Game 555: Castle of the Winds: Part Two - Lifthransir's Bane (1992)

 

       

Castle of the Winds: Part Two - Lifthransir's Bane

SaadaSoft (developer); Epic MegaGames (publisher, as shareware)

Released 1992 for Windows 3 

Date Started: 13 July 2025

Date Ended: 16 July 2025

Total Hours: 12

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5) but user-definable
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)  

         

Well, Part Two was mechanically very much the same as Part One, but I enjoyed the plot, and there were some notable equipment upgrades.

     

Part Two allows you to create a new character or import one from the first part. New characters start at Level 7 with 1,880 experience points, which is one level less (and about half the experience) as my imported character. More important, my imported character came in with over 90,000 copper pieces and a full set of equipment. A new character has only 75,000 copper pieces and must purchase everything anew.

       

The sequel offers similar gameplay to the original.

       

The game begins with a long message indicating that the Amulet of Kings has teleported the character to a small city with a keep and a Temple of Odin. To the north are "the massive ruins of the Castle of the Winds." The message recommends that the player stop and speak to the jarl before heading to the castle, but an attempt to enter the keep has the character stopped by a "burly guard" who refuses to believe the character's story or to let him pass. "[The jarl is] busy enough trying to handle creatures that sneak out and kidnap peasants. Do something about them and maybe he'll talk to you."

             

The opening moments.

        

The nearby town has a lane with five stores on each side. There are two armor shops, two weapon shops, two magic shops, two general stores, and two scroll-and-potion shops. South of the keep is the Temple of Odin. West of the keep is a bank. There's a sage (who identifies equipment) north of the keep, but it's hard to imagine a player who gets to this point without "Identify" in his spellbook already. North of the sage are a few rows of huts; the player can't do anything with them. The road to the castle stretches north from the huts, and along the way is a junk shop that will buy anything, even cursed or broken items. 

               

Wandering the streets of the new city.

      

There are no enemies in the town or on the castle screen to the north. The first floor ("Level 0") of the castle has a fixed layout. In the throne room is the corpse of the character's grandfather, King Lifthransir. (Like all the proper names in the game, "Lifthransir" comes from Norse mythology. A man and a woman, Lifthrasir and Lif, are foretold to survive Ragnarok and to repopulate the world.) As the character approaches, the ancient king's ghost speaks and lays out the backstory: One day during his reign, the trickster god Loki showed up and offered him a helm that would give the king control over wind and storms. What Loki didn't mention is that the helm was stolen from Thor's treasure room, and that Surtur, "the demon Lord of Fiery Muspelheim," wanted the helm for himself. Thus, shortly after Lifthransir accepted the artifact, the kingdom was invaded by hill, stone, frost, and fire giants. "They came, led by their kings, and with them came devils from Muspelheim. Even now they roam the lower depths."

          

Finally entering the titular castle.

       

The kingdom tried to hold out, but it was hopeless. Lifthransir's subjects made their last stand in the throne room, and Surtur himself "slew [the king] with his sword of fire, took the helm, and doomed [him] to roam Midgard as a spirit for as long as he remained!" But as he died, Lifthransir declared that one of his descendants would return and banish the fire giant and his allies. He suggests there's a time limit to this task, but if so, it's unspecific.

     

Meeting grandpa.

       

The dungeon below the throne room level is 25 levels, randomly-generated. As with the first game, but unlike Moria and Angband, the levels persist in memory after you leave, so you can fully explore and clear them. I did discover that if you go up or down the stairs by hitting SHIFT-parentheses instead of SHIFT-angle brackets, you'll get a new random level. I don't see a particular reason to do that in this game, but the mechanic is there.

       

As I explored, I almost immediately fell into the familiar pattern that characterized the final hours of Part One—indeed, that characterize Moria (1983), Angband (1992), and every other variant in this line, including the later Diablo (1997). I explored until my backpack was full, cast "Rune of Return," identified and sold all my stuff, checked the shops for new items that I might want, healed, and cast "Rune of Return" again to go to the lowest dungeon level explored so far. I did this about once per dungeon level, sometimes twice. Moria offered scrolls of return, of course, but the game mechanics required a bit more strategy than this. The player couldn't memorize the spell, for one thing; he had to hunt for scrolls, and sometimes there weren't enough. Even then, various calamities could befall him in the dungeon that might destroy his scrolls. Those don't exist in Castle. With "Rune of Return" as a learned spell, costing very little to cast, there's no reason not to use it for regular healing and mana restoration. You can just warp out to a safe space, rest, then warp back. 

      

Getting surrounded like this is a bad idea.

    

The other aspect that makes the game a bit too easy is a spell, which I found within two or three levels, to fully heal the character. It obviates most of the other spells, makes intelligence the most important attribute, and completely changes the nature of combat. Now you can just whack away, watching your hit points, fully heal when they get too low, and keep whacking away. These two spells together make dungeon exploration incredibly rote.

          

The game offers lots of new gear.

        

And yet I still had fun upgrading the character. Part Two introduces some equipment not found in Part One, including utility belts that greatly expand the number of active items you can carry, Packs of Holding, Gauntlets of Slaying, Boots of Speed, Elven Chain Mail, elixirs that resist elements, and—best of all—potions that permanently increase attributes. I also learned something that I didn't realize in the previous game: not all "enchanted" items are equal. You have to right-click on them to see the nature of the enchantment. One set of Bracers of Defense might "increase the armor value," but another set might "strongly increase the armor value." There's even a "very strongly." Weapon enchantments can increase accuracy or damage or both, or increase attributes. Armor enchantments might include resistances to elements in addition to AC boosts. Between stuff I found in the dungeon and the rotating inventories of the shops, I was constantly getting upgrades.

       

My endgame inventory. Note the different enchantments on my bastard sword.

       

The one negative aspect of all of this is that if you want anything, you don't need to worry about paying for it. I ended the game with 1.6 million copper pieces after buying anything I wanted whenever I wanted it. I could have made it more challenging by relying exclusively on found money instead of selling unwanted equipment, I guess.

       

Monsters are naturally harder as you go down. You meet dragons of various types and colors, starting with young dragons on early levels and progressing to ancient ones on later levels. There are demons who can summon other demons, giants, vampires and other high-level undead, elementals of all types, and necromancers. So many of them (in addition to traps) are capable of attribute-draining attacks that I got in the habit of simply chugging attribute-restoring potions whenever I found them, plus visiting the Temple of Odin to pay for restoration services on every visit to the town.

      

I have three attributes to restore from that last visit.

     

Once I had the "Heal" spell, only high-level dragons gave me much trouble. They have a fun breath animation, and some of those breaths were capable of wiping away all my hit points in one attack if I didn't have any resistance. Thus, an exception to using almost all of my spell points for "Heal" was to cast resistance spells against the appropriate element when I saw those dragons coming. I got a little use out of mass-damage spells like "Fireball" and "Ball Lightning" when enemies clustered together. 

       

That breath animation.

        

All that remains is to tell you the story beats:

    

• On Level, I heard someone "screaming for help." (Or so the game said; the sequel has no more sound than its predecessor.) I found a woman tied to an altar in a room full of ogres. She thanked me for rescuing her. She said she was a simple farmer who had been kidnapped to sacrifice to Surtur, and she warned me that Surtur is immune to fire but vulnerable to the lightning bolts that Thor uses.

      

Well, well, what's happening in here?

         

• After this rescue, the jarl was willing to see me. He gave me 100 gold pieces, or 10,000 copper pieces, a laughably small sum given what I already had. Later, I visited him again, and he gave me some Gauntlets of Slaying and told me the depth of the dungeon (25 levels).

       

I'm not going to post all the long text screens, but the game is more verbose than my summaries suggest.

    

• On Level 6, I met a wolf-man in charge of a pack of wolves. On Level 8, a bear pack. On Level 12, a wizard leads some manticores. These were all brief encounters, but they at least had some context.

• The giants and their kings were found in special rooms on Levels 16 (hill giants), 18 (stone giants), 20 (fire giants), and 22 (storm giants). Each king has a mocking message when you first engage him and then a death message in which he expresses confidence that he'll be avenged by Surtur.

        

The hill giant king's welcome message.

Entering the stone giant king's lair.

The frost giant king's death message.

        

I don't know whether it's necessary to defeat all of these fixed encounters on the way down. I suspect not. It's easy to miss some of them because of the game's love of trap doors, although I insisted on working my way back up to finish each previous level whenever I encountered them. I stuck resolutely to the pattern of exploration and return even when it became clear that I could probably win by just heading directly for the endgame.

   

I made it to Character Level 13. I got to 11 through experience alone, then immediately quaffed two Potions of Gain Level I had been saving for the occasion. I don't know what the level maximum is, but to make it to the 245,720 experience points required for Level 14 would require days of grinding. 

       

Hitting my max level.

         

Surtur is in a throne room on Level 25, surrounded by demons, giants, dragons, and other minions. It took me a while to clear them out. When I first struck Surtur, he responded with a monologue in which he claimed credit for killing my father, grandfather, and godparents and expressed confidence he would do the same to me. "I still have the legions of Muspelheim and Niflheim at my command!" Yes, he's capable of gating in demons as one of his attacks, although this isn't too dangerous if you can trap him in a hallway.

     

I used "Ball Lightning" here, just for fun.

      

He disappears a couple of times during the battle, like Minax in Ultima II, and you have to go hunting him down in some remote part of the level. When he finally dies, he has a villain's speech as a portal takes him to Hel. He leaves the Helm of Storms behind. I didn't have any problem killing him. I just had to cast "Heal" a lot. I might have restored my mana once with a potion.

           

There you are, you rascal.

        

The Helm of Storms makes the character simultaneously resistant to fire, cold, and lightning plus keeps "Detect Monsters" active. Unfortunately, "Rune of Return" doesn't work with the helm in the character's possession, so I had to walk up 25 flights of stairs. It's good that I had taken the time to fully explore each level.

    

Upon my return to the surface, I visited the jarl first. He congratulated me on my victory, knelt before me (apparently, the king of the Castle of the Winds outranks the jarl of the town), and reminded me to take the helm to my grandfather's ghost so that the helm could be returned to Thor.

       

That's too bad. I was looking forward to meeting him.

        

King Lifthransir said that not only was I king ("by deed and bloodright"), but Thor had visited and said that it was fine if I kept the helm. I took the throne and the game was over. I was a little disappointed to see that my leaderboard position was determined entirely by experience points and that my 1.6 million copper pieces did nothing for me.

   

I'm not sure I need to offer a full GIMLET or even change it from Part One. I thought the sequel had slightly better equipment, but it was balanced against a lower challenge. I also thought Part Two was a bit too long. I got bored by the end, longed for the more complex mechanics of Moria, and reached a conclusion that was a bit different from last time: While I would still prefer to replay Castle to taking another trip through Moria, that's entirely because Castle has an endgame achievable within a reasonable time frame. Mechanically, I would pick Moria. So I think the higher score for Moria makes sense. I give Lifthransir's Bane a 35.

        

I'm going to be awfully alone in this huge castle.

       

Since we covered the developer's history and future in the last entry, there's not much else to discuss here. Both parts of the game get a lot of love online, perhaps a bit more than they deserve. It's a fun game, and it hits my "recommended" threshold, but I think its place in the hearts of gamers has more to do with timing than quality. It rode the crest of the Windows, Internet, and shareware explosions and was more accessible than the ASCII roguelikes that preceded it. I have faith we'll find better graphical roguelikes in the future, however.

    

****

      

I just wanted to offer an aside here because I have nowhere else to talk about this stuff. I called Castle a bit boring and repetitive, and it was, but it would have been more so if I hadn't been listening to a book at the same time. That book was Stephen King's The Outsider (2018). I have a complicated relationship with Stephen King. I've always enjoyed his books, but after investing years and multiple re-reads in The Dark Tower series, I felt deeply betrayed by the last book (The Dark Tower, 2004) that I kept away from him for 20 years. Okay, that wasn't absolute. I read 11/22/63 (2011) because I kept hearing how good it was (and I agreed), and I gave Under the Dome (2009) a try because I liked the concept, but I thought it had a horrible ending. It's not an original observation that King can be awful with endings, and it's not helped by his insouciant insistence that he simply "finds" the story and has no control over where it goes.

   

Mid last year, I decided to give him another try. I started at random with Joyland (2013), which I knew nothing about. I began the book during a morning commute and was listening when I got home on my evening commute. At some point, I realized I was sitting in my driveway, refusing to get out of the car and go inside, because I was riveted by the book—and at this point in the story, absolutely nothing had happened except a teenager from New Hampshire had gone down to North Carolina to apply for a job at an amusement park. He managed to make it riveting with the quality of language alone, the evocation of scene, the establishment of character, the realism of dialogue. I've always thought King was a good writer, of course, but I don't think it ever hit me how good until I was delaying dinner to hear about the day-to-day operations of a fairground.

      

I've since listened to Doctor Sleep (2013), the entire Bill Hodges trilogy, Revival (2014), Blaze (2007), and Duma Key (2008). It strikes me that somewhere along the line, King finally got good at plotting an ending. So far, Dome seems to me the only recent book for which he had a good idea and couldn't make it work. Don't get me wrong—Revival has a horrible, horrible ending. It's perhaps the most horrific horror novel I've ever read. It has ideas that nobody, particularly those in the second half of their lives, should have implanted in their heads. But it's horrible for its content, not its plotting.

 

I am now hopelessly ensorcelled by The Outsider. (Please, no spoilers, even if you know the ending and find it deliciously ironic that I have just claimed that "King finally got good at plotting an ending.") I have no idea which way it's going. I don't even know whether it's going to turn supernatural or not. I keep looking for excuses to do errands so I can listen to it. So hats off to Stephen King, who is having an amazing "late period" and will always be oddly paired in my memory with Castle of the Winds. 

The Ormus Saga II: The XYZ Affair

 

     

I had to start over with The Ormus Saga II because I had been relying on save states rather than saving my character to the disk, and I accidentally overwrote all the save state slots trying to get Ring of Elanor to work. There's no particular reason to use save states for Ormus, as you can save from anywhere and saving and reloading both seem to work okay. But I have a long track record of C64 games, particularly those on tape, for which I can never get saving to work, and adopted the convention a long time ago of hitting ALT-S frequently as I play. That very muscle memory got me in trouble here.

   

It wasn't so bad, though, because ever since I learned that every town, keep, and dungeon has exactly eight treasures, and that the character gets an experience bonus after finding the eighth, I felt the need to start tracking how many I found. Unfortunately, I've rarely been able to get to eight. Ormus's locations often have areas blocked by locked doors, magically-locked doors, force fields, water, mountains, other pieces of furniture, and lava, each of which requires a different item or spell to bypass, none of which the starting character has. Many of the treasures are on the other sides of those obstacles.

     

Something needs to get me either past that chair or through that wall.

       

The joystick-only interface is so annoying that I was frankly considering bailing on the game, but I forced myself to slow down and keep notes. This is a paradox that I've repeatedly discovered while writing this blog: If I find myself impatient with a game, sometimes the solution is not to play faster, but to slow down and document everything. In a first-person game, this often means making maps, if I'm not already making them. For this kind of game, it means creating the sort of workbook that I've used for many Ultima clones, with tabs for locations, NPCs, equipment, monsters, and open tasks. (I'm keeping it in Google Sheets, so you're welcome to take a look.) Either way, completing the documentation becomes a goal in itself and increases my enjoyment even as it increases the amount of time I'm destined to spend on the game.

     

Finding the eighth treasure.

       

Since I had explored counter-clockwise the first time, this time I explored clockwise from Remfield. I hit the Temple of Ghur; two dungeons; the towns of Coldwater, Borger Springs, Greenfields, and Welling; a castle called Arbon; a tower called Skymount, and a small hut. Each had eight treasures, even though the huts were all in one room (every piece of furniture had something) and some of the castles had them spread out on four or more floors. The gold I found in these locations was enough to keep up my army and buy occasional equipment upgrades; battles in the wilderness remained rare.

    

Various findings:

    

• The enemy always attacks the Royal Palace moments after the character first leaves Remfield. A player who doesn't figure out quickly how to buy troops and send them to the palace is in for a short, frustrating game. The reason that the enemy always attacks the Palace is that every other town starts in enemy control. You have to free some of them before the enemy has any other place to attack.

• The game is a bit like Ultima II in that you have an inventory of usable items—maps, keys, magic keys, torches, skulls—that can only rarely be purchased. You generally get them at random for killing monsters or searching furniture.

      

Nice. Those are expensive.

     

• As you can see from that list, there are indeed both keys and magic keys. I was wondering about that during the last session. 

• All temples have monsters in the corners. It's one of the few reliable ways to find them.

• Every week, "payday" rolls around. The character gets money for every free city, town, and keep but also has to pay soldiers in his active army (i.e., not stationed at any particular location). 

       

Oof. I should have gotten rid of some of those soldiers.

       

• Monsters so far have included zombies, giant snakes, mean trolls, orcs, giant spiders, squids, seadragons, and pirate ships.

• As I checked out the inventories of each new city, I upgraded to a magic shield, magic armor, and a magic bow. So far, each of these is the best item in its class. 

          

Hell, yeah. It took the Avatar almost the entire game to get to this point.

      

I was curious how the game would approach dungeons—remember, every location in its predecessor is a menu—and it turns out that they're simply multi-leveled, indoor, top-down locations like towns and castles, but using outdoor terrain. An occasional chest or barrel hides the eight goodies that each dungeon has. A beginning character can't get very far in dungeons because so many of their areas are blocked by mountainous squares (which require a climbing pick) or lava, which I have not yet found any way to cross safely. I suspect a spell is going to be involved.

      

I guess I'll need to return later.

       

Speaking of spells, I found two magic shops among the towns I visited and logged, and between them, I bought nine different spells. Of them, there is only one that I a) know what it does, and b) can cast. That's CURAX, which cures poison. FOREMIS supposedly dispels force fields, and AN PULVIS removes obstacles, but neither work when I cast them. I suspect I need to reach a higher level. My character is still Level 1 because I haven't found a temple since the game's beginning.

         

I can't see any other way to reach that chest.

       

I know from King Argon that to beat the game, I have to:

   

• Solve the nine tasks of the god-servants.
• Go to the mystic flames in the mountains.
• Yell the Holy Word.
• Enter the Halls of Carion.
• Speak the three Eternal Words, backwards. 

    

I have not made much progress on this main quest. By the end of the first session, I knew the names of three of the god-servants, and I didn't learn any more this time. I did learn the Holy Word. In Wishek Falls, a woman named Madame Lane gave it to me as QTMNFEQ, but said it was encoded using an "ancient elven technique." According to her neighbor, Sullivan, that "ancient technique" is a simple Caesar shift of one place. However, a third NPC named Willis says that A and E are exceptions and always shift to each other. That gives the final result as RUNOGAR. That sounded familiar, so I looked up my notes, and that was the Holy Word in the first game. I guess someone who's won The Ormus Saga has an advantage.

       

Standard pronunciation?

       

Speaking of puzzles, an NPC named Allan in Monter Bay says that Tolkien's The Hobbit has the solution to one of the god-servant's riddles in Chapter 5. This is the chapter in which Bilbo and Gollum exchange a bunch of riddles, so I guess I'll just have to wait for that one.

     

I'll get right on that.

     

To this main quest, an NPC named James in Coldwater added something else. He said there were 25 treasures hidden across the land: three in the world of the undead and 22 on the mainland. He further said that I would need to find all 25 to succeed. So far, I have the locations of 8 of them. I've only dug up one. It was 4 squares away from the coordinates I had been given, and it had 3 jewels, 1 silver, 3 linen, and 2 CURAX spells. I'm not sure why I would have needed to find that to win the game. Maybe finding all the treasures is one of the god-servant's tasks. 

       

I don't like where this is going.

      

Most of the NPCs have just flat-out given me the coordinates for the treasures, but one of them, Jones in the town of Welling, had to make it a puzzle. He gave me an algebraic formula for figuring out the coordinates; I had to get the values from two other NPCs. This was the sequence:

   

Y = north coordinate

Z = west coordinate

    

Y = C + (4 x 6)

Z = (Y x 3) + D

C = 4 x 7 + 2 

D = (5 x 9) - 34

     

I'm aware none of those parentheses are necessary, but that's how the game gave them to me. 

         

This NPC is part of the problem.

        

I realized as I talked to NPCs that there's something I don't understand about the backstory. I don't know how much of it is left over from the first game, how much is kept deliberately hidden, and how much is just inept storytelling on the part of the author. This is the relevant text from the backstory in the game's introduction:

       

After reading the compendium, you know of the black book called Ulbore. The book has finally revealed the terrible truth about Sullivan and the Brotherhood of the White Rose. It is now up to you to complete 9 tasks provided by god servants in order to rescue the kingdom from the Armageddon.

       

So what was the "terrible truth," and how does that segue to needing to complete nine tasks? And who is Sullivan? I don't believe the first game mentioned Sullivan or the Brotherhood. Whoever Sullivan is, he appears to have been murdered. Princess Sheila says that King Argon feels responsible. All the conspirators who killed him have themselves been killed except for one named Gorab.

     

That's my summary of where I am with the game. Since I don't think the entry is long enough, I'll pick up from here and relate part of my journey in real-time, starting from Monter Bay, the last city I visited. It's on the east coast of Beryland, and I'm still working my way clockwise. I'm at full health and have 414 gold pieces, 44 troops, and 35 food. I immediately send 20 troops to Monter Bay, as I had to liberate it to explore the city and it otherwise has no garrison.

       

Checking my surroundings.

      

I check my coordinates and note that I'm not too far from a treasure. Monter Bay is at 96N 221W and there's a treasure at 64N 217W. It's dark as I head out. I'm out of torches, so I won't be able to see much of anything until the sun comes up. I use a map to get a sense of the area and see that the treasure is surrounded by swamp, which will almost certainly poison me. Not a problem; I have a CURAX. The bigger issue might be navigating around these rivers. If it gets too tough, I'll wait until I have a skiff.

     

As the sun comes up, I get a message that the enemy is attacking the Royal Palace. I have plenty of troops there, so the battle is quick. Unfortunately, I can't afford to replenish any of the soldiers I lost, since I need them to force my way into the next enemy-held town I encounter.

      

Defending the Royal Palace. Again.

       

64N 217W turns out to be right on the edge of an inlet. Of course, the treasure isn't there. I find it four squares to the north and west. It consists of 1 silver, 2 copper, 3 linen, 1 wood, and a magic axe. The magic axe sounds cool. I haven't seen one for sale. I equip it, get out of the swamp, and cure my poison.

        

A pretty good haul.

     

I soon encounter an orc. I attack with my magic axe and am happy to see that it's a ranged weapon. It hits him—and immediately breaks. I remember this from the last game. Ormus decides that the next time you fight, whatever weapon you have equipped is going to break. The only way to avoid it is to reload and equip a different weapon. No way am I losing my magic axe after one hit, so I reload, equip a dagger, watch it break, change back to my magic axe, and finish off the orc. I get 16 experience, 47 gold, and a key.

  

Combat is such a rare and minor part of the game, at least so far.

      

I almost don't see a little hut to my west. I enter. The location is labeled only "a small hut." The map consists of a single building and a fenced garden to its south. A tree in the garden has some gold. The building has a locked door, which I open with a key. Inside are two barrels (gold in both) and a bookcase (magic keys). A barrel in some woods has maps. There isn't any furniture left, so I start searching ground squares in the house and garden and find a couple units of jewels. 

 

Treasures are rarely hidden in random squares like this.

     

A zombie attacks in the northeast corner, and I kill him for 14 experience, 52 gold, and a nugget. Then I spy a troll by a pond and get 18 more experience and 28 gold. Then another one appears. This turns out to be the best grinding spot in the entire game. I'm tempted to stay until I have enough money for a ship.

    

After an entire night spent searching the walls of the buildings, the pond, and other terrain features, I can't find the final treasure. I'm not willing to search every square on the 576-tile map (I might if I could do it with "S"), so I reluctantly leave. 

       

The magic map of Caldara.

      

Not too far south of the hut is the city of Caldara. It's naturally occupied by enemy soldiers. I attack with y 24 troops. There isn't much strategy to these battles. You can either "attack," or fire a single volley at a single column of soldiers, or use a "weapon" which damages multiple soldiers at once. Weapons are single-use items that cost 24 gold pieces to replace, but you need a few of them because attacks only hit one soldier at a time, some soldiers require multiple hits, and you have to destroy the wall in front of them first. We're evenly matched here, and it takes me a couple of tries to win. I'm down to 4 troops when I do.

     

Caldara is a standard-sized city. My normal practice is to use a map when I first enter a location, then keep the screenshot handy for reference. Like many cities, most of its shops have ladders and thus rooms above them, but I rarely need to take a shot of the second floor. Night falls halfway through my visit, but the screenshot helps me navigate without requiring me to waste a torch.

         

You rarely have to worry about getting lost on the second floor.

       

The first thing I find is a boat shop, where I have enough money for a skiff (451 gold) but not a ship (3801 gold). I'll come back. The skiff, meanwhile, will get me across small bodies of water and increase the chances I can fully explore a city. A weapons shop has nothing new. At the troop shop, I replenish my lost troops and buy enough to garrison this city when I leave. At the inn, I replenish health and mana and buy a little extra food. 

   

There are two very valuable NPCs. Steve, above the weapon shop, gives me the name of another god-servant: NIKODEMUS. The town's mayor, Maddock, living above the inn, tells me of the Trigonom, which lets the wielder enter the Land of the Dead. It is assembled from three amulets, each of which is at a different temple.

      

I'm pretty sure I was supposed to try in the first game.

      

I find all the treasures and get 75 experience points. The treasures are five units of gold, one of silver, one of jewels, and a Stone Key, which seems like a unique item. I stop at the pawn shop on the way out of town and sell my excess treasures. I end up leaving with about as much gold as when I entered.

   

The enemy attacks and retakes Caldara the moment I step outside. I don't even have time to even save first. I re-conquer it, re-enter, replenish my troops, exit, and immediately send 20 to garrison the city.

   

Again, I realize I'm close to another treasure: the one from the algebra puzzle. Of course, I can't find it. I search for a five-square radius around the chest (which shouldn't be necessary, since Jones said the formula was its "exact location"). I double-check the solution to the puzzle (54N, 173W). I even go all the way back to Welling (without saving) to verify I wrote down the clues correctly. Nothing. Either I'm not going to be able to win the game because the author bungled his own algebra clue, or you're all about to tell me I somehow failed at simple math. 

    

Time so far: 9 hours 

 

Game 554: Castle of the Winds: Part One - A Question of Vengeance (1992)

I suspect I'm going to choose vengeance.

        

Castle of the Winds: Part One - A Question of Vengeance 

SaadaSoft (developer); Epic MegaGames (publisher, as shareware)

Released 1992 for Windows 3 

Date Started: 7 July 2025

Date Ended: 9 July 2025

Total Hours: 8

Difficulty: Moderate (3.0/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)  

         

Castle of the Winds was probably a lot of players' entry point into the roguelike (or, more appropriately, "roguelite") world. It isn't the first graphical roguelike, but it's one of the few that had any kind of widespread distribution. Because author Rick Saada worked at Microsoft, he was able to develop the game for Windows 3.1 long before the OS was released. It came out just as the average person started to access the Internet, and thus right as the shareware scene exploded. As such, if you Google the game today, you'll see that it has a lot more recognition than any of the titles that inspired it. Most of its players were probably unaware of those titles or of the larger roguelike genre.

        

Castle's clear origin point is Moria (1983); you see it in the town level, the types of inventory items, the spell list, the automap system, the way the "Return" spell creates a charge in the air around you and then makes you wait a few rounds before you actually teleport. It simplifies many of the mechanics, which I find too bad, and I normally wouldn't countenance such simplification in the name of a tile set and a few icons. But it also offers some significant improvements, including:

    

• A detailed, evolving story. I've never understood why other roguelike titles (as well as games in the Dungeon Master line) are so reluctant to occasionally interrupt the action with some bits of text. Here, you get regular plot updates and they're even somewhat interesting. You can review what you've already learned by choosing "Review Story" on the "File" menu.

• An improved interface. You know me: I like keyboards. How do you "improve" upon a classic roguelike interface like Moria's, where every action is mapped to its own key? The answer is, you keep that, and then you add the option do to certain things with a mouse, such as targeting enemies who aren't in your column or row, or dragging items from your pack to your various inventory slots, or right-clicking on an enemy to see how much damage he's taken. All of that is possible here.

• Excellent documentation. At any point in the game, you can click on the "Help" menu to get a list of commands, monster descriptions, spell descriptions, and weapon values.

       

This is the kind of weapon documentation every game should have.

       

Where the recently-covered Magus (1993) made me wish I could just play Moria instead, Castle is a game I would rather play than Moria. You'd think I could make that statement more often when we're talking about a ten-year gap, but alas. Ask me about The Ormus Saga II and Ultima III, for instance.

     

The PC is presented as an orphan raised by two kindly godparents. He knows nothing about his background except that he was found with an amulet. Around his 18th birthday, while he was away from home, marauders raided, pillaged, and burned his godparents' farm, stealing the amulet, leaving two charred corpses behind. Monstrous footprints led away from the scene towards some northern mountains.

     

Character creation begins that simplification process I talked about. All characters are the same fighter/mage/cleric/thief combo, although the player can set attributes (strength, intelligence, constitution, dexterity) to whatever he likes. He can upload his own icon and set a difficulty level from "easy" to "experts only." His first spell comes from a small list, with options like "Heal Minor Wounds," "Light," and "Magic Arrow."

          

Character creation. Since the author worked at Microsoft, I would have expected the option to label those columns with the actual values.

         

The character starts with around 5-10 hit points, 5-10 mana points, and 1500 copper pieces in a little hamlet south of the burned farmhouse. It has a couple of useless buildings and about half a dozen shops and services:

   

• Olaf's Junk Store, which will buy just about anything, including cursed items and rusted armor.

• Snorri the Sage, who will identify items until you get the "Identify" spell. You want to do this, as uncursing items is prohibitively expensive.

• Bjorn the Blacksmith, who buys and sells weapons. As you level up, the items sold get more advanced.

• Gunnhild's General Store, where you buy and sell cloaks, scrolls, potions, boots, belts, and packs.

• The Temple of Odin, where you can get healed and restored. You can also pay 1,000 copper pieces to get sent back to the lowest level of the dungeon that you've explored, at least until you get the "Rune of Return" spell on your own.

          

Buying my first belt.

      

As you can tell from some of these names, the game leans into a Norse theme, although until the end, it's mostly just names. Still, I suppose I prefer it to the constant regurgitation of Tolkien characters. 

     

North of town is a large screen with nothing to do but visit the burned-out homestead and walk north to the cave system where the monsters came from. This is where the game really "starts." My understanding is that the first level of these caves, and of the game's second dungeon, are fixed. The rest are randomly-generated when you arrive, but unlike Moria, they don't reset when you leave and return. The levels are full of traps, damaging runes, and secret doors, all of which can be found with a S)earch.

     

There are no enemies, and not much to do, in the outdoor areas.

       

The core gameplay is about exploring these dungeon levels, killing enemies, and collecting items to make your character stronger. There are multiple types of enemies—animals, humanoids, undead—and they get progressively harder as you go down. Some can attack from a distance—the manticore's barbs are particularly deadly—and some have status effects, like poison and temporary attribute drains. You fight with melee weapons and spells, but not missile weapons.

           

A gelatinous cube chases me through a dungeon room with a rune and a gas trap.

      

In contrast to most roguelikes, I found that I really couldn't survive without offensive spells. Some enemies just grind your hit points down so fast, you don't want to get anywhere near them. I had a lot of trouble with Level 1 characters until I created a new one with "Magic Arrow" as his first spell. Even late in the game, I was avoiding a lot of enemies by blasting them with "Lightning Bolt" and then escaping with "Phase Door" when they got too close.

     

Hit points restore at a pretty good clip as you walk around, but magic points are very slow to recharge. You need to find safe spaces to rest, which can be difficult, especially since enemies continually spawn. The overall challenge is well-balanced. One thing that makes the game a "roguelite" rather than a "roguelike," however, is that death isn't permanent. You can save and reload from anywhere. There's also no food system, which was mostly a waste of time in Moria anyway, and although there's a clock, there's no time limit.

       

Not the problem that this would be in a lot of roguelikes.

       

I like the inventory system a lot. Encumbrance depends on both weight and size of objects, and it slows down your movement speed when you get particularly laden. It's worth paying to have new items identified before trying them on; most of my early-game gold went to this expense. It was a relief when I finally got "Identify" for myself and could save my money for some of the tantalizing items the stores were starting to offer. I found plenty of upgrades in the dungeon itself, of course, and soon my small wooden shield became a medium steel shield and then an enchanted steel shield. There are "enchanted" versions of just about everything. With slots for weapons, armor, necklace, helmet, cape, shield, bracers, gauntlets, belt, boots, pack, purse, and two rings, you're almost always getting some kind of upgrade.

 

I found usable items less useful. Potions, wands, and spell scrolls all take time to use, opening yourself up to a couple of free hits in combat. If you save them for when you're desperate, you can easily get killed trying to use them.

       

The intuitive inventory interface.

      

Leveling is a somewhat lesser part of character development, occurring only about once per game hour (more frequently towards the beginning) and conferring extra health, mana, and one spell per level. You also get spells permanently from spellbooks and temporarily from scrolls. They're all very useful, although I've never understood Moria's system of applying "Light" to the room rather than the character.

        

Learning a new spell upon leveling up.

     

The spellbook can hold as many spells as you want, but you can select 10 to be hotkeyed from the "Spell" menu and to appear on the upper-right icon bar. Again, I usually give the keyboard the prize when it comes to efficiency, but I admit that clicking on a single icon is easier than hitting C)ast, then having to ? the spellbook because I don't remember the order of the spells, then hit the number associated with the spell.  

     

The game offers no sound. The graphics are mostly utilitarian and not terribly evocative. Every once in a while, the author places something like a statue or a fountain in a dungeon room to give it some character. 

       

Oh, that's so cute. Some of the little kobolds are still tucked in their little beds.

        

One such place was Level 4 of the first dungeon (the "mine"), where I found a bunch of kobolds sleeping on straw mats. A scrap of paper on their floor hit the first plot beat. It was signed with an "S." and told the receiver to "return to the fortress north of Bjarnarhaven" once his target was dead.

   

When I left the dungeon after finding this message, I found to my horror that the raiders had returned, this time burning down the entire town. This led my character to realize that he, specifically, was being targeted. "You swear once again to exact vengeance against those responsible."

        

Well, sorry everyone.

      

At this point, the player can travel west from the mines (via a road closed off earlier) to the village of Bjarnarhaven. It has the same services as the opening village, although wearable items and magic items are now split into two shops. There's a bank, and a neat aspect of the game is that deposited money remains available to spend, as if it were still in your pockets. The idea is that you're basically writing checks on your account.

       

I'm sure you folks will be okay, though.

      

There is indeed a fortress north of the city, a small fixed first floor giving way to 10 more lower floors. Gameplay remains the same as before, with the enemies getting harder. Fortunately, by this point I had the "Rune of Return" spell and could go back and forth from town as necessary. 

         

The automap of the fortress's first level. The levels below this one are larger and random.

       

On Level 5 of this fortress, I found a note ordering its recipient to patrol the fortress carefully, as "Hrungnir fears we have missed our quarry," and Hrungnir had already reported to his boss that he had completed the mission.  

     

After a lot more fighting, leveling, and so forth, I found the next plot point in a room on Level 11. Hrungnir turned out to be a Jotun (giant). He confirmed that I was his target. "My lord need never know of my initial failure." He attacked me with a squad of ogres and was capable of hurling boulders from a distance. I only won the battle using hit and run tactics (via "Phase Door").

       

Shooting a lightning bolt at the Jotun.

       

When Hrungnir falls dead, the character has a moment of satisfaction but is then racked by questions: "Who sent this Hrungnir? To whom or what did he report? Why were you selected to receive his malign attentions?" The character recovers his birthright amulet from the giant's body. This shows up in the inventory as the "Enchanted Amulet of Kings." 

   

I wasn't sure what to do at this point, and I spent some time bumbling about the dungeon and town before I realized I could use the amulet from the "activate" menu. The text related that it enveloped me in a warm glow and showed me a vision of my father. He introduced himself as "Prince Arvi," and said that the amulet's power let us meet somewhere between the nether realm and Midgard. He said that 18 years ago, the royal family got "enmeshed in a great conflict between the Aesir Thor and the trickster Loki." As a part of this conflict, the fire giant Surtur has come to Midgard, which wasn't supposed to happen until Ragnarok. Surtur is Hrungnir's master. My destiny, my father said, is to "thwart Surtur's designs on Midgard" and "reclaim our fallen Castle of the Winds!" I appreciate that because I was wondering what the title was about.  

      

My heritage becomes clear.

        

Finally, Arvi said that if I used the amulet again, it would teleport me to a town near the castle. At the castle, I will be able to confer with the ghost of my grandfather, King Lifthransir. I suspect he's going to tell me about the bane, as the subtitle of Castle of the Winds: Part Two is Lifthransir's Bane—although at one point, it must have been The Fall of Surtur.

         

No Y2K problems in this game.

        

In a GIMLET, I give the game:

        

• 5 points for the game world. I enjoyed the plot and the use of Norse themes.

 

Some well-written text describes my meeting with Hrungnir.

        

• 2 points for character creation and development. There isn't enough personalization of the character, alas, and I would have liked more variety in character classes.

          

My mid-game character sheet.

        

• 0 points for no NPC interaction. The author missed an opportunity to really flesh out the world.

• 3 points for encounters and foes. The foes are pretty standard, but with a decent variety of special attacks. I give a point here for the detailed descriptions in the manual. There are no non-combat encounters or puzzles except for the contextual encounter before the last battle.

      

I admittedly already had a pretty good handle on what "goblin" was, but I still love reading paragraphs like this.

        

• 4 points for magic and combat. It has a well-balanced magic system and encourages you not to ignore it. I wouldn't have minded some missile weapon options.

• 6 points for equipment. There are a lot of equipment slots and a decent variety of things to put in them. More important, it's always clear when you have an upgrade.

      

My endgame equipment.

      

• 6 points for the economy. Not terribly complex, but rewarding, especially at the beginning of the game. 

• 2 points for a main quest. There are, alas, no side-quests or choices.

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics are nothing special, but they don't interfere. As I reported, the interface works well, although I think it could have been a bit easier to use an item (you have to drag it to a belt slot or your free hand, then click "Activate," then choose the item).

• 5 points for gameplay. It's linear and not very replayable, but I found the difficulty and length both pitched exactly right.

   

That's a final score of 36. That's very close to the 38 I gave Moria, and if you look at the scores, you can see how the simplifications that Castle makes just about equal out its innovations. But as I said, I'd rather play another round of Castle than Moria (although not overwhelmingly so), so go figure. 

      

I'd like to get vengeance on this cover artist.

       

Computer Gaming World introduced a column on shareware gaming, written by Chuck Miller, in its December 1992 issue. This was just in time for Miller to review Castle of the Winds in 1993. Reading his column, I'm surprised to see him recognize its Moria roots, and even more surprised that he drops Moria's name with no explanation, as if the average reader could be expected to know what it was. I somehow didn't think that freeware roguelikes were as prominent in the average reader's vocabulary in 1993. Anyway, he liked the game, praised the interface, but criticized the lack of sound effects.

      

Author Rick Saada was a Cleveland native and Princeton University graduate who spent eight years at Microsoft during the company's formative years. He would have been in his late 20s when he put the finishing touches on Castle. Later in the 1990s, he moved to Flying Lab software and worked on Rails Across America (2001) and the MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea (2008). He ran his own company called Holospark from 2015-2019; its primary output was an action game called Earthfall (2017). Since 2019, Saada has served as the CEO for Earthfall's publisher, Nimble.

         

I like Lifthransir's Bane better. The Fall of Surtur feels like a spoiler.

        

Dating Castle of the Winds is difficult, and even now I'm not sure of the precise timeline. I believe the copyright date of 1989 is when Saada began working on it. A couple of sites online have the date as 1992, which seems possible given Computer Gaming World's January 1993 coverage, but I cannot find any mentions of the game in pre-1993 media. In any event, Part One was distributed as freeware. Those who paid the $25 registration fee received Part Two. There's no suggestion that this took a year, so I cannot countenance the opinion of many sites that Part Two is a 1994 game. It is, however, a completely different set of files, so I have to regard it as a unique title. I'll give it a try after an Ormus Saga break.

 

Edit from a day later: Based on this site that Busca linked to, which offers several early version of the game, it appears that the author was circulating versions of the game around his co-workers at Microsoft as early as 1990. It also appears that Epic MegaGames was offering it for sale by mid-1992, so I have changed the date accordingly.