Yendorian Tales: Keep to the Right

Where I've been lately.

           

Irene and I just returned from a western vacation (thank you, Patreon supporters!). We flew into Denver and drove around to Wind Cave National Park, Custer State Park in South Dakota, Mount Rushmore, Badlands National Park, Devil's Tower, Rocky Mountain National Park, and Colorado Springs, ending back in Denver for a visit to some museums. During the trip, I had to laugh a few times, because in both driving and walking (e.g., inside museums), I found myself adopting the same "rightmost" exploration pattern that I use in games.

   

As usual when I do that, I'm reminded that leftmost would make more sense. When you encounter a narrative spread across multiple displays in a museum, for instance, it almost always goes left-to-right. On the other hand, the rightmost path better corresponds with both vehicle and foot traffic. A leftmost approach to a national park, for instance, would have you constantly taking left turns across traffic. In any event, the rightmost method is hard-coded in me from years of experience, so I don't think I'll abandon it even in the face of logical alternatives. I just wish I had a better approach to the whole "island" thing. 

   

As an aside, one of the places we visited was the American Numismatic Association's Money Museum in Colorado Springs. I used to be into coin collecting as a kid, and the visit prompted me to dig my old collection out from the closet and start taking an inventory of what I have. I don't think any of the coins are very valuable, but on the other hand, I've had them for about 50 years, and some of them came from my father, who might have had them for 50 years before that. Anyway, if any of my readers are really into coins and wouldn't mind assessing my list when I'm finished, I would appreciate it.

          

My explorations for most of this session.

        

Let's get back into Yendorian Tales. The land of Yendor is in trouble. Monsters have been invading the mines, threatening the production of Nuore, the reagent necessary to fuel all magic. The great wizard Zamora was struck down by a shadowy figure during a public address; the orb that was supposed to banish all evil was stolen. Our only clues to restoring order are to be found in Zamora's journal, which only members of the Society of Wizards can translate. The first one, the Hermit, told us to seek out the Diplomat. We began this session attempting to do just that.

   

There are 13 cities in the land, and at the beginning of this session, I had only explored five of them. Since I had no specific leads on the Diplomat, I decided to just go in order of the various cities and caves, working my way counter-clockwise around the world., starting with the mines between Helsignor and Mantov. The mines don't have names, so I just numbered them on my map or used other descriptors.

         

A lot of the last seven hours was just this.

        

Here are the highlights:

   

Mine 3

       

Standard mine; two entrances; lots of unprocessed Nuore, silver, platinum. Enemies were of the easy, early-game type, like centipedes, wasps, rats, and a few goblins—which was good because insects and vermin are more likely to carry processed Nuore but less likely to require me to consume it. There were also a few battles with rare but difficult lava beasts, which I mostly fled. In hidden chests, I found a Scroll of Gravity and a Key of Duomin, neither of which I really understood until the end (see below). 

     

I don't know why I took so few screenshots during this section. Here's one of my clerics having reached Level 7.

         

Mine 4

     

Another standard mine, this one with rogues, goblins, and hobgoblins. There were three entrances, one quite far from the others. Ores were Nuore, gold, and platinum. It had a large treasure chamber with 11 chests, including lots of processed Nuore, long bows +2, and battle axes +2. In a buried chest, I found Healing Ointment, which I didn't think anything of at the time.

       

My inventory's starting to get a bit crazy. This is one of several pages.

        

By this point, I had enough experience to go up another level, so I returned to the starting cities to sell my ore and excess goods and level up. Some notes here:

 

• By this time, I was fleeing from most battles just because I didn't want to take the time to fight them. I only bothered to stand my ground if the number of enemies was small.

• After about my ninth time getting arrested for accidentally riding my horse into a building, I decided to give up on horses.

• My positive praise for the economy was a bit premature. After I sold my accumulated items and ore, I had hundreds of thousands of gold pieces. I still had hundreds of thousands after I paid for training to Level 7 and bought the stamina and strength upgrades in Mantov. Even still, the game has plenty of "money sinks" in terms of paying for weapon enchantments, processed Nuore, and potions, so I'm not quite ready to say the economy is "broken."

      

How was I carrying all of these things?

     

After leveling and straightening out my finances, I moved on to:

   

Port Hope 

      

On the southwest peninsula. It had a mining shop, healer, inn, map store (with it, I have all but four), and a guy who will enhance +3 and +4 weapons and armor. The governor gave me a quest to find the amulet belonging to his grandfather, Anatolay, who founded the town that bears his name. 

   

I was in the habit of feeding JOURNAL and DIPLOMAT to everyone I met, not expecting to encounter a new lead for a couple of towns, maybe. To my surprise, the second person I spoke with turned out to be the Diplomat: Paundor, the governor's advisor. He told me to seek out a man named Ian who makes unique weapons. "He should have what you need." I don't see how that helps me translate the journal, but okay.

        

Meeting with Paundor.

        

My notes said that Ian was in the tavern in Mantov. He was the one who made me buy a round for the house last time. I returned to Mantov and spoke to him. He said that he had recently sold an "unusual item" to someone in Moloch: a grapnel arrow. "[It] could be used to retrieve an item well out of your reach," he said.

   

Moloch is on the far eastern coast, and I decided to get there organically rather than head directly there, starting with exploring the two mines northwest of Port Hope, then continuing with the two mines west of Mantov.

     

Cave 1 

       

The two entrances northwest of Port Hope turned out to go to the same cave. I didn't call it a "mine" because it had no tracks and it was hard to get anything out of the walls. If I did get anything, it was invariably lead. Enemies were the same rats, bats, insects, and other vermin I was able to defeat at Level 1, which confused me—until the game started mixing some vampires into the battles. These guys hit hard, though they don't have the magic abilities that I was expecting from Dungeons & Dragons. There was another large treasure room with so much more processed Nuore that I was no longer worried about running out. A lot of Ancient Scrolls, too, which I can sell in the Athaneum for a lot of gold.

 

You guys were barely a threat six levels ago.

          

Mine 5

      

So close to Mantov that you can see it from the city. It has three entrances. Two are on either side of the city. I couldn't tell where the third one was, because it was inaccessible from the ground. I don't know whether it's one of the entrances marked on the map or not.

     

One of the mine's buried chests had a map piece showing an island in what I had thought was not part of the game world (the part covered by text in the map above). Ore was iron, nickel, Nuore, gold, and platinum. In addition to magicians, rogues, wizards, gnolls, hobgoblins, and mine trolls, we met a new enemy here: devils. More below.

      

A treasure chamber! No enemies, just a lot of chests.

      

I think that it was in this one that I found the Key of Port Hope. I had previously found a Key of Duomin and the Key of Devon, but I didn't recognize them as cities, as I hadn't been to them. I just figured they were quest items that would come into play later. I noticed that they show up in the (U)se menu, though, and I gave one a try. It turns out that they teleport you to the associated cities!

   

This made me start experimenting with some of the other items I had been accumulating and not using. Some findings:

   

• Scroll of Gravity: Casts a major mass-damage spell in combat, injuring all enemies.
• Healing Ointment: Fully heals one character.
• Dispelling Gem: Does a ton of damage to undead.
• Scroll of Holy Rain: Also does a ton of damage to undead.

       

The Scroll of Holy Rain helps out against some skeletons and mummies.

         

These items can only be cast once per rest, but since there's no real downside to resting (except having to wait about 30 seconds), that's not much of a disadvantage. 

 

     

Mine 6 

 

The relatively easy battles with goblins, hobgoblins, and gnolls didn't prepare me for the fixed battles in caves, which feature demons, devils, and gargoyles—sometimes a dozen or more. (I don't know whether it's a joke or just an homage to Ultima that demons and gargoyles are basically indistinguishable.) On the positive side, these enemies don't have the magic or ranged abilities that you might expect from experience with previous games. On the negative side, they are almost impossible to hit, they're immune to a lot of spells, and they hit so hard that they swipe away a third of a character's hit points. They also have a ton of hit points themselves. I found that I couldn't win battles with more than a few at a time, and even then it was only carefully monitoring and healing my characters round by round.

      

Ah, right. Sometimes they have one or two Princes of Evil with them, too.

       

My first thought in trying to defeat them was to hit them with as many mass-damage spells as I could, including the wizard's "Ice Storm" and the clerics' "Severe Wounds." But since the demons et al. take so little damage from these spells (they "save" or whatever this game's equivalent is), I was just depleting my spell points fast. Eventually, though, I found a strategy that worked most of the time:

    

• Rest before battle. 

• Go into the battle with "Shield Mist" on (you can cast defensive spells before combat, something I didn't realize until this session).

• Immediately soften them with the Scroll of Gravity. 

• Round after round, cast low-level mass damage spells like the clerics' "Minor Wound" and the wizard's "Flying Rocks." Since these spells don't use many magic points, I can cast dozens of them, and the enemies take about as much damage since they were always resisting the higher-level spells.   

           

Casting "Minor Wound" on a bunch of demons. The damage isn't much, but it adds up.

          

This strategy softened them up enough that my fighters could do the rest, at least if the size of the enemy party was manageable. Still, the strategy would be more effective with higher-level  mass-damage spells, which is only possible with plenty of Nuore and purple potions (which restore mana), so you again see why I'm reluctant to call the economy "broken" just yet.

     

I found the Key of Stachus and a couple of Healing Stones that don't seem to have any use. Maybe they're quest items. If they are, the interesting thing about them is that I found them in random battles. It would be nice if I could find keys to any one of the starting cities. Maybe I missed them in the first few mines, before I really knew what I was doing.

    

Stachus 

   

This town in the center of the continent offered wizard training, a weapon shop, a mine store, an inn, and a barracks for miners. My question about the Healing Stone was answered almost immediately when a miner named Louis told me that some monsters had stolen it from the town (leaving aside the fact that I found three of them). I finally met a man named Murray who gave me the quest, which I immediately turned in for 4,500 gold pieces and enough experience points to reach Level 8.

      

This kind of thing never happens when I'm in town.

      

A guy named Artemus, working for the archivist at the Athaneum, offered me 10,000 gold pieces for the city keys I'd found. I didn't sell them. They seem too useful.

    

I started seeing giants in the wilderness when I left the city. I avoided them.

 

Maybe later.

         

Mine 7

   

A small but standard Nuore/iron/silver mine, though the ore came in paltry amounts. Enemies were sparse; there was one fixed battle with undead; I didn't find anything interesting. I entered southeast of Stachus, but a second exit brought me within spitting distance of Moloch.

       

Moloch    

     

Moloch styles itself as a "Holy Town of Moloch," which I find amusing given that in Paradise Lost, Moloch is a child-eating demon. I think he's also a villain in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Also ironic is that the dead won't stay dead in Moloch's graveyard. A warrior named Vance, charged with keeping them under control, was fighting a losing battle until we showed up. We fought four difficult battles with skeletons, zombies, ghosts, and vampires, hard enough that I had to rest a couple of times in between to recharge my spell points and items.

     

Using the Dispelling Gem on the ghosts.

           

Once we defeated the undead, a cleric offered us a choice between a gold reward and a holy reward. I chose the latter, and we got 25 added to our maximum hit points. That's an increase of between 25 and 40%. Nice. 

     

Although having an NPC refer to "hit points" literally breaks the illusion a bit.

            

The town has a large concentration of clerics, including a healer and a cleric trainer (wouldn't it make more sense if the Healing Stone had been here?). Almost immediately, I found the Grapnel Arrow in a guild shop. The potion shop  sold both processed Nuore and purple potions, so I can see returning here a lot. Hopefully, I'll find its key somewhere.

      

In a chapel, Terence, who used to be a cartographer, cleared up the map issue: there is an island in the southeast quadrant, but it is surrounded by mist. He suggested that I ask Alexander about the mist. My notes say that he owns the weapon and armor shops in Saccate.

       

I remember that guy!

       

A guy named Bysette, wandering around the town well, responded to JOURNAL, but he wanted to know who sent me. Since I didn't have a name, he wouldn't offer anything yet.

     

Finishing Up

 

I attacked a random NPC in Moloch so I'd get arrested when I left the city and get transported to Mantov. There, I got my fighters trained and sold my excess armor. 

  

I walked to Saccate, where Alexander told me that the island in the mists "has long been used as a prison for the most feared criminal in the history of Yendor," but he wouldn't tell me anything more about him. He said that the mist surrounding the island seems to be the same mist now encroaching on the main island of Yendor.

   

I walked to Thieves' Guild, got my thief leveled up, and then used the Key of Port Hope to warp there. I returned to Paundor, prompted him with ARROW, and got this in reply: "Explore deep into the Northern Caves and return to me the Great Red Gem that is guarded by the black winged beasts."

        

So is it just an arrow with a hook? That's not exactly a groundbreaking invention.

              

The "Northern Caves" could be the ones just north of Port Hope. One of them had a lot of bats, so that would fit—except that I already explored those caves, and didn't find a Great Red Gem. On the other hand, my method of "exploration" has been to just follow the right wall (except when I can obviously see something that I wouldn't reach by doing that), so it's possible I missed parts of all of the caverns and mines I've explored.

   

Other possibilities are that the Northern Caves are the ones I already explored north of Saccate, or that they're the ones in the far northeast part of the map. I guess I'll try Cave 1 again before I go elsewhere. 

      

There were some moments when I wasn't enjoying the game, mostly due to all the walking and combat, but it came around again with some of the spell and travel shortcuts that we discussed. I have four more towns and 10 more cave entrances to explore on the main continent, and after that, I imagine it will move a lot more quickly.

       

Time so far: 21 hours 

    

****

   

Previous entry in this series

   

 

BRIEFs: Black Crystal (1982), Creepers (1982), Chitei Tanken (1982)

A game of its era.

      

Black Crystal

United Kingdom

Carnell Software (developer and original publisher); Mastervision (later publisher)

Released 1982 for ZX-81 and ZX Spectrum, 1985 for Commodore 64

Rejected For: Insufficient character development

     

For years, I've laughed at videos that show enraged computer users pounding at the monitors of their computers, as if (a) the monitor holds the CPU, and (b) beating at the CPU's casing would somehow fix whatever problem they're having with Microsoft Excel. Now I get it. If I had purchased Black Crystal back in 1982, not only would my television and ZX Spectrum keyboard have been in pieces by the end of the day, but I would have probably also smashed my Super Simon for good measure.

   

Black Crystal is a teach-you-how-to-play-and-punish-you-for-getting-it-wrong game that occupies a weird space between adventure game and RPG. It progresses through several phases as the player tries to find seven magical rings. Each phase offers a slight change to the interface, but there is no phase in which it isn't infuriating. In over 16 years of blogging, I can't believe that no commenter has ever mentioned it. I only tried to play it for a couple of hours, and I may have nightmares about it for the rest of my life.

     

These don't seem mutually exclusive.

      

The Tolkienesque backstory starts with the origins of the universe and brings us to the near-present, when an evil wizard named Tobias learned a spell that created the titular black crystal. For centuries, it has cast a pall over the Earth. Now a wizard named Gora has learned how to destroy the crystal, but it involves finding the seven rings that were splintered off the One Ring created by the creator god. The player can choose to play as a warrior, an elf, or a wizard. This choice affects the number of physical and spiritual points that he has, and thus how many actions he can perform in each category before becoming exhausted.

    

The game starts in the Kingdom of Beroth, a 30 x 15 map. Somewhere among its 450 squares, two of the magic rings are concealed. The player has to find them both (which involves no more than walking in the right square), then make his way to the Castle of Shadows to begin the next phase.

     

This is where I either need to lunge forward with my own sword or raise my shield above my head.

        

Text is insufficient to describe what happens next, so I highly encourage you to watch YouTuber SpongGames attempt to play the ZX81 version. Basically, as you enter each square—or pause too long in a square that you're already in—there's a chance that you'll be attacked by an enemy. These include balrogs, trolls, centaurs, wraiths, and forest dragons. After identifying your foe, the game tells you what the foe is doing. Examples:

   

• "It jabs its sword forward."
• "It moves forward to attack." 
• "It raises its sword above its head."

    

In response to what the enemy does, the player can:

   

• Thrust his sword upward.
• Thrust his sword forward.
• Thrust his sword downward.
• Hold his shield angled upward.
• Hold his shield angled forward.
• Cast "Lightning."
• Cast "Power Drain."
• Cast "Swerve."

   

There is a generally "right" response to each enemy action. For instance, if a centaur raises his sword above his head, you can kill him with a quick thrust of the sword forward. If the centaur starts to bring his sword down, though, it's time to counter with a "shield up." Generally, when enemies move forward, the correct response is to thrust forward, except for balrogs, flying lizards, forest dragons, and bats, for whom you want to thrust upward. If the enemy attacks forward, you respond with shield forward. Undead are susceptible to "Power Drain." Almost everyone is susceptible to "Lightning."

      

I did not act fast enough.

      

So far, I realize this doesn't sound so hard. Just identify the right counter and use it. The problems are:

  

• You only get one shot. There are no "lives." If you choose the wrong action, the enemy will kill you and you start over at the original square (although you keep any rings you found).

• You sometimes only have a split second to make the decision. The game is maddeningly inconsistent about this.

• The actions are mapped to weird keys. For instance, the three sword keys are Q, R, and U. The three spells are Z, B, and P. Even moving is weird. The cluster looks like this:

   

                   1  7  2

                   5      8

                   3  6  4

       

• If you don't move immediately after killing an enemy, you'll get attacked by another one, which is a problem because you only get so many physical or spiritual attacks before you get exhausted. Moving without incident incrementally restores those points.

   

But this most of all:

   

• The keyboard is horribly nonreactive. You can't just tap the key. You have to hold it down long enough for the computer to read that the key has been pressed, but not so long that you trigger the next enemy action before you're ready. If you're moving across the landscape, it's virtually impossible to move in a systematic manner in which you don't move too far or get attacked because the machine read no input at all and thinks you're just dallying. 

    

The last issue has to do with the ZX Spectrum having no keyboard buffer and the game not making it clear when it's expecting an input. It's not an emulator issue. The manual even warns about it.

   

I lasted long enough to find two rings in the Kingdom of Beroth, which allowed me entry to the Castle of Shadows. There, I had to find the secret door into the upper-left chamber, find a monolith that gave me the "Invisibility" spell, and find a stairway upwards. This is all while undead enemies are attacking; they mostly only respond to spells, but fortunately spiritual power regenerates with every step. There are other events, like chandeliers falling and spears firing out of holes in the wall, which demand the use of a shield or "Swerve." Even using save states to take the edge of incorrect choices (which stopped me from starting over at the beginning every time), after an hour, I was so sick of the keyboard issue that I decided not to go on.

        

What kind of sociopath puts spikes in a chandelier?!

      

From the manual instructions, the next three maps would be the Shaggoth's Lair, the Temple of the Fire Demon, and the Tower of Beroth. Shaggoth's Lair apparently has a text adventure interface where the player types commands like MOVE NORTH and GET LAMP. The other two maps use the interface discussed here. After that are at least eight more maps: Sea of Sand, Underground Swamp, Gold Mine, Bridge over Abyss, Temple Maze, Room of Pits, Lords of Chaos, and The Black Crystal. Each of these has additional instructions; for instance, in the gold mine, you use keys 5-8 to dig. In Temple Maze, you apparently fire lightning bolts with the "Z" key. For the Lords of Chaos level, the manual says: "This is a strategy game. You make your move and the Lords of Chaos make theirs." You have to drop the Fire Ring on the ground and lead the Lords of Chaos onto the ring to banish them, but "if they see the ring, they will throw it across the room."

      

Meeting a skeleton on Level 2 of the Castle of Shadows.

 

 

If you're interested in what these levels look like, I direct you to a series of videos created 16 years ago by YouTube user Allmightybobful. He hate-played every level of the game (the C64 version) with comments like:

      

• "As we prepare to enter the Castle of Shadows . . . we take a moment to wonder why a game like this is allowed to exist." 

• "If you needed proof that a gaming company changed its mission statement to 'we hate gamers,' look no further." 

• "Fear and loathing turn into unbridled rage at Mastertronic as I sink deeper into despair." 

      

I'll spare myself, since despite its listing on GameBase64, it's not an RPG. Its statistics are more of an inventory of physical and magical power and not inherent attributes that improve.  

       

The six programs are completely separate, incidentally. You have to pass your progress from each program to the next by entering a numeric code.

        

Although I don't find this terminology anywhere within the game's documentation, there are plenty of web sites that call it the first of the "third continent" series, the second of which was Volcanic Dungeon (1982) from the same year. I reviewed it a few years ago and played it to the end despite concluding that it wasn't really an RPG, either. It was a lot easier and more enjoyable than Black Crystal, and it had the same deterministic approach to combat, although based on equipment rather than actions. The third game in the series is supposedly The Wrath of Magra (1984), which I recently added to my list after someone added it to Wikipedia. I'll play it eventually. 

    

*****

       

I don't know what options you're setting with the 0-3 keys.

       

Creepers

United States

Silicon Valley Systems (developer and publisher)

Released 1982 for Atari 800

Rejected For: Insufficient character development

     

Creepers is a proto-RPG in which you control a party of eight characters at once: Sir Denish the Knight, Squire Cott, Dell the Scholar, Gala the Huntress, Dike the Thief, Zigg the Wizard, a merchant, and a prince. They travel together in a square formation through dungeon corridors, seeking the Golden Chalice. They encounter monsters, traps, and trapped chests. Although the characters travel in a blob, the player selects one of them to be "active" at any given time and can rotate that character's position in the overall party configuration.

   

The shtick is that each character has a set of skills that must be called into play in certain circumstances. For instance, Zigg can launch a fireball in any cardinal direction (out of a limited pool of them) and Gala can do the same with arrows. If enemies get into melee range, Sir Denish and Squire Cott can attack with a sword and martial arts, respectively. Dike is there to disarm traps, and Dell can teleport the party to safety. If any of these characters dies, the player loses access to their skills. It reminds me a bit of Oldorf's Revenge (1980), although the interface is completely different.

      

The wizard shoots a fireball at a centipede.

        

The commands are a bit of a nightmare, and I wasn't able to find a manual that documented them all. For some reason, my party members just started dying for no reason while I was experimenting. (I think they die if you just sit still too long.) Although each character has offensive and defensive attributes, they don't change during the game. MobyGames thus classifies it as an adventure game, but AtariMania thinks it's an RPG. 

   

Silicon Valley Systems was based in Belmont, California. They issued about half a dozen titles for Atari and Apple computers between 1982 and 1983, none of them RPGs. Perhaps the most intriguing is the all-text Final Exam (1982), in which you play a character desperately trying to study for a final exam, but facing obstacles such as, in MobyGames's summary, "a kegger next door . . . a homicidal ex-girlfriend, [and] your roommate's drug score." Why not just create a game in which you show up for class in your underwear while you're at it?

    

****

    

A contender appears.

        

Chitei Tanken

"Underground Exploration" (literal translation); "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (thematic)

Japan

Koei Micom System (developer and publisher) 

Released 1982 for PC-88

Rejected For: Insufficient character development

   

There have been a number of contenders put forward over the years for the first RPG from a Japanese developer. All of them were released in 1982. The only one I've covered that is unquestionably an RPG is The Dragon & Princess, and I think it remains the best candidate, but a few years ago, someone re-discovered Chitei Tanken, released in March of 1982, and it began appearing in databases with "first Japanese RPG" attached.

   

As longtime readers know, I don't obligate myself to play games written in languages that I can't type into a translator. I made that rule when typing was how you had to do it. Nowadays, of course, there are several ways to translate directly from a computer screen. I haven't changed my rule because I find a strong correlation between "can't type it with a western keyboard" and "automatic translation software does a miserable job." On the other hand, many of these early Japanese games often have very little text in Japanese in the first place. I feel like I ought to play a landmark game like "first RPG" if I possibly can.

       

A list of potential characters.

          

Fortunately, I watched this excellent video by YouTuber Retro Gaming Japan, which not only fully describes the game but wrestles with the question about what an "RPG" really is. The narrator supplies evidence that author (and Koei co-founder) Yōichi Erikawa has said in interviews that he believes he wrote the first Japanese RPG. The narrator himself is torn on the issue and finally decides that it is an RPG, but only slightly. His ruling is based in part on my own definitions (he quotes my blog)—but as they were four or five years ago, before I decided that character development was so important that it always had to be present, and not just one of three potential criteria. So while pre-COVID Chet might have agreed with him, current Chet says that while Chitei Tanken has RPG elements, its lack of character progression disqualifies it as a full RPG. 

    

Chitei Tanken has the player take a party of between three and six characters into a multi-level dungeon with the nebulous goal of gathering as much treasure as possible. You can apparently "win" by opening the last chest on the final level. The player creates the primary character and then selects the rest of the party from a list of 10 characters with fixed names but variable attributes: strength, health, daily wage and provisions (how much you have to pay him every day), and a dollar value at which the player can "buy out" the contract and replace the character. The main character also has attributes of intelligence and courage. Strength, health, courage, and intelligence all have maximums of 1,000; if any of them reach 0, the character dies. These attributes cannot be improved, but they can be "healed."

     

The combat screen.

       

I believe the manual for the game has been lost, but thematically it isn't a fantasy game. It seems to draw inspiration from the Jules Verne novel Journey to the Center of the Earth and/or the 1959 film adaptation, which was translated as Chitei Tanken despite the book having been traditionally translated as Chitei Ryokō. Characters are assumed to have rifles; the main character can use a portable computer; terrain includes swamps and deserts; enemies include Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra. The player can sell gold (which he must mine) and buy food and medicines at "native" villages on each floor. The interface is almost purely text, and the narrator of the video describes it much more as a logistic/survival simulator in which the player has to carefully manage time (every action takes some number of hours and sometimes health), terrain, equipment, food, and money.

     

I'll conclude with the video narrator's view: "This game might have been influenced by board games or simulation games. Any similarities to proper role-playing games might be a coincidence, and it might be that it was only called a role-playing game retrospectively."

     

He goes on: "Alternatively, one might consider this game to be some kind of proto-RPG; that is to say, an early adaptation or example of this genre that does not yet quite fulfill all requirements of RPGs." I think he nailed it there. Not only that: this description works for pretty much every RPG in this BRIEF.

 

The Search for Freedom: Repeated Injuries

Is this a warning or a hint?

       

Guest entry by commenter AlphabeticalAnonymous: 

 

Having already cleansed the streets and buildings of Smythetown of any evil presence (take that, heroes of Phlan), and with the city gates locked tight by evil magic, our party’s only course is to descend into the catacombs beneath the city where the evil wizard Macabath has holed up. What remains unexplained is why, having conquered this town, he would want to secret himself deep underground. Though I enjoyed the attention to detail in the opening text, the game world has so far mostly failed to capitalize on the initial setup. Then again, I’m only now entering the first of what promises to be 22 dungeon levels—perhaps there’s much more to come.

We descend and again find the catacombs to be as dark as a black steer’s tuchus on a moonless prairie night. Ruxpin readies a lantern and the screen barely lightens, almost imperceptibly. He can't hold two lanterns and a weapon, so he trades a lantern to Becket, who readies his as well. Trading items between characters is reasonably quick, with useful keyboard shortcuts. The game also offers a “Distribute” option, which the manual says will “unready all items, place them in a large pool in front of [the party], and organize them by item type.” I haven’t seen a need for that yet, but time will tell. At present, with two lanterns active (and maximum screen brightness, but then a 1990’s player could have done that too) we can just about see. However, all the screen brightness in the world won’t help us too much: we seem to be able to see only a single square ahead of us. 

We no longer have an active compass, but the automap continues to track our progress just fine. We could have Becket cast “Magic Compass” (which lasts three hours per level of the caster), but with the automap, we don’t see a need for it yet. Similarly, the mage spell “Locate” (which reveals our x/y coordinates in any town or dungeon) seems unnecessary with a fully working automap. Maybe we’ll reconsider these spells if spinners or redirectional teleporters show up. Also worth mentioning, because it seems unique among our spells so far, is the cleric’s “Safety,” which brings the party back to the nearest safe inn but at the cost to the caster of a permanent reduction of 20 magic points. My cleric only has 13 magic points, and even at higher levels it’s hard to imagine why I would choose "Safety" over a reload.
     

All first-level cleric spells. "Safety" sounds like a doozy.

      

Before long we stumble across some monsters and are offered the choice to try to sneak up on them, approach them, or flee. We choose to sneak but are told that the monsters see us. They turn out to be five rats and five bats, each with 2-4 HP and no armor. I wonder whether we were supposed to be grinding for experience and gold down here before mucking about fighting the sentries in their towers. When the battle is over, these fearsome foes have collectively managed to inflict a single point of damage on one character. No doubt about it, we were definitely supposed to be fighting this sort of enemy before the sentries. Nonetheless, I like that the game let us foolishly risk life and limb against the guards instead of railroading us immediately down into the catacombs. For our pains we earn 4 experience each and a total of 14 gold. 

Moving along, I am told that we spot an ambush—we can flee, or continue on and pretend that we don’t see them. Fleeing seems unwarranted given our recent victory, so we choose to "Act unsuspecting, then attack." The same as the last group, we find five bats and five rats. Our investments in armor prove their worth: the animals land several hits that all do zero damage. By coincidence or our own strategy, it is again Durkon, my other cleric, who loses our only hit point before we clear the enemies away for similar, rather paltry rewards. Leveling up (which requires us to gain 400 experience each) feels as far away as ever. 

         

First-level mage spells.

       

After further exploration and a few similar combats, in which we are ambushed by four goblins (who again pose little threat) we set off a “shower of spikes” that rains down upon the party. Some sort of hidden roll against dexterity or luck must follow: Ruxpin, Becket, and Kizke dodge; Tyrion is hit for 2 damage, and Durkon and Elphaba for 5. We move forward a square, and this time Ruxpin spots the trap. We can choose to disarm it or leave; the latter handily takes us back to the previous square (but leaves the trap square blank and unmarked on the automap). The clumsy Teddy accidentally sets off a ‘mantrap,’ which is undefined but I prefer to think was an ancient salt-sucking alien. Whatever its form, this trap knocks Ruxpin unconscious. He deserved it: disarming traps is the whole reason we have a thief in the party.

      

We retreat back the way we came, hoping to return to the town inn to rest. By backtracking, we learn something useful, when we find ourselves attacked by monsters on a previously-clear square. This at least clarifies that grinding should be a possibility by roaming around through the catacombs. The sentry guards had stayed cleared once defeated, so I wasn’t sure whether this was a ‘closed’ game in terms of total experience available. However, our newfound knowledge comes at some risk: we are confronted by a 16-HP ogre attended by two 5-HP troglodyte minions. The ogre hits hard but only gets one chance before we slay it; the others go down quickly as well. We once again don't earn much experience, but we do find that they were carrying a chest. Ruxpin isn’t awake to pick its lock, but I think smashing the lock has never yet failed to work. It contains 30 gold, a torch, and cloth armor.

      

Anyone can try to "Smash" or "Pick" the lock, but only a magic-user can cast the "Open" spell. I don't know why anyone would "Leave" it.

     

I started to prepare a detailed description of a combat interaction, but I feel (I hope) that it’s still too early for that. Simple melee brawls were more than sufficient throughout the first level of the catacombs; neither offensive nor defensive magic have been necessary for any of these foes, and it wasn't effective against the sentries, so I hope that opportunities for more complex interactions will eventually crop up. Otherwise, suffice to say that the combat graphics are sparse but adequate. Every character and enemy has a different appearance depending on which way it's facing. Occasionally, it's tough to determine whether an enemy is facing north or south; with the earlier sentries, I had to keep reminding myself that they were all right-handed, because otherwise I kept misinterpreting the art. Every character also seems to have a one-frame animation when they attack: the rat rears on its little hind legs, Tyrion swings his axe, Elphaba clutches her phial of Galadrial (or whatever it is). The combat terrain (always brick walls) seems to always represent the shape of the few tiles around the party when combat began. 

       
We find a number of messages as we explore the catacombs:

      

• An evil wizard can only truly be slain with a magic spell.
• If you map carefully, the locations of secret doors will become more obvious.
• Fight magic with magic.
• Kill him quickly.
• Use items to invoke their magic powers.
• When fierce warriors die, they go straight to hell.
• When Macabath is destroyed, his curse on the city will be lifted.
• Stairs are often well concealed.
• Blankets of Darkness and traps usually conceal something important.

      

As you see, most of these messages feel like hints to the party. And as usual, that raises the question of why these messages are there in the first place. So far, Macabath hasn’t done anything so dramatic as to use the walls of his dungeon to write his most secret weaknesses, but why would Macabath carve hints about how he could be “truly slain” into the walls of his home? Or does the carving predate him? Or did someone just whisper it to us from the shadows? Come to think of it, at least in the first level of the catacombs, we find zero evidence that they ever served any burial or related function. The only one we know buried down here is Macabath—buried alive, a la Werdna.

      

I thought this was fun: secret doors are represented by walls that can be walked through in combat.

      

We continue to fight lots of bats and rats, ogres and troglodytes, gremlins and goblins. The enemies always occur in the same combinations, though sometimes in smaller numbers than our initial encounters. The individual rewards of any one combat remain small, but their number means we slowly make progress in building up gold and (to a lesser extent) experience points. 
      
A few hours in, we thrash another group and find another chest as a reward. Durkon smashes it open, only to set off a "BOMB trap." This is bad news, as it does 10-18 damage to all party members. The bomb kills Ruxpin stone dead (he had been knocked out again), and leaves only two characters with a single HP each. Probably we shouldn't have left our primary trap-detector unconscious. Upon reading in the manual that resurrection of a dead character at the Temple costs 2000 gold (we have 231)—and permanently reduces endurance—I’m forced to reload. Intriguingly, such a serious trap isn’t there on the reload, likely because it had been spawned from a random combat encounter. Nonetheless, we haven’t learned our lesson yet: after defeating a band of gremlins and goblins, Durkon smashes open their chest to find a "Psychic Drain" trap. This causes him to lose 200 XP! Luckily, the game has some small amount of mercy and merely resets him back to his starting value of 300 XP. I already reloaded once, so I roll with this one. We find several other types of traps as well: we fall into a pit of spikes, choke on poison gas, and more. I eventually learn that the “Open” spell, which automatically disables any traps on a chest or door, is an adventurer’s best friend. [Ed. Funny how AA's experience parallels what I'm currently seeing in Yendorian Tales.]
       
We spend several game-days exploring the top floor of the catacombs. Encamping in those dark halls is a perfectly adequate way for characters to rest and recuperate, so long as one character stays awake to keep watch and warn of any approaching enemies. Honestly, with these enemies even setting no watch at all would still be fine: this would merely mean that the monsters get a free ambush, which is to say a first, free round of actions before our party can respond. At one point we find the descending stairs and decide to poke our heads down to see what we can find. Foolish! A one-way door leads out of the stairwell, then we find ourselves in a series of "magical darkness" squares in which our lanterns cast no light. This would be more of a problem if the automap didn’t continue to faithfully record our location, the nearby walls, and other useful notations. More worrying is the notation it shows on the stairs we just descended: they’re now on the wrong side of a one-way door, leaving us no way to reascend.
   

The first level of the first dungeon.

       

The enemies on the second level are the same as on the first. But at least a few things are more interesting. For one, we find the “corpse of rotting warrior,” who turns out to be still holding a silver two-handed sword. According to the manual, this is the second-best weapon in the game (after only Soulseeker itself), and we’ve found it after just a few hours of play. It takes two hands to wield and requires 16 strength, but it does 3D6+2 damage—far more than the 2D4 hammers most of the party is wielding. We also find a lot more traps, including another bomb trap that knocks out the entire party. We probably need to start casting “Trap Zap” as soon as we detect the presence of any traps. We reload, explore further, and eventually find the stairs back up—the stairway back up was accessible only a few squares away from where we originally supposed ourselves to be trapped on the second level. The party happily clambers back up and finishes exploring Catacombs Level 1. Only 21 dungeon levels left to explore.
        

Time played: 11 hours. 3 party deaths. 2 reloads.

     

[Ed. And with that, I have entries scheduled through the end of my vacation. Thanks again, AA, for making this possible!] 

   

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