Citadel: Won! (with New Summary and Rating)

 

Not to confuse beknight and benighted.

        

Citadel: Adventure of the Crystal Keep

Canada

Postcraft International (developer and publisher)

Released in 1989 for Macintosh

Date Started: 1 July 2018

Date Ended: 3 August 2018 (Chet); 19 June 2026 (Quirkz)

Total Hours: 8 for Chet (not won); 24 for Quirkz
Difficulty: Hard (4/5)

Final Rating: 30

Original Ranking: 174/305 (57%)

Current Ranking:  356/588 (61%)

      

Summary:

 

Citadel: the Adventure of Crystal Keep is a single-dungeon, rescue-the-princess blobber in the tradition of games like Wizardry and The Bard's Tale, but with some real-time action mixed in. It covers 12 levels, features eight classes and 44 spells, and comes with a few riddles and a decent variety of navigational puzzles.

    

****

 

Guest post by Quirkz:

     

[Quirkz ended the last entry feeling a bit depressed with his lack of progress, although by that point he had mapped at least part of all of the dungeon's levels. As this session begins, he sets his jaw and enters the dungeon one last time.]

 

I backtrack to the eighth floor where there's a locked door I've never been able to open. I try "Blast Portal" on it, and it works like a charm. Inside is a woman named Gladiis, depicted holding an orb. She drops a key when defeated. The room also has some gold, a glowing shield (seems to provide 2 more protection) and some mithril banded mail that I give to Caltrop to replace his vanilla chain mail, improving his AC by 3.

    

How are you going to fight with that thing in your hands?

   

At first I think this key is going to get me past one of my obstacles, but it doesn't let me into any of the locked doors I know. I retest this room with "Open Portal," which just picks the lock instead of destroying the door, and find that Gladiis's key is for her own door. Now I'm starting to feel like I just broke into a woman's house and killed her. Testing a theory, I reload and drop one of my party members, approaching with a group of 5, but she does not seem inclined to join forces. (The hint book goes into a wildly unintuitive interaction here involving speakeasy-grade door shenanigans, fortune telling, trances, and secret attacks. I never would have guessed any of these things. It confirms Gladiis is an opponent, though, not a friend.) I leave her dead because I want the magical shield, armor, and gold.

     
Reviewing my party stash, I find that I've got a small collection of items of unknown purpose, including two chalices from early levels that have high enough sale value that's probably what they were for. The descriptions mention a liquid inside, which made me think I'd need them as a solution to something, but there hasn't been a way to use them. I've got the hourglass. There's the gold flute; I understand what it will be for, but not how, when, or where to use it. And now the slate.

     
On the obstacles side, I still don't know how to get through half a dozen enchanted doors on 9 and 10; I don't know how to claim that fourth skull wand that might free Synd; I've got a massively confusing floor 11 to map and navigate; and then there's most of the twelfth and final floor to complete.

      
More exploration on 11. I think I'm doing well for a while, until I end up at the end of a long hallway that should be familiar, but the stairs are going the wrong direction. "Locatus" shows I'm on a different side of the floor than expected. I need to use that more. I take the stairs down anyway, trying to get a sense of what's on 12. It's a short room that leads to more stairs up and then a whole chain of rooms, including at one point a one-way set of stairs. There's another door maze on 12 like those on 11. At this point I'm fairly lost and don't trust my map, but I figure that wandering at random will at least show me some new things. I find another invisibility ring, always welcome.

       
I end up in a room with an altar holding one large scroll. I grab it, which causes the altar to crack and a big fight to begin: purple worms, an arch devil, some deaths, and some others. I'm very careful around the worms, who I think can decapitate or swallow people. One or two of my fighters are hitting, but I'm mostly throwing axes. Afterwards, an icon says: "Hurry, the blood scroll needs to be brought to the light of a new day to destroy him forever." Is this Synd? From her prism? There's a doorway at the end of the room, but when I go up I'm inside the anti-magic room, and all the doors are locked from the inside. Clearly I've done things out of order.

 

An altar shattering just because you touched it is an ominous portent.

       

I try to backtrack, but when I go downstairs there's another scroll on the altar, which is intact again. A game bug? I grab this scroll, too, but it's a trap. Five of my characters teleport away, leaving me just with the wizard. I can switch parties, but only to the cleric, who's a human and can't see in the dark. Somehow Siobhan finds Mulk and joins up. I try to switch parties again, but the option isn't available. The other four guys are missing for now. I wander some more, hoping to find the rest of the crew, but nobody shows up. I end up back inside the anti-magic dome several times, and I realize it's doing the same thing as the pyramid a few levels back, with one set of stairs giving four different paths down depending on the direction of your approach. I also realize there are two altars. One must be the real one, one must be fake. Good to know, because odds are high I'll be doing this again.

     
I still try to escape, thinking if I can get to the surface maybe the bartender will give me hints about my lost party. I stumble on a locked gate and am surprised when the game tells me I have the key. I step inside a small room. Unexpectedly, I plummet several floors to my death. This was the elevator shaft, except the elevator was on 11, and I'm on 12. The weird thing is it doesn't show the hole in the ground on this level, and it looked safe.

    
Well, it was probably all going to be a reload anyway. I've now seen half of 12 and have a sense of the endgame. What I don't have is any clue how the penultimate chapter is played.  

     

The penultimate battle, which does not look much different from the other battles I've been seeing for the last three levels.

    

I start working on 11 again, making heavy use of "Locatus." I keep ending up in places I didn't expect, facing directions I didn't expect. I slowly catch on that when I step into the anti-magic zone there's a flicker, and it's not just turning off the magic, it's also teleporting me to other points in a symmetrical room. It's not clear whether there's a pattern yet or whether it's random, but I can solve this by casting "Locatus" every time I step out of the zone. I have to redo my map, but 11 is nearly a solved problem, once I get the stairwells aligned with the correct spots on 12. It also feels like I've been through most or all of 12, just maybe not in the right order.

     
Gains include a fourth spellbook and the cleric runes for "Morale" and "Cleric Touch" (Level 10, the highest party heal). I don't seem to need either. "Haelan Al" is more than sufficient. As for the spellbooks, Siobhan is juggling two because they have different spells in them and I can't afford to buy duplicate scrolls or pay the 10k gold needed for ink to create scrolls myself.

     
Thinking there has to be something I missed with Lady Synd, I go back and try that gold flute again. Four characters are teleported away. My remaining two take the elevator and circle back to that plaque about playing music. The flute has 8 keys, and lacking a code or song I start at one end and play five notes. This time the wall opens, and my party waits inside. I swear I tried this multiple times before. I have no idea what was different this time. Checking the hint book much later, it suggests there is a proper code, and we needed to ask Burliman to get it. But testing a second time, I am able to trigger an unlock without playing that proper code. I really don't know what's right here, but it's aggravating.

     
Now we have a wand, probably the last one. Also a dancing sword, which sells for over 20k, though I'm still theorizing that maybe the dancing part is usable somehow, like a ranged weapon or something that works on enchanted doors. I don't sell it right away, even though it could buy a bit of training. We drop Mulk off at camp (he's too distracted by a pretty lady, I roleplay) and return to Synd. Brandish away! The gem dissolves, and Synd appears as an icon on the floor. In the party, we see that she is seriously buff, a level 21 Magus with 100 HP. That's twice as good as my best. She has AC -2 because she's got the sword Defender, the best weapon in the game. Also 95% magic resistance. 18s in intelligence and mien, 17 in dexterity, 16 in knowledge—these stats are better than any of mine. She also has a key on her, which is probably what I've been waiting for.
     

The moment everyone's been waiting for since they first saw the box art.

       

Now we can step through the square that the gem occupied, and behind it there are stairs leading down. Maybe this is a shortcut to the end? No, the stairs reverse and go back up across several levels. There's a pit in the ceiling, and I "Risan" up, expecting something glorious, but it's a small collection of duplicate magic items: another light orb, several elven arrows, a gargoyle, and a chalice, and somewhere in there I find a cursed necklace that locks itself on Synd. (The hint book suggests Synd would go this way looking for the blood scroll, before realizing it's down on 12. The game itself does nothing to support this idea.)

     
From there, I have to backtrack and determine whether it's worth selling the gear. Synd refuses to leave the dungeon until the evil is cleansed, evicting herself from the party on the doorstep. I hope she's there when I come back. It also means I can't uncurse her necklace. The gear sells for enough that I can level Jexica to 8 and DV to 7. On the one hand, I probably don't need it, and the 21 days of training feel like bad roleplaying, but on the other hand when Synd is 21, it feels foolish to delve to the deepest dungeon with a knight who's still level 6 and has the XP to be 10 or more.

    
Synd really is there when we re-enter the dungeon, thank goodness, having waited three weeks for us.

     

I could have used all of this in my party while exploring parts of 9, 10, 11, and 12.

        

We head down to Floor 11 and hit the central anti-magic zone. Synd's key fits the lock in the center, and we're able to step into the four-way stairs waiting there. I blink for a second as my brain shifts gears, because I've been thinking of this key as an exit tool and planning on retracing my torturous path up and down parts of 11 and 12, but this lets us bypass all that. I explored all of 12 without Synd, but with her you only need to visit one room. I'm not sure whether that's a crafty trick or terrible design. It certainly speeds up the ending once you know what you're doing.

    
From the anti-magic stairs, I know one of these four paths leads to the false altar, one to the true altar, and two to other areas.

       
I pick one at random and find myself standing in front of the real altar. I grab the scroll, re-fight the battle, and get the message to head for the surface. 

      

Those were his greatest minions?

               

The hardest part is getting lucky with the teleporter in the anti-magic zone, which has to send me to the south or west if I want to escape. It takes a couple of tries, but "Locatus" makes it easy to verify. At the elevator, I find myself confused because the buttons won't work. There's this weird, repeated thrumming sound every time I try to do anything, and it's got me convinced that the game has bugged out. I reload at the altar, re-fight the battle, and try again, but I get the same result. I decide maybe the elevator just doesn't work with the scroll, which the cluebook confirms later.

     
I'm stymied for a second, but I realize there is indeed one set of stairs up from 11 to 10. From 10, I've got 50 pits to "Risan" to 9. At 9, I have a very long pause to think, but I find there is exactly one square that lets me "Risan" to 8. This is why we map, people.

Floor 8 has the pyramid stairs to 7; 7 can "Risan" to 6, putting me in the "dead-end" treasure zone I fought with for half the game. From there, one more "Risan" to 5 puts me back in territory I've known since the first few hours, and it's trivial to rush for the exit.

     
When we're two steps from the door, Nequilar chuckles and appears before us, and a combat starts. For a dozen rounds, everybody misses each other, so I take the tried-and-true method of backing off and throwing axes. It takes a dozen hits or so, but that's it. There's no magic, no real strategy to it, just the same gimmick that's been making the last 8 or so hours work.

              

Honestly, I feel kind of bad about it, but I genuinely think my characters are supposed to be level 13 or 15 here, rather than 7 to 11, but the lack of gold in the game made that impossible. The guidebook shows experience up to level 15.

     
Anyway, Nequilar falls, Lady Synd calls us champions, and two steps later the end-credits roll, which coincidentally terminates my last save file. Reopening it just re-rolls the credits. If I want to play any further, I have to open an earlier file from before the altar.

     

I've got your written comments right here.

       

There are some loose ends. I never figured out what to do with the hourglass or the slate, or how to get past the enchanted doors, if there is a way. If there isn't, the game has six or so rooms you can never visit. I also never got to backstab anything. The thief and ninja have it listed as a combat option, but it was grayed out every time. I also never successfully picked a lock, despite that supposedly being a thing. There's a note in the manual to "use 'Inquire' often" but I can't find that at all. It sounds like a hint system, but maybe it means talking to the bartender about lost party members?

     
I also ended the game without really understanding any race or class benefits or restrictions (other than the vision). The manual hints but does not say what equipment is forbidden. I once had a spell go wrong when a cleric was holding a sword, but the manual says they can wear armor but not helms or shields, and my cleric had both of those the whole game with no ill effect.
        
While I'm nostalgic for it, and did find points of fun and satisfaction as I progressed, it is also an intermittently frustrating and imbalanced game, with a variety of problems and uneven challenges, and possibly some bugs or errors.

The first major obstacle is merely getting to character Level 2. Those early few-to-many hours are desperate, and it's very easy to get locked into a death spiral unless you know what you're doing or save with unashamed frequency.

      
The economy is ridiculously tight, to the point of being flawed, unless you make use of one or two different exploits, which are relatively easy to find and can completely break the game. The bad economy limits leveling, which impacts combat and spell effectiveness in a cascade of poor results and dissatisfaction. Full disclosure: I started a second run to test some things, and if you know what you're doing and also know what you don't need, the first seven levels do go easier, but it requires selling nearly everything, including most of the scrolls your wizard would normally scribe into a spellbook, and also limiting yourself to only one or two prestige class characters. After that, the gold still dries up, and unless you want to abuse wishes, you're not getting all of your heroes past Level 10.

      
The interface itself is sometimes your enemy, and inconsistent and occasionally buggy results can leave you feeling stranded or confused about the next steps. The experiences with both the flute and the enchanted doors in particular strike me as inexcusable, and the intermittently interactive door to Synd's prison was a problem.

      
The save system is unintuitive and downright dangerous, if you ask me, and it proved as great an enemy to my progress as any in-game threat.

      
Among the worst elements: I never once killed a monster with a spell. For that matter, I never cast a useful cleric spell above level 2, "Haelan Al." I tried a couple of other combat spells from Levels 2-4, but as far as I could tell they were inconsequential. (Testing later, I did finally kill some weak enemies with "Gestuns," but it took casting six of them in a single combat.) Two cleric spells that would have been useful, "Awake" and "Dispellere," are not made clear in the game and can only be found in the hint book (or by absurd levels of experimentation). My wizard had several essential navigational spells ("Locatus," "Levitas," "Risen") but such limited spell slots she barely ever did anything else. She often had to memorize one spell at a time in the dungeon, as the situation called for it. Half the spells seemed underwhelming, ineffective, or had a purpose I still don't understand or want.

        
Melee combat went from brutally difficult to trivially easy to then being so ineffective that I had to resort to a quirk or gimmick with the thrown axes to prevail. 
       

"Dispellere," which I only got from the hintbook, is a kind of in-combat genocide spell for a particular monster type—but you need to pick the monster when you memorize the spell, and it has a limited list of possibilities. Vampires and ghosts are good choices. The rest don't need it. You'll wish that deaths and mantrees were on the list.

       

The riddles and mapping challenges were for the most part fair, even clever. I had some irritation at points, but only half of that was deserved, and knowing what I do now I could probably complete the game a second time in half the number of hours. I'm not sure if my problem with rescuing Lady Synd was a bug or something I did, but that probably set me back several hours just by itself.

     
If you like mapping, this one is for you. The game rewards meticulous notes in several places and different ways. It even has an in-game map pad that I didn't use, but I have to give it credit for being pretty advanced back in a 1989 Mac game.

    
A few promising features, like lock picking and backstabbing, are either unimplemented, or documented incorrectly, or have a bug preventing them from working. Splitting the party is rarely used, but it's an effective strategy in those cases.

     
I didn't take advantage much of leaving a slot in my party open, and from what I can tell it really only applied three times: recruiting Fra Elsof, rescuing Burliman the clerk from jail, and then letting Synd join the party.

      

           
I don't really want to do a full GIMLET because I'm not sure I understand Chet's point system well enough, but I'll run through the key points. [Ed. Quirkz offered the text. I put the scores at the end based on his accounts.]

     

• Game World: One dungeon and a menu town. There's a backstory. It doesn't get very deep. Score: 3.

• Character Creation and Development: The creation interface is as unique as it is annoying. Classes are distinct and most have value. Development is crucial, but hindered by the economy. They have an alignment system, but it's only used for about three things. Score: 4. 

• NPC Interaction: Maybe recruiting party members counts here; maybe the way Gladiis is explained in the cluebook counts. Otherwise, it's interacting with shopkeepers. Score: 2.

• Encounters and Foes: There is a good variety of creatures, but too many of them boil down to physical attacks that either plink once for 1 damage or twice for 2 damage. Then there are a handful that potentially deliver status effects, and those few are genuinely scary, including poison, unconsciousness, and level drain. It's possible there were others that I missed. Only a couple of fights are against spellcasters, and those tend to either succeed quickly or become decisive full-party wipes. There are a couple of okay riddles and plenty of mapping puzzles, but also possibly a few bugs that directly affect some of the riddles. Score: 4.

• Magic and Combat: The manual makes it look like there's going to be a lot of useful magical tools, but in practice much of it was useless (or my spellcasters were too low level to benefit), and it boiled down to a few essentials—healing and navigation spells, mostly. Lots of wasted potential here. Combat is real-time and somewhat tactical, but also either breaks down or becomes gimmick-heavy (maybe that's my fault for using the gimmick too much) in tight situations. It almost always feels the same, with few combats requiring a distinct approach or being a memorable fight. Score: 3.

• Equipment: Decent here, with a variety of weapons, armor, and several important accessories. Magic items, especially invisibility, are important upgrades, but clerics are weirdly under-served by the options. Keys, scrolls, and the skull wands all play a big part, and treasures that serve mostly as a way to get gold are welcome. There's some unneeded redundancy in the weapons list, and I still don't know what to think about the slate and the hourglass, which appeared to be important but never had a use. Score: 4.

• Economy: Starts either frustrating or challengingly tight, depending on how you proceed through the first few levels, but then just gets worse and worse until it's the primary obstacle in the game. There are exploits to get around it, but that would feel like cheating. Score: 3.

• Quests: One main quest, well defined, but no side quests and no alternate outcomes. If I were giving points I'd dock it one here for having bugs (or severe interface issues) that interfered with multiple key steps. Score: 1.

• Graphics, Sound, Interface: Graphics are okay for the era, though the lack of color was a disappointment that I'm not over even after 30 years. The screen is too small, and interacting with everything in town is annoying and fiddly. Navigating works well by keyboard and is mostly great. Combat requires mostly mouse control, and is generally okay, though it's also possible for things to go badly wrong: selecting the wrong character if two overlap, accidentally unequipping or throwing weapons when you don't want to, and sometimes a missed click triggers a "make combat speed up" mode rather than letting you take an action, which can get you killed. Sounds are sparse, but decent when used, and only occasionally annoying. 19-year-old me appreciated the Monty Python "run away!" line too much. Occasionally things get buried in the interface, as you can tell by my not finding the combat message window or the ability to withdraw until I was halfway through the game. Score: 3.

• Gameplay: Exploration and mapping challenges seem generally good (despite the problems I caused myself by trying so many things out of order). Combats rarely found a good balance point, and tended to either fall into being a little too easy or needing a gimmick to get out. The game is mostly linear and not very replayable. Score: 3.

     

All told I don't think it would rate highly, but despite the frustrations I'm glad I played it again. It's an obscure and rare Mac-only game and there isn't much available online about it. I'm very happy it will now have a place on the blog.

 

        

****

 

Chet here again. Thank you, Quirkz, for such detailed coverage of this title that I under-served. The sum of the ratings I assigned based on your comments is 30, which is exactly the same rating that I gave the game in 2018, although some of the categories are changed by 1 point each.

   

As we now know, the promised Citadel II: Dark Tower never appeared, and this was Postcraft's only game. It was a weird lark for the California-based company, which otherwise specialized in desktop publishing and typography software. I was unable to find anything about its director, David Pavan, and it does not appear that any of the design team ever worked on other games.

    

****

   

Previous entry in this series

   

For further reading:

• Wizardry (1981), the game that primarily inspired Citadel.
• My first take at a "Summary and Rating" from 2018, which also has some information about contemporary reviews.
• Quirkz Media, Quirkz's web site, with his various publications and projects.

 10/08/2026