The Fates of Twinion: Up and Down and Over and Out

 

Is he related to a sloth? If so, the "ice" part really makes a difference.

         

When I blog about games, I sometimes deliberately adopt a "summary" approach. Rather than narrating the blow-by-blow of a second of the game, I wait until its end, and then cover its major plot points, themes, and mechanics in a few paragraphs. Other times, I try to give a sense of the moment. Call this the "articulated" approach. If the game is long and takes up multiple entries, I like to vary these two approaches.

   

There are times, however, when I'm essentially forced into the articulated approach because I don't know how long it's going to take to finish a section and I'm writing on a deadline (admittedly a self-imposed one). That's what's happened with The Fates of Twinion. Eventually, I'm going to finish all of these interrelated maps on Levels 4, 5, and 6, and I'll be able to see the big picture and give you a summary. But if I do that, I don't know if I'll be blogging again this year. Thus, for the second time, I have to offer you a hyper-detailed account of my blundering through these levels, many clues uncollated, many puzzles unsolved.

    

The interconnected maps that make up this session.

     

This session begins on Level 6 of the castle-inside-the-volcano. The level is called "Twinion Keep." I'm in this section of the dungeon to find four pieces of an ancient map for Queen Aeowyn, but I'm just happy if I can find a way forward. I have numerous locked doors and unsolvable mysteries in my backpath. This whole area is supposed to be part of the Kingdom of the Night Elves, but I've barely met any elves.

   

I start at the north edge of the map, move forward, fight one battle, and immediately get killed falling down a pit. It's not that I didn't notice the pit; it's just that you have to try to fall down every pit in the game to make sure it doesn't lead you to a new area. (I thought RandomGamer had a sensible reaction to this mechanic in the last Twinion forum.) As a reminder, dying has no consequences in this game except that you start over from the outside menu.

   

The one battle is with a new enemy, raptors, and it's a curious one. I end up fighting them a few times to test it out. Each time, I meet a handful of raptors in one party and a single raptor in another. Each time, I swiftly wipe out the party of 2-4 raptors, sometimes with a single attack, and each time, the single raptor causes me no end of grief. I miss him 2/3 of the time and end up having to waste a couple of entire potions to heal the damage he does. Until now, I didn't realize that one enemy could have different attributes than another enemy of the same type.

   

Other new enemies include Maoelian Woodsmen and Mages of Tresmed, and as with the Mindarian zealots and Salosian zealots of previous sessions, it annoys me that I don't know what these things mean. Give us some lore, Twinion! Are we really only three years away from Daggerfall and its 94 readable books? 

    

Who is Tresmed? Where is Sularia?

        

Just as I think this whole area is going to be a bust, a message alerts me to a secret door. On the other side, I find another message: "There is a magical force that returns most quest items back to where they came should you accidentally drop them." That's good to know. A couple of squares later, I'm teleported to a new area with a couple of lava squares, and no, I'm not walking into each lava square to see if it kills me. If there's any puzzle in this game that requires walking into a lava square, tell me now so I can quit now.

   

Another teleporter takes me from here to a third section of the level, where I underestimate a new enemy called an "ice sleeth" and soon find myself on the starting menu again. Rarely have I met a game capable of imparting such a sense of despair, as you realize that the enemy is capable of damaging more per round than you're capable of healing per round, and now you're down to 300 hit points, and your fate is essentially sealed.

   

In a rematch, I kill the bastard and recover a life jacket from his body. Yes, I know that doesn't make any sense. Anyway, the life jacket is the artifact I needed to get through the Lake of Despair on Level 5. 

     

Was he wearing it or just carrying it?

       

Yet another teleporter brings me to an unmapped area of Level 4: "Night Elf Ingress," and so I start exploring around there. I find an excellent grinding spot where I'm attacked by a couple of wraiths and a couple of brown bats, neither of which survive more than one hit, and yet the battle gives about 600 gold and 1,200 experience points. I repeat it about 10 times and then move on.

  

Through another door, I interrupt some wizards and knights fighting over a key. Naturally, they turn on me. When we're done, I have a Front Door Key. 

  

The way I came has been closed off by a one-way wall, so I head north, turn a corner, and fall down a slope to Level 5: "The Enclave." I've been to this level before, but not this specific area, where I'm surrounded by lava. I make my way through a few doors and secret doors, get the "Lightning" spell from a magic fountain, and go through a teleportation door that puts me back on Level 6: "Twinion Keep." It's a good thing I'm not relying on automaps.

    

I thread my way past some pits—I'll have to check them later—and down a snaking corridor that winds south, then west, then north. I fight off a night elf warrior and a few raptors. One of the battles gives me a Heal-All Potion (worth 20,000 gold, so yay!) and a second Ring of Thieves. I meet a monk in a corner: "Search well, for there are places in the dungeon where your attributes can be enhanced."

   

Another teleporter takes me to the western side of the same level. I wind around a hallway of plaques, most of which are broken and unreadable, one of which advises me to "if given a choice, use the opal second." I get attacked a couple of times by jaguars and another ice sleeth. 

     

I'm not sure about "informative."

       

The only way out is via yet another teleporter which takes me back to Level 4: "Night Elf Ingress," this place to an area called "The Vineyard." I don't know why it's called that. A small room has a sheet of music with a song written in the key of C. "The lyrics tell of two areas where race is the key to discovering treasure." Another room has 5,000 gold pieces.

   

The only way out of here, at least into an area I haven't already explored, is to fall down one of two pits. I suspect they'll both kill me, but I've worked out a way to "cheat" in moments like this. There's a "Quit to DOS" feature on the menu that saves the character and quits the game, allowing you to pick up where you left off. The game confirms that you want to quit after saving the character's location, though, so if you then say "no," your position is saved. The next time you die, you can just click the lower "skull" entrance on the main menu to return to the saved position. I'm not abusing this exploit in general, but I don't have any ethical angst using it to test pits.

    

The note about walls altered by construction is a signal to search for secret doors. You usually only get these messages on your second time through an area.

        

One of the pits surprisingly leads me to an unexplored area of Level 5: "The Enclave." As I land, the game says: "Your confidence turns to alarm as you feel yourself approaching the Fringe of Madness." The large room is full of spinners and one-way invisible walls, and the automap refuses to show me where I am on the level. I feel my way through the room, through an illusory wall, and right into a pool of lava, where I die.

   

From back outside the dungeon, I re-enter, but this time instead of tracing my most recent path, I head back to the Lake of Despair (on L5: "The Enclave") with my new vest. It doesn't make the area much easier. The water still saps my hit points alarmingly fast, and there are still instant-death traps on the islands. What the vest seems to do is reverse which islands are safe and which lead to instant death. This is enough to get me to a door that I couldn't access previously. On the other side is a Storm's Bow, a Freedom Ring, and a Fellowship Key. I lose my vest in a scripted event. 

        

You ought to call yourself something else.

        

From the Lake of Despair, I head through a portal I haven't taken before to Level 6: "Twinion Keep." Down a corridor, a female dwarf offers: "The graveyard is very dark. You must rely on your wits and skills to get you through." I'm assuming I haven't found the graveyard yet and that the light I find at the end of this entry is important to navigating it.

         

I suspect my "Intimidate" skill won't come in particularly handy there.

      

It's getting exhausting narrating all of this in paragraph form. Let's switch to bullets.

   

• Another walkway, pits on the side, all leading to death.

• A scrap of paper: "Reward offered for the return of a jeweled lockpick to Tipekans." 

• An NPC who tells me there are secret rooms in the area, some accessible only by certain guilds. 

• A helmeted NPC: "Three clues are available for each race . . . You must read all three clues, or you will not be rewarded." I guess maybe I couldn't read the other plaques for racial reasons. I believe I have experienced two such types of clues at this point.

     

I seem to be hours away from having even one of the map pieces.

       

• I just realized I never re-equipped my breastplate after losing the vest. No wonder enemies have been hitting harder.

   

This area ends in a portal. "Dark Alley waits the unwary traveler," it says. "Step cautiously as you wander through the darkness." I enter and find myself back in another section of Level 5: "The Enclave," again in an area that the automap does not pick up.

    

The corridor in which I find myself is not particularly dark. Back to bullets:

   

• The entrance to Smug's Jewelry Shop is locked. I had previously found the "back door" to the shop on the same level, so that suggests this area is in the southwest. I don't know why all these doors are locked nor why none of my keys work.

• A female NPC also searching for the Emerald Lockpick. "I must find it and get to Tipekans." This is the third time Tipekans and the Emerald Lockpick have been paired in clues. I find the Emerald Lockpick in a nearby room, guarded by a night elf monk. I still don't know where to find this Tipekans. My quest items pack is completely filled with lockpicks and keys, by the way. Something is going to need to give.

• A portal offers to take me to "The Stables." Another suggests that it goes to "Cliffhanger."

• A knight says he dropped a Skeleton Key, which he needs to get into "the secret armory rooms." 

    

I enter what looks like a regular door, but I'm teleported to Level 4: "aMAZEing," to an area I've already mapped. Fortunately, there's a section of this level that I haven't finished, so I head there, pushing my way through random encounters. I'm finding a lot more "Heal-All" potions in battles, saving me from having to buy them.

   

A barbarian behind a door says that grave robbing can be hazardous to your health. A fountain restores my mana. These are the only encounters I get before a teleporter whisks me back to an earlier part of the level. I take some time to verify that none of my many keys and picks will get me through a locked door elsewhere on the level. They do not. 

    

I "Teleport" out of the dungeon and find that I've reached Level 16. While leveling up, the game won't let me raise my agility anymore, so I do the other three attributes. It will be 181,595 experience points—about 180 battles, at the rate I've been earning lately—before I see Level 17.

       

I wonder if the game has a level cap.

         

Back in the dungeon, I fall down a couple of pits to "The Stables" area of Level 6: "Twinion Keep." Here:

    

• Difficult battles with ice sleeths and night elves.

• A fountain heals me; another poisons me.

• An NPC knight says that there's a lantern needed to open a door in the dark.

       

I found the lantern at the end of this session. I don't know where the door is.

     

• A sign above a door says "Rangers Only." I nearly leave but then remember I'm a ranger. Behind the door, I find a Skeleton Key.

   

The only way out of here is a portal door to a new area of Level 4: "Night Elf Ingress." I'm not here long enough for any bullets, except that I find a back door to Sneer's Pawn Shop. None of my many keys or picks will open it. This is the second shop for which I've found both a locked front door and a back door.

    

Not long after that, I run into a door. The game notes: "The door to the Armory has seen many a traveler pass, each in search of the secret rooms inside." Entering takes me to a brand new Level 4 map called "The Armory."

      

How many of them, like me, have no idea why they're here?

      

• Enemies on this level: skeletal savages, hill giants, grey oozes, green slimes, night elves, night elf monks, ice leeches, ice sleeths, barbarian vandals, raptors, clay golems, ruthless thieves.

• A room with a message: "One of your party members must stay in the Armory until light is shed on your purpose. He who remains must at least lead once upon your return. Then, you may alter your formation." None of that seems to apply to a single-character game. 

• A door that says "Fellowship Meeting Hall." There's nothing beyond but a battle with three slimes. 

• A message at a t-intersection: "Do not proceed north unless you have disarmed the traps." This is good advice, as every square beyond has a trap, and healing does not work in this area.

• A locked door unlocked with the Fellowship Key. A teleporter leads to a new part of the level.

• A locked door that I'm not strong enough to open. None of the keys work. 

• Lots of one-way walls, one-way doors, illusory doors, and teleporters.

• In an alcove, I bump a shield off the wall. It falls against a switch, which disarms the traps and unlocks the doors, although not the door I wasn't strong enough to open.

• A message on a locked door: "When the wand is zapped, stay in the area until you open the door." 

      

I'll try, but this game has a way of yanking you from one place to another. I mean, check the subtitle.

     

• A knight: "The dralks . . . or some such thing, they are what these elves worship." 

• A couple of places in which my mana is drained by "miasmal gases." 

• A magical fountain teaches me the "Light Shroud" spell. Another one teaches me the "Shield" spell.

      

I think it protects against attacks from the undead.

      

• A troll cleric takes some gold from me and gives me a Spidersilk Helm. Later, a guard lets me enter a door because I'm wearing the Spidersilk Helm. 

• Behind a secret door in this area, I knock over a magic wand, which activates, unlocking the door that mentioned the wand. This door leads to a series of corridors in which I find the Luminous Lantern. A final teleporter tosses me back to Level 5: "The Enclave."

      

How do I "mark well," exactly?

           

I managed to explore the Armory in one go, but I'm out of healing potions at this point, so I "Teleport" outside the dungeon to sell my loot and restock. I'm a bit depressed that I've found none of the map pieces, but I do have a few new keys and lockpicks, so perhaps it's time to try all the locked doors again. 

   

The game is packed with content, which I normally enjoy, but one thing that's annoying about the hints is that they clue you into things that you don't need any hints for. You'll just inevitably reach the location that the hint talks about and do the only thing that you can do there. This makes it more difficult to identify the hints that you truly need.

   

Now that my winter break has started, hopefully I have more time to get ahead of this game and to adopt a more summary approach. 

 

Time so far: 31 hours 

     

****** 

     

Sword Dream, my last 1993 game, is giving me trouble. I've tried several Macintosh emulators and associated models. When the game works at all, I can't access the characters' inventories, or do any of the other things that the buttons on the character sheet or supposed to do. Nothing happens when I click them, and the game doesn't have equivalent menu commands.

   

A shot from Sword Dream.

    

I'm talking about the four buttons below the character's names: the magnifying class, silhouette, dialogue balloon, and question mark. These are supposed to show the character sheet, go into the inventory, cast a spell, and provide help. None of them do anything for my configurations. If anyone wants to try to troubleshoot, please let me know what you find. I'll keep meddling with configurations. I've tried version 1.6 and 1.7; if you Google "Sword Dream 1.7.1," you'll find an appropriate download. You have to play the tutorial long enough to add a fighter to the party, at which point you should be able to tell if the problem is happening on your computer.
 

Excelsior, Phase One: Lysandia: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

 

Matt, I want to see this "Registry of Fixers."

       

Excelsior, Phase One: Lysandia

United States

Castle Software (developer); published as shareware
Released 1993 for DOS, 2000 for Windows

Date Started: 17 October 2025 

Date Ended: 14 December 2025

Total Hours: 32

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5) (Combat easy after the first few hours; puzzles still hard.)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) 

    

Summary:

 

Excelsior is a better-than-average Ultima clone, with an iconographic interface and single-key commands. The main character is a "fixer," arrived from another dimension to correct an aberration in the timeline of the land of Lysandia; this turns out to be a demon who has possessed King Valkery. The player must solve a multi-stage quest to banish the demon that takes him through cities, dungeons, and castles, including multiple conversations with NPCs.

     

Mechanics and combat are trifle bland. The detailed character creation ends up mattering little, NPC interaction is one-way only, and character leveling stops being rewarding well before the end of the game, which takes a smidge too long. Interesting interior layouts and challenging puzzles keep things lively.

    

*****

    

When I last blogged, the Resistance and I had pieced together that to banish the demon from King Valkery, we would need a Gem of Severance, a Crystal Jar, and a third unknown item. I had obtained the jar and had discovered that to make the Gem of Severance, I would need individual gems that would be left behind when I killed the most evil and most good people in the land. I had identified the "most good" as a friar living in isolation in the Royal Keep, but he would only consent if I stabbed him with a dagger dipped in holy water. The "most evil" person was a sorcerer named Fevez in the dungeon Daivenhoven; he wanted me to kill the leader of the Order of the Crescent.

   

These two sub-quests came together when I visited the Forgotten Pits, knowing that I'd find a priest there who could make holy water. He confirmed this, but said he could only give it to a member of the order of the Crescent.

      

Trying to save the world here, buddy.

    

I had no idea where to find the leader of the order, but commenter Scott had alerted me that there were two more levels to the Seventh Keep, which I had abandoned after exploring only two. The third level had one of the more difficult puzzles in the game, and I think I would have needed a hint to solve it if I hadn't encountered a similar puzzle in an escape room game just a couple of months ago. The level had eight messages on signs, plus a ninth talking sign that asked me for a password. The eight messages were:

     

• Tea is served promptly at three.
• One blue jay sat in the tree.
• Sail the seven seas.
• To be good is the goal.
• The eye can wander for days.
• Oh no! Something ate my cat!
• Each philosopher asked "Why?" five times.
• A hex on you! 

     

If you can figure it out, I tip my hat. The key realization is that each sentence has one word that sounds like a number (or is a number) and one word that sounds like a letter (e.g., "2 B good is the goal"; "The I can wander 4 days"). The password is discerned by ordering the phrases by the numbers and then spelling out the letters, which in this case is JBTIYUCO. I figured such a nonsense word couldn't possibly be right and that I was overlooking something, but to my surprise, it opened the way forward.

     

I want to know how I pronounced that.

       

On the fourth floor, I met a frail-looking woman who said she was hiding from King Valkery's minions. Apparently, the Order of the Crescent is some do-good organization, and the king outlawed it. The woman had run out of food and asked for half mine, which I gave. In turn, she put a brand on my palm and welcomed me into the Order.  

    

Knowing I eventually had to kill this woman, I tried to do it while I was here anyway, but the brand disappeared. Thus, I had to make my way back to the Forgotten Pit for the umpteeth time, descend to the priest, get him to sprinkle some holy water on my dagger blade, and then return to the Seventh Keep to kill Lady Jasmine.

    

Well, the good news is that you don't have to worry about that.

          

Before doing that last part, I returned to the Royal Keep and killed the friar. He was ready for it. After killing Jasmine, I returned to the dungeon Davinhovin and killed the evil sorcerer Fevez, who like the friar was ready and willing to die. It's notable that for both of them, I just had to T)alk to them, and the game took over from there. For Lady Jasmine, on the other hand, I had to do the deed myself with the A)ttack key right after the old woman complimented my generosity. I was sure that the game would give me some kind of "out," some way of tricking Fevez, but I couldn't find it if it did. It's an interesting moral question that I wish the game had milked a bit more.

      

How affable of him.

       

Killing the friar and Fevez rewarded me with the two halves of the Gem of Severance, but I needed to unite them. All I had been told was that I would need to find a statue of the demon Xoxiro in a deep dungeon and stick the two gems in his eyes. A return visit to the Resistance got me nothing new. I checked my notes, but I had already been to the bottom level of every dungeon I'd found.

    

I checked the map of Lysandia that Matt Engle had sent me and saw a dungeon I'd missed in the middle of the continent. I found it at the top of a river, through some poisonous fens. The dungeon was full of poison, too, so before exploring, I backtracked through several magic shops until I found the "Pure Blood" (PB) spell. (I'd been dealing with occasional poisoning up to this point at healers.) I took the opportunity to buy some other spells I'd neglected. I ended up casting virtually none of them and regretting that I'd spent the money.

    

A new dungeon entrance.

     

The dungeon of Draxen had four large levels, with sections full of water in which I needed to navigate by ship. Fortunately, there were ships in the appropriate places.  I found Eramel Plate Mail, the best armor in the game, at one point. There was also a sword called Avenger, but my paladin couldn't use it. There were a few secret doors. Naturally, I got attacked by hordes of dragons and undead and such, but combat hadn't posed any difficulty since about Hour 3, and it didn't pose any difficulty during this session, either. I think the only time I died during the last 24 hours is when a wizard hit me with a lucky "Sleep" spell that I just never woke up from. For everyone else, as long as I cast a healing spell once my hit point total got to, say, 300, I was fine.

    

Moving through Draxen.

        

Now, given the sheer number of enemies that you face as you move from one place to another, I wouldn't have wanted combat to be a lot more challenging. Nonetheless, I think an easy fix to the game's balance would be to have spell points regenerate about half as fast. The player would have to conserve a bit more, and potions would be more valuable.

    

Anyway, I made it to the bottom of Draxen and found a demon statue. I couldn't get near it, so from the altar in front of it, I U)sed the two individual gems. The game narrated how I threw them into the statue's eye socket and they fused into the Gem of Severance.

     

That looks less like a statue than a skull.

       

From here, the surface was a few "Instant Elevation" spells away. I stopped in Castle Excelsior for what turned out to be my final promotion; the game has a level cap at 10. 

    

Back at the Resistance HQ, Sebastian told me that the final item I would need to defeat the demon in King Valkery was the Banishment Sword. He sent me to Aldno. Fortunately, Aldno had the sword on him and just gave it to me with no fuss.

      

I think I should have noticed this place earlier.

        

No, of course that isn't what happened. Aldno told me that the sword was in Ironthread Keep, the only place I hadn't entered, because a sign next to the door kept asking for a password. Aldno related that the two sub-kings, Amanthor in Infinitum and Rodagarn in Griswold, each knew half the password. Of course, it wasn't as easy as just asking them. Each of them wanted me to do a little quest first.

   

Amanthor's quest was to cure the land of a drought. His sage, Horance, said I would have to do it by spreading Storm Dust into the atmosphere. I would first need to find the rock, then somehow get it up into  the stratosphere, then somehow cause a bolt of lightning to strike it. This quest sent me from person to person to find the rock, find a scroll that would summon a lightning bolt, and purchase a balloon with which I could hoist it into the atmosphere from the highest mountain. Everyone who knew something valuable wanted me to do a little sub-quest for him.

       

My patience wore a bit thin at this point.

               

I don't feel like relating all of it, but it took a while, mostly because the two guys selling the balloon wanted 5,000 gold pieces for it. Since I'd recently gone on a spell-buying binge, I had to ignominiously grind for the money. I did it in front of Oooblyae, which has shops that buy everything except bows. I got to the goalpost a lot faster by selling items than by looting gold itself.

     

Yay! 235 more battles to go!

       

But I confess I needed the hint book for the location of the rock. I couldn't find anyone to tell me. It turned out to be in the middle of a very obvious landscape pattern south of Infinitum. I can't believe I didn't notice it.

     

Amanthor gave me his half of the password (the nonsense IBBR) and had me see one of his servants, Heltimer the Obscure, about a key that I would need in Ironthread. The key turned out to go to a clock I had bought ages ago, turning it into a "Wound Clock."

      

Amanthor is happy.

      

Rodargan, meanwhile, didn't want to give me his half of the password while a king's spy, Peffley, was hanging about nearby. Valkery had recently given Peffley something called the Miracle Ear, an automatic translation device which Griswold depended on to negotiate trade with the monster-inhabited city of Grethal.

     

I had to conduct a world tour of several towns, one NPC sending me to another, before I learned Peffley's big weakness: He's a coward. With that intelligence in mind, a little threatening caused him to cough up the Miracle Ear, which Rodargan now wanted me to take to Grethal to work out a new trade deal. On my first visit to Grethal, I had been unable to speak to most of the NPCs. This time, I could. The goblins and trolls and whatnot protested that they were just as civilized as humans and elves, just misunderstood.

       

Your argument would be more sympathetic if you didn't attack me everywhere I go.

       

A gorn named Bleh gave me a password that I would need in Ironthread (CAVENGBER), and a golem named Hurmst told me I would definitely need a clock in the tower. I parlayed with Mayor MgMemble and got the favorable trade deal Rodargan was asking for. When I returned to Griswold, Rodargan gave me his half of the password: IGBL. That means that the final password was, yes, IGBLIBBR. No one was going to brute-force their way into that tower.

       

"Mayor MgMemble" sounds like the villain in a bad Christmas movie.

              

I have no idea how many levels Ironthread was. It had multiple up-and-down ladders, and no light source worked, so I could only see one square around me at any given time. I thought I'd probably have to map it, but instead I just followed the right wall, going up or down as I came to ladders. It worked. I eventually came to a dead-end amidst walls of fire.

   

Here, alas, I needed the hint book again. I'm not sure this was a fair puzzle. I had to pair Bleh's clue (CAVENGBER) with the wound clock, which when U)sed, could be set to 13 different positions. The trick was to associate each letter with a number on the clockface in alphabetical order: for instance, C was 3 and A was 1. V is, of course, 22, but 22:00 on a 26-hour clock would be 9 on a 13-hour clock (with AM and PM). I get the logic, but not how the player could possibly have stumbled upon it on his own. Since the hint book shipped with the game, though, I can't ding the authors too hard for this one.

      

Why would any society settle on a 13-hour day?

        

When I had finished entering the sequence, the fires heated up and presented me with the Banishment Sword.

   

"Instant Descent" got me out of the dungeon in a few seconds, and all I had left was to go to Castle Excelsior and confront Valkery. I stopped to visit Sebastian just in case. "The Day of Renewal has arrived," he proclaimed. "Begone and may the stars shine brightly upon you."

   

I entered Excelsior and marched up to the king. He wouldn't talk to me. I tried attacking him, but all the attacks missed. I needed to use the Gem of Severance first. A couple of text paragraphs explained what happened: I smashed the gem in half, which caused Valkery to vibrate and then split in half himself, a noble king in the rear and "evil incarnate" in the foreground. The evil version drew his sword and attacked.

     

So, it's the literal type of Gem of Severance then.

      

We traded blows for a while. The Banishment Sword did several hundred points of damage per hit, but the Dark King must have had a few thousand. His sword, meanwhile, hit me for about 115 per hit. I think I could have won by just casting "Flesh Mend" every so often, but the easier way was to use the Glistening Elixir, which raised my health to 999. That lasted long enough to see the battle to the end, which was only a few more rounds.

      

It's a good thing the two kings didn't end up in the opposite order.

      

More narration: the Dark King fell to the floor, still threatening me with his dying breaths: "True chaos is not a material being. It will live on, stronger than ever, for your anger toward me merely strengthens it!"

       

I hope I remembered to poke some air holes.

         

Fortunately, "true chaos" could be captured in a jar. When I used the Crystal Jar, the narration described how the incorporeal entity that came out of Valkery's body was "ripped apart and pulled inside the jar."

   

The "good" Valkery had his Theoden moment, slowly coming to his senses and thanking me for banishing the demon and restoring his wits. He offered a reward, which I declined. In fact, I didn't even get to stay long enough for the banquet. Instead, the Great Council immediately sucked me back to Fixer headquarters, congratulated me on a job well done, and promised me a promotion.

      

This framing story is a nice meta-commentary on CRPGs. You could assume the role of the Fixer in just about every game that you play.

        

You will be tempted from my description to think that the main quest is too long, with too much back-and-forth, and too many stacked sub-quests. There is an extent to which this is true, but I don't want to over-emphasize it. Like the best of the Ultima games, Excelsior does a superior job with writing, plotting, and use of its graphics, such that its areas are never boring. Like, it would have been nice if Rodargan had just given me the password, but the idea of a human society needing a fragile magical item to engage in trade with a monster society is compelling, and it was fun to talk to the NPCs who had only been able to grunt on my first visit. Superior writing kept the long text passages from risibility (I would never call the Dark King's dying speech a "Trandle Oratory," for instance). Interesting layouts and puzzles kept the dungeons from falling to tedium.

     

Good writing (including dialogue) and use of graphics distinguish Excelsior from dozens of similar Ultima clones.

         

Where the game really disappoints is in character attributes. Excelsior is hardly the first game to offer numerous character options and then never actually use them in encounters, NPC dialogue, quests, or puzzles, but it somehow cuts more deeply here given the game's more unusual options (sexless golem paladin, male imp pirate, female giant bard). Similarly disappointing is the alignment system, which only seems to affect the number of spell points required to cast certain spells, and naturally gravitates towards the spells you use most often anyway.

   

I do think the different classes could create very different gameplay experiences, however. I didn't use much magic in the game, and if I were going to replay it, I would choose a magic-heavy class to see how some of the more expensive, higher-level spells performed versus the weapons that I relied on. I also note that intelligent spell use can make aspects of the game faster. I never bothered to explore "Mortimer's Pinpoint Relocation," which uses a magic skull to perform a sort of mark/recall. Very late in the game, I discovered that I had bought something called "Air Walk" at some point. It literally allows you to fly, rendering other forms of transportation obsolete. Overall, I only explored about 10% of the spells available to me.

        

My late-game character. I guess I could have gotten 1 more point of dexterity.

       

On the other hand, I think a purely-martial character would have a nightmare of a time, relying on rare potions and natural regeneration to heal (maybe even paying for healing!), having to walk back out of every dungeon. Rogues and assassins would have a particularly difficult time, with no actual stealth mechanics. On the other hand, I think the author did a good job seeding the game with high-level weapons and armor for each class. 

     

In a GIMLET, I give the game:

    

• 4 points for the game world. Its main plot may be a bit derivative, but its framing story (involving the Fixers) is at least original. The world is well-constructed, although it doesn't have a ton of lore. It would have been nice to know something about where all those dungeons came from. Why is the Seventh Keep called that, for instance?

• 4 points for character creation and development. As discussed, an extensive creation process gives way to not much use of the character attributes. Advancement is relatively satisfying in the early stages.

• 3 points for NPC interaction. There are lots of NPCs, but alas all the interaction is one-way.

     

NPCs have a lot to say, but you never say anything back.

      

• 4 points for encounters and foes. The foes are nothing special. They mostly come from Dungeons & Dragons, with a few associated special attacks. I would have liked them to be individually harder but rarer. The game earns some credits with the interesting puzzles, even though I thought a few were unfair.

• 3 points for magic and combat. An easy melee system makes combat unbalanced and discourages experimentation with spells. The Ultima-derived spell variety is otherwise impressive.

     

Battle with some zombies near Ironthread Keep.

        

• 4 points for equipment. You get a decent number of equipment slots and regular upgrades. I always like when games allow me to dual-wield. There are some fixed item locations, but a lot of your inventory comes from random battles.

• 4 points for the economy. The fact that I had to grind 95% of the way through the game shows that it at least never gets out of control—and I didn't buy more than half the spells. Most games offer too few ways to spend money; I think this is one of the few that offers too few ways to make money. Cash drops from slain enemies are paltry; you really have to load up your inventory space (which you don't have that much of) and sell things if you want to get rich.

• 3 points for a branching main quest with lots of sub-quests. I do not think there are any side-quests or optional areas, however, and unless I missed something, there are no alternate paths or role-playing choices. (One exception: solving a cryptogram on your own instead of paying for it.)

    

This was a well-constructed sub-quest that had the misfortune of appearing too late in the game.

        

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The game makes fine use of its iconographic graphics and its single-key approach to commands is exactly what I want from an interface. But the sound effects are basic and rare, and the footstep effect is annoying enough that I turned all sounds off. I would have liked an in-game map and an option to dump NPC dialogue to a note file, neither of which is a big ask by 1993. I should note here that the authors did include an in-game map in version 2.0, released the following year, so I think you could bump up this category and the final score by 1 point for that version.

• 4 points for gameplay. The world is nonlinear, but the plot is mostly linear. There is some mild class-based replayability. It was a bit too easy and a bit too long, but only a bit in both cases.

   

That gives us a final score of 36. Going into this entry, I thought to myself that it ought to just crest my "recommended" threshold, and that's what it did. I also thought it should get about the same as Enchantasy from the same year, which I rated at 35, and Antepenult (1989), which I also rated at 36. These games form a trilogy of superior Ultima clones.

     

Part of the game's thorough documentation.

           

Excelsior was written by Matthew Engle, who handled most of the graphics and design, and Daniel Berke, who handled most of the programming. ("Digital Antiquarian" Jimmy Maher has an extensive rundown of Engle and Berke's backgrounds and the game development process in this November 2020 entry.) The two had met in high school but did most of the development while they attended college in different states, occasionally meeting to trade notes and disks. They sold the game through bulletin boards and the occasional ad. When the Internet era came along, they switched to web-based sales (also switching their brand to 11th Dimension Entertainment). Nearly 30 years later, their site still offers Excelsior and its sequel along with an award-winning text adventure they wrote in high school called Skyland's Star. 

         

They began working on Excelsior, Phase Two: Errondor almost immediately, but exacerbated physical distances made development slow. Rather than simply re-use assets from the first game, Engle and Berke replicated the Ultima VI interface. The plot has the Fixer tracking down a missing colleague on the subtitular world while also completing her mission.

   

Berke became a software engineer and remains one to this day, based in the Seattle area. Engle became a game producer for Disney and Knowledge Adventure, then switched careers by going to law school. He practices in the Phoenix area.

    

My new approach to going through the years may mean we actually get to 1999. We just have one more game to wrap up 1993. 

Game 563: Telnyr III: The Four Runes (1993)

 

         

Telnyr III: The Four Runes

Australia

Independently developed and released as freeware; republished in Loadstar 193 in 2000

Released c. 1993 for Commodore 64

Date Started: 13 December 2025

Date Finished: 13 December 2025

Total Hours: 3
Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)
Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

    

Australian Peter Boothman (1944-2012) was best known as a guitarist in the Sydney jazz scene. (See here for an album of his music.) But in his 40s, he developed an interest in computer programming, selected the Commodore as his machine of choice, founded Brunswick Publications, and released several games and utility programs through a local newsletter for Commodore enthusiasts. He put a copyright of 1990 on his first game, The Stone of Telnyr, but did not do the same for the two sequels. They may have been written and released all at once or spaced out by 1-2 years. We only know that all three games were available by 1993.

     

The Telnyr titles are all afternoon quasi-RPGs with similar mechanics. Boothman experiments a bit with screen sizes and layouts throughout the series but otherwise doesn't make many advancements. I found Telnyr III easier and shorter than the first two.

     

The king gives me a mission.

        

Telnyr is once again in trouble—monsters roaming the land and such—and the solution this time is not to find the Stone of Telnyr or the Golden Chalice but rather the Four Runes (Air, Earth, Fire, and Water). Character creation consists of only a name; all characters start with 250 hit points, 250 food, a +5 sword, and 0 crystals, herbs, potions, gems, or spells. The interface uses the joystick along with a few keyboard commands that the game always displays at the appropriate time.

       

Starting out on the main continent.

        

The plot takes place across five islands, four accessible from the first via a ferry, all of which fit entirely in the exploration window. As the character moves about, he gets attacked every few dozen moves by rogues, thieves, orcs, ghouls, et cetera. There are between one and six in each party. In combat, the player can choose to manually attack, automatically attack (make manual attacks until the battle is over), cast a spell, take a potion, or run away (works about half the time). Potions increase the number of the character's attacks to three per round for the duration of the battle. When there is more than one enemy, they attack individually, so facing six enemies is the same thing as facing one enemy six times in a row.

        

Battle with a bunch of ghouls.

        

Enemies drop gold, food, potions, crystals, and gems. These same items are also found randomly as you explore; their icons pop up nearby, and you have a limited amount of time to go and collect them before they disappear. 

   

There is no experience or character development. The only way to get stronger is to buy better weapons, buy spells, amass potions, and to cast "Heal" or "Revive" (like a double-"Heal") repeatedly to increase current hit points (if there's a maximum, I never reached it). Weapon upgrades (Sword +10, Sword +20, Sword +30) come in the king's castle on the first island, but before long, you find a Sword +40 in a treasure pile and that remains your only weapon for the game. In the previous two Telnyrs, spells were inventory items, purchased individually. Here, you pay to learn them and spend crystals to cast them. On Tropicania, you find a shop where you can pay money for crystals, uniting the two parts of the economy. The game is dangerous in the beginning, before you've found this store, and before you've found some other lodes of crystals. You can easily lose more health than you have the crystals to restore.

           

"Exploring" Telnyr Castle.

         

The starting island has the king's castle, a dungeon, and the ferry terminal (these, like all locations in the game except the dungeons, are purely menu locations). The castle offers the opportunity to visit the king, a grocer, a weapon shop, and a library. On your first visit, the king gives 15 crystals and asks you to bring the runes back to him for further reward.

          

The ferry terminal. One of the caches has a ferry pass that makes travel free.

       

The weapon shop sells not only the aforementioned swords but also a sextant, which is necessary to identify your coordinates on the various islands. This, in turn, is necessary to find three treasures whose locations are given in three library books. It must not be a public library because you have to pay for them individually. They give the coordinates to three caches on three different islands, one of which has the Rune of Earth.

      

One of the books. I guess I didn't care about the plot.

        

The other three runes are found in dungeons. When you enter a dungeon, the perspective switches to a side-view showing multiple levels with ladders, like a game of Donkey Kong in which the challenges have mysteriously vanished. You get the same encounters every few dozen steps like on the outside, except with harder enemies like vampires, ghosts, and demons. The dungeons on the main island, Forest Isle, and Lamentia have two levels; the one on Devils Peaks has three. All have a treasure at the bottom; three of them are runes.

      

Finding the Rune of Air at the bottom of a dungeon.

        

As you return runes to the king, you're rewarded with crystals and gold.

   

Forest Isle has a magic shop along with a dungeon. Here, you can buy "Strength," "Confuse," "Heal" (50 hit points), and "Teleport," the latter of which gets you out of dungeons without having to crawl back up. It's vital. Lamentia's magic shop offers "Nutrition" (creates 20 food), "Revive" (heals 120 hit points), "Flee," and "Missile." "Missile" is the equivalent of "Banish" in the previous games; it kills most of an enemy party, leaving just one or two for you to finish off in melee combat. But it's expensive, and I found that I needed most of my crystals for "healing," which is a bit of a misnomer in this case, as the spells just add hit points to your total regardless of how many you started with.

      

My inventory late in the game, when I have all the spells.

      

Tropicania has a potion shop (hardly necessary, given that enemies drop them a lot) and an outpost with a jeweler, a grocer, and a casino. The jeweler sells crystals for gold or gems, the latter of which you almost never find. The casino lets you bet between 10 and 50 gold on a moronically simple game in which you roll three numbers between 1 and 20 and win if the third number is "between" the first two (including the first two). So if the first two rolls are 5 and 15, you win if the third roll is anywhere within that range, and lose if it's 1-4 or 6-20. The obvious strategy is to bet big if the range is greater than 10 and less otherwise, but in practice, the casino shuts down after a few wins, so it's not a huge factor.

             

Tropicania. Note that a bag of food has appeared next to me.

         

I found that the island near the outpost was a good place to grind, since I could trade looted gold for crystals and then heal the damage. 

    

The last two dungeons are difficult, delivering multiple combats with demons who swat away over 100 points per round. I didn't even attempt them until I had my hit point total well above 1,000 and plenty of crystals in reserve for the "Revive" spell, the "Flee" spell (works 100% of the time in case fleeing regularly does not), and the "Teleport" spell to get out.

      

This is a time to run away.

        

After I found the third rune, the game said a pack of ghouls followed me out of the dungeon. They apparently continued to tail me as I made my way home, because from that point, every grocer got scared and closed his shop before I could buy anything.

       

Navigating the multiple ladders of the final dungeon.

            

Once you bring the fourth rune to the king, you get some fireworks while the central icon quickly cycles through all of the enemies you faced. The king says, "Thanks a million." You can keep playing if you for some reason want to.

      

The second game had chalices appear everywhere, so I guess maybe these are runes.

      

The game gets a 16 on the GIMLET, doing best (3s) in "Magic and Combat" for its variety of options and spells, "Economy" for its continuing relevance. It gets a 0 for NPCs and 1s and 2s for everything else. This rating is consistent with the 15 I gave to the first game and the 17 I gave to the second. These were quick diversions that came on free disks—appetizers for more elaborate titles. To which we will now return.