Revisiting: Akalabeth: World of Doom (1980)

Why are these early games so eager to call the player a fool?

As I write my entries for this blog, it's always a pleasure when the original game developers stop by to comment on the games I'm covering. We've heard from Corey Cole on Hero's Quest (and lots of other games!); Robert Clardy on Dungeon Campaign; Steve Moraff on Moraff's Revenge; Gordon Walton on Dungeon of Death; Don Worth on Beneath Apple Manor; Laurence Brothers on Omega; and...probably several others that I'm forgetting (in which case I apologize). But I've never even attempted to get in touch with the man most responsible for my addiction to CRPGs, the Father of the Avatar, the King of Alternate Realities, Lord Cantabrigian British himself, Richard Garriott.

If you asked me the reason, I suppose I'd say that I wouldn't know what to ask him that wasn't already covered in Dungeons and Dreamers (2003) by Brad King and John Borland. The book is maddeningly selective, jumping from Ultima to Doom to Quake to MMORPGs with barely an acknowledgement of anything else happening in the industry. But if you ignore the rest of it, it works great as a biography of Garriott (who just got married and is calling himself Richard Garriott de Cayeux these days). The authors clearly had full access to, and cooperation from, Garriott. We even learn when he lost his virginity, for god's sake.

The book describes how 17-year-old Garriott, a tabletop RPG lover, became entranced with a 3D maze game called Escape on his Apple II. He'd already been programming a bunch of D&D-based games on his school's computers--in fact, he managed to get school credit for it--and he saw immediately how he could merge D&D-style gameplay with first-person exploration. As he worked on the programming for the maze, his mother helped him by drawing the graphics for the monster inhabitants. After a year of furious programming and play-testing the game on his friends, family, and girlfriend, he had Akalabeth.

Over the summer between high school and college, Garriott got a job at ComputerLand in Houston, Texas. He showed the game to his boss, who loved it and convinced him to publish it. With no real expectations, Garriott made 16 copies on disk, photocopied the manual, and offered them for sale in Ziploc bags. Fifteen of them sold right away, and his boss (who the book tragically does not name) [Edit: but was revealed in other places to be a John Mayer] sent the sixteenth to California Pacific Computing, who immediately flew Garriott out to California and signed him to a contract. Over the next few years, the game sold 30,000 copies and made Garriott $150,000, or over $400,000 in today's money. [Edit: I am indebted to this article on the Digital Antiquarian for helping to establish the proper date of these events. Note that the article also questions claims about the sales figures.]

The original game in its Ziploc package.

Up until that last two sentences, it's amazing how similar Garriott's story is to that of Joseph Power, who wrote Wizard's Castle around the same time. (See my recent discussion of that game.) Power also got started offering his game in a computer store and was also courted by a California publisher. But subtle differences, including the choice of platform and the lack of graphics, meant that Power's contract fell through while Garriott went on to form an empire.

Akalabeth, sometimes later known as Ultima 0, was the first game I played in my epic project to play every CRPG ever made. That was back in the fall of 2009, before an anoymous Redditor encouraged me to turn my experience into a blog. By the time I started writing, I had left Akalabeth behind and had just won Rogue. Because of this, I covered Akalabeth hurriedly, not even bothering to offer screen shots of the game in my woefully inadequate entry. The title of that first posting is "Akalabeth and Skipped Games"; in addition to Akalabeth, it describes the PLATO games and a few Apple II-only games that I skipped at the time. I've later returned to visit those, and so it only seems fitting that I offer a proper entry on Akalabeth as well.

Garriott's original manual for the game is available at the Museum of Computer Adventure Gaming History (thanks to commenter Natreg for providing the link!) and it identifies the creator as "Shamino Salle Dacil, alias Richard Garriott." The game thus predates Garriott's adoption of the moniker "Lord British," although this wasn't long in coming, and subsequent editions of the game and manual use that name. My understanding is that "Shamino" was Garriott's SCA nickname, and of course he shows up as an NPC starting in the first Ultima.

I was surprised to see that the back story references Mondain, the villain from Ultima; I didn't realize that Akalabeth had such a thematic connection to the Ultima series. Mondain isn't the villain in Akalabeth; instead, he's recently been driven off by Lord British, and the hero of the game is left to contend with the monsters Mondain left behind. You could almost argue that Ultima, then, is a prequel to Akalabeth!

The game begins by asking you to enter a "lucky number" (used as a variable for the random overland map and the starting attributes) and a difficulty level from 1 to 10. I'm not sure exactly what the difficulty level adjusts; but in this expedition, I played on Level 7.

You play Akalabeth as either a fighter or a mage. Fighters have a greater selection of weapons, but mages can control the "magic amulet" that's a major key to character development and ultimately breaking the game. You don't name the character (yet) or set any other attributes like race or sex, but before you head out to adventure, you buy your initial selection of equipment. As I recall from playing over three years ago, at the outset you want to invest almost everything into food.

Movement in the Apple II version is absurdly cumbersome, and I can only imagine it made sense on the Apple II keyboard in some way I don't see. ENTER moves north, / moves south, and the the two arrow keys move east and west. Other commands are (S)tatistics, (A)ttack, (P)ause, (X)enter castle or dungeon and the space bar to pass. There's no save! I'm pretty sure there was in the DOS port I played back in 2009.

The outdoor area. I'm on top of an adventuring shop. There's an impassable mountain to my east and a dungeon to my north.

In the limited outdoor area (about 400 total squares), you find several adventurer's shops, several dungeons, and Lord British's castle. Finding anything without running out of food is an early game challenge, and a good argument for using the same "lucky number" over and over until you learn the terrain.

Once you find Lord British's castle and give the sovereign your name, the game begins in earnest. Lord British bumps up all your attributes by 1 and gives you a quest to kill a random monster in one of the dungeons.

Dammit. I hate gremlins.

Dungeons are essentially interchangeable. Some appear at first glance as if they have no monsters, or no way down, but that's just a clue that there are secret doors. So you just have to find one convenient to a town and the castle and use that for the entire game. In each dungeon, monsters are entirely predictable: a rat and a skeleton on Level 1; a rat, a skeleton, and a thief on Level 2; a rat, a skeleton, a thief, and an orc on Level 3; and so on down to who knows what level (I've gone as far as 11). Other enemies that appear are gremlins, vipers, mimics, daemons, balrogs, and carrion crawlers. Combating them is matter of pressing "A" and selecting your chosen weapon, and then perhaps an additional command for the type of attack. Monsters have some limited AI and will flee if their hit points get too low, forcing you to chase them around the level. As you do, their hit points regenerate, which must be a first.

"Throwing" my axe causes me to lose it.

Chests are located at fixed locations and always have the same things; they also respawn when you leave and return. As you explore, kill monsters, and open chests, you slowly acquire gold, backup weapons, and sometimes food. There are ladders, holes, and pit traps connecting the multiple levels of the dungeons. Some monsters have special attacks, such as thieves who steal items (sometimes leaving you weaponless) and gremlins who steal food.

The game also shares Ultima's odd approach to hit point accumulation, by which you receive hit points upon exiting the dungeon, based on the number and levels of enemies you've killed. I originally thought this was exceedingly silly, but I realized that it's essentially the game's way of eliminating the experience-point middleman. For whatever reason, programming limitations prevented Garriott from including experience points and levels, which inevitably lead to more hit points, so he just went directly to killing monsters=increases in hit points.

I had been in a long time.

Thus, advancing in the game is a slow but somewhat satisfying process of entering dungeons, killing monsters, building gold, retreating, getting more hit points, buying food, and re-entering the dungeons. Since there's such a paltry selection of weapons in the game, getting extra hit points--along with the occasional stat boost from Lord British--is the only way you really develop.

This is all true, at least, until you get lucky with a magic amulet. They cost 15 gold pieces and have limited charges, so you can't use them willy-nilly. They have several helpful spells: "Ladder Up," "Ladder Down," "Kill," and one labeled "BAD??" Nine times out of 10, "BAD??" does something bad, like damaging your hit points or turning you into a toad with 3 points in each attribute. But the 10th time, it "turns you into a lizard man," with attributes three times the value of when you started. This change is permanent, and cumulative, so if you can successfully use the amulet this way several times, you can get strength, dexterity, stamina, and wisdom statistics in the several hundreds.

My character after a few successful applications.

Now, using the amulet this way does carry a risk, and you still have to worry about food (and gremlins stealing it; they can steal almost all of it in just a few rounds), and you still have to grind for gold to pay for food (and more amulets), but the lizard man trick does make the game a lot easier if you can get it right two or three times.

Dungeon exploration is primitive but fun. I like how enemies can attack you from any direction, so when you approach a four-way intersection, you tense up wondering which way they'll come from. If you don't map or otherwise keep track of pit traps, you can easily find yourself in a cycle of repeatedly falling lower and lower and unable to climb back to the surface. Levels are only 9 x 9, but even smaller than that because corridors don't share walls. As you play the game, it's worth doing your explorations in a single dungeon and mapping it, since you'll be returning to it a lot.

A typical Akalabeth dungeon level.

As you return to Lord British, having completed his quests, you get increased attributes (paltry in comparison to enhanced lizard man attributes) and new quests to slay monsters.

I'll be sure to give a(n) mimic a real killing.

The monsters I got on this play-through were gremlin, mimic, daemon, and balrog, and I don't know if this is randomized for other games. (I suspect it must be; otherwise, the "a(n)" article doesn't make any sense--but then again, I don't think any monsters in this game begin with vowels, so it doesn't make sense either way.) Once you slay enough of the creatures, Lord British makes you a knight. You can continue playing, but you have effectively "won' at that point.

Here are a few take-aways from the experience:

1. Akalabeth is sometimes called the first commercial CRPG. While this isn't technically true--we've seen other examples here on the blog--it is one of the first commercial games that is unquestionably a CRPG, with the types of statistics, weapons, combat, hit points, gold, and other trappings that we've come to expect. The other commercial games we've seen from this era almost all have little quirks that better characterize them as proto-CRPGs. Only Dunjonquest: Temple of Apshai clearly precedes Akalabeth in the commercial CRPG market as a full RPG.

2. This is also the first CRPG that offers a quest for something greater than just "collect treasure." It is the first game in which your goal is to become a hero, and solve a problem, and not just get rich.

3. Akalabeth is the clear beginning of a line. Aside from the maze game that inspired Garriott to create the 3D maze, there is no obvious forerunner to Akalabeth. It is one of the earliest commercial franchises that doesn't owe its lineage to the mainframe PLATO games.

4. Many of the trappings established in Akalabeth have carried forward into the Ultima series, including Lord British, the reference to Mondain, and all of the creatures encountered in the dungeons with the exception of the carrion crawler. All the way through Ultima V, the approach to the dungeons remains the same: small, no shared walls, multiple ladders and pits up and down, secret doors, pit traps, and random chests.

The game is difficult but fair, and even without the lizard man trick, you could win the game in 8 or 10 hours of playing, as long as you're careful, map the levels, and don't overextend yourself in the dungeon.

When I originally rated Akalabeth, the GIMLET only added up to 9. It was early in my rating days, and probably a bit harsh. Without looking at my previous rating, today I'd give it:

• 2 for the game world. There's slightly more story than most of the other games of the era, but not much. Garriott had not yet developed the flair for detailed back stories that he'd display in Ultima.

• 2 for character creation and development. It's not horrible. You get a decent set of attributes at the outset, and each visit to British upon completion of a quest kicks them up.

• 0 for NPCs. There really aren't any. Lord British handing out quests isn't enough.

• 2 for encounters and foes. They're pretty basic, but touches like having enemies flee and having rogues and gremlins steal put Akalabeth a little ahead of its time.

• 2 for magic and combat. There aren't many combat tactics, but vacillating between missile weapons and melee weapons and being able to flee with strategic uses of "Ladder Up" and "Ladder Down" adds a few logistics to the game.

• 1 for equipment. You have a few items, but not enough to get excited about.

• 2 for economy. Gold is precious, but you really only spend it on food and magic amulets after the initial outlay. Towards the end of the game, you collect an abundance of it.

• 1 for quests; a series of very basic main quests doesn't warrant much more.

• 1 for graphics, sound, and interface. We're well before the era when any of these things were good.

• 2 for gameplay. The game is challenging but not maddeningly so (and you can adjust the difficulty). It's fairly nonlinear, but without enough stuff to make nonlinearity really matter.

That adds up to 15, which is a little better than I originally gave it. Remember that when I assigned the original rating of 9, it was two months after I first blogged about the game and six months after I played it. I was clearly forgetting some of its elements.

With this posting, I feel like I've at last done right by the game. Let's head back to the modern era with Starflight II.