Excelsior: Who Has Gone Farthest?

 

Chester reaches the Ninth Circle.

       

My "fixer" has arrived in Lysandia from another universe, tasked with dealing with some kind of threat to the land. He has inhabited the body of a sexless golem paladin (I will never tire of writing that phrase). He has spent the first 12 hours chasing hints to find three magical amulets that allow him to improve his attributes when he levels up. Towards the end of that quest, he learned that there is a Resistance in the dungeon of Intungo, which is on an island.

   

During this session, I:

   

• Acquired means of crossing water.
• Explored the dungeon to find the Resistance.
• Accomplished the Resistance's first mission.
• Made some progress on the Resistance's second mission.

   

The narrative starts in the city of Farborough, where I had previously noted ships for sale. I now have the 5,000 gold pieces necessary to buy one. I talk to everyone first—since NPC dialogue is prompted by plot points, it's a good idea to re-visit everyone when you re-enter a city—and manage to learn both "Swimming" and "Seamanship." 

        

An NPC teaches me how to sail my new ship.

        

These skills allow me to both purchase a ship and sail to a special magic shop accessible only by sea. I think that's half a dozen magic shops I've encountered so far. They sell both wands and spells, and I really need to keep track of which shops offer which spells so I can return when I have more money. I have to leave my horse behind; apparently, the ship is too small to accommodate him.

   

On the high seas, I confirm that the game world is 500 x 500 tiles and that it—hallelujah—does not wrap. The ship has a catapult that does about as much damage as my Retribution Sword, but from any number of squares away. It still confers experience, and land-based enemies still drop treasure.

     

The edge of the world.

      

I spend some time checking out nearby islands but find them mostly empty. A large island to the southeast has a single empty hut and a city called Rondeway. 

   

Eventually, I sail across the southern boundary of the map to visit the island with the city of Heize and the dungeon of Intungo. I find Heize curiously useless except for two pieces of NPC dialogue:

   

• "There is a great chemist living in the Seventh Keep."

• "There is a magic clock which, when wound with a special key, has remarkable powers." This is important, as I later buy a clock for 100 gold pieces in Rondeway.

        

I just need the key.

      

Intungo starts out as a typical maze-like dungeon. I explore the first level for a while, fight a lot of monsters, and take a ladder down. On the second floor, I'm greeted with a sign that says: "SE. W. NW. NE. SE. N. W. SW." At first, I think it's directions to the maze, but it soon becomes clear that doesn't work. None of the corridors go in intercardinal directions.

   

I wander a bit more and find a talking sign that asks for a password. It takes me a few minutes to figure it out. There are certain wall patterns in the dungeon shaped like letters, starting with an "S" southeast of the entry ladder. I go west from there and find a "U." This continues for a while until I piece together the password requested by the sign: SURMOUNT. This opens the way to the next level.

        

Note the first letter in the lower-right.

     

The third level has a walled city, grassy expanses, trees, and gas lamps. A watchman demands a password, but I got it last session from the woodsman Hule: VICTORY. This answer opens a door in the wall. The city is full of Resistance members who proudly proclaim their roles, including both fighters and scholars.

          

I think you're on shaky philosophical ground.

         

Their leader, Sebastian, is found to the west. He asks if I'm willing to aid in the overthrow of King Valkery, and I say yes. Sebastian gives me my first mission: deliver a message to King Valkery's heir, imprisoned somewhere in the Royal Keep.

   

Before I leave the Resistance city, I explore a lower level, which has a training arena and a room that includes every regular weapon and piece of armor in the game. There's also a storeroom with a skull. I pick it up, and the game says that I've acquired Mortimer's Skull. I have no idea who Mortimer is. I hope I didn't do something too early.

      

Be glad there are no shops in this little town.

      

Thanks to previous explorations, I know that the Royal Keep isn't the same thing as Castle Excelsior; it's a tower to the north of the castle, along the coast. I get attacked by guards the moment I enter. The first floor is full of things that look like cells, or perhaps storage rooms, but none of them have a person with them.

         

Nor is there any way to open any of those chests.

    

Level 2 is dark. Neither my magic lantern, nor my regular lantern, nor "Dark Eyes" allows me to see more than one square in radius. I circle the place forever before I realize I'm just walking in circles. I have to spend about 30 minutes searching every single wall space for secret doors. I finally find one mere steps from the arrival ladder. Boo.

     

This will not be the only time this session that I start searching in the wrong place.

     

Level 3 has more rooms and cells. There's an area with a door maze in which I have to move diagonally through doors and search diagonally for secret doors, followed by an area in which I have to move diagonally through trees and find secret doors. I don't happen to have my external numberpad at this point, so I have to use the on-screen keyboard app to get me through it. 

        

I'm not sure I understand how trees have secret doors embedded in them.

             

On the final level, I'm greeted by a guard who asks me if I know the name of a "murderer who fled from the continent." I actually do—a guy named Cope in Heize confessed to me that he committed murder—but I forget it at the time. I say YOU, and the guard pretends he doesn't get the joke. He leaves me alone to wander around. Again, I find plenty of cells and prisoners, but most of them are behind doors I cannot open. There's a large area to the north that I can't find a way to access despite searching every potential wall for secret doors. I can even see a guy in there who is probably the target of my quest.

   

Eventually, I speak to the guard again and try confessing to the murder myself. He tosses me in an otherwise inaccessible cell, and I find my way to the prisoner through a series of secret doors.

        

I like his reaction.

       

The prisoner introduces himself as Prince Williamson, son of King Valkery, and he has a long story to tell. He knows why King Valkery has undergone such a severe change in personality: A few months ago, he was in the throne room with his father when a "dirty old man" entered and offered the king a gift. When the king accepted, the old man shouted an incantation and broke a glass rod above his head. This act caused a brief electrical storm, from which "some sort of ethereal demon" emerged and entered the king's body. Valkery immediately changed from the wise, compassionate king he had once been to the tyrant we know today. He ordered everyone in the throne room executed except for Williamson, whom he had imprisoned.

   

The prince is delighted to hear about the growing Resistance. He thinks he has a way to restore the king, which he writes down and asks me to bring back to Sebastian. He bravely volunteers to stay behind "so as not to arouse any suspicion with the authorities."

      

Part of the Prince's story.

     

I use the "Instant Descent" spells to get out of the keep quickly and make the long return to Sebastian. Once I get to Intungo, I can use "Instant Descent" to get to the Resistance city quickly, but it takes a long time to cross the map, and I find myself wishing for some kind of fast travel mechanism. Later, I buy "Mesmer's Flying Feet" from a magic shop, as it promises to move the character great distances with each casting. The joke's on me, because it only moves the character about 20 squares, and he has to leave his horse behind. Not worth it (although it might allow access to some of the islands without having to buy a ship).

   

Sebastian receives Williamson's information gratefully and says he'll need to consult with his advisors. In the meantime, he wants me to speak to Ambora, the antiquarian, about a "powerful elixir which may prove useful in our efforts." Ambora tells me about the Elixir of Capital Power, which grants "near immortality." He thinks its secret is in the Almanac, a collection of arcane knowledge written by the sage Varbel, who did the majority of his research on Zzoborf Isle.  

      

Alas, the Almanac will cease publication next year.

          

Thanks to the map that Matt Engle gave me, I know that Zzoborf Isle is off the southeast coast of the continent. But I also know that I've been there, and there is nothing there. On the way there, I stop at a bit of land in the far northeast corner of the map and find magical fire that I can E)nter. It leads to a cave full of fire—some kind of underworld, I guess. I don't find anything to do there just yet, but I suspect I'll be back later.

          

After confirming my previous finding that Zzoborf Isle has no towns, keeps, or other things of note, I set about searching literally every square before finding the book 30 minutes later in a pool of water. Boo.

          

 I wish I'd started at the south end of the island.

      

The book is waterlogged and unreadable, but I have notes that Yohan in Roaldia repairs damaged books. I take the book to him and pay him 1,250 gold pieces to restore what he can. It turns out to contain a series of numbers.

      

I met a cryptographer named Wipfel in Rondeway, so I take the book to him. He says he's sure that "each set of three numbers represents a single letter," but he wants 5,000 gold to offer more than that. I start grinding for it, but I soon decide it will take less time to decode the cipher myself.

         

Was this the only page?

            

Since each grouping has three numbers from 1-3, that gives 27 possibilities, or one more than the alphabet requires. Since the book has both 111 and 333, I figure it's not as simple as putting them in order and assigning "A" to the first one and "Z" to the last. But eight combinations are unused (no SPHINX OF BLACK QUARTZ in this message), so I can still assign a random letter to each number set to simplify the cryptogram. I get:

   

CSFAVM QLFSH XIRDMLB HVVQ OYFXP RXL YRJZRC YRAIQ

 

I like to think that I'm good at cryptograms, but I can't get anywhere with this one. There are no obvious As, THEs, or NOTs, no repeated words, and only one set of double letters. Finally, I fire up my Microsoft Access database of English words (what, you don't have one?!) and start messing around with combinations. I start by assuming that the "V" in HVVQ is either O or E—more likely O since E is the most common letter in English and yet the V occurs in only one other place in the entire phrase. That limits the first word to only 106 possibilities, two of which are DAEMON and DRAGON. I work with DRAGON, which turns out to be a fortunate choice, and soon have:

   

DRAGON ??AR? ????N?? ?OO? ??A?? ??? ?????D ????? 

   

I then start working on the ?OO? word, the first letter of which has to be the last letter of the second word. It's not BOOK, since nothing ends in ??ARB. I think I'm getting somewhere by assuming it's MOON and the second word is CHARM, but that ultimately leads to dead ends. SOOT doesn't seem likely at first, but it would mean that the second word ends in S, which makes sense, and then a flashback to goddamned Ishar gives me the answer:

   

DRAGON TEARS ????NE? SOOT ??A?? ??E ?????D ????T

       

I'm literally trying to save the world.

       

That word before SOOT has to be CHIMNEY, right? Now we're off:

 

DRAGON TEARS CHIMNEY SOOT ??AC? ?CE ?I??ID ?I?HT 

    

It's nearly winter in Maine, and I see BLACK ICE immediately for words five and six. The final phrase is easy from there:

 

DRAGON TEARS CHIMNEY SOOT BLACK ICE LIQUID LIGHT

   

Whew. That only took about 90 minutes. I should have grinded instead.

    

Is that a recipe list? If so, I'm not sure how to find those items. It occurs to me at the end of all of this that I probably have to grind for the money and pay Wipfel anyway, as it's probably necessary to trigger the next bit of dialogue. Neither Ambora nor Sebastian has anything new for me in the meantime.

        

At least I didn't cheat by using the map. He would have told me.

      

I try to clean up some minor "to do" items before closing this entry:

   

• Another unexplored northern island has a single hut. Outside the hut is a sign that reads: "Karth Whitlaw and His Barbilious Inventions." There's a guy in the hut, but he doesn't seem to have anything to say to me. I can only assume he's important later.

       

"I was hoping to solve a quest before someone gave it to me."

      

• I spend some time chasing Jad Merlings, the renowned bard who can supposedly teach me "Music." Every time I visit a city where he supposedly last went, it turns out he's moved on to the next city. I visit South Blagsell, Burroughs, Hollow, and Woodshade, hearing at the last city that he's moved on to Roaldia, where I got the first clue about him. I give up. I hope "Music" isn't important.

      

Fool me five times . . .

        

• The only skill I don't have besides "Music" is "Lockpicking," and it doesn't seem to stop me from picking locks.

• I still have a couple of towers to explore, which I might do as an alternative to grinding outside Castle Excelsior.  

• No new weapon or armor upgrades this session, but I do visit Castle Excelsior at the end of it and go from Level 6 to Level 8. Dragons start appearing in the countryside.

           

Ow. Stop.

      

Combat remains frequent as I move from place to place, but it's become a trivial annoyance rather than any kind of challenge. That's too bad. It appears that the character development part of the game is largely over (save perhaps some additional spell acquisition). The good news is that the authors have shown a certain talent for puzzles that enliven what would otherwise be standard fetch quests. 

    

Time so far: 19 hours

BRIEF: The Fantasy Worlds of Tamrak (1993)

 

A backstory to make Norman's head explode.

        

The Fantasy Worlds of Tamrak

United States

Independently developed and published

Released 1993 for DOS

Date Started: 11 November 2025

Unplayable because: Unregistered demo is limited in gameplay 

           

"Tamrak may or may not be a fantasy world," the manual's backstory begins. Ooh, I like a good mystery. I mean, character creation has me choose between human, elf, and dwarf characters before sending me out into a landscape in which I fight orcs and goblins with elven daggers and magic spells. Also, the name of the game is The Fantasy Worlds of Tamrak. But, you know—the jury's still out.

      

It's a good metaphor for meta-data about the game itself. Most web sites, as well as the game's manual, give its name as Infinite Fantasy Adventures: Volume 1: The Fantasy World of Tamrak, but the title screen drops the series title. Perhaps nothing is more ambiguous than the name of the development kit (which we previously saw in The Rescue of Lorri in Lorrintron from 1991), which variously goes as DC-Games, DC-Play (sometimes without the hyphens), the Graphics Adventure Game System (or Builder), and the Generic Adventure Game System. Sometimes it goes by multiple names on the same screen.

         

That could be a sci-fi or steampunk castle.

      

That said, it's a competent enough kit (credited to David Hernandez of Plano, Texas), and I noted some of its strengths in the earlier entry. It offers keyword-based dialogues, a variety of text encounters, NPC movement scripting, complex item manipulation, and tactical combat reminiscent of Ultima V (the Ultima series is, of course, the source for the general look and feel of the kit). Neither game that we've seen has really exemplified what is possible with the kit. Tamrak is better than Lorrintron, but at least the author of the latter purchased the full version and could thus offer EGA graphics instead of this game's ugly CGA.

     

The story is that the world of Tamrak has long been going through a golden age under the wise reign of King Josephus. Tamrak consists of twelve "worlds," each ruled by an appointed lord, each represented by a jewel stored in a guarded safe in Josephus's castle. In response to some recent unrest, Josephus has the safe checked, and it turns out that someone has stolen the entire set of jewels. A tablet left behind indicates that the theft was orchestrated by the evil wizard Marbodaei, thought long-dead, now returned to launch his own claim to the throne. In desperation, Josephus flings a message calling for a hero into a time portal, where it arrives in the lab of the inventor of a time machine (the PC).  

      

Character creation has the player choose from elf, dwarf, wizard, archer, and fighter classes. The selection adjusts the game's attributes: strength, speed, aim, dexterity, hit points, IQ, and power. The player then gets to add to these attributes from a pool of bonus points.

     

I like that you get little tips on the uses of each attribute.

      

Gameplay starts in the character's own house, where he can pick up a key and a leather jacket. The backstory has already alerted the player that the time portal is hidden in a regular wall space, which serves as a hint to search the walls until he finds a secret door. But walking through the door just returns the character to the house; to move forward, he has to stand inside the doorway and hit E)nter.

      

Escaping the house.

       

Correct use of the portal sees the player arrive in the World of Tamrak, where his first priority is to find a town selling weapons. The game uses a traditional Ultima-style keyboard interface, with single letter commands like A)ttack, G)et an object, and T)alk. 

        

Arriving in Tamrak. Note the list of commands.

           

Tamrak's map is a large 100 x 255 tiles. The "worlds" of Tamrak—they may or may not be fantasy, remember—are just castles. The manual gives the names of all twelve—Odem, Pitdah, Bareketh, Nophak, Sappir, Yahalom, Leshem, Shebo, Ahlamah, Tarshish, Shoham, and Yashpheh—and their associated stones. (The source of this list is Exodus 28:17-20; each of these names is a gemstone displayed on a priestly breastplate that Moses ordered the Israelites to make.) These castles, as well as other scattered towns, also provide services including healers, pubs, and shops selling weapons, armor, spells, potions, necklaces, rings, and various modes of transportation.

      

Arriving in a new town.

      

Both indoors and outdoors, the character may be attacked by randomly-spawning enemies like orcs, trolls, giants, lizard men, snakes, water sprites, and pirate ships. Combat works like Ultima V in that a single enemy icon may turn out to include multiple enemies, which spread out and take on individual form once combat is engaged. Each round, the player can attack, cast a spell, or use an item. Attacks are targeted with a cursor that allows diagonal and ranged attacks. The character gets experience for every successful action, not just kills, and leveling up (which confers extra maximum hit points and spell power) is relatively swift.

        

Fighting a couple of lizard men.

       

There are some solid basic RPG mechanics here. I never fail to enjoy the process of slowly getting stronger, through both leveling and equipment purchases. Early-game combat is challenging and (for me) required careful use of spells like "Scare" and "Paralyze." It doesn't take long, however, for the game's many faults to come through.

    

• The game has a food mechanic, but food depletes so slowly (like one unit per 1,000 moves) that the developer might as well have not bothered. I think the starting 25 rations would last the entire game. This is good because:

• All food looted after battle is mysteriously rotten. 

• Something is broken with the random number generator that determines how much gold you find after battle. It's normally around 10-100, but every once in a while, you find thousands of gold pieces after killing the weakest enemy. You also sometimes find negative gold pieces, but this happens rarely enough that you can amass a fortune in a short time and buy the best items in the game. At some point, enemies stopped being able to do any damage to me at all when I crossed a certain AC threshold. 

       

That's what I call a Pyrrhic victory.

    

• When you enter certain buildings, you'd better pay attention to what square you arrived on because the game often shows no door, ladder, or other indication of the exit square. You have to just stand in the right place and hit E)xit.

      

Trying to find the way out of this shop.

      

• Sometimes, when you exit a city, you end up back at your house in the northwest part of the game map. 

• The game wastes the kit's dialogue abilities by rarely offering any keywords that NPCs respond to. Although like Ultima IV, everyone responds to NAME, there's no equivalent to JOB to prompt further discussion. The manual suggests that QUEST works, but no one I used it on responded.

      

Either Marta has a very strange nickname, or something has gone wrong with the data file here.

       

• You can ask a lot of NPCs to JOIN you, creating a party of up to six ("and another sixteen in reserve," the manual says, but I don't understand how that works). But a party simply multiplies the number of enemies you face in combat, making combat last a lot longer. Companions do not provide any advantage.

        

I briefly had a couple of allies.

      

• If you die, the game sometimes resurrects you and sometimes doesn't. (I think maybe you get a fixed number per level.) If it doesn't, you have to reload your last save game. But if you do, you mysteriously die again after one step. The only way to fix this is to completely quit the game and restart.

• Fully exploring the map means being able to cross water. The game offers a raft for sale, but for some reason it thinks the raft is food. You can Q)uaff it, for instance. If you drop it and use it to cross a river and then pick it up again, you'll lose it—the game adds it to your food total. Fortunately, there's a separate skiff that you can steal that doesn't have this problem. 

• Every 255 moves, the game says you're exhausted and forces you to C)amp and rest, an action that can be done literally anywhere and takes no time at all. 

      

I can even rest on a skiff in the middle of the ocean.

       

• The game will get into a glitch by which every store sells the exact same random things regardless of the specific nature of the store. 

• There are spelling errors on just about every screen. 

          

The "b" isn't even silent in that word.

        

The indoor areas can be unexpectedly large and complex. There are towers inside cities and dungeons inside towers. You have to watch for cave openings everywhere. My general sense is that finding each of the 12 gems requires solving a variety of puzzles or following a variety of hints. I found two of them in dungeons in their respective "worlds." As for the others, at least one site says that there's one puzzle in which you have to fool a guard with a false key, but I don't see how the mechanics even allow a puzzle of that kind of complexity.

      

This dungeon's name is a bit on-the-nose.

     

I wasn't really sure what to do with the two gems that I found (carnelian and emerald). I tried taking them to their respective kings, as a wizard told me, "Return the carnelian to the same place as Odem is." I tried speaking to the king of Odem, dropping the gem in front of him, dropping it on a nearby dais, and so forth, to no avail. I also tried returning them to King Josephus in his castle, Concord, but he also failed to recognize that I had them. He said that I should "return them to the Icon"; I have no idea what he means by that.

     

You mean "again," right?

     

A few other notes:

   

• The manual offers a list of different NPC types that the player will encounter, including trainers, beggars, and quest-givers, none of whom I encountered.

• I did encounter bartenders, however. You can order three beers at each of the game's pubs before the bartender cuts you off. You can ask for a tip after each beer, but the bartender only offers anything valuable after the second one.  

        

After three beers?! Oh, wait . . . I'm playing an elf.

       

• In addition to potions, the game has a lot of exotic foods that provide various temporary benefits like enhanced strength or rapid hit point regeneration.

       

I hope that the bread and cakes are "in the culinary style of the elves."

     

• I found two "proclamations," but the game offers no way that I can find to read them. 

• There's a store where you can buy lanterns and torches, but none of the underground areas were dark. The same store offers keys, but so far every locked door and chest could be bashed open.

          

But why?

            

If the game isn't unwinnable because of its bugs, it is unwinnable because of its shareware nature. The demo version allows the player to enter four of the twelve castles; the others simply say that there is no door present.

     

That must be inconvenient.

     

You had to register the full game to get access to the rest of it. The author asked $10 plus $2 for shipping and handling. The registration form promises that in addition to the full version of the game, those who register it will receive "a jewel from the Fantasy World of Tamrak," guaranteed to be "natural in origin." There's a skeptical part of me that wonders whether the full version ever really existed, and whether anyone really got that gem.

 

An NPC offers commentary on the shareware nature of the game. Technically, I have 10 jewels to find.

       

The Fantasy Worlds of Tamrak was written by Ray Johnson of Tupelo, Mississippi. (He gives a "C.G." after his name, and I cannot come up with any idea for what it stands for.) Johnson apparently also created a text adventure called Lost Gold: The Search for the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine in 1992 (also made using a kit; in this case, the BIG Adventure Game Toolkit). I like to think its story began, "The Dutchman Gold Mine may or may not be lost."

 

The Fates of Twinion: Nor Any Drop to Drink

 

"Carving?"

       

Over the next few hours, I won the "Gauntlet" quest, consisting of two maps, Gauntlet Droit (to the east of the main entrance) and Gauntlet Gauche (to the west). They were both 16 x 16, densely packed with encounters, messages, teleporters, one-way doors, locked doors, fountains, NPCs, and other special encounters. In fact, I'd venture that Twinion (as well as its predecessor, Yserbius) has more content per map than any tiled game since Might and Magic.

   

Except for a lockpick found in the bats' treasure room in Gauntlet Gauche, most of the core action was in Gauntlet Droit. A message near the entrance set it up: "The gauntlet has been thrown down in the Coil Maze. Now you must return it to its birth place, to solve this quest and complete this most simple phase." Later, another message: "Westward, an ancient foundry, now extinct, lies at the bottom of a shaft. It was here that the Lava Glove was born . . . And here it must return once you've retrieved it."

       

The "Coil Maze"—not really a maze, just a coiling bit of corridor—lay in the southern half of the level, reachable only by teleporter. It had a lot of fixed battles. Amidst the single panthers, duelists, brigands, and so forth were the occasional battle with, say, one master knight and three henchmen, or three wizards of Gnog and two duelists, or three apprentice thieves and two novice thieves. Parties of multiple enemies can often kill me within a few rounds, but I remembered some basic tactics from Yserbius, such as always carry a Scroll of Protection; it has multiple uses and negates all damage for a few rounds. An elixir of health, which restores 125 hit points per sip, is also a necessity. Between these two items, I could outlast most parties of foes.

        

Using a scroll in battle.

        

Some other notes about the Gauntlet:

   

• A lot of my battles started with me missing exactly three times before connecting in the fourth round. I don't know what was about. I missed three times in a row far more often than I missed a single time.

• The game really wanted me to have a crystal that, when used, I guess reveals secret doors? I can't seem to get it to do anything at all. In any event, there were a lot of battles with berzerkers who possessed them.

• I was unable to enter four rooms in the Gauntlet Gauche. Two of them had signs reading: "The door to the west is locked, but no lockpick can help you here! You must learn to use what is at hand in a more creative fashion." I thought the message must be referring to the crystal, but I couldn't get it to work. The other two doors also had a message: "Only a masterful thief can open this door." That one seems more straightforward, and I'm not a thief, masterful or otherwise.

• Several messages just had a series of cross symbols. Maybe I need some kind of skill to translate them?

    

Untranslated or untranslatable? (The top half is left over from previous messages.)

      

The final battle in the Coil Maze rewarded me with the Lava Gauntlet. I returned it to a corridor where messages indicated I should bring it. "You have won the challenge of the gauntlet," a message said. "I shall send you to its end." This turned out to be a single-square room where I got 1,000 experience points, an additional skill ("Intimidate"), an additional spell ("Petrify"), and a regular crossbow, which I already had. I assume the reward is tailored to the class, as there are a bunch of other squares that I cannot enter in the same row.

       

My dubious "reward."

       

When I exited the dungeon, I hit Level 9 and got another spell, "Teleport," and another skill, "Stamina." I haven't made a lot of use of skills or spells so far. "Read Tracks" just seems to tell me that enemies are near, which is always. I don't think I've been poisoned yet, so no need for "Cure." "Teleport" is just a dungeon-exiting spell, which you can achieve easily enough by dying.

    

My current skill list.

     

With the Gauntlet completed, I next ventured into the northern chamber to explore the Queen's Aqueduct. I had explored here initially during the first entry and was unable to get very far. What I failed to appreciate then is that nothing stops you from walking into the water, except that you take damage with every step and cannot heal until you get out. 

          

The two water levels.

       

An early message in the Aqueduct said: "Seek the protector of this aqueduct in the west. His magic blocks your forward pass." This was a clue to explore a map to the west called The Reservoir. It consisted of a central pool of water, with a river running to the east (to the Aqueduct). The area was ruled by a giant named Lord Aqueus, and his giant minions were frequent encounters across the map.

   

As I entered the area, an NPC told me to be on the lookout for a helpful thief and giant. The giant was named Sartiq. He opposed Aqueus and gave me a chant to help me get past the waters protecting Aqueus's throne room. I guess he didn't fully trust me because he held something back. Later, I met a thief named Malik who carved a mark in my arm and told me to show it to Sartiq for the rest of the chant. When I returned to Sartiq, he taught me a rhyme to actually enter the throne room, then died.

      

"Sartiq" sounds like he would be a Belle Époque playwright.

       

The rest of the level had various encounters. There were a lot of one-way doors, locked doors (I found a red lockpick somewhere, which worked on most of them), fountains, messages, and NPCs. I used a rope I found in the Aqueduct to save some adventurers who were about to get swept away by the currents, earning a silver ingot for my trouble. There was a central island in the Reservoir with four pillars, and if there was any way to move one to reach the central square, I couldn't figure it out.

       

Yo momma so fat . . .

        

Eventually, I came face-to-face with Aqueus. It took me a couple of tries to win the battle. Even with a Scroll of Protection active, he was capable of hitting hard enough to destroy my hit points in three rounds, far more quickly than drinking a healing potion could restore. I finally got him with "Petrify," although it took several attempts. He left a silver bow, a Blood Shield, and 2500 gold. 

     

Did he pick his name before or after taking over an aqueduct?

       

After Aqueus died, the waters mostly stopped damaging me when I walked in them. A couple of squares in the Aqueduct still had an "undertow" that killed me instantly. Nonetheless, I was able to explore the rest of it and to find an eastern passage to a new map called Twinion's Falls. There's still a door I cannot pass in the Aqueduct; it bears the message: "Return here once you've completed what must be done elsewhere." I assume I have another puzzle to solve in Twinion's Falls.

 

Arriving in a new area.

      

Miscellaneous notes:

   

• The annoying thing about fixed encounters in this game is that they never clear. Kill an enemy party, walk one square away, return, and you'll face them again. The only exception is boss-level foes. Clearly, the game has a way to remember that you've defeated those, so why not the battle that you just fought?

       

Not to mention locked doors.

      

• An encounter with a wet elf that I didn't understand: "Her majesty's idea of draining the River of Eternity is a good one, albeit a bit late for my brother." Maybe it'll become clearer later.

• I didn't mention it last time, but the early game plot, in which the queen is using the first few dungeon levels to test the mettle of would-be heroes, is clearly cribbed from Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981).

• It was very late in this session that I figured out how secret doors work. You get a message like "there are scratches in the stone here." This is your clue to use the crystal ball or an equivalent spell (which I don't have). Then you get a notice that you've found a secret door, although nothing is shown in the window. You have one turn to then walk through the illusory wall. I was able to explore the other maps without knowing this (coming at the same areas another way), but the Queen's Aqueduct had a few areas only discoverable by this method.

       

It takes me a while to get the hint.

        

• My archery-based character is able to equip a shield along with his bow. 

• About 25% of the game's battles have some kind of flavor text to put the battle in context. I applaud this. 

         

For instance.

        

Twinion continues to be a perfectly serviceable single-character game in the Wizardry tradition. Unfortunately, what I enjoy most about the games in the Wizardry line is the tactics associated with party-based combat. Twinion is a bit boring in that regard, and thus I find I have to have something else going—an audiobook or a television show—as I play.

   

At the same time, I can only imagine it was boring as a multi-player game (not multi-character, mind you, but multi-player). Joining a party that someone else controlled, only being able to occasionally act in combat, must have been excruciating. Maybe a lively conversation system made up for it, but I suspect the novelty of online play was doing much of the heavy lifting. 

   

Time so far: 8 hours