Sunday, September 29, 2024

Game 529: Dungeon Adventuring Construction System (1990)

 
"Looks like a (puts on sunglasses) riveting title."
      
Dungeon Adventuring Construction System
United States
I.F.C. Systems (developer); Softdisk (publisher, in Loadstar disk magazine)
Released 1990 for Commodore 64
Date Started: 25 September 2024
Date Ended: 29 September 2024
Total Hours: 7
Difficulty: Moderate (3.0/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)
Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)   
     
The Dungeon Adventuring Construction System was written by David Caruso II and published in Issue #74 of Loadstar in 1990. As delightful as it would have been if the author had been the son of the NYPD Blue actor, there appears to be no relation. The kit initially resulted in only one complete adventure, Caruso's own Dark Fortress (1990), published 4 issues later, but a re-release of the kit in 1998 resulted in three more: Annathor's Crypt (1998), In Search of Demonbane (1998), and Treasure of the Loadstar Tower (1999). Crypt and Demonbane are both by John Mattson, whose Labyrinth (1991) and Knight's Quest (1991) we covered over the summer.
    
The main Dungeon program released in Issue #74 acts as a character creator, central "hub" for characters, and dungeon editor. The individual adventures are called from the main program as "data disks," allowing a persistent character to participate in multiple adventures. We saw this basic setup as early as Eamon (1980), although the mechanics of the Dungeon system are very different. Characters can be human, elf, dwarf, sprite, and ogre. Attributes are strength, intellect, dexterity, and luck. For humans, these seem to always roll within a range of 11 to 16; some of the other races can roll up to 18 in the expected values. The instructions say the maximums are 25, but I suspect that's the maximum you can achieve through leveling and not the initial creation. There are no explicit sexes or classes; it's best to regard each character as a combination fighter/thief with the thief's ability to use magic items.
     
The end of the character creation process.
        
All games take place in a single-level, overhead, gridded dungeon of 17 x 38 squares. (This makes 646 total squares, although the game instructions oddly insist that there are 678.) Every adventure has an entry point, a quest location, and an exit point. Everything else is just an obstacle or asset on the way to the quest location. The editor allows for a wide variety of such encounters, including messages, dialogues, battles, locked doors, one-way doors, secret doors, squares of darkness (you can't see the character), treasures, traps, and healing squares. You can have multiple encounters in a single square.
          
Finding a trap. About half the time, you have a chance to disarm it.
        
Exploring these dungeons and triggering the various encounters feels a bit like playing Phantasie (1985). There are even little dots where you find certain encounters. Some of the character creation elements, such as the inclusion of ogres, sprites, and luck, may also have been influenced by the earlier game.
    
The kit allows creators to make any monsters that they want. Monster attributes include armor class, regular attack type and damage, special attack type and damage, the frequency of the time that special attacks are used, accuracy, attacks per round, and hit points. There's a very crude graphic editor that you can use to create a small monster portrait, but overall graphics are not the system's strength.
      
Battle options against a skeleton.
       
Combat has you specify a type of attack (though I never got any options other than "swing") and a spell that you want to cast, if any. Once you initiate it, you can just watch the rounds go by or interrupt at any time to specify a new type of attack, cast a new spell, or switch equipment. Killing enemies rewards you with experience and, often, treasure.
       
The system includes 18 spells, each of which has a three-letter code. Spells are treated as inventory items on other pieces of equipment like wands, scrolls, and stones. Thus, you might find a crystal with three castings of HEA ("Heal") or a staff with STR ("Strength"), BAL ("Fireball"), and DAP ("Disable Trap"). 
        
Some of my items and their spells.
      
Spells are separated into combat and non-combat varieties. I found that the most valuable of the former is LZE ("Paralyze"), which stops enemies from attacking for a few rounds. PHY ("Psychic") lets you see enemies' precise statistics. Non-combat spells include TRS ("Spot Treasure"), EYE ("Cat's Eyes"; allows you to see in darkness squares), TEL ("Teleport"), PAS ("Passwall"), and ESP (sense the location of the quest). Effective use of these spells is absolutely necessary to succeed in the adventures.
       
PHY lets me see the statistics for the underboss in Dark Fortress.
       
Equipment is less varied. The character can equip a weapon, armor, and shield. Equipment does not accompany the character in and out of the dungeon programs (although it is converted to experience points when you leave), so each adventure has to start the player with some appropriate items. In both Dungeon Welcome and Dark Fortress, the starting equipment lasted throughout the adventure and was better than anything found during the adventure.
        
Entering Dungeon Welcome.
      
Dungeon Welcome is a small program contained on the editor disk. It has two halves. The top half of the dungeon introduces the player to the different encounters that the kit offers and lets him find a magic wand that helps a bit later on. The bottom half offers a brief quest to find a ruby.
       
The kit offers a dialogue system that enables passwords and riddles.
      
The game manages to pack quite a bit of content in a small space:
     
  • A man near the entrance introduces the quest and alerts you to a secret door to the east.
  • A "falling rubble" trap cuts off access to the early part of the level.
  • A small area of darkness that you have to navigate by feeling your way through.
  • Battles with a goblin and an imp.
  • A door requires a purple key. The key is found in the middle of a river, but the game has you automatically slip and fall down the river (using the teleportation mechanics, accompanied by messages) and miss the key.
     
What's even the point of being an elf?
      
  • A magic necklace contains the PAS spell, which you can use to come through the wall near the river and grab the key. There are two ways to get the necklace. One is to fight a tough battle with a wizard (I died the first time); the other is to find a secret door near the wizard.

Once you have the key, you're teleported back to the beginning, and you can use it to open the locked door, grab the ruby, and leave.
      
About to win the scenario.
      
Back in the "Guild" (the main program disk), you have to visit the "Review Board" to level up. I was disappointed to find that my accumulated experience from Dungeon Welcome wasn't enough for even half the experience I needed for Level 2. I suppose I could have played it again. The game comes with a couple of higher-level characters on the disk if you want to bypass that kind of hard work.
         
Dark Fortress is the first complete adventure using the Dungeon creation kit, and the author really goes all-out. It took me three tries to win it (you really need to pay attention to spells), and I almost wished I had grinded (ground?) the character in Dungeon Welcome for at least one level.
       
The title card for Dark Fortress.
       
The setup is that "for many years, the Dark Lord and his army of evil have terrorized the land." You have to invade his fortress and kill him. Intelligence suggests that if you do kill him, "all his followers will be destroyed forever." It's hardly the most original plot line in CRPG history, but it's better than nothing. Characters start with plate mail, a bronze shield, and a magical halberd.
    
Early in the adventure, you wander into a room where the Dark Lord's chief lieutenant, Lothar, is rallying the troops. He takes off, and you have to win a difficult battle against an ogre, followed by an easier one against a goblin.
     
Entering the first Dark Fortress room.
      
The rest of the dungeon is structured in four major sections, each requiring you to find a key that's necessary to reach the Dark Lord in the final area. I don't believe there are any "walking dead" scenarios in the game, but there are some places that you definitely want to have one encounter before another. Chief among them is a prisoner who tells you to give a ghost a book. If you reach the ghost first, not knowing what to give him results in your character being teleported to a trap that could easily kill him.
         
A FIRM SHAKE got me nowhere.
      
Some features in this adventure include:
    
  • Four cells, each of which contains a tough monster. You absolutely need spells to defeat them. But after each battle, you find a powerful magic item and get to enjoy the benefits of a healing square.
  • An imp tells you he hid a wand in a hole. If you reach in, you get bit for damage (and no wand). If you refuse to reach in, the imp grabs your arm and bites it for damage. We all know what we call that type of choice.
  • A huge room with a checkerboard floor. From the moment you enter, each square offers three or four options for movement, one of which teleports you to the next safe square; the others have traps and send you back to the beginning. If you make your way through the area, and defeat a dragon, you can access a treasure room with more spell items than you could possibly use during the remainder of the game. 
        
One wonders how a "huge dragon" appears "suddenly."
       
  • An encounter with the "head of security," Cunik, who has one of the keys. You meet him after a large room in which every single square has a battle with some monster.
        
"Cunik" sounds like a Slav trying to insult a Canadian.
       
  • A large maze of secret doors and dark areas. EYE really helps here.
  • A second encounter with Lothar. If you defeat him, you get the Blade of Lothar, necessary for defeating the Dark Lord.
   
There are a lot of different monsters in the scenario. I wrote down: giant ant, rust monster, giant plant, ogre, goblin, boulder (yes, you fight an actual boulder rolling across the screen), magic swords, skeleton, djinni, tryant (treant), crystal statue, killer kube (mimic), axe beak, mummy, dweeb, zombie, ape, tyrannosaurus rex, imp, and dragon.
         
The djinni has perhaps the most complex graphic in the game.
      
You eventually find the Dark Lord in a room in the northwest corner. The difficulty of the battle is mitigated with the dozens of spells that the average player would have upon reaching this point. I cast YZE at the beginning, giving me a few free rounds, and buffed myself with STR, AGI, and SHD. The Blade of Lothar did so much damage that even at 100 hit points (well over double monster other monsters), he died in just a few hits.
     
"Full Force" was the name of his sword.
      
After he died, "the fortress start[ed] to rumble and shake," and I had to run for the exit and return to the Guild.
      
Another example of a load-bearing boss.
        
My victory with Dark Fortress let me reach Level 1 finally. When you level up, you get to increase two attributes, and you get a bump in maximum hit points.
        
Leveling up at the end of the scenario.
          
Miscellaneous notes:
    
  • In addition to Dungeon Welcome, the main disk also lets you create a random dungeon called Lost World. It starts you with a sword, plate mail, and wand with four spells and sets you loose on a map in which monsters, treasures, and other encounters have been completely randomized.
     
Fighting a goblin in a Lost World scenario.
       
  • A "boss key" (F5) blanks the screen. It's hard to imagine a year and platform (the Commodore 64 in 1990) less in need of such a feature.
  • If you die during an adventure, you're returned to the guild and will be resurrected by the review board, although the death counts against your statistics (I don't know if it has any other detrimental effect). While you're on an adventure, your character is registered as GONE on the roster, so if the adventure goes badly, you can't just kill the program and try again. However, GONE characters do eventually "make their way back" to the guild. It takes a few hours. 
       
The roster screen, or "Guild" as the game calls it.
      
  • One major problem with the program is that messages only appear once and any key cancels them. You have to be sure not to hold down a movement key or press it too fast, lest you automatically acknowledge a message before you've read it. 
  • Along the same lines, the title cards for each adventure, establishing the plot, stay on screen only as long as it takes the program to load. Even at era-accurate emulator speeds, I kept missing most of the text.
  • There is no money in the game.

  • The sound palette is okay, with a lot of dings, smashes, bloops, and arpeggios reminiscent of Sword of Fargoal (1982).
  • The 1998 re-release of the kit seems to offer no extra features except a new title screen.
      
Lost among dark squares in In Search of Demonbane, Part I.
       
My only complaint about the kit is the slow speed of character development. A player who liked the game would have had to play Dungeon Welcome, Dark Fortress, and Lost World repeatedly to enjoy the benefits of leveling, at least until 1998. Beyond that, it's not a bad blend of roguelike and Phantasie elements. I liked many of the textual and dialogue encounters and wished Caruso had employed more riddles and puzzles in them.
    
I'm not sure if I ever established a clear policy for creation kits, including whether to number, play, review, and rate every game separately or whether to cover them in one master entry for the kit itself (and not force myself to play every module). I started to do the former with this one but then decided to be consistent with my approach to games like Eamon (1980). (It's worth noting that El Explorador de RPG, Jason Dyer, and Nathan Mahney at CRPG Adventures took the opposite approach.) I guess the approach I've settled on is to regard it as one "game" with multiple modules if it requires a central hub disk but separate games if the kit produces standalone executable files. In that spirit, I briefly checked out Annathor's Crypt and In Search of Demonbane even though they weren't published until 1998. I don't know what caused a revival of the kit eight years after it was first published, but I suspect Jon Mattson discovered it and wanted to write adventures for it but figured no one would still have the original disks from 1990.
      
Both adventures offer more interesting stories. Crypt concerns the retrieval of a magic staff from the resting place of a black druid, still guarded by his fanatical followers. Alas, I couldn't get the game to run past the title screen. I got an error every time I tried to load it. Mattson's documentation does a decent job with world-building, though, and shows that the kit can support more complex narratives.
     
The setup for Annathor's Crypt . . .
         
Demonbane is in three parts. It casts you in the role of a thief who accidentally released a demon while exploring an ancient tomb. A wizard named Roth captured you and tossed you in his dungeon, but he agrees to let you go if you'll embark on a search for a magic sword that can slay the demon. Part 1 begins with a "test" that the wizard has devised to see if you're even capable of wielding the sword: the recovery of a mystic rune from his basement. Parts 2 and 3 only unlock with passwords obtained from the earlier parts. The character starts with a shortsword, a cuirboilli vest, a small shield, a healing potion (HEA), and an Atlas elixir (END). The first level is almost entirely dark squares, and while I'm sure it would have paid off eventually, I got sick of it early on and ran out of time to finish this entry by my self-imposed deadline.
         
And for In Search of Demonsbane, Part I.
        
Among the two scenarios I experienced, I'd give the game a 27 on the GIMLET. It does best with multiple combat options (particularly spells) and the overall short but challenging gameplay (4s), worst in "Economy" (0), and 2s and 3s in everything else. The specific scores depend a lot on the specific modules, with the 1998 games clearly earning higher ratings in both "game world" and "encounters and foes."
            
I want to thank commenter Tristan Miller for bringing this one to my attention and for supplying prepared disks that saved me the trouble of following a lot of Loadstar instructions and doing a lot of disk-swapping to set up the programs. That was four years ago. I do eventually get to things.
 

44 comments:

  1. Welcome back! Always good to see a new game review.

    All is right with the world.

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  2. Welcome back Chet. And again with an interesting find.

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  3. Good to have you back on a Sunday morning...

    When are you going to try your hand on an adventure construction kit like this one here or FRUA, designing your own scenario?

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    1. Replying to myself here, sorry, but I spent a significant amount of time in the late aughts with the Aurora Toolset from 'Neverwinter Nights' adapting every classical (first edition) 'Das Schwarze Auge' module in that engine, because they were laying around and I had the ambition.

      It seemed impossible until I found the 'Lilac Script Generator' which allowed a multiple choice, point&click approach to creating scripts fitting the toolset. Using the original maps from the modules, I then had a blast recreating those adventures (for a single adventurer, without considering class or alignment - that would take a team of people).

      And I still wonder if this blog might produce a true-to-god crpg based on its insights, whether in an existing toolset or made entirely from scratch.

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    2. I'm not sure it would be worth the time I'd have to take away from the main thrust of the blog. I'm also not sure I have the patience for it. I would love to consult on the development of a game someday, but it's hard to see myself actually dragging and placing the walls.

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    3. *whispering* get NWN on GOG, download a 'Beginner's Guide' for the Aurora toolset, start tinkering with the possibilities of 3rd edition D&D, download 'Lilac's Script Generator', dream up your perfect campaign, work on it in the background (sort of like a retirement project) and keep this secret from everyone else, please :)

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  4. Welcome back! Now you hopefully have the semester start crunch safely behind you and more spare time for other things (not just the blog).

    So the underboss in Dark Fortress is called 'Lothar'? Not the most common name for an English language fantasy scenario.

    As this adventure was apparently created sometime in 1990, I'd speculate maybe Caruso was inspired by seeing it in the news, e.g. Lothar de Maizière (head of the first and only democratically elected government of East Germany, starting in April 1990, half a year after the wall came down, until reunification in early October that year) or Lothar Matthäus, captain of the German football (US: 'soccer') team that won the World Cup in summer 1990.

    Both those names might even have made it into mainstream US news occasionally at the time. Or he was specifically interested in world politics or football - having an Italian-sounding/origin family name with the World Cup taking place in Italy and the next one in the US.

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    1. Or from Mandrake
      https://www.mandrakewiki.org/index.php?title=Lothar

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    2. Or a couple dozen more listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothar

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    3. @Dalinar: I had looked at that list and to me none of the others sounded quite as probable as source for a 1990 game/scenario. But that might be due to my subjective perspective. After all, I'm not Caruso and unless he shows up here and clarifies, it's all speculation anyway, but I liked this theory given the year.

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    4. I hope it was Lothar Lindtner that was the speculative inspiration for the choice of name.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothar_Lindtner

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    5. There was a popular Saturday Night Live sketch around this time (1989-1990) called "Lothar of the Hill People" that may have been an influence by injecting the name into popoular culture. I still hear that silly theme in my head whenever the name Lothar is mentioned.

      https://snl.fandom.com/wiki/Lothar_Of_The_Hill_People

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  5. You could just decide this on a case by case basis, whatever feels right for a given creation kit. Are there even that many cases of kits coming up in the near future? I know Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures is on the 1993 list, but I don't think any module despite the default one contained in the game would count as "released" according to your blog.

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    1. I don't know. If it was published somewhere for people to download and play, it's probably "released." I'd love to be able to add a rule like, "There has to have been an intent to make at least some money, if only indirectly," but that would exclude most roguelikes.

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    2. But in the late nineties, it became very easy for anyone to create their own webpage and effectively self-publish anything downloadable.
      I suppose your Rule 4 applies, i.e. to reject amateur efforts that have no innovations or accolades.

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    3. I feel like a good rule of thumb, having experience with such engines, is if the games can be distributed as self-contained games rather than additions that can only be played if you have the engine itself. Given other rules, it really just seems it'll depend on what people can slip into Mobygames.

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    4. Personally I'm more interested in reading you cover new systems rather than additional content for a single system. So my vote would be to be selective about modules and move on to the next game. Leave the thorough content coverage for others.

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    5. Blades of Exile was in 1997, but that almost certainly doesn't count as "the near future".

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    6. That makes me wonder if anyone has managed to make an actual RPG in ZZT, a popular game/editor from 1991.

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    7. ...turns out the answer is a resounding YES. The ZZT archive contains about 250 games flagged as "RPG" (out of about 4000 games total). Only two of these were released in or before 1993, and only one of those has decent reviews, and that's Quest For Coronation.

      You can play it online here: https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/tiara/
      At first glance, it does not meet Chet's definition of an RPG; but some of the later ZZT titles might.

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  6. Did the trip back to the guild after the Dark Lord's defeat happen automatically as a text dump or did you have to move yourself manually. That is, I want to ask the Dark Lord's sword Full Force, I wonder if you take me home, or are Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam also required. OK that was a big stretch.

    Welcome back! As a fellow academic I will say that you are well ahead of the schedule I expect when someone says "I'll get to this in mid-September once the semester is under control."

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    1. I had to move myself manually to the exit. I otherwise don't quite get your references.

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    2. When I said "mid-September," I should have accounted for the fact that I'd be at a conference the third week of September and that I always need at least a week to recover from those.

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    3. Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam featuring Full Force. Probably not to your taste. Heck, not even to my taste, but the backing band is rocking some very iconic 80s keytar and electronic drums. (I was genuinely curious whether you had to move yourself to the exit though, and what happens if you don't get there fast.)

      Also to be clear when I'm talking about the person who says "I'll get to this in mid-September once the semester is under control" I mean me. If I say something like that a good time to expect it is January 7.

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    4. Yes, that has definitely been me in the past.

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  7. Games like this which show the whole level on the screen are kind of charming.

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  8. Welcome back!

    Adventures tend to be unique enough it's hard to toss two games together written with the same system (and once we get into a 90s, a _lot_ of games are written with systems, like Inform and TADS, including highly notable ones). If I had something that was more "systemic" like an RPG kit I'd be more likely to roll everything together.

    btw, one of the discoveries made recently (buried in the comments in my third post on Cracks of Doom) was two games by a "company" called "Dwidge Factory" which turned out to be Adventure Construction Set disks. Would you have interest in trying those? I don't know if they could be done as Mobygames entries by the rules but the idea they were somehow put to market is interesting.

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  9. The score is, again, criminally high for what essentially is two disjoint scenarios shipped with an "RPG engine" what was very dated at the time of its release. "Game world" should be, essentially, 1 (there is none); characters - 1 (they exist, but they are really encounters); graphics - 1; gameplay - 1 (you didn't even gain a single level, and there are very obviously no role-playing options, alternative endings, and so on, and so forth); NPCs - 1; graphics/sound - 1 (it is awful by Commodore standards, by RPG standards, and by 1990 standards at the same time, and is literally worse than games that are 10 years older); yet Chet tears up, thinks of "what it could have been", and gives it points for stuff that he thinks could be done with the engine, but, for some reason, wasn't.

    And what's the reason? The engine is extremely primitive. It has no skills. The editor clearly is not quite there. There are no classes, and no meaningful way to mimic classes. Monsters and items are nothing more than sets of statistics. Combat is 1 monster per encounter, with no positioning, or anything other than using items (and, yes, spells are items). Graphics are not even iconographic.

    So, again, what kind of game could theoretically be made with this, even if this engine ended up in the hands of the genius dead set on making one? Well, probably nothing very good - with a total lack of skills and the combat that you have to work around rather than work with being the reasons (even if we forget about the graphics, or lack thereof, and severe limitations of the amount of text). However, there is no sign that there was a single genius wanting to do just that; if anything, there is a lack of anything produced with this engine, and, whatever is shown there, is inferior to "weird French RPG's" that are considerably older and have lower scores.

    Seriously, this game has the same score for graphic/sound/interface and NPC's as Darklands! Better combat and equipment system than Star Control II! Game world and characters beating Warlords! Yet we all know that it is nowhere near these quite flawed examples, and it wouldn't be there even if someone invested time to try and do it, simply because the whole thing is too primitive.

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    1. Well, we knew the GIMLET was really subjective and broken from the beginning, no need to get all outraged at game #529, I think we're alle happy to read about what the game's offering despite some wrong numbers.

      Trying to conciliate a somewhat relevant matter, fans...

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    2. As always, I get tired quickly trying to argue specific GIMLET ratings. I thought the kit was okay. It didn't hit the level (around 35) where I'd recommend you try it for yourself, but it was promising enough, and it passed the hours.

      The "interface" part of category 9 matters more to me than to most people. This game had a very easy interface that gave me no trouble. The Darklands interface was a nightmare that wiped out any good will that it got from some of the graphics. The graphics had problems, too, as you'll see if your read that entry. The GIMLET doesn't reward more advanced graphics; it rewards those that work well given the scope and nature of the game.

      As for equipment and combat, neither was a strong point of Star Control II to me. Action combat is never going to get a high score. I though the variety of spells here were worth the points.

      With kits, I always have to walk a fine line between what's possible and what they actually did. Neither of the games I finished here exemplified "game world" very well, but the two Mattson games seemed to do it better, and I reached a compromise.

      As other comments have said, people who don't like the GIMLET should read everything BUT the GIMLET and then we're all happy.

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    3. Anyone who runs a review site has encountered a version of the pushback the GIMLET gets. For certain people, a quantitative ranking seems to scramble any ability they might have (and some don't have any to begin with!) to read the room and say to themselves "The grade is mostly a fiction, it's mainly just for fun, it doesn't matter if it's 'wrong', the ratings are much less important than the qualitative commentary".

      The mindset that relentlessly hierarchizes everything, and then takes that hierarchy super-seriously, is exhausting to deal with. It's as if those people care more about jockeying for position, and insisting on which media property is "better", than about experiencing the media to begin with.

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    4. Eh, quibbling about ratings is going to happen, especially when you've got years of things to compare to. People think a game they like is treated to harshly or a game they don't care about is given a too nice treatment. That said, Chet feels like that guy who most people aren't going to agree with, but at least his biases are clear. (He's probably the only person on the planet to combine interface, graphics and sound together, whereas for everyone else that'd be three separate categories) It's not like he's someone who is just completely crap at games yet somehow talks about them for a living.

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    5. Chet, thing is, your blog is already used as a source at Wikipedia/Moby Games, and it is only a matter of time before people start taking GIMLET seriously, particularly when trying to sort out what appeared when in RPG's. Sometimes you seriously throw off the addition of the features, and nobody likes that - not even you, since you tear through some of the the contemporary reviews you disagree with.

      Well, as far as Darklands went, your interface impression was...

      > The interface worked mostly okay. I appreciated the keyboard backups for all of the menu commands. I would have appreciated numbered options on the encounter screens, so I could choose them.

      And, funny enough, you yourself picked up on a problem that I highlighted a while ago: that the interface which relies on *unintuitive* keyword commands (which is what inevitably happened during localization at those times, and still happens now, since nobody bothers to translate mnemonics) is not good:

      > There are a few too many commands that are indiscernible from the interface and must be looked up in the manual; for instance, pressing "A" to equip items in inventory, or "F7" to set an ambush.

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    6. Eh, quibbling about ratings is going to happen, especially when you've got years of things to compare to. People think a game they like is treated to harshly or a game they don't care about is given a too nice treatment.

      I agree up to a point, but with two caveats. One is that, with any review in any medium, a lot of people won't bother reading the review and will just skip ahead to the rating. Some projects I've been involved with have debated whether to have quantitative ratings at all, for that very reason: people reliably focus on that and ignore the rest.

      The other thing is that some people's brains are wired in such a way that it really bothers them when a quantitative system seems "wrong" or inconsistent, because that kind of hierarchical, quantitative thinking is so central to their cognition. People who aren't wired that way can find it totally mystifying that someone could get so invested or bothered by it, so we assume they're taking issue with the fact that a particular game was disrespected. But sometimes, it's more that a person's buttons are getting pushed -- "It's wrong, it's not 100% consistent, you have to fix it" -- and they're simply unable to let it drop.

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    7. I think some people just confuse a 50 on the Gimlet with a 5-out-of-10 on a magazine rating scale. The 50 is actually a very high rating whereas the 5-out-of-10 is a rather poor one. And the Gimlet actually has a solid explanation whereas many magazine ratings are basically "gut feeling".

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    8. Ratings are only ever going to be consistent in a rough sense, no matter who is doing them. I’m sure there are plenty of pairs of films to which Ebert gave the same score, which he didn’t find equally good, in hindsight.

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    9. @BESTIE: Thing is, this did not start with the present game. RG already quibbled extensively with other GIMLET assessments and scores in recent times, e.g. for Dungeon Hack, Shadowcaster, Centauri Alliance, ... (as was also noted by others in this thread).

      Mention single things that may have been overlooked or you disagree with for specific reasons regarding a game, sure, that might be constructive. But this constant nagging about lots of details and individual scores really is leading nowhere. So I wonder if PK Thunder isn't on to something with his second caveat.

      I also agree with Tristan about ratings never being fully coherent among themselves anyway.

      Delete
    10. I'm guilty of some regretful GIMLET nitpicking myself, but I suspect Chet is much more likely to abandon the GIMLET than try to hold it to this perfect standard. And that would be a shame, because this GIMLET data is really interesting and useful for those of us who can approach it from a reasonable perspective.

      Of course it isn't perfectly objective, but I think it gets surprisngly close. If that's not good enough, then please ignore it!

      Delete
    11. @Busca, Shadowcaster vs. Dungeon Hack and Centauri Alliance was the extent of that. There was an argument of sorts during early Whale's Voyage about the merits of mnemonic shortcuts, but too many people took it to the wrong direction.

      Delete
  10. Welcome back !
    Your brief break was so un-brief that I started thinking you got sucked up by the 20th Legend of Zelda, "Echoes of Wisdom". Kidding, of course !

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hard to believe there was a Lisa Lisa comment and not one for the initial reference. Here goes...
    YEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm not sure I deserve it. It was a lame pun. I couldn't think of one that went well with "construction."

      Delete
  12. Happy to have you back, Chet! I always have a soft spot for games with editors. I always have ideas in my head, it's just putting them on paper or in memory that is difficult.

    ReplyDelete
  13. >A FIRM SHAKE got me nowhere.

    Did you try a HARD STARE?

    ReplyDelete

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