Game 110: Keef the Thief: A Boy and His Lockpick (1989)

"Gee, I wonder in what decade this game was made" -- no one.

Every so often, while going through the games on my blog list, I fire up a new game and get in a bad mood from the opening screen. This is what I'm going to be staring at for the next couple dozen hours?, I think, and start thinking of ways I can avoid it. I can't pretend I have emulator problems, because a dozen of my readers will pipe up and say it works fine for them. Maybe I could just quietly drop it from my list? No, that won't work: I've been mentioning it for the last two postings. I could write one short posting, move on, and hope they don't notice. That worked for Moebius. Then again, I had about one-third of my readership back then. Dammit! I guess I'll just postpone it for several months and hope I die before I get to it.

Everything about Keef the Thief annoys me. The title annoys me. The goofy portrait of the protagonist on the main screen annoys me (but not nearly enough as the box cover). That I have to play as "Keef the Thief" annoys me; would it really have broken the game engine to allow the player to name his own character? The logo for the damned company that makes the game annoys me:

Any company that has the word "dog" in its name generally annoys me.

The copy protection questions that I have to answer when the game starts, forcing me to consult an long and poorly-organized list of possibilities, annoys the hell out of me. The disco music (way to break the fantasy immersion, jackasses) annoys me--I turned it off. The interface annoys me--it's way too easy to click on an unintended thing.

Why didn't they just use an online authentication code or something?

Perhaps what annoys me the most, however, is how clever the game thinks it is. A rumor has it that the game was originally supposed to be a standard, classic high fantasy adventure, but that during development, one of the creators entered a bunch of joke text on each screen as a placeholder. EA liked the joke text so much that it decided to change the game to a comedy. If that's true (and I'm not convinced it is), I hope the EA executive that made that decision was fired. The "comedy" in the game is almost universally horrible.

Ho ho ho. Anachronisms are always a riot.

Can I find a way to argue that it's not an RPG? No, I guess not. It has attributes, and the combat that we're going to have to discuss seems to be based on them; it's got a proper CRPG inventory; and the character does gain experience and levels. It has adventure game trappings, to be sure--another hybrid--but it definitely qualifies as a CRPG.

The game rolls random stats and gold when you first start. You can start-scum to get better values if you want.

Nothing to do but suck it up and play it. But if you grouse about it enough at the beginning of your entry, you'll only have to write a few paragraphs of gameplay. Also, you can spend a bunch of the first entry summarizing the back story. Sigh. Fine. Let's get to it.

The game has you playing in the guise of (duh) Keef, a young thief who has just been kicked out of his home city by the disgusted Town Council after efforts to train him as a priest, a wizard, and a fighter have failed (though not without leaving him with some associated skills). The Eldest One has led him out into the jungle, weaponless and penniless, pointed him in the direction of the city of Same Mercon, and told him never to return, "not even if you conquer the world and become God-King."

The game is set in the remains of a collapsed empire, in an area called "Tri-Cities," a designation that immediately takes me back to 2002, when I spent a night in Kennewick General Hospital, howling in agony, after trying to impress my friends by casually tossing some exotic variety of chili in my mouth and chomping it down. But I digress. These tri-cities used to be ruled by an emperor named Telloc, who disappeared while trying to cast a spell on himself to ward off a prophecy that he would disappear. The city of Same Mercon ("jeweled city") is the old capital; the city of Tel Hande ("emperor's shield") is a walled fortress where the inhabitants live in a "police state" and believe the emperor will return; and the city of Tel Santi ("emperor's roost") is a huge temple where the inhabitants guard some wondrous artifact.

Keef is the fourth adventure-RPG hybrid we've seen this year, and like all but Hero's Quest, the result of the cross-breeding is sterile and deformed. Exploration in the game is an odd mix of static screens (as in B.A.T.) when you explore in towns, and 3D navigation (as in the "Gold Box" games) when outside or in dungeons. As you move around town, the directional perspective frequently changes. A little compass attempts to keep you oriented, but I keep getting confused and going the wrong direction.

You want to call her "lovely," it's up to you.

The game has plenty of characters with whom you can talk; unfortunately, every dialogue option costs money. It's a bit crazy. I only started with 107 gold pieces, and if I want to ask someone about his job, I have to spend 5 of them. If I want to ask a fellow thief about good pickings in town, it'll be 40. I suppose you could "talk-scum" by asking the questions and then re-loading the game (you get a single save slot), but that strikes me as unconscionably lame and against my rules, plus part of me worries that the game needs to "register" the dialogue for certain plot events to unfold. (Even when I know that this isn't true, I'm usually paranoid that it is.) Within a few minutes of exploration, I had spent all my starting money on a couple of dialogue options, a dirk, and a rope.

I'm just glad Ultima V didn't adopt this system.

With some experience with adventure-RPG hybrids under my belt, if you asked me what I must want from such a hybrid, it's "adventure-game style puzzles with RPG-style combat." But like most hybrids, Keef doesn't quite measure up. The combat system, I must admit, is highly original: a real-time mechanic in which you maneuver around a battlefield in 360 degrees (though not continuously scrolling). You can charge up to enemies and attack, or back off and hide behind obstacles to regain your strength.

Fighting some drunken bar patrons.

I absolutely hated it before I realized you could maneuver with the arrow keys and attack with the SPACE bar--a mechanic that makes the process more fluid and exciting (clicking with the mouse in the tiny combat window is an exercise in futility). As you attack, blood spatters appear on the faces of the enemies when you hit.

Though innovative, there are a few problems with it. It's devoid of any tactics beyond maneuverability; the tiny view window (which appears if you're wearing a visored helmet or something) feels confining; and my color-blindness means that I can't really distinguish myself, enemies, and obstacles in the tiny battlefield map at the top of the screen. Still, I started this post ready to absolutely excoriate it, but I've progressed to just not thinking it's very good.
 

Keef is, of course, a thief, and part of the gameplay is theoretically about stealing. You have the option to steal from shops and to break into houses in town, though my pre-game experimentation suggests that I need better attributes before I can hope to be very successful at either. The burglary system is particularly vexing. You stand outside a row of houses and wait patiently for the guard to pass by, then choose a house to enter. No lockpicking or anything.

The guard sidles by as I case the property.

But once inside, every time I try to steal something (provided the house has something worth stealing, which it rarely does), I fumble and hurt myself and fail to get the item. Honestly, how is it even possible to fumble and hurt yourself while trying to steal a goblet? In any event, I'm not sure what purpose it serves to steal stuff since there's no "sell" option at the shops. [Later Edit: Thanks to VK, I now know that you can sell the items in a bar. The command to do so is a little obscure.]

If you time things poorly or spend too long in a house, the guard catches you and attacks, and so far I haven't been able to defeat him. Guards also show up if you repeatedly try and fail to steal things from shops.

This, granted, makes sense when what you're trying to steal is a horse.

 
If there's any main quest thread I'm supposed to have picked up, I haven't found it yet. I've mapped the city of Same Mercon and made notes about things to buy and people to talk to once I have more funds. Honestly, I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep my rule against save-scumming when dialogue options cost money. I have to pay 3,000 gold pieces to hear an ogre's response to "Want hear poem?" in the Pink Dragon bar, and if it doesn't deliver, I'm either re-loading or quitting permanently.

***

I don't know how long this game will take me, but I'd like your comments about what happens after this one. I fired up Rings of Medusa for a couple of hours the other day, and I have to admit it seems like an intriguing game, with some nice graphics and innovative elements, but I can't see it as an RPG, not even a hybrid like Sword of Aragon. I can't find evidence that the main character and his units level, and the "inventory" is of a strategy game style where units either have it or not, which is a little different than I think of it for RPGs, in terms of finding interesting magic items, weapons, potions, scrolls, and such to equip and use. That leaves only one of my core criteria present in the game.

This is something I might forgive if there were authentic role-playing choices in the game (as in Aragon), NPC dialogues (as in Space Rogue), or some other common RPG element, but I don't see these here. Instead, the game seems to offer a primarily logistical challenge as you build finances, field large armies, build mines, engage in trade, and administer conquered cities. These are not the types of things I particularly enjoy in games. I'm also finding the interface very frustrating.

It's not a pure strategy game; it's a hybrid of something. I'm just not sure that "something" is an RPG. But I haven't played it for very long, so perhaps I'm missing something. You have a few days to try to sway me one way or the other.