UnReal World [v. 1.00b]: Won? (with Summary and Rating)

My "winning" character.

          

UnReal World [v. 1.00b]

Finland

Three Relaxed Byte-Biters (developer)

Released in 1992 for DOS as shareware

Date Started: 27 May 2018

Date Ended: 6 June 2018

Total Hours: 15
Difficulty: Moderate (3/5). Would be easy (2/5) except for permadath.

Final Rating: 38

Ranking at time of posting: 232/294 (79%)

UnReal World continued to offer enjoyable mechanics for the rest of its short length and moderate difficulty. I say "moderate difficulty," but of course any game with permadeath has unique difficulty considerations even if normal gameplay is quite easy. As it turns out, UnReal World is quite serious about its permadeath. After my priest died, I started taking copies of the save game every few levels. When my third character got killed--like the first, by a minotaur--I restored the backup and fired up the game again. This is what I got:

             

This game is hardcore.

         

Wow. The game doesn't just delete your character when you die; it actually stores the fact of his death in one of its files, so you can't just restore and reload. I couldn't figure out how it was doing it. I tried deleting the character from the "high score" file, but that didn't do it. I looked at all the files that had been modified at the same time the character died, but I couldn't find anything explicit in any of them. Re-naming the save game file did no good. I opened the save game file in a hex editor and re-named the character, but the game still saw right through that. The developers did not want people to cheat.

I'm sure I could have figured it out eventually, but I decided to move forward honestly. The game isn't so hard that you can't win without cheating, even with permadeath. As we'll see, there are few NetHack-like threats to your well-being. There are no spellcasting enemies, no dragons, nothing capable of stoning or paralyzing you. I think it even prevents you from dying from poison by setting a minimum hit point threshold, after which the poison wears off naturally.

I won with my fifth character, a dwarf hunter. Hunters have a reasonably easy time because as long as they can find a single tree, they can search repeatedly for food and healing herbs.

            

That one tree is going to cure my hunger and wounds.

           

I used the hunter's ability to self-heal to game the virtue system. When you level-up, you get bonuses for each virtue that you've raised over a certain threshold. You can slowly build these virtues by the way you act in the game (though I never did figure out how to build honesty), but the easiest way is by praying at an altar and sacrificing hit points. All I had to do was find an altar near a tree, and I could sacrifice my hit points, run to the tree to heal, and run back to the altar. Soon, I was getting the bonuses on every level increase.

           

Not "cheating" so much as "exploiting."

         

The dungeon consists of 18 levels, and they're not quite as random as the typical NetHack dungeon. In NetHack, you can theoretically find special encounters like shops, altars, and treasure zoos, but there's no guarantee that you will. Some games never generate a shop. In UnReal World, on the other hand, it seems that the same encounters and special areas will be found in every randomly-generated dungeon, just in different places. Some of the things I always found on the way down were:

• Copious altars and confessionals.

• A potion store-room guarded by a zombie alchemist

• An ancient library full of magic scrolls, guarded by several zombie librarians

• One level with a single tree and one level with a small copse of trees

• Beds for getting a better night's rest

• A room where all the doors close when you walk into it, but there's a pick-axe somewhere in the room and you can use it to get out

• A priest looking for a holy item; he gives you a salt jar if you find it for him

• An alchemist who will sell and identify potions

             

He's apparently from New Jersey.

            

• A mage who will identify wands and staves

• A warrior priest proselytizing about a god named Thunder 

               

Levels 6, 12, and 18 are special levels in which all the squares are open. Each has one of the three keys that you need to enter the Doom-Tower. Level 6 is a giant swamp full of "bloodsuckers" and sinkholes. Level 12 is a "Dryad Forest" full of wood nymphs. When they're near they can cause trees to smack you with their branches and weeds to trip you. It's a pretty easy level for a hunter, though, because he can just stop and heal whenever he wants.

          

Getting through the slightly-annoying Dryad Forest.

         

The monsters get really tough after Level 12, and I decided to avoid them as much as possible. Minotaurs, Olog-Hais, cave bears, and pythons are capable of pounding away more than half your hit points in a single blow. Two unlucky rounds are enough to kill you. I used the resources I had--Wands of Confuse Monster, Scrolls of Teleport, and so forth--to get around them as much as I could.  

             

One of the more amusing combat messages, as I battle a minotaur.

          

Level 18 is a weird level called "Emptiness," which is literally just a huge square of empty tiles except the one that has the third key. There are no monsters, traps, or anything.

Once I had all three keys, I returned to the surface and entered the Doom-Tower in the northern part of the outdoor map. The single tower level had about 8 doors that I had to unlock with the keys. There was another altar and confessional, and a bedroom with two beds.

          

The interior of the tower.

        

The center part of the tower had a winding corridor that ended in a single square. When I stepped in it, I got the message below.

            

A crummy commercial?

          

Huh? I have no idea what this message is referring to. There is no inn anywhere in the outdoor map. "NIGHT CAP" seems to be some kind of password, but I can't find anyone to give it to, and you can't just feed keywords to most NPCs anyway. Is it setting up a part of the adventure that was never built? Is it a tragic joke about how just because there's a big formidable tower in the center of town, there isn't always something valuable inside? I've no idea. I wrote to Mr. Maaranen, but no response as yet.

Lacking anything else to do, I guess I'm going to consider that a win. Obviously, the end--if that's what I experienced--is a bit of a let-down, but I'm not letting it detract from the things I liked about the game. A few things I discovered since last time:

            

• The game rewards you with experience for much more than just killing enemies. You get it for finding gold, successfully using (and identifying) magic items for the first time, finding traps, using your class's special skills, transitioning levels, and probably some other things I didn't notice.

• If you have a lockpick, you can use it to lock doors behind you and prevent enemy pursuit.

• You can find horses in the dungeon and ride them, allowing you to easily outrun enemies. You can't fight with melee weapons from horseback, but you can shoot missile weapons.

            

Mounting a horse.

        

• Like NetHack, you find fortune cookies that give you hints.

             

I think this is referring to an encounter where you open a barrel and there's a zombie inside.

           

• There's a potion that allows you to eat any item as if it was food. Late in the game when I was out of food and didn't have a tree nearby, I used the potion and ate an extra staff.

• If you find a flute, you can use it to charm snakes.

• You can climb up on furniture and jump on enemies like you're in WrestleMania or something.

               

Uruk-Hai would be a good name for a wrestler.

           

• Much like Ultima V, you can move items of furniture--beds, chairs, cabinets, and so forth--to block certain passages.

• The engine supports keyword-based dialogues with some NPCs but doesn't really employ it very well.

          

Following his prompting, I said "death to orcs," and he gave me a lamp.

          

There were a few things I disliked, principally the fact that when you get tired, you have to acknowledge the message every single move until you sleep. Also, you have to sleep multiple times successfully to stop being tired, and every one causes you to wake up hungry.

There were some game elements that I never understood. Here are a few:

               

• For a while, the game seems to be interested in assigning titles to the various character levels. You start as "Stranger in a Strangeland" at Level 1, then move up to "Coward," "Believer," and finally "Clergyman." It stops there no matter how many levels you attain. All classes get these same titles, which are obviously a bit weird.

• Every time you kill a zombie, you get this message: "You hear frightening, gruesome laughing echoing in the room! Human zombie screams as maniac. Some winged and horned creatures appear and catch the soul coming from human zombie's body . . . and everything is silent again." No other creature has a death message like this.

• You can get friendly monsters to follow you by speaking to them and using the "leadership" option. Once they start following you, they disappear, and the only way you know they're with you is that every time you invoke the "chat" command, the game asks whether you want to chat with your follower. I have no idea what they do for you. They don't seem to increase any statistics or act in combat. I carried an orc with me the entire game before letting him go in the tower. As he left, he complained that he didn't know why I'd dragged him all the way there.

            

Getting an orc follower. For some reason.

         

• No enemy in the game is capable of causing fire damage, and yet there are potions and wands of Resist Fire.

• One of the items you can find is a makeup kit, which does nothing for you but can theoretically increase the charisma of NPCs. Why?

• There's a "pull lever" command that's never employed.

• A "drink" command allows you to slurp from bodies of water, but there's no "thirst" statistic so no real reason to do so.

• Even though the random generation process can create disconnected areas in the dungeons, I never found a single secret door. I only got into the hidden areas by bashing through with my pick-axe.

              

Most of these points are probably answered by the fact that the engine was intended to support multiple campaigns, including some of greater complexity.

In a GIMLET, the combination of the engine and this campaign earns:

               

• 1 point for the game world. The backstory about the creation of the universe really has no relevance in the game itself, and the game itself tells no story.

• 5 points for character creation and development. The selection of 6 races and 6 classes offer a variety of approaches to gameplay, with each class (in particular) facing a different experience. Leveling up occurs frequently and offers relatively tangible rewards. The virtue system is under-developed but still an interesting addition.

• 3 points for NPC interaction. There are wandering NPCs who offer services, conversation, and the occasional side quest. I'm not sure I understood what all of them were about. Some will even join you but, as above, I don't know to what end.

            

An elf taunts me for no reason.

          

• 4 points for encounters and foes. The monsters are mostly D&D-derived standards, with few special attacks. I did like the way that some of them responded to specific objects: salt kills zombies, holy items turn skeletons, flutes charm snakes, and so forth. I also loved how you could look at them and get a sense of their condition and equipment.

• 5 points for magic and combat. The game has a typical roguelike's sense of tactics, with the addition of allowing multiple attack types (including shield bashing, which I didn't cover) depending on the weapon and each character's set of special abilities. Clerics, mages, and priests also have a small selection of spells.

            

Fighting with a two-handed sword.

          

• 5 points for equipment. In variety, it's not quite as good as NetHack or even Rogue. I think the engine supports magic weapons and armor with various pluses, but I never found any in this campaign. There are otherwise fewer types of wands, scrolls, and potions with fewer effects. On the other hand, any game that gives you a primary weapon, a secondary weapon, missile weapons, and separate armor slots for head, arms, hands, torso, waist, legs, feet, and back can't be all bad.

• 4 points for economy. It holds up pretty well, with the ability to buy items in shops, identify items with wandering NPCs, get specialized weapon training (I didn't really explore this), and sacrifice gold at altars for virtue boosts. There's even a casino, though I didn't spend much time there. On the other hand, you can get through most of this campaign without doing any of those things.

            

A wandering merchant saves me from starving.

           

• 2 points for quests. I was so disappointed with the end that I only give it one point there, but there are also a couple of NPC-based side quests.

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface, mostly going to the interface, which like most roguelikes is easy to master. I thought the graphics worked reasonably well, but the sound was just bloops with the occasional unwelcome passage of music.

• 6 points for gameplay. A bit linear, but with an excellent sense of pacing and a lot of replayability given the randomization and different classes. More important, I like the difficulty level here. It has NetHack's permadeath, but much milder gameplay and a smaller dungeon make it far less punishing than the typical roguelike.

                    

That gives us a final score of 38, which doesn't sound very high but puts the game solidly in my "recommended" zone, and it beats every roguelike I've played so far except NetHack v. 3 (44), which had better character development, combat tactics, and the best approach to RPG equipment that we've seen so far in the chronology.

           

Kicking this door open conferred something of a bonus.

            

As we discussed last time, this is only the beginning of the UnReal World saga. Principal developers Sami Maaranen and Erkka Lehmus (with Jussi Kantola, they make up the original "Three Relaxed Byte-Biters") would continue to issue near-yearly releases all the way to the present day. (Incidentally, Maaranen was only 15 when the first version came out in 1992. This may be the first game I've played whose developer was born after me.) The official development history shows that the next major releases, in 1994, greatly expanded the wilderness and introduced a lot more survival elements, with skills such as fishing, foraging, swimming, and tracking. Instead of classic D&D-derived character classes, you play as a fisherman, hunter, legionnaire, or locksmith--although fantasy races (elf, dwarf, orc, etc.) are still present.

I'm not sure that the 1994 editions (v. 2.00b-2.03) still exist anywhere. The earliest I've been able to find after v. 1.00b is v. 2.09 from 1996. By then, the game had been fully stripped of its high fantasy themes, all characters are human (from different tribes), and surviving in a harsh world became the primary quest.

When I reach 1994, I'll take another scan and see if those versions have turned up; otherwise, we'll have to wait until 1996. Either way, I look forward to seeing how this unique and clever series develops.

Game 291: UnReal World [v. 1.00b] (1992)

The long-running series begins.

                   

UnReal World [v. 1.00b]

Finland

Three Relaxed Byte-Biters (developer)

Released in 1992 for DOS as shareware

Date Started: 27 May 2018

In continuous development for almost 30 years, this "survival roguelike" has developed something of a cult following. I became aware of it through a roguelike subreddit and then its own dedicated subreddit, where unbridled joy followed its release on Steam two years ago. Players seem to love the gritty realism of trying to stay warm, dry, and fed in Iron-Age Finland, with accompanying realistic images created by dedicated cosplayers. It also seems to have the typical appeal of open-world sandbox game in which your skills improve with use. (The modern game's 28 skills include "Hideworking," "Timbercraft," and "Agriculture.") I gather it plays something like Skyrim if it took five times as long to travel between cities and you had all the most difficult options of the "Frostfall" mod enabled.
           

The 2018 version of the game.

           
Fans of the modern game will therefore barely recognize this first version, set not in the authentic past but in a standard high-fantasy kingdom called Ankhyrnia, complete with elves, orcs, and magic, and only a couple hints of a "survival" approach. Though it would be tempting to regard this version as a completely different game that just happens to have the same name, the evolution becomes clear as we move from version to version, which we'll be doing over the life of this blog.
            

One of three pages of NetHack-like commands for this version.

          
The first version clearly owes a lot to NetHack, with much of the thematic material drawn from the Ultima series. In addition to permadeath, it has a roguelike's complexity of commands, using almost all letters of the keyboard in both lower-case and capital varieties, plus several of the function keys and special characters. As the developer was uninterested in multi-platform porting, there are more graphical icons here, although a full-ASCII mode is available. The game goes a step beyond NetHack in the number of attributes and with the introduction of a few skills. As you play, you can't help but feel that the mechanics of the game were designed for a bigger game than the one in front of you, which is indeed the case. The developers intended the base game to serve any number of "campaigns," only one of which was ever designed.
          

Deep in a dungeon, my wounded character finds a Potion of Gain Ability.

          
The game's background gives a lot of detail on the history of the world, most of which isn't used in-game and could be replaced with any other framing story. We learn that the world of Ankhyrnia (a probable homage to Ultima, given other themes that the game uses) was created by Ayinar, the god of gods. The history of the land is marked by wars between good spirits called Tanwas (six of which were promoted by Ayinar to godhood) and evil spirits called Arwas. I could be wrong, but Googling suggests that the proper names were invented by the authors specifically for the game and not derived from existing mythology.
          

Part of the long backstory.

          
In character creation, the player can choose from human, half-orc, elf, halfling, dwarf, and half-troll races and warrior, priest, mage, rogue, cleric, and hunter classes. Attributes, randomly rolled from 3 to 21, are wisdom, agility, strength, charisma, intelligence, exactness, speed, and physique. These help determine the three skills: melee weapons, missile weapons, and defense. If there are any class restrictions on item usage, I never ran into them.
           

 A mixed bag in this set of random attribute rolls.

              
The campaign, called "Random Adventure," places the character in a small world consisting of a town situated between the Doom-Tower and the Dark Caves. The quest is no more than to "find out what is in the tower," accomplished first by exploring 15 levels of the caves to acquire three keys.

The opening town has the character's house, with a set of starting equipment, shops selling weapons, armor, and magic items, a casino, several schools that offer training on specific weapons, and a bank where you can deposit money for safekeeping.

The town map.

Browsing weapons in the weapons store.

            

Early on, you learn to be forgiving of the game's tortured English. I'd certainly rather deal with some awkward sentences than have to make my own translations from Finnish. But the translations create some confusion at points. The bank is called an "office," for instance, and you might overlook it if you don't bother to enter and speak with the agent. A couple of my characters nearly starved to death before I realized a trader in the dungeon wasn't selling "tin" (the metal) but rather tins of canned food. Confessionals encourage you to do penance for "needles fighting," which sounds painful if not lethal, but of course it means "needless." One of the types of armor you can find is "feet shields," which I'm guessing describes greaves or sabatons. You don't have to worry about stealing from the "potion store" since the latter word is used in the sense of "store-room" and not "shop."
                 

Occasionally, you get a little introduction to a dungeon room.

          
Gameplay feels a lot like NetHack at first. The shops operate the same as NetHack shops, where you examine and take items and then pay the shopkeepers. Dropping items in the shops allows you to sell them. Many of the commands are the same, like (q)uaff, (w)ield, and (i)nventory, and the game adopts the convention--going all the way back to Rogue--of randomizing potion colors, wand materials, and scroll words for each potential set of magic items in the game, forcing you to experiment or find methods of identifying the items.

Soon, however, you start to appreciate some of the greater complexities of UnReal World. For instance, combat isn't just a matter of arrowing into enemies. In fact walking into a monster's or NPC's position allows you to pass them, not fight them. Instead, you choose from a couple of attack options (weapon 1 or weapon 2) that in turn brings up a sub-menu with different attack types depending on the weapon you wield and your skill with it--a dynamic we saw in Dungeon Master.
           

Choosing an attack type against a wild dog.

         
Each character class has a special skill menu that provides various advantages in combat and exploration. Warriors can punch and wrestle opponents, slamming them into walls, without relying on their weapons. They can also "wrench" their opponents' weapons away. Priests have natural abilities to identify scrolls and potions and to find "natural" food. Rogues can sneak, steal, disarm traps, and open locked doors. Hunters, if they stumble into a tree square (which exist within the caves) can find herbs to heal themselves, find food, and craft arrows from the wood.
          

The warrior applies his wrestling skill to a skeleton.

          
Exploration proceeds generally like NetHack. While areas are uncovered from amid blackness much like any roguelike, you also have a "fog of war" outside the 9-square area around the character (less if the character has a light source).
          

Traps include quicksand.

           
The dungeon is generated randomly by running a separate application. You can do this for each new character or let each character build on the experiences of previous characters. The random generation creates some oddities such as doors that open into blank walls, or doors situated right next to open squares going to the same destination. It mostly works, though. Each level fits entirely on one screen. Some areas are naturally hidden, and all of my characters had a miserable time trying to find secret doors no matter how many times I hit the "s" key. I mostly found secret areas by chopping my way into them with a pickaxe.

Enemies in the dungeon are mostly high-fantasy standards: giant bats, wild dogs, orcs, skeletons, zombies, minotaurs, and so forth. Putative "monsters" might befriend certain PCs; orcs are friendly to half-orc characters, for instance. Combat strikes me as a bit easier in this game than in NetHack, and there seem to be fewer enemies overall. A player can descend into the caves quite quickly, and I suppose a rogue could dart down, find the keys, and escape without fighting at all. Players can do body-part specific damage on enemies (a common one is cutting off the enemy's sword arm, causing him to both howl in pain and drop his weapon), but the character has no such weaknesses. Compensating for the ease of combat is the fact that hit points don't regenerate on their own; you must find a healing potion or herbs, get lucky with a prayer, or sleep. UnReal World also has a Rogue-like dedication to ensuring that you're always on the cusp of starvation. Unlike Rogue (but like NetHack), you can eat enemy corpses--and perhaps get sick or poisoned from them. You don't get any intrinsics from them.
         

You can look at a creature to get a detailed assessment.

Cutting off an enemy's limb.

      
The greater fun is the variety of non-combat encounters in the dungeons. These include wandering merchants, NPCs with side-quests, bandits who demand your gold, and special areas such as underground forests in which nymphs gambol.
           

Using Ultima-like dialogue, a priest gives me a side quest to find a holy symbol for him.

          
A series of altars introduce the game's "virtue" system, clearly inspired by Ultima IV and its successors. UnReal World has a trimmed-down version of Lord British's list, with virtue consisting of valor, honor, honesty, spirituality, and justice (eschewing, if you're counting, compassion, sacrifice, and humility). When you come upon a shrine, you choose a virtue on which to meditate. The first challenge involves drawing the virtue's rune by arrowing the cursor around--the challenge being that you can't "lift" the cursor, so you have to draw the rune in one continuous set of moves.
             

Drawing the rune for honesty.

           
After that, you supply the virtue's mantra, along with a second mantra that indicates what you want to do: check your status with the virtue, get a hint on how to improve the virtue, sacrifice gold (always $250) to improve the virtue, or sacrifice 10 hit points to improve the virtue. (Both the runes and the mantras appear in the game manual.) Each virtue has a few in-game ways to improve it, but not many; this is one area in which the engine demanded a more extensive campaign. I particularly like that you improve spirituality by making use of one of the several confessionals found in the dungeon. You can confess anything, but the game suggests common vices like needless fighting, drunkenness, and patronage of a prostitute.
             

"Weekend in New Orleans" serves as a shortcut for all of these.

           
Leveling up occurs at reasonably regular intervals, with increases to hit points, skills, and attributes. Being virtuous sometimes gives you extra bonuses during leveling. Each class has a hit point cap, and I found that most characters reached it within about 5 level-ups. Other statistics improve past that, however.
          

Leveling up. Valor is the easiest virtue to improve. You just charge into combat.

          
As with most roguelikes, the equipment system is strong here. For armor, you have your main torso armor, helmets, boots, gloves, cloaks, and the aforementioned "feet shields." There are potions, wands, rings, staves, and scrolls to identify--and wandering mages who will do so for a fee. Players dedicated enough to truck everything back to the surface for resale will make a bundle, which of course helps with virtue development at the altars. Between those altar contributions, identifying items, buying items, paying for identification, and paying for healing, the economy is also relatively strong.
           

A mid-game inventory. "Saltjars" cause zombies to immediately desiccate and die. "Make-up stuff" increases the charisma of NPCs. Why?!?

A wandering magician offers to identify my stuff.

      
There are a thousand other details and oddities. You can get hiccups from eating tinned food; they interrupt you every few turns with a hiccup message. Skeletons are resistant to edged weapons. Ogres (for some reason) can impersonate other NPCs until you get close. Zombies can keep on fighting as you carve chunks out of them, which the game highlights with a series of hilarious messages. And when zombies die, demons show up to convey their souls to Hell. Rogues roll a chance to steal every item they pick up in stores. You can find beds in the dungeons that give you a better night's sleep than random corners. It's these types of little details that are so delightful in NetHack, and the developers did an excellent job introducing original details to this game. If any of you get a chance over the next few days, fire it up and see what you encountered that I missed.

I found the game's challenge moderate enough that I decided to play it straight. My first character who really tried, a half-orc warrior, found two of the keys before he was slain by a minotaur on Level 12 of the dungeon. I just started a second character: a priest named Jeanne. If I lose her, I'll probably resort to save-scumming (my usual standard is to save every two levels) so I can experience the endgame in a reasonable amount of time. For now, I can say that this is a great start to the series--a fun, well-balanced RPG with more interesting encounters than the typical roguelike (up to this year, anyway). It's good to see something other than SpurguX coming out of Finland.

Time so far: 6 hours

*****

Turlogh le Rôdeur, or Turlogh de Penroth if you go by the title screen, turns out to be an interactive gamebook; it actually came coupled with a printed comic gamebook called La Sphere du Necromant in which you play the same character. "Playing" the game is a process of walking through an extremely linear story in which you meet weird NPCs and fight the occasional combat in which random rolls of the dice play a role.

The title screen has a different name than the game was marketed under.

The accompanying book. Are those Frankenstein-like bolts sticking out of his neck? Or are they badly misplaced ears?

Meeting an NPC.

              

The beginning of a combat.

            
If it was in English, I'd suck it up and cover it in a single entry, but I really don't feel like translating all the French text for something that isn't really an RPG, and I can't really figure out the controls for the few combats that the game offers, so I'm afraid it goes in the rejection heap.