim tabletop setting, which aside from one 1998 offering published its last module the same year. 

    

SSI will continue to squeeze everything it can out of the D&D license for a couple more years, and I will dutifully play all of them. We may see an SSI/Cyberlore partnership again as early as 1995, with World of Aden: Entomorph; otherwise, Cyberlore will go off in its own direction, specializing in fantasy strategy and simulation games before getting out of the business in 2005. 

    

I'm a bit annoyed that we never had any resolution on the duck.

  

****

   

Previous entry in this series

     

For further reading: 

 

My index of games played by lineage has all other Dungeons & Dragons titles.

The Internet Archive has the Al-Qadim: Arabian Adventures source book. 

 07/30/2026