Game 216: City of Death (1985)

I'm not a huge fan of this game, but I have to admit this isn't a bad graphic.

City of Death

United Kingdom

Independently developed; published by Red Shift Ltd.

Released 1985 for ZX Spectrum

Date Started: 16 March 2016
Date Ended: 16 March 2016

Total Hours: 1

Reload Count: 2

Difficulty: Adjustable between very easy (1/5) and moderate (3/5)

Final Rating: 13

Ranking at Time of Posting: 21/213 (10%)

Ranking at Game #452: 57/452 (13%)

City of Death is a silly, inconsequential pseudo-RPG. It was written for the ZX Spectrum. But I repeat myself. I could reject it as an RPG on technical grounds, but I won it in less than an hour, so I guess I might as well say something about it.

As a tape game with no save ability, I knew it wasn't destined to last long. There's no character creation process, just a difficulty setting from "easy" (which is very easy) to "moderate" (which is easy) to "hard" (which is moderate). The setting affects the character's starting attributes: skill, stamina, and coin.

   

   

You play a warrior named Swordbane who has come by boat to the City of Death hoping to find the wizard Bellatrix (oddly given as a male), the only person who can save Swordbane's village from "the dark sorcery of the evil Druids." The setup is that Bellatrix is living in one of the several dozen houses in the city--his position is randomized at the start of the game--and you have to find him. It doesn't take that long even if you visit the houses randomly. After you find him, you have to kill a skeleton. Then the game is over.

[Edit: As commenters pointed out below, the game's "plot" and main screen art are clearly drawn from the Fighting Fantasy gamebook City of Thieves (1983). No acknowledgement to the source material is provided in the game or in the one bit of documentation I found online. I'm guessing it wasn't an official collaboration.]

   

Just off the boat. What is it about the ZX Spectrum that encouraged games with tiny stick figure icons?

   

The map shows various boats, parks, and other interesting features, but the character has to stay on the gridded roads. He moves with the uncomfortable AZXC cluster. All options are always on the screen, even though you have to be in particular places to do them.

Your only hope in finding Bellatrix, other than systematically exploring every house in town, is to purchase hints from the townsfolk. The key mechanic of the game is barging into each house and either ransacking it for gold or paying the occupants for intelligence. You can only visit each house one time.

   

You basically play a sociopath in this game.

   

Searching and stealing has a chance of producing an angry homeowner, whom you then have to fight to the death--more on that below. Offering to pay for help produces a 5 gold piece option and a 10 gold piece option. The 5 gold piece option always produces the same thing: "a skeleton rules this town." The 10 gold piece option gives you some information about Bellatrix, such as "Bellatrix lives close to the palace" or "Bellatrix lives near the tower." The information might be a lie, but lies only come up once, whereas true statements will appear at least twice. Once you have double-confirmation of Bellatrix's whereabouts, there's no reason to keep paying for information; it makes more sense just to loot the houses at that point.

   

   

Combat can occur with residents, as above, or with the guards (blue icons) or "soul-looters" (red or green icons) that patrol key intersections. If you surrender to them, you'll be taken to jail, where you lose a ton of stamina, so that's a bad option. But all combats are to the death, so it's best to avoid guards and soul-looters early in the game.

   

An early character fails to take my advice.

   

In combat, you have various options to strike individual body parts or an option to strike randomly, which has a better chance of hitting but does less damage. You and the enemy exchange blows until one of you is dead. Your success in combat depends on your skill, and the results are really pre-determined. At a skill of 20 or above, house residents never even scratch you. At 50 and above, you're immune to guards and soul-looters.

   

Fighting a soul-looter.

   

Increasing skill and stamina is a matter of finding the game's various shops. You don't actually buy "things" in these shops, you just pay varying amounts of money to increase your skill (weapon shop), stamina (tavern), or both simultaneously (magic shop). 

   

Improving my skill in the armory.

    

When you finally find Bellatrix, either through luck or clues, he significantly boosts your statistics and tells you to go kill the ruler of the city--the skeleton from the hints.

   

   

The skeleton is just wandering around the city, but before you bump into him, you need to get your skill to 75 or above. Below that, it's impossible to win the combat; above it, it's impossible to lose.

I was doomed to fail this one.

  

Killing the skeleton gives you a congratulations screen with the number of moves it took to win. I guess the goal is to try to beat the game in the smallest number of moves possible. This becomes easier when you know the layout of the city and where places like the tower, palace, dungeon, and estuary are.

   

    

As I said, a silly game, barely an RPG, to occupy only the briefest section of time. It earns virtually nothing on the GIMLET:

• 1 point for the game world for a bare-bones framing story.
• 1 point for character creation and development--no creation, minimal development.
• 2 points for NPCs, who are relatively vital to the game.
• 1 point for encounters and foes.
• 1 point for combat, which not only lacks tactics but lacks even random luck.
• 0 points for no equipment.
• 2 points for an economy that's reasonably important.
• 2 points for a main quest.
• 2 points for minimal graphics and sound and an iffy interface.
• 1 point for gameplay, awarded for being somewhat replayable.

The final score of 13 seems a little high, but at least the game was short.

  

  

The developers are given as Peter Carmpouloni and George Carmpouloni, and the only thing that comes up in my Google searches of the brothers are their games. In addition to City of Death, they seem to have been responsible for two adventure games in 1986: Missione Sabotage and Time Sanctuary. The publisher, Red Shift Ltd. in the London Borough of Hackney, had a history of publishing minor titles from independent developers during its brief (1983-1985) existence.

I'm sure that, as a kid, this would have been an adequate time-waster, but....1985? Come on. The ZX Spectrum wasn't a great machine, but it was capable of better than this. I'm still waiting for a 1980s U.K. game that shows that some developer in the country actually understood RPGs. Maybe we'll see it with Fairlight or Runestone or one of the other games coming up this year.