Game 238: Fer & Flamme (1986)

This company will one day own the Might & Magic franchise.

       

Fer & Flamme

("Iron & Flame")

France

Ubisoft (developer and publisher)

Released in 1986 for Amstrad CPC

Date Started: 23 December 2016

      

I have an uncle who did some Peace Corps engineering work in west Africa during the mid-1980s. I can't remember what country, but he was stationed for a while in a fairly remote village of about 2,000 people.  I've heard him describe how the village only had one television set, and that television set only got one channel, and kids would flock to the guy's house and pay whatever they could save--the equivalent of nickels and dimes, I guess--to get to stand in his living room and watch whatever happened to be on. They didn't really care. It could be some politician giving a speech, or Mr. Rogers, or a badly-dubbed episode of Barney Miller, but the sheer novelty of the technology made them happy to watch whatever they could lock their eyes on.

Fer & Flamme is the RPG equivalent of that television set. So was Tyrann, for that matter. Neither game offers a core experience that dozens of American titles weren't offering 5 years earlier, but "globalism" wasn't a word yet, and this was the best you could do if you were in France. That it's the first RPG--perhaps even the first game--from Ubisoft (just look at the crudeness of that logo!) adds a nice layer of irony to the whole thing.

By 1986, France was in its brief "golden age" of RPGs, and Fer & Flamme is one of about 10 French-only titles that we see between 1984 and 1989. Le Maitre Absolu (1989) is the last RPG I can identify that only had a French release. Plenty of other games after that, of course, were given French translations, but overall France's strategy after the 1980s seems to have been to host multi-national conglomerates rather than small independent developers writing specifically for French audiences. (Of course, we can't rule out the alternative hypothesis that a lot of French-only titles simply haven't made it to English databases.) Ubisoft is preeminent among such companies, and it's fun to see their humble beginnings with Fer & Flamme, Le Anneau de Zengara (1987), Le Maître des Ames (1987), and Le Maître Absolu (1989). But the company clearly knew where the money was--distributing American titles in France and later developing titles for global releases--and 1989 is the last year that they fielded anything that requires a diacritical.

There's nothing here we haven't seen before. Even the backstory is written as if the author was trying to be as generic as possible. "Il y a de cela bien longtemps," it begins, a phrase that means the same thing as, and is just as cliched as, "once upon a time." The game is set it the Kingdom of Thulynte, formerly peaceful and ruled by King Ulrik from the capital of Dord, "City of a Thousand Fires." Ulrik was forced to flee when a wizard named Khaal worked some evil magic that turned Thulynte's brave defenders--the "Miniens"--into an army of undead. A resistance tried to oppose Khaal, but it was short-lived, because Khaal "knew everything, saw everything, guessed everything."

The game world as given in the in-game map.

 
The party is a group of mercenaries from the neighboring country of Senghar, which once enjoyed amicable relations with Thulynte, but is now worried about its own security. The party consists of 5 characters chosen from 8 classes: warriors, magicians, elves, thieves, knights, clerics, dwarves, and "tinigens," the game's version of "hobbits." Each has various minimum requirements among the game's four attributes--strength, intelligence, wisdom, and dexterity--and the game gives you 40 points to distribute among them.

I believe using elves and dwarves as separate classes rather than races goes back to original Dungeons & Dragons. Elves are basically fighter/magicians. Dwarves have some special skills related to exploring underground. Warriors and knights seem to be about the same, with warriors perhaps a little stronger and more brutal. My party consists of a knight (Bucher), a magician (Amadou), a cleric (Bruler), a thief (Lumiere), and a dwarf (Roussir).
  

Creating a character.

  
All my characters' names are variations of "fire" themes in French. I did this because I thought that Fer & Flamme meant "fire and flame," and I was going to make fun of the game for such a redundant title. Then I realized that fer actually means "iron"; "fire" is feu. I had to delete like three paragraphs.

During character creation, you have the option to purchase weapons, armor, shields, and helms for the characters. Everyone gets 600 gold pieces, which goes a long way for magicians, who can barely wield or wear anything, but not for knights, who have a large selection. As I was purchasing weapons, I thought if you're given a choice between an epee simple ("simple sword") and an epee en fer ("sword on fire") you naturally have to go with the latter. Now, I realize it simply means "iron sword." That was a bit of a letdown.
   

I should have bought the sword that requires two men instead.

   
When the game started, I couldn't find any indication of these weapons and armor within my characters' inventories except as reflected by their armor class. Unless I'm missing a command, there doesn't seem to be any way to trade or drop these items. I can only guess that, like Tyrann, you can only have one of each type of object at a time, and when you buy a new one, it automatically replaces the old one.

Magicians also choose spells during this process. The screen showed 5 Level 1 spells but only let me select from among three of them: "Charm Persons," "Force Field," and a "Striking Spell" that I guess is equivalent to "Magic Missile." Oddly, I got the same screen for my cleric, but there don't seem to be any Level 1 cleric spells so I couldn't choose anything.
  

Choosing my first spell.

          
After a process of saving the party, the game begins with the characters north of a city (Dord) on a gridded map. The player is quickly exposed to what is perhaps the worst interface in RPG history--perhaps even game history.
   

The opening area.

     
As we see with so many titles of the era--although rarely to such an extreme--despite knowing that the platform on which the game is to be played has a full keyboard--you need it for characters' names, for instance--the developers assumed that players wouldn't want to be bothered with anything more complex than a joystick. Along the bottom of the screen is a series of 28 icons. They include Roman numerals from I to V, corresponding to each of the characters, 4 arrows for movement plus "up" and "down" options, and symbols that correspond with actions like enter, leave, check character sheets, check inventory, check health, look at the map, search, take, drop, steal, give, haggle, pay, and cast a spell.

The player maneuvers through the game by pushing left or right on the joystick (corresponding to the left and right arrows in the emulator) and hitting "fire" on the appropriate button. There is no redundant keyboard input. When the game asks which of your characters should complete an action, you can't just hit "3" on the keyboard; you have to scroll the icons to "III" and select it. To even move, you have to swap around the various arrow icons. This kind of gameplay is torturous. I can't believe it didn't occur to anyone to allow hitting the number keys in addition to selecting them from the icon strip, not to mention keyboard backups for all of the other options.
   

This just makes me want to go to New Orleans.

    
Moving into the city of Dord prompts you to exchange disks and then changes the interface to a first-person adventure-game style where you walk from screen to screen with the various arrows. The city consists of a number of street scenes, houses, and shops.
   

Let's see...I can buy chicken for 54 or 44. This is going to be a tough choice.

     
Occasionally, you meet NPCs who greet you with a hearty "bonjour!" You select a character to speak and then select from among options to "flatter," "threaten," "insult," or "wait." In my experimentation so far, anything other than "flatter" just makes the NPC leave. "Flatter" takes you to other simple keyword options, like "hello," "action," "me," "you," and "nothing," and each of these can continue into more options. For instance, choosing "me" leads you to a series of options where you explain to the NPC just who you are. So far, I haven't gotten anything from NPCs except pleasantries.
   

I get only a "hello" when telling an NPC that we're "friends."

      
Throughout the city, you run into doors that you can try to "enter." Usually, the game tells me that they're closed and invites me to break in. I haven't had a particular reason to do that yet.
     

       
Out in the countryside, I've run into a few parties of monsters, but I confess I'm confused as to how the combat system works. I do have the manual, but it's not a lot of help on this issue or I'm mis-translating the passages. It seems to start with a phase in which you position your characters against the monsters on a 5 x 5 grid. For some reason, the "up" action moves from character to character during this phase, which took me a long time to figure out. The monsters themselves don't move during this phase, but they might change positions entirely between phases.
   

The party faces a group of skeletons.

    
If you want to fight anyone that round, I guess the monster needs to be in the square directly in front of the character; otherwise, the game ignores that character.   
After the movement phase, the game enters the combat phase, where each character has options to attack, cast a spell and then attack, or flee. Once you choose the option, combat begins for that character. You see your character's strength, hit points, and experience, as well as the monster's, and you watch the rounds go by as hit points deplete and experience increases. At the end, one of you is dead.
    

Combat options.

    
That's the way it works theoretically. In practice, my characters are unable to strike even a single blow against any of the monsters I've encountered. I just have to watch as their hit points go down and the monsters' experience goes up, and then I get a message that the character is dead. I suspect I have to be doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what it is.

   

Things are not looking good for Amadou.

     
That's where I am with Fer & Flamme. I've hardly penetrated the game and am confused about a lot of its conventions, but I thought I'd post this and see if anyone who's played the game might pop along with some advice. In my first year, I abandoned a couple of French games too quickly because I found them confusing and bizarre, and I don't want to make the same mistake again. But barring some miracle I'm not anticipating--"Addict, you just have to hold down CTRL, and then there's a keyboard option for every game command!"--I feel like we're in for the same experience we've had with most French games: high weirdness, high frustration, low GIMLET.

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OrbQuest, an early Mac game, is coming up, but I can't seem to find a viable copy anywhere. As usual, help is appreciated.