1993/1994

1993 was a disappointing year with a few highlights.

      

It's been so long since we had a yearly transition entry that I almost forgot that I had to do one. We last started a new year almost five years ago, in April 2021.

   

At the time, I noted that 1993 was a peak year, containing more RPGs than any year before or after. I had the idea that if I could just get through 1993, it would be all downhill from there. Alas, owing to new discoveries, 1995 is now the top year (77) until we reach 2012 (88) and 2013 (104) for computer RPGs. (I haven't logged everything for 2014 or 2015 yet). If we consider all RPGs (including consoles and handhelds), we'll also hit a peak in 1995. There really is no "downhill."

    

Hence, my announcement a few months ago that for 1994 and each year thereafter, I would be capping the total number of RPGs explored at 25. I will still alternate "primary" year games with "backlist" games indefinitely, so any game that I skip has a chance of coming up as one of the latter titles. 

       

Current results from my master game list.

      

Many commenters have opined that RPGs entered a slump around 1993 from which they didn't recover until the late 1990s. I'll reserve my opinion on the existence, nature, and duration of the slump until I've played games from those years, but I agree that 1993 feels like the beginning of one. The average GIMLET for 1993 regressed to 31.37, lower than not only 1992 (35.64) but also 1991 (32.29), 1990 (33.2), and 1989 (31.89). Only two titles came anywhere near the top of the list, Dark Sun: Shattered Lands and Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds, both of which rated in the 60s. Number 3, Ambermoon, is all the way down at 51.

   

I have some fond memories from some of the titles in the 40s and 50s. I didn't like Betrayal at Krondor as much as many of my commenters, but it was at least unique in its approach. I think Bloodstone: An Epic Dwarven Tale might have been the height of the Magic Candle series. Unlimited Adventures preserved one of my favorite game engines. But most of the rest, even good ones (Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness, Ultima VII: Part Two - Serpent Isle, Dungeon Master II, Might and Magic V) are lesser than earlier games in their respective series.

        

Eye of the Beholder III was one of many titles this year that were shadows of the glory of former games in the series.

        

What astonishes me about such an underperforming year is that we're running out of time! Diablo is coming in 1996, Fallout in 1997, Might and Magic VI and Baldur's Gate in 1998. Maybe as soon as the end of the current decade, I will be blogging about huge, open worlds, immersive 3D graphics, lush ambient sound, in-game lore that a player can get lost in, and NPCs so fully realized that I prefer many of them to my actual friends. I rather expected we'd ramp up to those things. But the way it's been going, one day I'm going to be slogging through Whale's Voyage II and then suddenly, boom, Daggerfall. I suppose it's possible. Ultima Underworld seemed to come out of nowhere, after all.

          

How is this only four years away?

       

So 1993 could be the beginning of a slump. Or—again, I say this in complete ignorance of what awaits me in 1994—it could be a momentary pause in which developers were sort-of gathering themselves. The transition from 1993 to 1994 was at the cusp of a lot of things: CD-ROMs, Windows, the availability of the Internet to the average member of the public, the presence of a computer in the majority of western households. A lot of these things were there in 1993, but not long enough for developers writing games for 1993 releases to have made much of them. Maybe 1994 will see that burst of quality that I've been waiting for. Don't disabuse me.

     

1993 Game of the Year Nominees 

       

I'm going to do something different this year by selecting the nominees, letting you vote, and then selecting the final "Game of the Year." I'm not promising to go with your vote, but I'll at least lean towards it. These are what I would consider to be the top contenders:

   

1. Dark Sun: Shattered Lands. I went into this game expecting very little and came out seeing it as a worthy evolutionary step between the Gold Box series and the Infinity Engine games of the later 1990s. Not only was it the highest rated game of the year, but it also rated above a 5 in every category except "Economy." It had all the trappings of a modern RPG: tactical combat, a complex inventory system, full-sentence NPC dialogue, a world steeped in lore, and copious side quests as well as a compelling main quest. What a delight.

       

Full-sentence dialogue is important to my conception of a good RPG.

      

2. Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds. It would be weird to give the 1992 "Game of the Year" to Ultima Underworld and then next year's to the sequel, but then again, these two games are so good that perhaps I ought to drive it home by giving the top prize two years in a row. Not only did I think that Labyrinth was equal to the original in its mechanics, but I also thought it was a far better Ultima game.

         

And 1993 featured it in two excellent games.

     

3. I'm going to pretend here that Ambermoon has a shot because I honestly liked both it and its predecessor, and as I said in my follow-up: "Almost nowhere does the game achieve, or even stray towards, brilliance. But it is almost uniformly not bad." That's almost hyperbolic for 1993. But honestly, most of its strengths are eclipsed by Dark Sun.

     

Ambermoon: a good game. "Good" is a superlative in 1993.

       

4. Yes, sure, Betrayal at Krondor. As I said earlier, its approach is the most unique of the titles I'd consider for "Game of the Year." Its high-quality prose and immersive storytelling set a standard unrealized by any other title I've played except perhaps quasi-RPGs like Star Saga. It also set the bar for RPGs integrated into the canon of a fictional setting. I also liked the open-world exploration and the variety of encounters, but I think Dark Sun did those things just as well, with better RPG mechanics besides. But if you think Krondor deserves "Game of the Year," you're in good company. Computer Gaming World gave it the "RPG of the Year" award in the June 1994 issue. 

       

I didn't love it, but I will always remember it.

      

Let's consider some honorable mentions that have no chance at the top spot but make me wish I gave out more than one award per year.

       

• Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness. It's a great adventure game, atmospheric and fun, but the authors aren't even really pretending that RPG mechanics matter anymore.

• Perihelion. Talk about atmosphere! I still watch a video of this game's opening every once in a while.  

• Daemonsgate: Some of the best lore, including in-game cataloguing of that lore, that we've seen so far. The developer did a reasonably good job making the physical environment and NPC dialogue match that lore.

          

I didn't do a very good job selling the idea that there's much of a contest, but I honestly want to hear your thoughts. Remember, "Game of the Year" is supposed to be about influence as much as quality. Anyway, I've created a survey for you to vote, but I thought I'd take the opportunity to do something that I've never done before and poll my readership on your demographics and opinions. I'd thus appreciate if everyone reading this entry took part in the survey, even if you don't have a strong opinion on "Game of the Year." And don't let the survey stop you from talking about your preference in the comments.

      

Year-End Superlatives

     

Total Games: 63 played, 11 BRIEFed, 2 put on the "Missing and Mysteries" list. In total, I wrote about 75 games. That's 11 more than 1992 and the largest annual number for my blog so far. I guess that's the highest number that there ever will be.

 

Highest-Rated Games:  Dark Sun: Shattered Lands (64), Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds (63), Ambermoon (51), Bloodstone: An Epic Dwarven Tale (50), Betrayal at Krondor (50), Unlimited Adventures (50), NetHack 3.1.3 (48), Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness (47).

 

Lowest-Rated Games: Ultimuh MCMLXVII: Part 2 of the 39th Trilogy - The Quest for the Golden Amulet (3), Mechanical Anarchy (11), Magische Steine (14), Black Dawn (14), Blade of Doom (15), Schelober's Quest for a Babe (15).

      

The worst game of the year. It didn't even know what it was parodying.

        

Longest Played: Ultima VII: Part Two - Serpent Isle at 112 hours. If you want to know why I didn't even give this one an "honorable mention," that's why.

 

Longest Between Start and End: It took me 372 days (but "only" 62 hours of play) before I allowed myself to admit that I wasn't going to finish Angband.

 

Percentage Won: As of right now, I've won 52 out of 59 winnable games, so 88%. I suspect it will drop to 87% after The Fates of Twinion. 

 

Highest Category Scores

   

• Game World: Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, Daemonsgate, and Betrayal at Krondor (8s).

• Character Creation and Development:  Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds and—gods forgive me—Princess Maker 2 (7s).

• NPCs: Dark Sun: Shattered Lands and Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness (7s).

• Encounters and Foes: Dark Sun: Shattered Lands and Dungeon Master II: The Legend of Skullkeep (8s).

• Magic and Combat: Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, NetHack 3.1.3, and Unlimited Adventures (7s).

        

Dark Sun is the odds-on favorite for its fascinating game world and tactical combat.

       

• Equipment: NetHack 3.1.3 (9). This is the highest score I gave all year for anything.

• Economy: Princess Maker 2 (8). Maybe this belonged on the nominee list.

• Quests: Dark Sun: Shattered Lands (7).

• Graphics, Sound, and Interface: Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds and Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness (7s). 

• Gameplay: Warlords II (8). This isn't the first time (cf. Pirates!) that we've seen a non-RPG or quasi-RPG take the prize in this category.

   

Best Game with an Awful Category: Dark Sun: Shattered Lands with is 2 for "Economy." The SSI crowd just never learns.

 

Worst Game with a Good Category: Stronghold, barely an RPG at all, got a 7 in "Gameplay" for its utterly addictive and replayable nature. Quenzar's Caverns and DragonMaze were both afternoon RPGs that managed to hit a 6 in "Gameplay" for offering the perfect length and challenge for their content.

    

1994 Preview

    

So, once again, the official 1994 play list, in the order that I will cover them, is:

   

1. Realms of Arkania: Star Trail 
2. Dark Designs IV: Passage to Oblivion 
3. The Elder Scrolls: Arena
4. Yendorian Tales, Book 1
5. Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse
6. Escape from Ragor
7. Pagan: Ultima VIII
8. Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession 
9. Jiji and the Mysterious Forest, Chapter 2
10. Aethra Chronicles: Volume One - Celystra's Bane
11. Hexx: Heresy of the Wizard
12. World of Arch
13. Darghul
14. Darkmere: The Nightmare's Begun
15. Ishar 3: The Seven Gates of Infinity
16. Nahlakh
17. Robinson's Requiem
18. Crystal Dragon
19. Superhero League of Hoboken
20. Realmz
21. Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager
22. Alien Logic: A Skyrealms of Jorune Adventure 
23. Menzoberranzen
24. Ironseed
25. Newcomer
26. Istanbul Efsaneleri: Lale Savascilari 

 

We will have appropriate pre-play discussions as each title nears the starting date. If any of these games ends up getting rejected or otherwise BRIEFed, I will draw a new title from the list at random.

      

As a devoted Elder Scrolls fan, what will I think of the first game in the series?

      

I believe that this is the first year since 1980 for which I have never played any of the games on the list to their conclusion. I have never played any of the 1994 games that didn't make it on the list to their conclusions, either. In fact, I have never played any of the 1994 games at all except about 5 minutes with Pagan (I quit once I saw it had jumping puzzles) and maybe two hours with Arena about 20 years ago. As such, I have no idea at all what to expect.

 

I am most looking forward to Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager based on the quality of its predecessor. I'm most curious about Arena; knowing so much about the Elder Scrolls universe these days, I'm eager to see how it differed when it was new. I'm equally curious about Ravenloft given the quality of the module on which it was based; though I assume that if the game reproduced that quality, I'd have heard a lot more about it over the years. I also have a lot of curiosity over the foreign games on the list, including World of Arch (Finland), Newcomer (Hungary), and particularly Istanbul Efsaneleri (Türkiye).

   

A preview of the first Turkish RPG.

       

I wouldn't say I'm particularly looking forward to Realms of Arkania: Star Trail, Dark Designs IV, or Ishar 3, but I suspect they'll all be reasonably acceptable. I had a decent time with their predecessors. I wouldn't say that I'm dreading any of the games—I don't know enough about them—but I will say that I don't have a lot of expectations for Jiji and the Mysterious Forest or Superhero League of Hoboken.

     

We'll definitely see a lot less variety in platforms in 1994. Microsoft is dominant, and only three games on the list—Dark Designs IV (Apple II), Darkmere (Amiga), and Crystal Dragon (Amiga)—lack DOS or Windows releases, at least if my original research is correct. Of course, we'll still continue to see plenty of other platforms in the "in between" games. 

     

Please remember to fill out the survey. Without further ado, let's jump into Realms of Arkania: Star Trail! 

Sword Dream: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

 

Note the "winning text" just above the trash can.

        

Sword Dream

And specifically, the "Spirit of Darkness" module 

Sogni & Spade ("Dreams and Swords") in the original Italian version 

Italy

Independently developed; originally published by VideoCOM, later released as shareware

Released 1993 for Macintosh

Date Started: 24 December 2025

Date Ended: 4 January 2026

Total Hours: 14

Difficulty: Hard (4.0/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)  

     

A kit lives and dies on the strength of its sample scenario. The best sample scenarios make you glad you bought the kit even if you don't intend to construct any adventures of your own. "Rivers of Light," the sample that comes with Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set (1984), is a worthy game in its own right. So is "The Heirs to Skull Crag" from Unlimited Adventures (1993). When a sample is boring, poorly balanced, or simply unplayable, it makes you wonder if the kit simply isn't capable of anything better. This was my reaction to The Bard's Tale Construction Set (1991). 

   

So all I can say is that to the extent Sword Dream is a good construction kit, its assets are poorly showcased by "Spirit of Darkness." The default scenario is small, simplistic, confusing, and far too difficult and grindy.

   

I gave you the setup last time: an unidentified evil has settled in the Valley of Dawn, driving out most of the residents. The valley contains a mage's tower and a town (Smalltown), which together offer the usual CRPG services. The one dungeon is a nearby mine. The mine consists of three small levels: upper level, mid-level, and lower level. The upper level has two separate sections, depending on whether the party moves to the mine entrance from the square to its west or from the one to its southwest. The mines are swarming with random encounters:

     

• Upper level: Giant spiders, giant rats, kobolds, goblins
• Mid-level: Goblins, skeletons, giant spiders, giant ants
• Lower level: Skeletons, giant spiders, giant beetles, evil monks

      

Battles on the mid-level had an annoying bar in the middle of the screen.

      

These enemies are ridiculously hard against a Level 1 party, which has no defenses against a giant spider's poison or a giant rat's disease, and which doesn't make enough money to have those conditions healed in town, even if they could make it back to town in time. The only solution to those particular enemies is to flee from them, every time.

   

Regular enemies are hardly any easier. They can kill Level 1 characters with a single lucky blow. If you get wounded, the cleric has one "Cure Graze" spell, and then it's back to the town for any healing beyond that. If resting worked in the dungeon, you could heal 1 hit point per day, but it doesn't work (you're awakened by a noise). If a character dies, you can't afford to raise him. The only completely honest solution is to grind in the doorway to the mines, returning to town frequently to rest and heal. The less honest solution is to reload every time a character takes a major blow.

       

At higher levels, the cleric has a few more spell options.

        

I went with the less honest solution. I explored all three levels, fleeing from every battle that looked too hard, attempting the ones that looked winnable, reloading if I lost more than I gained. When I had done everything but win the game's few fixed battles, I grinded Level 2 like a chump and then tried again. When those battles proved impossible even at Level 2, I hex-edited my characters to Level 3. I wasn't about to grind to Level 3. It would have taken, conservatively, 500 winning battles. I would have been playing the game for more than an entire work week. There are no encounters in the game that provide extra experience boosts.

   

I took the opportunity to enlist a wizard as the sixth character so I could check out a little magic. Just as in Dungeons & Dragons, Level 1 and 2 spells are underwhelming, and the wizard has very little to do once they're cast. Casting spells is needlessly annoying, first with the material reagent requirement ("Magic Missile" requires glass lenses), second with the interface. When you cast a spell, the casting character's "index card" window comes to the forefront. You then have to expand it to see the list of spells, double-click on the right spell, and then click on the appropriate place on the map to target it. Doing this before the timer runs out is difficult, unless you just leave the character's expanded window open all the time.

       

Nailing a kobold with a "Magic Missile."

       

Here's a rundown of the three levels:

 

Upper level - Main section 

 

• Exhausted gold veins.
• An old man who hands out lanterns. 
• A message in blood: "Saint Cuthbert shall free us from the Spirit of Darkness."
• A couple of gems.
• A passage blocked with a landslide, seemingly on purpose.
• A ladder to the mid-level.

   

Upper level - Alternate section 

   

• A storage area with nothing in it.
• A kitchen area with a dagger. 
• A corridor with a trap that a rogue can identify and disarm (this happens automatically). 
• An illusory wall leading into an ancient temple with the statue of a saint.

       

Finding an illusory wall.

       

• A fixed battle against three skeletons in the temple's chapel. Killing them nets a suit of plate mail, a shield, a long sword, a bow, and arrows. This was the only one of the three fixed battles that I was able to win on Level 1.

     

The first of three fixed battles in the game.

         

Mid-level

 

• Exhausted gold veins. 
• A square where the game says we found a knife, but we didn't get a knife.
• A square that teleports the party back to the upper level, but in a wall space.

     

This feels like it should have hurt more.

       

• A little poem written on the wall before the fixed encounter below: "Unbeliever, go back and shiver. Go ahead if you dare to meet Saint Kildere. Saint Charlemagnette's might you'll meet on your right. Saint Cuthbert, male and proud, to the left singing aloud." Going forward at this location reveals the encounter below. Going left brings you around to the same encounter, though you just have to defeat one of them. Going right takes you to the aforementioned teleporter. I wonder if there are some bugs here, and the left and right options were meant to lead to different encounters.

• A small room with a fixed encounter with 9 skeletons. This battle is so weird that at first I thought it was bugged. The battle map is turned upside down so that the party cannot flee without going past the skeletons. Some of the skeletons start in what ought to be inaccessible wall space. About 50% of the party's attacks do no damage, instead producing the message, "The weapon rebounds!" Once all but one skeleton is dead, you get that message for every attack, and the skeleton will not die. The manual says that the message is indicative of enemies that must be killed with magic, but I don't think the game gives you any magic weapons. You have to kill him with spells. It's a good thing I trained up that wizard. (Throwing holy water at him may work, too). I killed him with three castings of "Magic Missile." 

       

I was very confused by this encounter.

      

• A ladder to the lower level. 

    

Lower-level 

   

The lower level has only one fixed encounter, with two evil monks. As the battle begins, the game explains that: "The Dark Monks are an evil faith, and are known to worship Mistress Death." I couldn't defeat them until I cheated up to Level 3. Killing them nets 400 gold pieces, a gem, and a lantern.

      

I love how they were doing nothing more nefarious than mining gold.

        

That's it. I don't know whether "winning" means defeating all of the fixed encounters or just the one encounter with nine skeletons, which is the last one that I did. Either way, when I returned to the Valley of Dawn, I got the victory message:

      

A hooray for you! Today is a great day for the inhabitants of the valley. The spirit of darkness was defeated, hope restored, and the pass can be walked again by honest men. The mayor of Smalltown is here with most of the citizens, and a feast will be held in your honor.

     

The pass leading out of the valley is now open. I stepped on it, and the party got 500 gold pieces. A few more steps, and I was prompted for the scenario file that the party was departing to. It's one of the oddities of the kit that character files cannot be saved separately. Instead, characters are transferred between scenarios when you literally walk out of one and into the other.

        

This came out of nowhere.

           

Until I won that final battle, I was so sure that I must be missing something that I used the "Search" command on literally every square of the dungeon. It never once produced anything. 

    

The question for us now is: Is the kit capable of a better game? Probably a little. It would be interesting to try a higher-level scenario with the full complement of wizard and priest spells. I like tactical grids, but they're always boring at early levels. On the other hand, the documentation doesn't give any indication that the game is capable of NPC dialogue, puzzles, interactive encounters, side quests, or the rewarding of characters based on anything other than combat or treasure. The inventory system is simplistic, lacking rings, helms, boots, belts, etc. In sum, it seems capable of creating only very basic games, and the only thing that recommends it is that I don't think there was anything else like it for the Macintosh. On my GIMLET, it scores a 25, with mostly 2s and 3s across the board. It does all the things that an RPG should do, but without quite enough depth.

     

I would be remiss if I didn't cover a few interesting features that partly redeem the kit:

   

• It supports voice-based controls using Apple's PlainTalk software. I don't think I've seen such an option in any previous CRPG.

• When a character picks up two of the same item with a limited number of uses, the game offers to "merge" them into a single item. For instance, a lantern with 60 minutes of light and a lantern with 30 minutes of light becomes a single lantern with 90 minutes of light.

       

I guess it makes sense. You're just pouring oil from one to the other.

       

• If you missed the addendum to my last entry, all of the compositions are original to the game except "Jingle Bells," which was indeed checking the current date and substituting for normal exploration music. 

• Inspecting each item gives you a detailed set of facts and statistics. 

      

Checking out a suit of plate mail.

        

• I appreciated the somewhat limited textual narration of the corridors and rooms. It was well-written, with no major translation issues, and did a good job evoking a Dungeons & Dragons module. I would have liked to see more of this narration to truly flesh out the world. I think the game could have earned a 5 for "Game World" this way. 

• I also like the idea of a "Place" menu that lets you make common transactions within a business without having to go and find a specific counter or NPC. Daemonsgate operated this way as well. 

         

In an email to me, Accomazzi acknowledged the debt to D&D, which he mirrored in the name of the original Italian version of the kit, Sogni & Spade ("Dreams and Swords"). He says that he did play Pool of Radiance, but "did not particularly love it." He did love Ultima III-VI and "appreciated Wizardry." Ironically, I find Sword Dream closest to Pool of Radiance among these titles, though I see how the tactical combat might have been inspired by Ultima instead. 

 

The original Sword Dream went through several releases between 1993 and 1995, and new scenarios became available on a web site donated by a U.S. fan. These additional scenarios include "Return to Dawn Valley," "Secret of Greywood" (also spelled "Graywood" in some documentation; also sometimes "Darkwood"), "Quest for a Paladin," and "Nile Trial," all but the last created by the original team. ("Paladin" at least had input from the original team, though the primary author was Nicolas Meyer, a Swiss fan who helped with the French translation of the kit.) I haven't been able to find any of them, alas.

     

Sword Dream 3D. It manages to look a bit like Ishar.

            

In 1997, the team released Sword Dream 3D, an update to the kit that changes the main interface from 2D to 3D. Original team members Luca Accomazzi (design) and Eugenio Spagnolini (graphics) were joined by Alessandro Raccuglia (3D graphics). The new engine is supposedly backwards-compatible with scenarios created for earlier versions, although the 3D version comes with a new default scenario: "Heroes of the Black Tower." Accomazzi has made the kit and the scenarios available on his GitHub page, but the compiled version is available only as a CD-ROM disk image, and I'm having the worst time getting it to work with Basilisk II. (I'm aware that there are folders on his page for some of the scenarios that I said I could not find, but they are empty or have 0KB files in them. I have written to Mr. Accomazzi to see if he still has them.) In any event, I would regard the 3D version as enough of a change to be a fundamentally different game, and I've listed it separately on my master game list.

     

Accomazzi, already a columnist for the Italian MacWorld, continued to be Italy's resident Mac (and general Internet) guru for the next two decades, with publications like Da Terenzio a Internet: La Tecnologia Raccontata a un Profano (2005), iPhone e iPad Sotto il Cofano: Per Tutti i Dispositivi iOS (2010), Mac OS X: Sotto il Cofano (2010), OS X 10.9 Mavericks: Guida All'uso (2013), and Cuore di Mela (2016). He currently runs his own company, Accomazzi.net, specializing in Internet-based security and e-commerce solutions. Spagnolini entered the gaming industry, worked 13 years for the Walt Disney Company, and is now the CEO and founder of Gamyth, a startup working on its first persistent-world RPG, Narramor.

    

Except for what I decided to do with The Fates of Twinion, this entry brings us to the end of 1993, so we'll have the traditional transition before moving on. 

The Fates of Twinion: Lines and Squares

 

What would happen if I "accidentally" clicked "on-line"?

       

I had an oddly enjoyable experience with Twinion during the holiday break, one that had little to do with the game itself. I played it in a couple of long sessions with a crackling fire nearby, a snow-covered landscape out the window, surrounded by holiday cheer and too much food, audiobooks or films in the background. I spent about half of each day doing things with Irene, including playing Frosthaven (which I'm starting to believe will never actually end) and scanning half a lifetime of photographs. Otherwise, Irene did Sudoku and crocheted, and I did crossword puzzles and filled in the squares on half a dozen 16 x 16 Twinion maps. A more complex, immersive game would have taken over the experience and disrupted the delicate balance.

         

I spent most of the first half untangling filling in parts of the three levels that I blogged about last time: Level 4: "Night Elf Ingress," Level 4: "a-MAZE-ing," Level 4: "The Armory," Level 5: "The Enclave," and Level 6: "Twinion Keep." When I ended the previous session, I was on the cusp of a few discoveries that simply required me to go in slightly different directions from the ones I had previously chosen. To wit:

    

• I retraced my steps through the invisible one-way wall area of "The Enclave," went a different direction than before, and found one of the map pieces that Queen Aeowyn asked me to find. Specifically, I found two men fighting over the map piece and managed to snatch it just as they fell into the lava. (I was just reading how despite the many film depictions of lava that show otherwise, a person would not actually fall into lava so much as on top of it, sinking no more than a couple of inches while catching fire and burning to death. I demand a new, traumatizing ending to The Lord of the Rings.)

       

The area that a later NPC calls "pandemonium."

      

• After an encounter in an unexplored region of "Night Elf Ingress," I found a set of Pipes of Enchantment. This powerful artifact turns some of an enemy party to my side. I don't know how many charges it has, but I've been using it sparingly. 

       

It's nice to make enemies attack themselves.

      

• A room behind a secret door on the same level gave me a M.A.Z.E. Key (despite the periods, I suspect it doesn't stand for anything). This key opened a door I hadn't been able to access on "a-MAZE-ing," where I found a second map piece. The M.A.Z.E. Key and the Stone of Awareness both disappeared at this point, having fulfilled their duties. I can't give Fates of Twinion much, but I'd love to see more games in which quest items automatically disappear when they've satisfied all useful purpose.

• The door that I was not strong enough to open in "The Armory" yielded when my strength exceeded 20. It led to a series of rooms, most of which I couldn't open. The one that I could open held a set of armor specifically for rangers. I gather that the other rooms would have opened to other classes and held armor specific to them. I'm getting the sense that a lot of locations are class-specific, accounting for some of the dead spaces on my maps. It's all the more shame that the authors didn't let a single player create a party.

         

The one door that I could open.

       

Combat ceased to be much of a concern after the last entry. I continued to experiment with a few tactics, but when you find multiple Potions of Heal All in your post-combat loot, plus you make enough money to be able to afford those potions topside, combat strategy becomes easy: Fight until you're down to a couple of hundred hit points, then get a dose of that potion. Most enemies didn't cause me to have to use the potion during combat, although vampire sorceresses, golems, and sleeths ("sleethes"?) remained rather dangerous.

   

Mostly due to experience bonuses from finding the map pieces, I made it to Level 19 by this point. I started to hit caps in my attributes and skills. The game wouldn't let me advance "Agility" past 8 nor any of my skills past 12. After one more level, unless I learn a new skill, I won't have anywhere to put my skill points.

     

Even my spells are nearing their maximum.

      

(Related question: What is the point of putting any points into the "Teleport" spell? It does one thing: teleport you out of the dungeon.) 

       

At this point, despite some existing holes in almost all the Level 4-6 maps, I couldn't find any place to go except a new map: Level 7: "Tipekans," which is of course "Snakepit" backwards. On my initial visit to the area, I could only explore its edges; the center of the map was walled off. A message noted that this was the clever work of the brothers Sneer, Smug, and Smirk.

    

Yes, they built walls. Diabolical.

      

Old enemies included golems and grey oozes. New ones were Marillian swindlers, Faenian sorcerers, guardian medusas, winged pythons, pincer pythons, enchantresses of Casille, and murderous thieves. (Again, no word on where any of these locations are.) Enchantresses of Casille had a lot of hit points but otherwise weren't dangerous. Only the murderous thieves posed any real challenge. I died the first round that I faced them and had to come back. Packs of them could easily wipe out my hit points in a single round. I mostly defeated them by using the Pipes of Enchantment to convert some of their members.

      

Encounters:

   

• Someone took my Tnepres Key and gave me a Welcome Scroll.

• A gremlin cleric exchanged my Emerald Lockpick for a Diamond Lockpick. (A note later suggested that without the Emerald Lockpick, visiting this map was pointless.)

• Behind a door opened with the Diamond Lockpick, someone exchanged it for a Sapphire Lockpick.

• A dwarf knight was searching for a temple to heal his wound. 

       

I've already been there.

       

• An exasperated halfling mentioned an area called "The Races" in which only certain races could open certain doors. I thought she was talking about the area I already mentioned at first, but later I learned otherwise.

• Behind a secret door, a sleeping thief woke up, picked my pocket, and fled. At first, I thought he just stole gold. Soon, I realized he stole my Sapphire Lockpick. Goddamn it.

   

Fortunately, I annotated where I got everything and did the loop again. This time, knowing that the Diamond Lockpick would be shortly replaced by the Sapphire Lockpick, I took a break in between to test the Diamond Lockpick in the safe on Level 5: "The Enclave." It worked. I got 100,000 gold pieces and three artifact items: a Staff of Justice, a bow called Crescent Moon, and Nero's Lyre. I ended up selling the staff. Crescent Moon seemed to do more damage than my existing bow, so I swapped it out. The Lyre apparently cast's "Fireball." After this detour, I returned to "Tipekans" and finished the circuit without visiting the thief this time.

     

"Somehow found their way into  your pocket?!" I earned those gold pieces.

       

All this key and lockpick-swapping made me realize I had some locked doors on Level 4: "Night Elf Ingress" that I hadn't tried in a while. One, near the entrance, opened with the Front Door Key. It took me to a fountain that taught me the "True Seeing" spell. It reveals hidden doors. This is particularly useful because I've been relying largely on my Ring of Thieves for that, which runs out of charges after about 10 uses. (It recharges when you leave the dungeon and return.) 

   

Other doors still wouldn't open, so I was stuck again. I hadn't checked all the walls of "Tipkekans" for secret doors, so I returned to do so. It's worth noting a few things about secret doors:

      

• The game often clues you to their presence with a vague note about "strange markings" on the wall or "construction" recently having been done in the area. Sometimes it only does this on your second visit to the wall.

• Some secret doors you have to detect with a spell or item that casts the spell. Others you cannot detect and must simply bash through.  

      

A typical hidden door message. This one didn't show the door after I discovered it.

      

• It's about 50/50 whether the game actually shows a door after you find a door.

• Your discovery of the door is extremely temporary. Your next action must be to walk through the door, or else the game will forget that you found it. If it's a locked door, your discovery must then immediately proceed to use of the correct key or pick, then immediately travel through the door, or else the game will forget that the door is both discovered and unlocked. 

      

This time, the Sapphire Lockpick revealed a door I had missed before. I followed a series of teleporters, picking away at the edges of the level, until it brought me to an unmapped area of Level 4: "Night Elf Ingress." Along the way, a bunch of signs indicated that I was headed for the "ballroom." At one point, some thieves waylaid me, tied me up, and stole the Sapphire Lockpick again. I was able to keep the rope when they untied me.

      

I think I have an idea where I could use this.

      

The "Key of C" opened the door to the so-called ballroom, which was just a 2 x 2 room. There, one fountain poisoned me and another taught me the "Bard" skill.

   

Yet another teleporter took me to a new map on Level 6: "Rat Race." I didn't get very far in the level, which featured false doors (or else I was the wrong race), damaging waters, and one-way walls. I ran into one NPC who said that she'd just found her fourth map piece and needed to find the way out. Ominously, the game mentioned that she had a Skeleton Key. A few steps later was another NPC: "Some doors here are to deceive, not to open. By the way, you did bring your reforged Skeleton Key with you, didn't you?"

      

Would rage GIFs be a good addition to my blog?

       

I soon learned that I was in a dead-end area of the level. I'd missed a secret door somewhere. 

    

Pop.

      

That was the bursting of the little warm bubble that the game had managed to build up. Now, in addition to obtaining the Skeleton Key again, I would have to re-obtain the Emerald Key, then re-exchange it for the Diamond and Sapphire Keys, then work my way all the way back to the level again.

   

When I got back to the outside, I hit Level 20, and the game asked me to make the choice depicted at the top of this entry, and for a delightful two seconds, I misunderstood and thought that the game wasn't going to continue to let me play unless I joined the online version.  

   

I finished the session by returning to an area of "Night Elf Ingress" that ended at some lava. The rope I got from the thieves swung me over. On the other side, I found a fountain that taught me the "Fencing" skill but nothing else.

   

My progress on Levels 4-7 so far.

         

While I was wrapping up this entry, commenter JoshNotCharles commented on an old entry called "Breadth, Depth, and Immersion." I remember writing that entry and feeling that the thesis needed a bit of refinement, but rereading it today, I think it holds up fairly well. Moreover, it gets at the heart of what's wrong with The Fates of Twinion that isn't wrong with, say, Wizardry. Twinion offers too much breadth—
too large a physical space—without enough depth or immersion. It's a line rather than a cube. 

    

The online version of Twinion must have at least been a square. Multiplayer interaction and the increase in combat tactics would have created greater depth. By making no adjustments when adapting the game to its offline mode (such as allowing party creation), the developers ensured that the solo player would face a far less interesting game. I suspect they didn't care; I think the screenshot at the beginning of this entry demonstrates that the developers always intended offline mode as an appetizer for the more lucrative online mode. 

    

I'll probably press on to the end of the map quest and then call it a day.

   

Time so far: 36 hours 

Game 564: Sword Dream (1993)

 

        

Sword Dream

And specifically, the "Spirit of Darkness" module 

Italy

Independently developed; originally published by VideoCOM, later released as shareware

Released 1993 for Macintosh

Date Started: 24 December 2025

 

Sword Dream is an Italian RPG creation kit for the Macintosh, published in several versions between 1993 and 1997. It was distributed first by a commercial publisher, then as shareware, and it found its way on a couple of shovelware packages. The kit allows for the creation of tiled, turn-based Dungeons & Dragons-style scenarios with some of the look and feel of the SSI Gold Box games. Version 1.0 came with a sample scenario called Spirit of Darkness. I should have played it last May, during our "darkness" phase.

    

This is only our second Italian RPG, after Time Horn (1991), although two earlier ones (1984's Buio! and 1985's L'isola dei Segreti) are on my backlist. Still, it's not a country that really churns out titles, so it's a fresh experience. The primary author, Luca Accomazzi (based in the Piedmont region at the time), was well-known in the Italian Macintosh community: he was a columnist for MacWorld and later wrote several books on OS X and iOS. He was joined by Eugenio Spagnolini for the graphics. When local distribution through a traditional publisher failed, they released it as shareware in Italian, French, and English. They updated it in 1997 with a 3D engine, which I have listed as a separate title on my master list. 

       

A shot from the tutorial that comes with the kit.

              

Unlike, say, Unlimited Adventures, there's not much evidence that it was successful in its primary goal as a kit. Almost no scenarios have survived. Documentation for a 1995 update of the kit mentions several scenarios (Return to Dawn Valley, Secret of Greywood, Nile Trial, Quest for a Paladin) that could be downloaded from a short-lived web site (too old for the Internet Archive, alas), but all but one (Nile Trial) were written with the involvement of the original team.

        

The title screen from Spirit of Darkness. Accomazzi had a relative in Boston collect his shareware fees. That relative is now the director of the NASA Astrophysics Data System at Harvard University.

       

Spirit offers no backstory except that a shadow is falling over a peaceful valley. The game starts, as apparently all scenarios do, with a "party" with no members. You can move an icon around the screen, but it comprises no one. Party members must be recruited from various buildings and institutions. Here, a nearby Wizard's Tower offers mages and a nearby town offers fighters (recruited from bank guards), rogues (found at the brothel), clerics (at the temple), and rangers (at the inn). Paladins are supposedly possible with the engine, but they don't appear in the sample scenario.

   

Inviting a character to join the party basically has you created him from scratch, with typical Dungeons & Dragons choices and limitations. Attributes are the classic D&D six (on the usual scale from 3 to 18); races are human, elf, dwarf, and gnome. Alignment is set by clicking in the right spot on a two-axis graph to make the character chaotic and good, plain good, order and good, neutral, chaotic and evil, plain evil, and order and evil. The character sheet has no explicit declaration of sex; the manual mentions both male and female characters, but all of the portraits look male to me. You can click on the portraits to cycle through features like mustaches and beards, but the main portrait stays the same.

     

Recruiting a rogue.

        

Once created, the characters can outfit themselves in an equipment shop in town. In addition to weapons and armor, they need rations to eat every day and lanterns to explore the dark dungeon. There's no way to trade money between characters, so you can't create a bunch of characters and then dismiss them to get rich.

 

The scenario comes with a pre-created party consisting of one of each character class. You can add more party members, up to eight, but the game warns you that the scenario is balanced for five. I originally created my own party but ended up reverting to the default party when a couple of my members were killed.

      

Buying items at the only shop.

     

Once the party is in order, the only thing to do is explore the only dungeon available—a mine at the north end of the 8 x 8 outdoor map. The mine and the outdoor area around it host typical first-level enemies like goblins, kobolds, giant rats, and giant spiders.

   

Combat transitions to a tactical grid on which characters can attack in melee range, use ranged attacks, cast spells, and flee. The only major difference from SSI tactical battles of the era is that you're timed in Sword Dream. If the character fails to act within about eight seconds, his turn is considered "passed." This is particularly annoying because it takes about that long to bring up the spell interface, select a spell, and target it.

       

The combat window. I've accidentally hidden the turn timer off-screen.

          

By now, you've noticed elements of the interface. Like many Mac games, Sword Dream doesn't take you away from the operating system and into the game's own world, but rather emphasizes the OS with multiple windows that the user can independently re-size and re-arrange and lots of cutesy icons and buttons. The "Finder" icon remains perpetually visible, and you can see the desktop (including other open windows and icons) beneath the game. This is because Mac users, no matter what else they're doing, always want to be reminded that what they're fundamentally doing is playing with their Macs.

           

(When taking screenshots of Mac games, I often forget, as you see here a few times, that the menu bar is actually part of the game interface and ought to be included.)

       

There simply is no way to construct a good layout of these windows, particularly since the game insists on having each character window appear separately. If you have five characters, there isn't enough room to display the entire card along one side of the screen, but if you overlap the cards, you can end up obscuring one or more of them depending on which card has the foreground. [Ed. Accomazzi pointed out by email that a Mac model capable of 1024 x 768 graphics would work a lot better with the window layout. I guess this is true. I don't think Basilisk II is capable of emulating any Mac with color at that high a resolution.]

       

A reasonably good arrangement of the windows, except that I have 5 characters. The second character's index card is hidden behind Thor's. If I don't overlap them, however, there isn't enough space on the left side of the screen to show them all.

       

If you want to see the character's entire statistics sheet or inventory, you have to expand the card by clicking the box in the upper-right of the window. This action has no keyboard backup. The expansion messes up the order of the windows. Exchanging items between characters means expanding one window, dragging it out of the way, expanding the second window, dragging the item between inventories, then dragging both windows back to their original locations.

       

Trading. My window arrangement is now a hot mess.

                     

The interface offers both a "transcript" (a blow-by-blow of what is happening, particularly in combat) and a narrative window that gives a brief description of rooms and encounters. I rather like the latter, though I find it difficult to keep an eye on it. There are keyboard backups for movement and most actions, which is admirable, but a few key actions, like opening the character's inventory or targeting a ranged attack, must be done with the mouse.

      

As usual, I turned off music. The MIDI quality is fine, but the song selection doesn't quite fit the action. I only heard two tunes during the brief time I had it turned on. One, during regular exploration, was inexplicably "Jingle Bells." [Ed. As PK Thunder notes in the comments, it wasn't inexplicable at all! I was playing it during the week of Christmas, and the game must have been programmed to detect the date and insert the song accordingly. More on the music next time.] The other, during battle, I couldn't identify, but it was slow and contemplative and not something that you'd expect during combat.

 

Other sounds are mostly annoying. A satisfying "clunk" when a weapon connects in combat is always good, but not at the expense of an annoying honk whenever you hit the wrong key or the "coyote howl" whistle from the main theme of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that accompanies every pop-up message. (No disrespect to that masterful theme, of course, but the whistle without the answering trumpet call is like an itch you can't scratch.) 

      

The cleric's pitiful Level 1 spellbook.

      

If you've played Pool of Radiance, you remember how the first foray into the slums with Level 1 characters is quite hard. Mages can cast one "Magic Missile" spell and then they're out. Clerics are similarly weak, with maybe one "Cure Light Wounds," but at least they can wear armor and wield proper weapons. Any character can get knocked unconscious from an unlucky hit. Spirit of Darkness is the same, perhaps worse, in this regard. Mages are extra useless because not only do they get a limited number of spell slots, but most of their spells must be accompanied by material reagents, purchased in the mage's tower.

   

Meanwhile, many of the enemies you face (principally giant rats and giant spiders) are capable of poisoning the party, which saps damage every round, a condition that a Level 1 party has no ability to survive. You can fortunately save and load anywhere, but even still, during my first couple of hours with the game, I kept accidentally saving when my characters were poisoned or had been killed in the last battle without my noticing because of the inability to see all character statistics at the same time.

     

Time for a reload.

    

Also like Level 1 Gold Box characters, this party is looking at a lot of dead kobolds and goblins before they hit Level 2. Characters earn an equal amount of experience and gold after a successful battle, but not much of it. After a dozen or so, I had nearly 200 experience points, but the experience bar suggested that the next level wouldn't come until about 2,000. Presumably, there are treasures and special encounters that produce experience rewards. I just haven't found them yet. The manual for the kit describes a lot of higher-level character abilities and spells, but I don't know whether Spirit of Darkness offers sufficient content to reach them.

   

You see nothing in the top-down exploration interface. You slowly reveal squares as you explore, but you have to step on every one to trigger associated treasures and encounters. I don't know how large Spirit of Darkness is, but it's at least two large levels.

      

Starting out in the Valley of Dawn.

      

After a few false starts, I started with a new party consisting of two fighters, a ranger, and a thief. I figured I'd train up a mage once I got the other party members to Level 2. 

    

The scenario takes place in The Valley of Dawn. "Anyone with a sensitive soul can feel that something is amiss," the narration window says. "It is as if a dark spirit has invaded the valley, bringing gloom and evil in its wake." As noted before, the small 8 x 8 map consists of a Wizard's Tower, a mine, and the town of Smalltown. There's what looks like a corridor heading south along a river, but if you try to go that way, "the very air seems to reject your presence, and you are sent tumbling the way you came."

     

As for Smalltown, it used to be a wealthy, peaceful place, but "nowadays, most of the town is abandoned, ruins abound, and the inhabitants are nowhere to be seen." Despite this ominous narration, a bank, inn, temple, shop, and brothel all seem to be doing fine. The castle is abandoned, though, with a sign outside promising a "princely sum" to whoever can "free Smalltown from the Spirit of Darkness."

        

Moving around town. This party has no members yet.

      

Each of the buildings has a small interior to explore, but I don't think there's anything to find there. Instead, the player is meant to go right to the shop's special menu. However, some of the buildings have locked doors and inaccessible areas that indicate possible secret doors, so I'm not sure. The manual says nothing about doors, locks, or secret doors.

       

Some of the menu options in the Wizard's Tower.

     

The only menu options for the brothel are to recruit a rogue, buy rations, and spend the night. Spending the night has the same effect as doing so at the inn. Spellcasters can memorize new spells and everyone gets hit points restored. There's no indication that any hanky-panky is going on.

     

At the bank, you can deposit or withdraw gold and recruit fighters. The inn has options to stay the night, buy regular rations, buy weak or strong drinks, buy iron rations, recruit a ranger, leave a character temporarily, recover a character, and talk to the barkeep. Staying the night fully heals the party (whereas resting on the road only heals one hit point). The barkeep has a few tips depending on how many drinks you buy and of what type:

   

• Welcome, adventurer. Nice to see somebody looking healthy and strong. Care for some money? Try the mines. 

• Have you been to the temple? It's so old that we of the valley forgot the name of the saint.

• When you'll enter the mines from the main entrance, keep your left to reach the stairs to the second level. 

         

I love "Yeah" as the party's reaction to the tip.

       

At the temple, you can heal various conditions and recruit a cleric. The shop is unique in having no exploration area; entering just takes the party right to the buy/sell interface.

    

Outside, the Valley is generally a safe place, but if the party stands still long enough, they'll be attacked. Some of the attacks are odd. Whether through a bug or just sadism, giant ants are impossible for a Level 1 party to hit. You can also get "attacked" by a unicorn, the only response to which is to flee, which gets you a bunch of gold pieces, as if you had won a battle against a traditional enemy.

      

Are there other "friendly" encounters in the game? Time will tell.

            

"There's some evil lurking here," the game says as you enter the mines. It notes that the miners have all abandoned the area, but curiously there's still an old man passing out lanterns in a Level 1 room. The narration window flags several other "encounters" as we explore corridors and hit dead-ends.

   

• Many exhausted gold veins. 

• Someone has scribbled on the wall in blood: "Saint Cuthbert shall free us from the Spirit of Darkness." It looks fresh. 

• We find a couple of gems on the ground. 

• A bunch of rocks block a passage. Its placement seems to be deliberate. 

     

How do you purposely create a landslide in a dungeon?

      

We fight lots of battles against giant rats, giant spiders, goblins, and kobolds, except that every time I get infected by something, I have to flee combat and reload. Eventually, I just start proactively fleeing anything that causes poison or illness.

      

Hello, no.

    

Eventually, I find the stairs to Level 2, where Level 1's enemies are supplemented with skeletons and giant ants. It becomes clear to me that I'm going to have to engage in a bit of grinding to survive. I have no idea how many levels make up these mines, nor how long the scenario will take to win. I know we're all eager to get to 1994, but it's not Sword Dream's fault that it came last on the 1993 list, and I want to give it the full treatment before moving onward. My judgement so far is that it does a decent job replicating a typical Dungeons & Dragons module, but with a lot of cutesy Mac stuff I could do without.

        

Time so far: 3 hours