Game 590: Labyrinths (1982)

 

You have to admire a game that gets right down to business.

      

Labyrinths

United States

Progressive Computer Applications (developer and publisher)
Released 1982 for Atari 800
Date Started: 10 September 2026

Date Ended: 10 September 2026

Total Hours: 2

Difficulty:  Easy (2.0/5), not that it means much in this game, since there's no objective

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) 

     

Any player who has sampled Telengard (1982) or one of the other DND variants knows that the geography of those games is just an illusion; the character can hit (P)ass next to the stairs and receive encounter after encounter. This game does away with the illusion. It's all-text. There is no movement, no sense of any geography. The player enters the dungeon and gets encounter after encounter until he dies.

      

Ads for the game in magazines like Antic and Compute stressed this inherent randomness. "DIFFERENT EVERYTIME [sic] YOU PLAY!" the publisher boasted.

      

I enter a very small office every day.

         

There's no backstory except that the character is going to descend into a network of labyrinths and try to get rich. The player names the character and chooses from fighter, thief, cleric, and magic-user classes. Each character starts with between roughly 1 and 15 hit points (class dependent) and a spear. He immediately starts encountering gnolls, mummies, zombies, giant spiders, dragons, and 30 or so other D&D-style creatures. As in the DND variants, these monsters all have an explicit level between 1 and roughly the player's current level plus 2. There can be multiple monsters, but they attack and die as a unit rather than individually.

        

If the player successfully kills the monsters in combat, he gets experience and finds treasure that can include weapons, armor, scrolls, and gold. Gold is converted directly to experience. The player can find treasures irrespective of monsters, too, and just as in Telengard, it's always fun when a Level 1 player finds treasure worth 5,000 gold pieces and gets to Level 3 immediately. Levels come with extra strength and hit points.

       

This was a good day.

       

So far, this seems like an awfully basic game, and it is, but Labyrinths has some surprises when it comes to combat. It's unexpectedly tactical, and in a way that's class-dependent. Some examples:

   

• Enemies start at range. Some try to maintain a range, others close the gap. The player can also run towards or away from the enemy. He might want to maintain distance from melee enemies, using his own missile weapons, or run towards enemies with breath attacks and kill them in melee combat. If he runs far enough away, he escapes.

• The character can carry several weapons, both melee and missile, and use them as the situation demands.

     

Combat options for a magic-user  character.

       

• Spellcasters get typical D&D spells at appropriate levels, including "Magic Missile," "Shield," "Strength," "Speed," "Lightning Bolt," and "Hold Monster." Clerics get several variations of "Cure," "Teleport," "Hold Person," and "Flame Strike," among others.

• Thieves can hide in shadows and backstab. 

     

I somehow managed to backstab with a bow and arrow.

        

• Characters can find magic weapons and armor in the dungeon or purchase them from an occasional merchant. Magic weapons may have an increased chance to hit, increased damage, or both.

• The game tracks encumbrance, also based on class. 

• All characters can read magic scrolls, though they don't know the effects until they've read them. These scrolls might heal, protect, or strengthen the character.  

• The player can consult battle statistics that show his chances to hit the monster and vice versa.

     

Statistics for the current battle.

      

• Every once in a while, the game gives the player the option to leave the dungeon and go outside. If he takes it, he always a) encounters a merchant and can buy one item, b) rests and heals, and c) immediately encounters a pit that dumps him back into the dungeon. 

     

Do I have to count them out individually?

        

It's too bad that this is all for nothing. The game has no quest. The character can never escape the dungeon or retire. (I've verified this by inspecting the file.) He just keeps fighting until he dies and gets a score.

     

So it goes.

       

Although there are no graphics, the game does offer basic sounds (crunches and such) during combat. The game changes colors of the screen background and text at random, which I could do without. All command prompts are given on-screen, which is handy.

    

Although there are things I like about the game, I think the ad over-sells it a bit.

      

I've often thought that in an all-text game, there isn't any excuse for simple mechanics, since the developer didn't have to spend time or disk space on graphics. By the same token, though, I think that there's no excuse for an all-text game to offer no story or ending. 

      

I can't find that the Burtonsville, Maryland-based PCA ever made or marketed any other games; they must have blown their budget on full-page ads. Labyrinths sold for $28.95 on disk, or about $100 even today, which is pretty crazy. Still, for a game that isn't very good (GIMLET of 15), it isn't half bad.

   

For further reading:

• My "Index of Games by Lineage" has the titles in the DND line. 
• El Explorador de RPG's coverage of Labyrinth. As usual, he gets into more details about statistics and mechanics than I did. 

****

    

That's all I accomplished this week. How pathetic is that? Less than 1,000 words. I wanted to couple this with one or two other short games, but I ran out of time, and I knew that if I allowed myself to break my regular posting schedule, which has been intact since April, I'd end up taking a long hiatus. I might anyway; this month is killing me. But cross your fingers for another Ravenloft entry on Sunday.