Time Horn: Summary and Rating

Some of the missions involved defeating a "black master."

     

Time Horn: Il Corno del Tempo

Italy

Lindasoft (developer and publisher)

Released in 1991 for Amiga

Date Started:  1 June 2017
Date Ended: 10 June 2017

Total Hours: 9

Difficulty: Hard (4/5)

Final Rating: 29

Ranking at Time of Posting: 136/253 (54%)

Ranking at Game #457: 267/457 (58%)

    

This will be the first time that I wrap up a game based on the experiences of a commenter, but Zardas did such a good job filling in the next stages of the game that I feel like it would simply be a waste of time if I did it myself. He also cheated to give himself invincibility and unlimited movement, so it would have taken me 10 times as long just to arrive at the same conclusion.

      

I had the hardest time even getting this screen.

     

I did play a little more on my own, but I continued to have problems that even Zardas didn't seem to experience, including characters who "died exhausted" no matter how much food and water I gave them and an inability to get out of the mission even after achieving its goal and returning to the starting location to end my turn. Also, the documentation never turned up to explain exactly why we were on these various missions in the first place.

The primary reason, of course, for declining to experience the rest of the game myself is Zardas's report that the final mission crashes with an error message. I realize this sort of thing happens under certain circumstances that I might not have experienced, but I still wasn't going to risk wasting that kind of time on a game that I probably wouldn't be able to complete.

      

Not the kind of thing you want to see after completing 15 missions.

     

Based on what we know about the game so far, I give it:

• 3 points for a short backstory that does an adequate job setting up the adventures to come. If the manual ever turns up, I may decide it deserves more here.

      

Mordred begins to make a name for himself. Funny how this is in English.

     

• 2 points for character creation and development. There's no creation at all, and based on Zardas's reports, the max of 5 levels per class offers fairly limited development without much sense of growing really stronger, except perhaps in spells. This is faintly understandable, because there's a decent chance that Mordred will lose one or more allies per mission and have to recruit them anew at Level 1. So those Level 1 characters can't be entirely worthless, even late in the game.

• 2 points for NPCs. There are no NPCs to talk to, but there are some who will join the party--up to 5 per mission, if you can afford it. There are various strengths and weaknesses among these characters.

• 4 points for encounters and foes. There seem to be a large variety of monster types capable of various offensive attacks, ranged attacks, and magic, each requiring a slightly different strategy. The missions also offer some minor puzzles and traps. This category might get an extra point if it turns out the documentation describes each foe in detail.

      

Enemies crowd and paralyze our hero.

      

• 3 points for magic and combat. I thought the combat system needed a few more options. The only real tactics for fighters are associated with the use of the environment and strategic use of movement points so you don't end up in a weak position. Both of these are complicated by the enemy's ability to see you before you can see him. Spellcasters have more options, including some impressive summoning and mass-damage spells.

• 2 points for equipment. According to Zardas, there were no upgrades after the initial purchases.

• 4 points for the economy. You need the money from the quests to re-hire slain NPCs, re-stock on food and water, and upgrade magic abilities. A player who scummed his way along and never lost an NPC would probably find himself overburdened with cash before the end.

      

Mordred is rewarded for completing a mission.

      

• 3 points for the quests. You have to complete 15 missions before engaging in the final mission to overcome the Occult Master, and we don't know what that ending looks like. If it turns out there were choices or role-playing decisions, it might earn some more points. The individual missions follow a predictable pattern of 2 item fetches and 1 assault on a heavily-fortified stronghold to kill a key enemy.

      

Modred slays one of the sub-bosses and retrieves the "om key" needed to open the temple.

      

• 4 points for graphics, sound, and interface. I find the graphics and sound to be very serviceable, but I had constant problems with the mostly-mouse interface. Simple tasks like switching between party members was harder than it should have been.

• 2 points for gameplay. I suppose it has some nonlinearity in that you can approach the missions in any order. But I found the individual missions excruciatingly long and far too difficult, and I suspect the overall game would therefore rank low for those aspects.

       

That gives us a final score of 29, pretty low for 1991, but again subject to review if we ever find a manual and/or a version that we can complete.

I really do like the idea of "mission-based" RPGs, featuring a central hub where you can rest, restore, and advance, then head off on a variety of individual, independent missions in any order. They remind me of that old Airborne Ranger for the Commodore 64. But all the ones we've seen--Time Horn, Paladin, Knights of Legend, Sorcerian--have introduced issues that blunt my enjoyment of what could otherwise be an enjoyable dynamic.

It was fun to try a rare Italian RPG. Unless one surfaces before then, we won't see another one until Alfa Romeo Racing Italiano (2005), which stands a strong chance of being rejected. 2006's Etrom: The Astral Essence sounds more promising.

Returning to the field in front of us, it seems like we'll be on a Deathlord/Conan combo for at least a few entries.

Game 251: Time Horn: Il Corno del Tempo (1991)

Nothing about this game is in English except the title, and even that is repeated in Italian.

     

It's never a good sign when you're role-playing a "hero" named Mordred, but that's where we find ourselves in the curiously redundant Time Horn: Il Corno del Tempo from Lindasoft. It is the first RPG on my list from Italy (and one of only three on the list at all), raising the question of whether other efforts have simply not been catalogued or whether the Italians, having sent America its best food and singers for 100 years, decided to be a good sport and import for a change.

I have not been able to find documentation for the game (which seems to exist only for the Amiga), but fortunately an introductory screen offers the basic plot: In the world of Soldoro, a knight named Mordred struggles to save his kingdom from an invasion by the Occult Master. He has sold an artifact called the Globe of Falibar to get the 4,500 gold coins needed to hire other adventurers and outfit his party. His ultimate goal is to find the Time Horn, kept in the Temple of Soldoro, and use it to destroy the Occult Master.
      

The only documentation I have for this game.

     
The game begins on a  map with five cities (Knheim, Yoras, Darjor, Argat, and Filbrim), some kind of ruined city or castle in the middle, and a temple in the northeast. When you click on each city, it brings up a screen indicating whether you've completed the city's three "missions," so my best guess is that you have to complete all 15 missions before you can do anything with the ruined city or temple.
     

The game world.

     
You don't actually move on the map; you just click from location to location and indicate whether you want to go there, a process that advances the game calendar several days. I'm not sure if there's any real penalty to this or if there's a time limit to the game.

Each of the cities offers the same menu of services: a castello (castle) where you can take missions, a locanda (inn), where you can enlist other adventurers to your cause, an emporio for buying food and drink, an armeria for weapons and armor, an orefice (goldsmith) for uncertain purpose, and a gilda dei maghi for learning new spells.
     

Buying items in the armory.

    
Mordred begins with 30 strength, 15 wisdom, 20 dexterity, 30 resistance, 19 weight, 12 mobility, and no protection. The armory sells a typical set of D&D-derived equipment, translated to Italian, including mazze (maces), pugnali (daggers), and spade (swords). Mordred comes with a sword, a large shield, and something abbreviated "arm. legg." which I suspect is armatura leggera (light armor), which seems to be halfway between armatura cuoio (leather armor) and armatura di ferro (iron armor). As he equips items in missions, his protection goes up but so does his weight. There aren't any expensive or magic items in the armory's list to save for.
     

Checking out Mordred's statistics on the main "town" screen.

    
Characters recruited at inns include a mage, an Amazon, a paladin, a barbarian, and a dwarf. Each costs between 500 (barbarian) and 2000 (mage) gold pieces per mission. The mage starts with a few spells like "Arrow," "Heal," "Poison," and "Cure Poison."
     

The selection of NPCs waiting in the inn.

    
Until I experienced (and lost) a couple of missions, I didn't realize the importance of stocking up on water and food. The characters need to eat and drink frequently during missions (perhaps influenced by the weight carried), and food and water are rarely found during the mission.
     

A sign announces the setting of this city's first mission.

     

Accepting a mission takes you to a mission map, where you encounter monsters, find items, and solve small puzzles. The overall structure feels something like Paladin or HeroQuest, or perhaps a light version of Knights of Legend. Unfortunately, there's no in-game text indicating what your quest or objective is. I don't know if this information accompanied the manual.

During the missions, each character has a certain number of movement points to get around the map. He or she can also go into the inventory to equip and un-equip items, eat, and drink; examine objects and signs; cast spells; and attack enemies. Characters (or, at least, characters at the opening levels) can only attack or cast once per round. When dealing with enemies, there thus aren't many tactics except not to blunder into them, ensuring that they get the first attack. This is hard, because clearly they can sense you from well off-screen (and even use missile weapons from off-screen), but you have no way of seeing them until you're only 6 squares away.
       

My dwarf has just finished attacking the goblin. He then stood aside so my Valkyrie could finish off the goblin with an arrow.

      
Enemies drop weapons when they die, but I suspect the sale value of the items is outweighed by the encumbrance issues.

I attempted the first mission in Knheim twice, the first time with just the mage NPC, the second time with the paladin and barbarian. Both times were miserable failures. In my first attempt, I didn't know enough about how the food and water system worked and didn't bring enough. Both my characters "died exhausted" before the enemies killed them.
     

The paladin is hungry. But his fatigue meter--under his name--depletes whether I feed him or not.

      
The second time, though, the same thing happened, even though I packed plenty of sundries. I did make it a lot further into the level. It starts in a small forest patrolled by "gollums." You have to find a lever to open the gate to a small fortress, where you fight goblins and gnomes. A stairway goes down into a dungeon from there, and multiple rooms and corridors eventually lead to yet another level. The "gnome lords" that inhabit the dungeon were too tough for my characters and ultimately killed them.
     

Somewhere during the mission, I had to find a key that opens a door.

     
Reasoning that without the manual, I needed an advantage for the first mission, just to understand it, I allowed myself to resurrect by save-state-scumming (you otherwise can't save during the missions). But even with this cheat--even reloading after every successful hit by the enemy--I couldn't win. The dungeon just seems to keep going on forever, and my characters have some kind of "fatigue" meter that depletes regardless of whether I have them eat or drink regularly. They kept "dying exhausted." Ultimately, even reloading in those cases, I blundered into a large room with about 5 gnome lords capable of killing each character in a single successful attack. No amount of reloading save states ensured that they missed 5 times in a row. I had to give up.
      

I lose my barbarian during the "monster movement" phase.

    
For my third attempt, I went to a different city, splurged on the Valkyrie, paladin, and dwarf, and tried the first mission there. It started me next to a large farm with several buildings to enter and a large number of goblins swarming the area. After clearing the goblins in the outdoor area, I adopted hit-and-run tactics for those inside: assembling outside the doors, charging through at the beginning of the turn, attacking, and then retreating back outside where the monsters couldn't easily retaliate.
      

My paladin kills a goblin, then prepares to rush back out the southern door so the other goblins can't retaliate during their turns.

      
Once cleared, some of the buildings had chests with gold, jewelry, food, and water.
      

These chests held riches, and ultimately the object of the mission.

      
During the combats, as in the previous scenarios, several of my characters leveled up. This causes each of the characters' attributes to increase between 2 and 6 points. You get experience from successful hits as well as kills, which is nice.
     

The paladin levels up after killing a gnome.

     
Finally, in one of the chests, I found a map. Picking it up gave me the message "missione terminata"--but nothing else happened, and my characters remained in the mission. No new menu option appeared. I hunted around for some kind of exit or extraction point but found nothing.

This therefore seems like another one in which I won't be able to progress unless someone is able to turn up the documentation. I expect that it includes the objective for each mission, instructions on how to get out of the missions, and better information about the fatigue meters. I'll leave this one open for a while and see if anyone shows up with the manual.
    

Just another shot of my characters fighting gnomes and gnome lords in a small dungeon room.

    
I haven't been able to find much on Lindasoft except that it was active from around 1986 to 1992. Time Horn seems to have been an odd lark for the company; its other offerings are sports games like Holo Squash (1992) and Franco Giardelli Hockey (1990). The authors of Time Horn are given in-game as Ignazio Corrao, Sergio Zimmerhofer, and Marco Zimmerhofer. Of the three, Corrao is the only one with a MobyGames profile; he has credits for graphics on a number of European games through 2012.

1991 continues with Synergistic's take on Conan!