Game 138: Empire II: Interstellar Sharks (1982)

      

Empire II: Interstellar Sharks

United States

Interactive Fantasies (developer); Edu-Ware Services (publisher)

Released in 1982 for Apple II
Date Started: 6 February 2014
    

It appears that I'm about to become the first person online to offer a detailed description of Empire II: Interstellar Sharks, and I'm not entirely sure I'm up to the task. The entire series--what it's trying to achieve, who its audience was, how seriously we're supposed to take the game documentation, what it's really about--continues to confuse me.

In September, I looked at Empire I: World Builders and noted that:

Empire is a uniquely weird game. Its weirdness begins with its manual, full of a propagandist history of the empire that offers an alternate take on human history, and continues with its interface, mechanics, and overall gameplay goals. If it was created today, I would suspect its creator to be a gifted but extremely disturbed person. But 1981 was a time in which video games were new, and common tropes not yet established, and this game comes from a creator (Edu-Ware Services) that specialized in educational software rather than role-playing games. Even with this understanding, playing the game feels a bit like indulging someone's lunacy.

Everything I said about the first game is true for the second. It comes with bizarre documentation of an alternate history and possibly-dystopian future. It features a quasi-simulation experience in which you have to go step-by-step through the most mundane things, like taking a flight from one planet to another: walk through the multiple screens of space dock, enter the passport office, apply for a passport, go to the ticket office, buy a ticket, present items at customs, go to the boarding area, enter the ship, exit the ship, present items at customs again. It has a combat system that's hardly used. Overall, it's hard to imagine anyone finding the game truly "enjoyable." I'd suspect that this game was designed amidst a lone creator's slow descent into irrecoverable madness--except that I know that the creator, David Mullich, went on to a productive and prolific career, including directing the Heroes of Might and Magic franchise for 3DO between 1999 and 2002. That Empire found a reasonably reputable publisher, which thought enough of it to publish the entire trilogy, also argues against the "lone psychopath" hypothesis. So I'm left doubly baffled by a series that seems to have been created by sane people, with an actual expectation to make a profit, and yet has all the fun of going through airport security. I feel like there's some obvious piece of the puzzle--some weird market trend that existed in the early 1980s that I forgot; some meta-theme completely going over my head.

Empire was an open-ended game in which you tried to survive as a pioneer on rugged planets, taking the role of a miner, homesteader, or missionary. It was set in the context of a new and expanding galactic empire. Empire II takes place some centuries later, with the planets colonized, and you act out one of three roles: pilot (trading commodities between planets), businessman (trading stocks and "carrying out covert operations for the company which he serves"), or diplomat ("execute assignments for the Empire"). Somehow, success in these areas will lead to the ultimate goal: a visit to the imperial home planet of Triskelion, where the manual promises some clue as to winning Empire III. The manual sets up this epic struggle by noting that "Gone are the days of frontiers and rugged individualism; red tape and regulations have become the obstacles of life amid the stars." I'm just not sure that red tape and regulations were precisely what every young RPG player was clamoring for in 1982.

The gameplay baffles me because it's boring (despite some exciting-sounding mechanics), but the manual baffles me because it's just crazy. The manual for the first game records an alternate history in which most of Earth is destroyed by a nuclear holocaust, and the first "perfect man," Gortus Lazur, forms an Empire from the ashes. There's a lot of pseudo-science and weird philosophy in the manual, and I don't know how seriously the player was supposed to take it, but it didn't have much bearing on the gameplay.

Empire II's documentation manages to top the first. The instruction manual is accompanied by The Memoirs of Yoram Lazur, the "twelfth empress of our great empire." (For some reason, Lazur's line is unable to produce any male offspring.) It takes the form of a long letter between an empress and her daughter-heir, and it cryptically imparts information about the bizarre game world, suggesting that the specific scientific breakthroughs and laws passed under each empress's rule have been planned for centuries, and that the Empress is really a puppet ruler at the mercy of a large bureucracy.

The tract indicates that empresses are impregnated by a host of consorts called "Reproductive Advisors"--the embryos are then whisked away to be raised by surrogates, and empresses never actually meet their daughters. There's a section where the empress rails against her advisors for introducing a new technique via which she will be artificially inseminated instead.

Oh, there's a lot more in the 18-page manual that I can't begin to comprehend. Strange anecdotes from the past (a few pages are given to the tempestuous relationship between an empress and a scientist named Escher who invented the "Mobius drive," 900 years earlier), allusions to the computers ("independent thinking machines") outpacing humanity, references to illegal worshippers of the "Lord of Light." I don't know if this is just supposed to be an original way to introduce the player to the history and terminology of the game world, or if it's all supposed to be a grand allegory, or what. Whatever the case, Mullich put a lot of effort into building an original and bizarre back story, none of which carries into the gameplay except a single appearance by the disciples of the Lord of Light.

Do they realize their "L" is backwards?

The interface is an odd blend of adventure game, RPG, and simulation game. Like the first game, all progression is through text commands, of which the book lists more than 150 possibilities for verbs and nouns. Some are specific to certain locations and classes, but it's a lot to keep track of. For a long time, I couldn't catch a ship out of the spaceport because I didn't realize you had to BUY TICKET and then, separately, PAY.

The RPG elements come in the form of  a set of standard D&D-style attributes, though with the addition of "senses," "psionics," and "aim." These are all rolled randomly, as is your sex. You then select the profession that goes best with your attributes.

I was doing good for a little while.

The attributes are important, as they are the subject of frequent rolls to determine the success of game actions. For instance, getting contraband through customs requires an intelligence check, negotiating a treaty means a charisma check, escaping from the authorities means passing a speed roll, and successfully striking a blow in combat is dependant on strength. This is one thing the game does reasonably well, and it forces you to plan your character's actions around his strengths and weaknesses.

After you select your class, you head out to the spaceport, where you can either jump into your own ship (if you're a pilot) or take a commercial transport to another planet. The classes come with different starting items and credits; for instance, the diplomat automatically has a high-level passport to almost all the empire's planets, and the businessman has a trading pass for the stock exchange.

Lots of interstellar travel in this game, which has all the excitement of catching a flight in real life.

 
Combat is essentially identical to the first game. Each character has a separate damage rating for his head, torso, left arm, right arm, left leg, and right leg. You engage in combat by typing movement commands (BACK, FORWARD) and attack commands (HIT HEAD, KICK TORSO, SHOOT LASGUN BODY). Each attack is followed by a roll against the appropriate attribute, at which point the game alerts you if you've hit your opponent, missed him, or fumbled and damaged yourself instead.

Keep reading. I actually have a good reason for killing a priest.

It's not a bad mechanic except for the rarity in which you need it. In about four hours of gameplay, I only had to fight one combat, though it was an option a second time when I was trying to evade arrest (I BRIBED instead). This is in sharp contrast to the first game, where combat came upon you with alarming frequency.

There are about eight planets visitable at the beginning of the game. Each has its own selection of stores, corporate offices, banks, medical offices, and embassies. Each planet consists of a straight road that wraps back on itself after six or seven screens; it's impossible to get lost. For some of them, going off the beaten path into the wilderness produces a special location, like a black market or an illegal temple to the Lord of Light.

Exploring the planet of Hwitrokken.

Only one planet has a "mercenary" store that sells advanced weapons and shields, but these are all illegal, so if you buy any, you have to pass an intelligence check every time you try to clear customs--which you have to do twice on each journey. Given the lack of combat in the game, it doesn't make a lot of sense to carry these things around.

The game has a reasonably sophisticated crime-and-punishment system. You can ROB stores, STEAL from NPCs, BRIBE customs officials, buy and sell drugs, and murder people for their credits.

I would think a key to avoiding a successful police raid is to not sell your drugs in a big building that says "hedonistic services."

If you get caught at any of these things, you get sent to prison for several years. (Diplomats have "diplomatic immunity," but this can be revoked for serious crimes.) On one planet, Denieves, there's a "hedonistic services" building where you can gamble, buy drugs, or sleep with a prostitute. Each carries the risk of a raid that will land you in jail unless you FIGHT, BRIBE, or ESCAPE successfully. The gambling game is horribly weighted towards the house, so it doesn't help much financially, and visiting the prostitute also carries a risk of venereal disease. (Incidentally, I thought Wasteland was the first CRPG sex, but apparently it was much earlier.)

The candle is a nice touch.

Whether you play a pilot, businessman, or diplomat, I think the goal is to amass enough funds to fully outfit your own ship, which you can then, somehow, fly to Triskelion. (None of the commercial flights will take you there.) Getting rich is proving quite difficult, and more than a little boring.

Some of the many parts you need for a ship.

I've done most of my playing with Denise the Diplomat. I find that the pilot class has way too many logistics to deal with, from buying the right amount of fuel for the ship, using "flight planning services" to PLAN a trip to a specific planet (they won't do Triskelion, so that's a bigger puzzle), taking the time to INSURE cargo, COLLECT impounded cargo, and so on. Even launching the ship involves enough steps to make a flight simulator proud. There are different flight considerations for intra-stellar and inter-stellar flight.

The pilot's role is logistically complicated.

The businessman has to mostly trade stocks, which is rather boring, as the prices only vary about 2% every 10 minutes.

Wow, is this exciting.

The diplomat visits embassies to get diplomatic missions. Some of the missions I've been assigned are to collect taxes from all the corporations and different types of stores; assassinate the high priest of the Lord of Light worshippers on Apollin (this was the one necessary combat); carry a diplomatic pouch to another planet; negotiate a treaty with an alien ambassador; and negotiate mining rights on the one mining planet.

Denise has just passed a charisma check and has just successfully negotiated a treaty with the one known alien species.

These sound exciting on the surface, but they're mostly about just getting to the right planet and entering the right building (with an occasional attribute roll). This process is complicated by a number of factors:

• There's no rhyme or reason to the system of getting commercial transport from one planet to another. The available ports of destination are randomly rolled the first time you visit the spaceport. More than once, I've had to fly aimlessly from planet to planet until a route finally opened to my destination. Buying tickets costs a lot of money, and it's been impossible for me to earn more than I've had to spend.

I'm sure these places are nice, but I really needed to go to Prothocole.

• Embassies mysteriously disappear. I'll be given a mission to deliver a pouch on, say, Hwitrokken, but when I arrive on Hwitrokken, there's no embassy. I have to leave for another planet and then find my way back to Hwitrokken and hope the embassy is there this time.

• Sometimes, the mission is on a planet that is not visitable through commercial transport, so until I collect enough money to buy my own ship, I won't be able to complete the mission.

Going from one nondescript planet to another, having to PRESENT ITEMS at customs twice on each trip, trying to find the right combination of trips that will get you to the right place, watching your fortunes grow by pennies per hour . . . none of this is very much fun. I've started about six characters so far, and not a single one has died. Instead, they've just coasted to a stop. I get to the point where I can't get to the location of the next diplomatic mission, or afford passage to another planet, and I just run out of stuff to do. Again, the contrast between this and the first Empire game couldn't be more stark. In that one, you couldn't stay alive for more than 10 minutes; in this one, you can't get anything significant to occur.

The manual says that "Interstellar Sharks is the simulation of the complexities of modern day life projected onto a galactic scale." I guess I have to agree, but I find it bizarre that anyone thought players wanted a game like that, let alone make it. The game's good ideas (the stats checks, the crime system) are subsumed by a monotonous gameplay that contrasts starkly with the completely far-out game manual and back story.

I don't know how well Empire II did in its time, but the fact that the game is so lost (most mentions of it online are from people looking for it) seems to suggest that it isn't regarded as a beloved classic. I was lucky enough that one of my commenters, Odkin, had both the game and the manual. I keep meaning to ask him if he has Empire III, which is similarly lost. Knowing whether I'll be able to finish the series will probably matter a lot as to whether I bother to try to finish this game.

Later Edit: No one has been able to turn up a copy of Empire III. I heard from David Mullich and we had a brief e-mail exchange, but he didn't remember enough to be able to help me with the gameplay, and he didn't give me permission to post other aspects of our conversation on my blog. If I ever do find Empire III, I might give this game another try, but otherwise I'm going to move on.

Even Later Edit: I won Empire II over seven years after this initial entry. Read the second posting here.

Game 116: Empire I: World Builders (1981)

As I suspected, DarkSpyre's playing-to-interesting-blog-material ratio is turning out to be quite high. I've finished about nine levels but I don't have a lot to say, so while I try to scrounge more material for something interesting about that game, let's clear out another 1981 offering. That I'm able to play it at all is due to reader Josh Lawrence, who scanned me a copy of the manual and its vital list of command words.

Empire is a uniquely weird game. Its weirdness begins with its manual, full of a propagandist history of the empire that offers an alternate take on human history, and continues with its interface, mechanics, and overall gameplay goals. If it was created today, I would suspect its creator to be a gifted but extremely disturbed person. But 1981 was a time in which video games were new, and common tropes not yet established, and this game comes from a creator (Edu-Ware Services) that specialized in educational software rather than role-playing games. Even with this understanding, playing the game feels a bit like indulging someone's lunacy.

Preparing to lift off into space.

The game takes place in the future, naturally. The manual comes with an "official imperial textbook" called The Birth of a Free Empire. It's an extremely bizarre bit of propaganda that breaks human history down into periods called the "Primative Era," the "Feudal Era," the "Great Anarchy," and the "Imperial Solution," through which man evolves from "very savage man" to just "savage man" to "perfect man." The history is presented in a timeline that diverges from actual human history at some point--it has the nuclear destruction of San Francisco in between the invention of the computer chip and the moon landing--but it clearly suggests there was some kind of apocalypse after our modern era that ultimately led to the formation of an empire led by Gortus Lazur, glorified in the history as the first "perfect man." It's unclear how much of the fictional history is supposed to be an alternate reality and how much is supposed to be an imperfect recreation of actual human history, but either way it's entertaining in a somewhat uncomfortable way.

The "perfect man" is apparently a South American dictator.

The game begins with the player in a spaceport in New York City, just before he blasts off for the stars. The player enters the "new colonists" section and randomly rolls attributes for a new character, then determines whether the character is going to be a miner, missionary, or homesteader, which feels a bit like you're about to play one of the background NPCs in a traditional RPG.

Rolling stats for a new character.

One you choose your class, you're assigned an allotment of money and equipment. You then proceed through a medical check and customs before passing through the "boarding gate" and blasting off in your ship. You're treated to a launch animation, find yourself in space, and must immediately make a constitution check to see if you survived liftoff.

Assuming you survive, you're soon orbiting a "new planet," and this is where the game truly begins. If you choose to land on a planet whose atmosphere you can't breathe or whose gravity is too strong, you die. Otherwise, you can exit and start exploring. On each habitable planet, you can visit towns, fight creatures, interact with NPCs, sink and explore mines, establish homesteads, preach in public parks, buy and sell goods, and blast off for other planets or for home.

 

An NPC approaches me on a horizon that also contains a town and my ship.

The basic mechanic of Empire is to navigate through a series of simulated environments and situations using a baffling number of commands. Some of the activities are centered around the character's core role (miner, missionary, or homesteader); some, like combat and NPC interaction, are common to all roles. Success is influenced by the types of equipment you carry and constant attribute checks. There are many things that can kill you, including starvation and thirst (you start with 10 food and 10 water).

Selling ore at the company store.

An early goal on every planet is to find a town and purchase decent weapons. Of the dozen or so characters I created, most of them died while trying to find the town on the planet's surface. If you're lucky enough to arrive there, you find that every one has four shops: a casino, a "company store," a general store, and an armory. You can only gamble a maximum of $250, and winning is entirely about "psionics" checks rather than any actual strategy.

Combat--which can be triggered randomly or by attacking an NPC--involves a screen in which you and your enemy trade blows (or shots) and roll attribute checks to determine their success or failure, slowly taking damage to your body parts until one of you dies. If it's the enemy, you can loot whatever goods or food he had.

I don't know how to begin to describe the multitude of things that happen during the game. Weird creatures (including unicorns) appear on the horizons. Random vigilantes, soldiers, traders, and other NPCs show up and either give you items, offer trades, or demand items from you. Constitution checks every time you blast off can result in your death. Every time you move, there's a chance you might wind up in quicksand or drown in the ocean or suffer some environmental hazard. Dinosaurs attack. Sometimes, you just die without any explanation. One of my characters got this message randomly while he was exploring a planet:

I made a successful charisma check, was promised wealth, and suddenly found myself starting over in New York. When I checked the "off-worlders" section of the starting area, I found the character present, with an additional $50,000. I'm not sure what happened or how I got home.

Explaining gameplay, including commands, is perhaps best done with a couple of sample characters. These are a few who I managed to play for a reasonable amount of time. There were plenty of others that died in combats, falling into quicksand, starving, in mine collapses, or for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

Um...why?

I'll skip the earthbound parts of the descriptions, which always proceed the same way: STRAIGHT AHEAD to an examination room, STRAIGHT AHEAD through customs (the purpose of these screens seems to be to remind players of a character's attributes and inventory when reloading an old character), LEFT through the boarding gate, and a constitution check upon launching.

1.  Mark the Missionary

With lousy strength, this character makes a poor miner, and his extremely low speed doesn't recommend him well as a homesteader. The high psionics and intelligence scores, on the other hand, are perfect for a missionary.

The first planet Mark comes to has low gravity and a thin atmosphere, so he continues to SEARCH for a more likely candidate. The second has the right atmosphere but no government; he figures he needs a governmental system for the type of civilization that would be ready to receive his proselytizing. After a few more planets go by, he finally finds a suitable one: regular gravity, standard atmosphere, high population, modern technology, and an oligarchical government.

This stage of assessment is not unlike Starflight from five years later.

He LANDs on the planet and gives the command to GO OUT of his spacecraft. Finding himself on a barren plain, he decides to engage in a circular pattern to search for a town, going first EAST, then NORTH.

A "noble" approaches. Using the WHO command initiates dialogue. The noble introduces himself as Gaheris and gives Mark some of his food, which is awfully nice. He is followed almost immediately by another noble named Zora, but he simply says "hmmph!" and stalks off.

Mark proceeds WEST and WEST again and finds himself at the ocean. He becomes thirsty and chooses to DRINK some water.

Returning to the EAST and NORTH, Mark is approached by a soldier. When asked WHO, he says he's collecting taxes. Mark says NO to the request and finds himself jailed for two months (where?). When he gets out, he is immediately approached by a merchant WHO offers to sell water for 90 credits. Since Mark only has 500, he says NO and fails a charisma roll. Next along comes Gort the peasant WHO asks for food. As a missionary, Mark feels compelled to GIVE him some.

After some more wandering and unhelpful NPCs, Mark comes across Bonzo the Bandit, who demands his money. Mark says NO. Combat begins. Bonzo throws a broadsword (leaving him weaponless) but Mark dodges it. Mark hits RIGHT several times to approach Bonzo, and Bonzo flees before Mark can even get a screenshot. LOOKing reveals the discarded broadsword, which Mark GRABs.

In some mountains to the south, Mark meets Lazarus the Missionary, who gives him some food.

 
Mark continues to explore, DRINKing and EATing when necessary. Marco the trader appears and offers to trade his "electronic" for Mark's knife, but since the knife is the only weapon Mark has, he says no.

Mark is suddenly attacked by a "Bandersnach," a tyrannosaurus-like creature who swipes off Mark's right arm with his claws. Just as Mark assumes he's about to die, the "Lord of Light" appears and gives a "prophecy" that for some reason takes Mark to the "end of game."

When I reload, Mark is still available as a character and is back on Earth, so I load him up and launch him into space again. He LANDs on a planet run by a "company" government. He GOES OUT of his spaceship and immediately finds himself attacked by another bandersnach! (Oddly, he has his arm back.)

Things look bad for Mark at first. He loses his left leg and suffers damage to his torso, but he is ultimately able to kill the monster with his knife.

Flush with victory, he grabs the only item the bandersnach left--some food--and prepares to embark on his quest when yet another goddamned bandersnach appears, takes off Mark's right arm with a swipe, then disembowels him. I guess it was Mark's destiny to be killed by a bandersnach. He never got to find a town and PREACH.

2. Cornelius the Miner

Cornelius starts with strong strength and dexterity but poor senses, which should theoretically make him a bad miner, but I figure what the hell. The first planet he finds has a religious government and a mineral density of 6 on a 14-point scale. He LANDs and GOes OUT.

Fortunately, there's a town (and, for some reason, a unicorn) within the opening area, meaning Cornelius doesn't have to risk death wandering the planet looking for civilization.

Instead, he immediately sinks a MINE and begins hunting for ore. Using combinations of LEFT, RIGHT, UP, DOWN, and LOOK, he builds his mine and searches for minerals, using MINE whenever he thinks he's near something. Every movement is accompanied by an associated strength roll.

He nearly chokes on gas a few times and has to extricate himself from a couple of cave-ins, but otherwise he doesn't do too poorly. After mining about 10 units, he returns to the surface and goes IN TOWN to sell his ore.

In the general store, he BUYs a pistol and some bullets along with some leather armor.

At United Ores, he has the proprietor ASSESS his haul and sells it for 560 credits, which he reinvests in an electorch (a more sophisticated bit of equipment than his shovel). At a gambling facility, he GAMBLES 50 credits and wins.

Unfortunately, upon leaving town to sink his second mine, he is immediately attacked by a bandit. Though he LOADs his pistol and EQUIPs his leather armor and SHOOTs to the best of his ability, he is killed in the resulting duel.

****

I tried a few homesteader characters but couldn't survive long enough to do the core things that homesteaders are supposed to do: SETTLE to establish a farm, select a spouse, PLOW, SEED, HARVEST, and so on. All together, there are more than 200 commands in the game, and it's a bit difficult to keep them straight. There are a ton that I never found the remotest use for: TEST water; STEAL, ROB, or BRIBE;  get so desperate in combat that I had to use PUNCH, SLAP, or SLUG; PREACH or CONVERT as a missionary; CAPTURE stray animals or MATE livestock.

Empire is merciless in is lethality. Killed characters are immediately deleted from the disk. Since the game constantly references and saves the character file, using save states in the emulator doesn't work: if the game can't find the character file, it crashes shortly after you load the save state. You'd have to back up the character file every time you created a new save state and then painstakingly restore it.

There appears to be no way to "win" Empire--just to continually improve the character and try to survive in a hostile environment. You can theoretically return home in your rocket and attempt another profession with the same character, though I wasn't able to get anyone to survive nearly so long. Characters age--every action in the game takes time--and apparently 200 years old is the maximum playable character you can attain.

Empire was developer Edu-Ware's answer to the lawsuit that forced it to withdraw Space (an obvious ripoff of Game Designer Workshop's Traveler RPG). Empire lacks Space's detailed background development for the main character but obviously improves on the gameplay in other ways, and it's hard to argue that it's not an RPG--just a really, really odd one. In a GIMLET, I'd give it:

• 3 points for the game world. Extremely original, yet not referenced during gameplay that I could see.
• 3 points for characters. There's not much customization going on, and no development once created (in fact, the character slowly deteriorates), but the three "classes" do feature very different games.
• 2 points for NPC interaction. There are some limited NPCs, and choosing whether to aid or fight them does offer some role-playing options.
• 3 points for encounters and foes. The monsters are well-described in the manual and do behave and fight differently depending on type.
• 2 points for combat. You have a lot of options, but only a few viable ones, and thus there aren't many tactics to pursue.
• 2 points for equipment, used for both combat and core missions.
• 2 points for the economy. I never outspent my starting cash, but perhaps I would have if I'd survived long enough.
• 1 point for quests. There is no main quest, just gameplay mechanics that vary among classes.
• 1 point for graphics, sound, and interface. Graphics and sound had not advanced anywhere by 1981 that I'd remotely recommend them. The interface, with its ridiculous selection of commands that work inconsistently, is mostly awful.
• 3 points for gameplay. Non-linear and replayable, but extremely frustrating in its difficulty and lethality.

The final score of 22 isn't bad for a 1981 game, and if I had a lot more time or the game had a main quest, I'd love to play it longer and see what other gameplay elements it revealed. As it is, I'll have to leave that to you while I return to DarkSpyre.

We'll be encountering this series again if I'm able to play Empire II: Intersellar Sharks or Empire III: Armageddon. The manual for this game announces the sequel titles even though they wouldn't come out until 1982 and 1984, respectively. It sounds like they might have something approaching an actual quest.

The Empire series was designed by David Mullich (b. 1958), who was recruited into Edu-Ware when the company's owner met him working in a Los Angeles computer store. His first game was The Prisoner (1980), based on the cult British TV show. Mullich's long and currently-active history includes stints at Cyberdreams, 3DO/New World, and Abandon Interactive Entertainment, with credits on famous games like I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, the Heroes of Might and Magic series, and Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines. I've written to him to see if he's interested in commenting on this entry.

Back to DarkSpyre for me!