Game 403: Might and Magic: Clouds of Xeen (1992)

 

      

Might and Magic: Clouds of Xeen

United States

New World Computing (developer and publisher)

Released 1992 for DOS, 1993 for FM Towns and PC-98

        

       

Might and Magic: Darkside of Xeen

United States

New World Computing (developer and publisher)

Released 1993 for DOS and PC-98, 1994 for FM Towns

  

        

Might and Magic: World of Xeen

United States

New World Computing (developer and publisher)

Released 1994 for DOS and Macintosh

Date Started: 8 February 2021 

    

We'd seen expansion packs before, but no one had ever done anything quite like this: two games, released separately, but ultimately meant to be paired, with additional content if you pair them. It's as if you could install Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim and explore half the world of Tamriel in the same game session, jumping between each game's quests at your desire.

    

I went back and forth on the best way to approach it. By strict chronology, I should play Clouds of Xeen first, then Darkside of Xeen, then the shared content. It would be one thing if Darkside was just an expansion pack, requiring Clouds to play, but it isn't. It's playable as a completely separate title. Playing it this way would highlight some elements and frustrations that players of the combined game never experienced, including level caps in Clouds, a fairly difficult time getting started in Darkside, and buildings in both games that cannot be entered without the other title. Finally, playing them separately would have allowed me to number and rate them separately.

  

On the other hand, evidence suggests that New World intended the games to be paired from the start. Clouds was released in the fall; Darkside in the spring. Players would have only had a few months to play Clouds by itself (unless, of course, it was the only one they purchased). Playing it strictly by chronology would have mimicked the experience of some 1992/1993 players, but not the experience of nearly everyone who has played it since. It's not even clear that New World intended them as two separate numbered titles. Officially, the two games have no numbers; only by numbering The Mandate of Heaven as VI does it become clear that the company regarded the games as distinct. Actually, it's not that clear even then: for all we know, New World thought of the Xeen titles as two halves of IV and the separate World of Xeen as V, or Swords of Xeen as V.

   

Ultimately, I was persuaded to play them together by two factors. First, most of my Patreon supporters said that would be the best way. The second reason was pecuniary: I discovered that I'd already purchased the joined World of Xeen package from GOG years ago, as part of a compilation that includes all the games through Might and Magic VI. This means, however, that there are some aspects of the original game that I won't experience (including one that we have to address almost immediately). It also means that I won't be numbering and rating the games as separate titles.

      

Blah, blah blah. Here's character creation in Xeen. It's the same as Might and Magic III except that there are "skills" where the alignment used to be.

         

The imagery and documentation that come with both halves of the game make it clear that Xeen is a flat world with two sides. Rather than slavishly explore one side and then the other, I'll probably approach this more organically, spending most of the early part of these entries on the Clouds side before transitioning to the Darkside, but I won't necessarily insist on completing all the Clouds quests before making at least some initial forays. We'll see. What I will do is save the Darkside manual until my first substantial Darkside visit.

   

It's worth recounting some events from the first three Might and Magic games even though their impact here won't become clear for a while. (In saying such things, I don't want you to get the impression that I remember a lot about the Xeen games. I don't. I just remember this much.) The series has almost always centered on a band of locals who become swept up in events of galactic importance. In Might and Magic I, that group slowly learns that their world is in fact a space ship on which an alien named Sheltem has crashed. The party follows the footsteps of a mysterious figure named Corak, who died in pursuit of Sheltem. They discover Sheltem is masquerading as a local lord; they expose him; he flees.

      

The party assembles at the inn. We'll get caught up eventually.

      

In Might and Magic II, the same party discovers that not only is their world a space ship, it is only one of four nacelles connected to a central module called CRON. The lifeforms on the ship are intended (by a mysterious race of "Ancients") to populate the planet of Terra, of which Sheltem considers himself the ruler. To stop the ark from making it to his world, he breaks into CRON's control room and aims the ship for the sun, but the party manages to avert disaster.

   

It's a bit unclear what happens after that. When Might and Magic III picks up on Terra, the CRON from the previous game has crashed on the planet and "most" of its denizens have been lost. The fate of the party is unknown, but I like to think they founded the castles of good, neutral, and evil. The ship that held the CRON and the VARNS lies under the continents of Terra, waiting to be awakened. Sheltem is somehow alive again, as is Corak, and the party arrives in the ship just in time to witness them fighting each other. Sheltem escapes the fight and flies off in a ship. Corak follows. The party mucks around some more and learns that Sheltem and Corak are both creations of "the Ancients." Sheltem was supposed to oversee the colonization of Terra, but he rebelled against his orders and decided to protect the planet from the Ancients' experiment instead. Corak was created to eliminate Sheltem and take his place. Having been defeated, Sheltem is apparently seeking to take his vengeance on one of the Ancients' other project planets. The party in III blasts off in a third ship, chasing Corak and Sheltem, but something goes wrong and we don't hear from them again until Might and Magic VII. Clouds of Xeen starts on Xeen with a fresh, clueless party of natives. 

    

The clueless natives discover that the armory isn't exactly packed with equipment.

    

The members of this party have all been sharing the same dream lately. In the dream, they are sent a message by Crodo, advisor to King Burlock. Crodo relates how Burlock's long lost brother, Roland, has recently returned after a long absence looking for the "land below the land" (clearly the Darkside of Xeen). He is obsessed with finding something called "The Sixth Mirror," which allows for easy transport between places. Spying on Roland, Crodo observed him in his room talking with a demonic figure. In the ensuing battle, Crodo failed to kill Roland, who appears to be undead and now calling himself "Lord Xeen." Roland imprisoned Crodo in Baron Darzog's tower. Crodo implores the recipients of the dream to make a weapon capable of slaying Lord Xeen "in your laboratories in Newcastle." Recently, Newcastle has been destroyed by a bolt from the sky, and the dreams have ceased. The party has gotten together in the city of Vertigo to set out to deal with the threat.

The original Clouds program has a voiced, lightly animated introduction, not present in the World compilation, in which Crodo narrates the backstory [ed.: My mistake. It is in the World compilation from the main menu, under "other options"]:

  

Crodo: I am Crodo, overseer of the land known as Xeen. Many years have passed since the glory days of King Burlock.

Burlock: I am the king!

Crodo: When times were good and there was much rejoicing.

Peasants (deadpan): Yaaaay.

Crodo: But now, imprisoned in this enchanted tower by the sinister, self-proclaimed Lord Xeen.

Lord Xeen: (Laughs maniacally while his "pet" also chuckles)

Crodo: I am unable to help you in these dark times. It is now up to you, adventurers, to right what has been wronged.

Lord Xeen and Pet: (Laugh again)

            

As you begin the game, you can select from two difficulty levels, "adventurer" or "warrior"; I went with the latter. The game starts in Vertigo with a default party, but I naturally turned around, went into Geraldine's tavern, signed in at the desk, and deleted everyone. 

     

Money does grow on trees!

     

As usual, Clouds has you create six characters, male or female, from human, elf, dwarf, gnome, and half-orc races. Attributes and races are remarkably consistent across the series (the full list can be seen on the screenshots). The only thing that has changed since the third installment is that there are no more alignments and that some skills (e.g., "Swimmer," "Danger Sense") can be assigned on creation. There are also no slots for NPC hirelings in this game, meaning each player will have to do without at least four of the 10 available classes.

         

Oh, right. An NPC already made that joke.

      

Rather than try to min-max things or deliberately create a challenging party (all druids!), I did what I've been doing more and more lately: I left it to fate. Using random rolls for all of the decisions (specifically, I rolled for the portrait, which determines the race and sex, then rolled for the class, then hit "Roll" until I had attributes that allowed that class), I created the following party:

     

• Saoirse, a human female paladin with "Crusader" and "Swimmer" skills

• Cathbad, a human male druid with "Direction Sense" and "Swimmer" skills

• Suss, a dwarf female ninja with "Danger Sense" and "Thievery" skills ("Thievery" is the only skill with a numeric value)

• Mica, a gnome male knight with "Armsmaster" and "Spot Secret Doors"

• Grey Witch, a half-orc female sorcerer with "Cartographer"

• Dorcas, a human female barbarian with "Swimmer." The "human female" part is provided by the game, but the portrait is one of the oddest in the bunch and is certainly up for interpretation.

     

Without a pure cleric, this might leave me light on healing abilities, but I hope the druid and paladin can make it up. We'll see. I was about to say I can always create new characters, but I think this game--like the last one--has a fixed number of enemies, so you could get to a point where there isn't enough experience left to elevate a new character.

        

One of our first combats. Beats rats.

       

Characters start with no equipment, so finding an armory was a priority. There was one across the way from the inn. We fought our first battle against a green slime on the way, which must be disgusting to kill with your hands. The armory didn't even have enough weapons for all of us, and the few that it did have took almost all of our gold. I equipped myself as best I could and started poking around Vertigo.

   

Mechanically, this is the same engine as Might and Magic III. The graphics may be a little more detailed; there's less ornamentation around the view window; and the spot for NPCs has been replaced with a "GTFO Panel." The button that brought up "Corak's notes" in III now links you to a little module that keeps track of quests, quest items, and "auto notes" (no more writing down passwords). There are snippets of voiced dialogue when you enter shops; for instance, the armorer growls, "What do you want?" and the bank clerk chirps, "Safe and secure!" Otherwise, nothing as much changed, which is mostly a good thing. The interface is wonderfully intuitive. All options have redundant mouse and keyboard commands, and it doesn't make you back out of sub-menus (including shops) to switch between characters.

         

I wonder what the next town's excuse will be for empty streets.

      

There are a bunch of things that may be new but may already have been in Might and Magic III. I'd have to go back to that game to remember.

    

• Vertigo is 30 x 30. I thought I remembered that the towns in III were still limited to the 15 x 15 standard.

          

The automap works pretty well.

      

• Everything can be searched--beds, crates, furniture, even trees--by hitting the SPACE bar.  In the tavern, hitting SPACE on top of tables brings up lines of dialogue from the patrons (who you otherwise cannot see). Searching trees usually produces a few coins for some reason.

• If you try to open a grate and fail, the character takes a lot of damage, sometimes enough to kill her. But successful opening conveys more experience than any enemy in town, so much so that I was able to level Suss the Ninja up to Level 3 while the rest were still stuck at Level 1. Bashing wastes this experience.

    

Vertigo had an armor, a tavern, a ranger teaching "Pathfinding" for 2,500 gold, a magic guild, a separate guy selling memberships to the magic guild, a guy teaching "Cartography," a magic mirror (I assume you need to know the code for where you're going), a bank, and a training facility. The town was overrun with slimes and giant grasshoppers (technically "doom bugs"). The mayor (living in a tent in the plaza) and some tavern NPCs conveyed that the infestation had driven most of the population out of the city. The mayor hired someone named "Joe the Exterminator" to deal with the problem, but it didn't work.

 

Temples are always a key resource in a Might and Magic game. I have no idea who we're worshiping, though.

      

I don't think combat has changed at all since the last game. It's still turn-based, but with sound and animation that makes it sometimes feel like there's some action going on. I didn't have a lot of resources at the beginning. Grey Witch could shoot one magic arrow (her default spell) before she had to rest, but she also spawned with a Rod of Pain. For most of the area, I had just a single bow, in the hands of Suss, which actually worked to kill most enemies from afar. If the enemies got up close, they were capable of knocking my characters out in one hit, which meant I had to rest or visit the temple, as I started with no healing spells.

   

As usual, the game offers a few opportunities for the party to get a leg up. A healing well took care of my hit points between battles, and donating 50 or 60 gold to the temple will cause them to bless you with a group of buffing spells. This latter option made us essentially invincible to the monsters.

     

Shooting grasshoppers in Joe's warehouse.

     

We found Joe's warehouse, crawling with pests, and in one of the crates found a note that indicated Joe was breeding the monsters rather than exterminating them. After we killed every last beast, the mayor rewarded us with 5,000 experience points and 4,000 gold pieces. The latter was enough for us to get trained up to Level 3 or 4, purchase guild memberships, and buy a few spells for the characters. I gave "Jump" and "Wizard's Eye" to the sorcerer and "Cure Wounds" to the paladin and druid.

     

As he rewarded us, the mayor noted that he'd recently received a request for help from the dwarves in the Red Dwarf Range. Their mines have been invaded by the Mad Dwarf Clan. The bartender had previously told me that the entrance to the mines is in the hills west of Vertigo.

        

No experience or gold will beat the "outstanding citizenship award."

      

I think I'll stop here and take opinions on my party before I go forward. I've heard there are some really tough combats towards the end of the game, and I'm wondering if I can afford to waste three slots on characters with no spellcasting ability (knight, ninja, and barbarian). Would one or both be better served with a pure cleric? Does the druid really make any sense? On the other hand, maybe I remember those battles being hard because I over-valued spellcasters and didn't have any strong melee fighters.

    

In my summary of Might and Magic III, I noted a couple of problems with the series, which I otherwise love. One is ongoing, one developing. The ongoing problem is an inability to take itself seriously. If I'm going to spend several dozen hours in a fantasy world, I don't want it to be a parody of a fantasy world. Might and Magic rarely goes completely over the edge, but there are times that it's pretty silly, and the whole "Joe the Exterminator" quest doesn't really bode well.

 

The second problem is the developing one: as the game gets more graphically detailed and more mechanically impressive, certain elements of realism are hard to ignore (I dubbed this paradox "Cabbage Theory" in the linked entry). Towns empty of visible NPCs were fine when the graphics were all abstractions; you could imagine that they were there somewhere. But now that the graphics are showing me trees and park benches, the emptiness of the setting is more keenly felt.

       

The bartender gives us a clue for the probable next quest. Note there are lots of people on this screen.

     

Might and Magic isn't alone in that regard. The Gold Box wrapped up in the same year without ever showing enemies in the exploration window, let alone NPCs. The Wizardry series has shown a small number of named, wandering NPCs, but the environments are still unrealistically sparse. But this era is visibly coming to an end, heralded by games like Ultima Underworld and Legends of Valour. (Games with third-person views were generally ahead of their first-person counterparts in this trend.) Going forward, I'll accept wireframes with no people, but I don't know if I can accept tables and chairs with no people.

   

This issue doesn't reduce my enjoyment much, though. Might and Magic still stands out from its contemporaries in one major area: content. The developers pack their maps with treasure, clues, and encounters. If they lead the industry in anything, it's in the concept of "side quests." Few other games would even bother to have a list of "quests" because there would be only one quest for the entire game. I look forward to seeing what the World of Xeen has to offer.

   

Tme so far: 2 hours

Magic Candle III: Re-Lit

This clearly advanced technology is powered by . . . bones.

         

I started The Magic Candle III almost a year and half ago. It was three weeks after I started a new job at a university, and one week after classes began. That whole month was hell. I was trying to develop new curricula and lesson plans while learning a new place, a new commute, new everything. I didn't get a single post on a game completed between 9 September and 16 October and didn't fully recover my previous output until January 2020.

   

When I finally looked at the game again after a month and a half, it felt like it was too soon to start over but too late to continue with my previous game. I feel like this a lot, with games that I've played for the blog and otherwise, sometimes with books or television shows, too. Anyway, I tabled The Magic Candle III until such a time that it no longer felt too soon to start over. And today, of course, having read my first entry on the game to re-familiarize myself with the initial experience, I decided I didn't need to start over after all. Ha! How ironic! You don't seem to be laughing. Well, please just continue with me anyway. It's not like anyone's selling pitch forks in January.

         

The orcs' throne room looks pretty cool.

       

I'll let you refresh yourself with the backstory at the link above. Suffice to say that my party--containing my heroes from The Magic Candle and The Keys to Maramon--arrived on the island of Kabelo in the Solian Islands, on a mission to figure out the source of a mysterious blight. Kabelo is ruled by the parents of Garz, one of my companions, and as I ended the first entry, we had just entered the orcish city of Urkabel.

As suspected, the city had a lot of shops, services, and NPCs (many behind locked doors, but fortunately Garz often piped up to name the resident). From a wizard named Lavinha, I learned that this game's teleportal chambers use the bones of sea birds, and that I would need three skulls to go back to Oshcrun island, and a skull and two wingbones to return to Kabelo. She sold bones, but I declined to purchase any for now. A lot of the city's NPCs seemed to gather in the tea house (these orcs are uniquely civilized) at various times of day. An orc named Dangaladik that I met in a tea house told me that something called "Qaldiur" (I assume a dungeon) is "ripe for the picking," and that the password to get in is MELSHINDE. Lamdurudin recommended that I talk to sailors in Herrington and Elfport about the Blight. There were lots of NPCs with flavor text, and some services that I didn't pursue because I didn't bring enough money.

        

Garz's father has a quest for us.

        

We meet Garz's father, the orc king (if he has a name, I never found it) in his palace. While he disapproved of Garz seeking our aid, he said he'd work with us if we could prove our good will by obtaining the orc Scepter of Kabelo from their "goblin allies" in Serivu on the island of Solihub.

    

At this point, I returned to Oschrun Island and the city of Telermain. I did this for two reasons. First, a check of my inventory made it clear that I hadn't brought nearly enough Sermins. Sermin mushrooms are life in the Magic Candle setting. They're the only way to restore energy and keep the party from collapsing in a heap on the floor, never to rise again because the game prohibits you from sleeping just anywhere. Second, if I took any notes about NPCs or "to do" items when I started in 2019, I don't know where they are. I needed to re-explore and remember what everyone had told me.

         

The journal reminds me of a password.

      

The Sermin excuse turned out to be valid, but shortly after I arrived, I remembered why I hadn't bothered to take any notes: the game takes them for you. This is a wonderful feature that we find in so few games. The in-game notebook in The Magic Candle II was useful, but only up to a point. If you didn't remember to export it before the end of your session, you lost it. Here, it preserves the notes with the save file. You can review them chronologically, search them for keywords, delete useless ones, and even type in your own. These options went a long way into getting me back up to speed.

         

Not everything that the journal records is useful.

     

With my second reason to be in Telermain thus moot, I returned to the Solian Lands and the island of Solihub. This was marked clearly on the game map, so it was easy to find. It was a typical town, populated by civilized goblins. The mayor said he'd trade the scepter for some kind of charter (I think I missed some dialogue), and that he'd need Garz as a hostage until we returned with the charter. The game did this for us (we had no choice), so after talking with the various NPCs, we returned to Urkabel, where the king gave us the charter, at which point we had to go back to Serivu to make the final exchange. Instead of rejoining our party, Garz went home but said he'd re-join us if we met him there. I didn't feel much like going back to Urkabel again at this point, so I moved on.

         

The goblin accepts the charter.

      

I'll cover a few aspects of the game that came up as we explored the two cities. These mechanics haven't changed since the first game, but it's worth a couple of refreshers. First, there are two types of NPCs. The first type are generic and interchangeable. You ask them for "News." There are at least half a dozen in each city, and each one gives you a random selection from the same pool of three or four lines. You can't do any additional talking with them. The second kind are named NPCs who you can ask for "Advice," which often leads to other keywords. However, many of the second type are locked away in their houses. You have to know their names when you knock on their doors. You usually get their names as one of the random dialogues from the first NPCs. It was through this process that I met a wizard named Evixu in Serivu and got her to join the party.

    

A generic NPC gives me a name . . .

. . . which gives me a word to try when I knock on a door . . .

. . . which leads me to a useful conversation with a named NPC.

       

Character development in The Magic Candle series occurs in two ways. First, as you fight enemies and accomplish a few other tasks, your related skills increase. Your attributes, however, only increase via the second method: finding gods and waking them up. To do this, you first have to get some intelligence about the location of a god's temple. Then you have to visit the temple and find the secret word on the altar. Finally, you have to find the separate location where the god is sleeping, approach him or her, and whisper the word. If you have the right god, he or she will wake up long enough to raise some of your attributes and skills. My notes are full of parts of these variables, like I found a word (BRUNDISHAR) in a temple, but I don't know whose temple it is. Or I know the god Selene sleeps near Eisheim, but I don't know where her temple is.

        

Not knowing his name or password, we let the sleeping god lie.

      

As with the past two games, I assume I won't make much use of the teleportals in this one. The developers went through a lot of trouble to create a network of teleportals but then made it too easy to get around the islands without them.

    

I'm not sure exactly what solving the quests for Urkabel and Serivu did for our main quest, but afterwards, I didn't have any strong clues about what to do next. I decided to explore the islands in a systematic order from west to east, and thus sailed to the far western island of Rastanna. Features on land often don't show up until you're standing in an adjacent square, which means you have to step on at least every other square when you're exploring a piece of land. I'm also alerted to combats one square away, probably because my characters have enough skill in "Tracking" or something.

   

I fought most combats as I encountered them, at least at first, re-acclimating myself with the rules and strategies. One thing became clear quickly: I needed to invest more in missile weapons. Only a couple of my characters had them. I eventually went back to Serivu just to buy bows for everyone. I started experimenting with mushrooms and spells again. I was reminded how powerful it is to swallow a Mirget (strength) and a Gonshi (speed) at the beginning of a battle, and how important it is to protect everyone with Nifts (physical attacks) and "Shield" spells (magical attacks). I remembered how useful the "Jump" spell is to immediately get a melee character over to a magic-using enemy. I used up a lot of "Cure" spells and Medicin doses recovering from the illness inflicted by blight creatures. On the whole, I think I'll save a discussion of combat for a later entry, but The Magic Candle has always been strong in combat tactics and spells. I don't really see any major advances here, but the system is still pretty good in comparison to other games of the era.

          

In battle with blight creatures.

       

As you walk through the Solian Lands, you see evidence of the Blight everywhere--little patches of ground that seem to be clouded with pestilence or toxins. So far, these areas haven't caused any negative effects with my party.

         

Note the discoloration around the east of the gateway and mountains.

       

Rastanna was mostly a bust, though I did write down several things to which to return later. I found two dungeon entrances, but I didn't know the passcodes for either of them. There was at least one stronghold, where you can rest, heal, and study spells without interruption, and one temple to an unknown god that gave me the password PINTALDI. The islands south of Rastanna (called the Outsiders) had a couple more strongholds, a sleeping god who didn't respond to any of the words I'd used so far, and a third dungeon (actually a tower, but "dungeon" is the common term).

         

I arrive in Herrington Bay.

       

From there, I nudged east and explored the Herring Isles. including the city of Herrington, which seemed to be a human city. An NPC named Enfala told me that South Herring Isle has a shrine to the goddess of birth, Olkanis, and that Olkanis herself rests in the mines of Tarrak on Rastanna.  Elsewhere, a man named Berbedos gave me the password to enter the Tower of Wesgar, which seemed to be the tower I had recently found on one of the Outsiders, and a man named Kenneth told me that the god I had discovered in the Outsiders was probably Bohar (I haven't found his temple yet). Thus do the pieces slowly fall into place.

   

When I explore systematically, I like to do so in a recursive way, so that I return to already-explored places if given a good reason. Since I now had the password to a dungeon I'd originally skipped, I returned, gave it at the gate, and entered.

       

Is it a magic password? Is there some guy on the other side of those doors waiting for it? The game never says.

       

Dungeons don't seem to have changed much from the previous game. They're divided into corridors and rooms, with slightly different rules for each; for instance, the entire party moves with the active character in corridors, but not in rooms. Rooms often have multiple exits, linking various sections of corridor. As usual, I adopted a "rightmost wall" pattern of exploration and hoped it would save me from mapping.

The first room I entered had an ogre. I don't remember if the previous games had ogres. The one here had a ridiculous number of hit points--more than 400. At first, I thought he was alone, but it turns out the little orbs I had taken for decorations or furniture were giant spiders. Something about the graphics in this game wreaks havoc with my colorblindness. I guess it's mostly that the icons are too small, and they attempt too much detail for icons that small. I can't tell people from objects, enemies from bushes. Exploring the dungeons looks like it's going to be much crisper.

        

It didn't look like a barrel.

      

Anyway, we eventually whittled him down, killed the spiders, and looted the room for 17 gold pieces and a chest with 20 Sermin mushrooms. We were ambushed in the next hallway by rust monsters, slimes, and an ogre, but we managed to kill them with minimal damage. As usual, I don't think there are any random combats in this game, and once you clear part of a dungeon, it remains clear. I can't quite remember what the rules of respawning were in previous games, but I think they only applied to the outdoors.

 

The characters occasionally have little banters. One occurred here as we walked down a corridor. Evixa asked whether it was here that "they" kept the "magic candle rot" or "magic candle fungus." Sakar corrected her that they kept the mold here--not mold like fungus but mold like the form in which they poured the wax to shape the candle. That's a weird bit of lore. Anyway, I think the game would have chosen any two random party members for this dialogue. It's not like it grows from the characters' personalities.

         

Sakar started a sentence with "actually." I have to kill him now.

        

Another room with an ogre and some lesser foes netted us an iron helmet and a suit of methreal. Beyond was a stairway up. In a room on the second floor, we met some skeletons and killed them easily. I was surprised when they popped back to life a couple of rounds later. I had forgotten that in this game, you have to cast "Restsoul" to permanently deal with slain undead. Fortunately, Fiz had 18 of them memorized. I'm sure I'll need some more.

        

An extra step that most RPGs don't require.

      

One thing that I'm noticing is that my weapon skills are increasing at an amazing pace. Every round, someone's archery or sword skill goes up. Unfortunately, this contributes to feeling like the characters stopped developing halfway through.

   

I think I'll end there. We'll see how the party did with the rest of the dungeon in the next entry. It's good to get the ball rolling on this again after so long.

Time so far: 9 hours

Game 402: Theseus and the Minotaur (1982)

 

Since this game never references Dungeon!, I'm not sure why TSR wants us to know that it's a trademark.

         

Theseus and the Minotaur

United States

TSR Hobbies (developer and publisher)

Released 1982 for Apple II

Date Started: 6 February 2021
Date Ended: 7 February 2021

Total Hours: 3

Difficulty: User-adjustable, but ultimately very easy (1/5)

Final Rating: 9
Ranking at Time of Posting: 11/404 (3%)

     

Although TSR never tried to bring Dungeons & Dragons to computers on their own, they did make a brief one-year foray into computer game design. In 1981, the company hired a couple of young programmers to write three games for the Apple II: the awkwardly-punctuated Dungeon! Computer Adventure Game, Theseus and the Minotaur, and Dawn Patrol. None of them are RPGs, though they're close. Dungeon! is a computer adaptation of a 1975 TSR board game that might be considered a "lite" version of Dungeons & Dragons. Dawn Patrol is a fighting simulator that draws themes from TSR's World War I RPG of the same name. Theseus is an original maze game that recounts the adventures of the Greek hero as he saves King Minos's daughter from the labyrinth.

      

The games are important to CRPG history for a couple of reasons. The lesser one is that TSR must have been dissatisfied with the experiment, because they never tried to make another game on their own after 1982. They would partner with other developers from here on. More important, one of the young developers, Bruce Nesmith, discovered that he liked designing games more than he liked programming them. He stayed on at TSR for the next 13 years, writing modules and books for the various Dungeons & Dragons settings. When he left the company during its mid-1990s decline, it was to return to computer gaming--as a senior game designer for Bethesda Softworks. He worked on The Elder Scrolls: Chapter II - Daggerfall (1996), left the company for a few years, and returned in time to write quests for Oblivion (2006) and Fallout 3 (2008) and ultimately serve as the lead designer for Skyrim (2011). 

         

One of the minor denizens of the labyrinth.

          

Little of Nesmith's future glory is evident in Theseus, a minor maze game meant to be random and replayable. The backstory of Theseus generally follows the myth: The son of King Minos of Crete was assassinated in Athens during the Olympic games, leading to a war between Athens and Crete. As a peace condition, Minos demanded that Athens annually send seven boys and seven girls to Crete, where they were fed to the minotaur, a shameful product of Minos's wife's coupling with a bull (there were extenuating factors not worth exploring, but it was ultimately Minos's fault). To stop the carnage, Theseus, son of King Aegeas of Greece, volunteered to go with the next tribute so he could slay the beast. Whereas in legend, Minos's daughter Ariadne fell in love with Theseus and gave him a ball of string so he could find his way out of the labyrinth, here Ariadne has been kidnapped by the minotaur and must be rescued.

       

Enemies include a female minotaur in a dress with a rolling pin.

       

The game takes place in a labyrinth of three procedurally-generated levels, each taking up no more than 10 x 10 spaces. There are multiple up and down stairways connecting the levels. Somewhere in the complex are Ariadne, the Minotaur, about half a dozen other minotaur-esque foes, and a handful of snakes. You start with 100 hit points and no equipment.

         

The game asks you some questions as you set up.

        

At the outset of the game, the player specifies a maze "complexity" from 1 to 100. You get more points for higher complexity, but it's supposed to be a lot harder. In truth, I didn't find more complex dungeons any harder. They just had more staircases. Since you have to map no matter what, extra staircases don't mean very much. Neither do the other settings that you get to tweak during setup. One is whether the maze has any secret doors. If so, you have to bump into walls to search for them; if not, you don't. The other is whether the maze has "mirror rooms." These are like combinations of teleporters and spinners from other games; when you enter one, you get confused, and your next move immediately casts you out of the room in a random direction and then faces you a random direction. Both elements make the game longer, but not particularly harder. Since you get more points for more complex dungeons, you might as go hog wild--although not all the way, because I found that the game crashed when I tried to create dungeons with a complexity of 100.

     

The top row represents the three levels of the labyrinth with a complexity of 1. The bottom row are the three levels with a complexity of 50.

        

That brings us to the biggest issue with the game, which isn't evident in a modern emulator: it's slow. The 2-3 minutes it takes to build the dungeon is nothing compared to the roughly 7 seconds it takes the game to register your commands and redraw the screen. Only by cranking the emulator to about 700% did I find it tolerable.

   

Mitigating all of this is an opposite factor: the game is easy. Technically, your only winning condition is to escape the dungeon. The moment you enter, you can turn around and leave. If you set a relatively high complexity level, you'll even get a pretty high score. The other supposed quest elements--rescuing Ariadne and killing the Minotaur--simply serve to increase your score when you do leave. Other killed monsters also add to the score, but every turn you spent in the dungeon subtracts a bit from it.

        

The Minotaur attacks as I turn a corner.

       

Even if you decide to stay and handle the other tasks, the game isn't very hard. For the first roughly 150 turns, you can restore any lost health by simply hitting the W)ait option, so in the early game, you just want to charge through the corridors, killing everything you see, then waiting to restore health afterwards. There are two types of enemies: snakes, which must be fought within the same square as you; and other enemies, which you fight from one square away. Either way, you only have one option in combat. You start only with fists, but once you kill a creature, you can search his body for weapons. If you find one, it's usually a bone (yuck!). Eventually, you'll come across a message with a "magic word." If you use T)alk to say that magic word out loud, you get a magic sword.

        

An inventory check after looting a slain foe (on top of a down stairway) reveals that Ariadne is in my inventory.

           

After the game stops letting you rest and heal, it becomes more strategic. You generally want to save your health for the Minotaur, so you simply map until you find him (it's best to get the magic sword first), taking alternate routes to avoid enemies when you see them. They don't pursue you. Ariadne is hidden in a random square, and you can't see her from a distance, so you have to explore every square until you find her. Both times I found her, the message flashed so quickly that I didn't notice. I just happened to notice later that she was in my "inventory." If you rescue Ariadne before you meet the Minotaur, he'll kidnap her again when you run into him, and after you kill him, you'll have to find her wherever he stashed her the second time.

         

Winning the game after rescuing Ariadne and killing the Minotaur on a complexity of 50. On a complexity of 1, rescuing Ariadne but not killing the Minotaur, I got a score of 1,345.

            

That's about it. A winning game on a high complexity takes no more than about 30 minutes, and most of that is mapping. There are a couple of mysteries. In addition to the message telling you the secret word, you get another that says, "Flee from the magic word" (maybe it's trying to trick you), and still another offering you the "secret." For instance, in my last game, the message said, "The Secret is the Zebulon." I have no idea what that meant; speaking the word causes the screen to redraw, but I'm not sure what actually happens. There's also a note in the manual about not killing friendly creatures, but I don't think I ever encountered any.

         

I have no idea what this is about.

         

I've seen some web sites claim that Theseus is a computer adaptation of Robert Abbott's 1962 pen-and-paper logic maze of the same name. In the game, one "character" (Theseus), who has the ability to move wherever he wants, tries to escape a maze in which a second character ("The Minotaur"), moves each round according to fixed rules. If the first character encounters the second, he loses. The problem is that while Abbott published a logic maze of that type in 1962, he didn't call it Theseus and the Minotaur until his 1990 book, Mad Mazes. This version has been adapted to a number of computer applets of the same name, but the 1982 game is really nothing like it.

          

The halls of mirrors have a fun in-game graphic, but they don't amount to much.

         

However, it does seem to me that Theseus draws a lot from the previous Apple II game Dragon Maze (1978), which plays a lot like a pen-and-paper logic maze. In general, there was an early fascination on the Apple II with 3D mazes and the associated graphics. The point of Theseus is not so much to kill the Minotaur and rescue the Princess but to map the dungeon. As I made the maps above, it occurred to me how trivial a task it was for me, having done hundreds of them, but it must have been relatively novel for many players of the era. Simply figuring out a path to follow, aligning staircases, remembering that right is east, and getting oneself untangled from the "halls of mirrors" would have been challenges by themselves. On the other hand, I don't want to over-emphasize this. When Theseus was published, Akalabeth, Ultima, and Wizardry had all been out for at least a year, and they offered the same sort of maze challenges in the context of the type of role-playing to which you'd think TSR would have aspired.

          

The box art is the best part of the game.

       

The game GIMLETs poorly. Like many non-RPGs (it fails all three of my criteria), it gets the highest rating (3) in "Gameplay," as it is meant to be replayable and short. Nothing else tops a 1. The total is 9. When we next encounter Bruce Nesmith, we should see those numbers go a lot higher.

 

Game 401: Sword of Zedek (1981)

 

I may be puny, but at least I could be bothered to center my title.

      

The Sword of Zedek

United States

Krell software (developer and publisher)

Released 1981 for Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80; 1983 for Commodore 64

Date Started: 30 January 2021
Date Ended: 30 January 2021

Total Hours: 2
Difficulty: Easy (2/5)

Final Rating: 10
Ranking at Time of Posting: 21/404 (5%)

      

Here's another entry that really isn't much of an RPG, but uses RPG conventions to populate a different sort of game. Ten years ago, I would have called it bad. With the hindsight of 400 games, I call it bad but at least something different. 

    

Like the recently-explored Dragonsbane, Zedek is a short game, meant to be played in one session (there's no save ability), meant to be played multiple times before winning. You play a warleader--giving yourself a name is the only option you get--who has a brief 55 turns to amass resources before a showdown with the demonic warlord Ra. 

    

Gameplay occurs over a grid map of 9 x 10 squares (although there's a separate 3 x 6 map that I don't quite understand; it may be a separate indoor area). You can pull up the map and see where you are at any point with the "M" key, but you don't want to do it too often because it counts as a turn and turns are precious. This approach has a little in common with The Wizard's Castle (1980).

     

The "campaign map."

      

Each square can contain a few dozen of 12 types of creatures, including wolves, orcs, trolls, centaurs, elves, and snakes. Each square can also contain gold, torches, or one of twelve special treasures, including the Sword of Zedek, the Shield of Achilles, the Belt of Loki, and the Ring of Wraith. Usually, these items aren't revealed unless you (S)earch, though. Sometimes, squares are dark and require you to light a torch before searching.

       

My character halfway to the battle with Ra.

    

In any square, you can:

      

• S)earch for treasure
• T)ake any visible treasure
• Try to P)ersuade the creatures to join your party
• L)ight a torch
• View the M)ap
• Turn your V)isibility on or off (if you have the Ring of Wraith)
• W)ait

      

You have to be judicious with your moves because you only get 55 of them before Ra begins his assault. While it's tempting to persuade any creatures in the square, then search, then take what you find, that series of actions will take at least three turns. 

       

I find the titular Sword of Zedek.

        

Each action has a chance of providing one of several special events, none of which require you to spend a turn:

       

• The "king" of one of the groups of creatures might offer to join your army for a certain amount of gold. You generally want to say yes because if you don't, there's a chance they'll join Ra. But you start with only 5,000 gold, so you'll run out swiftly unless you get more.

• The "bane" of one of the groups (e.g., the Bane of Orcs) might offer to join. The bane prevents any of those creatures from joining your party, but it also neutralizes any that Ra has.

• A powerful but treacherous dragon may offer to join the party. He adds a lot of combat power, but there's a random chance each turn that he'll betray you and steal your gold.

• You may get a random hint as to the location of one of the special treasures.

       

With only 10 turns to go, it's probably safe to accept him.

       

When Ras finally attacks, he has himself, 500 demons, and whatever kings and banes you unwittingly sent his way. You get to see the combined power of your army compared to his in a numeric score. Then the final battle begins. Each round, you and Ra do damage to each other's armies, and the game recounts your losses. Ra always seems to lose a minimum of half his demons no matter how weak you are, which is strange.

   

When Ra gets down to 8 demons, he'll flee, and you have a few rounds to accomplish anything you can to replace your losses. You can R)etreat from the battle with Ra, too, for a few rounds of respite. Whether you flee or he does, he will eventually re-engage, and he'll be back up to full strength when he does. You'll have to knock him down again. He'll do this three times before you achieve victory on the fourth round--if your initial army was strong enough. Otherwise, you die and the game starts over.

           

Round 1 of combat. I feel like I got the short end of the stick here.

       

Frankly, I found the game quite a bit opaque and unsatisfying in the final battle. I can't quite figure out how the math works. For instance, if I just stand still for 55 turns, accepting no allies and finding no treasure, I end up facing Ra with a combat power of 3 against his 1,380. You'd think that would be instant death for me. And yet I'm still able to kill 250 demons in the first round, plus a couple of his allies, before he kills me. If I face him with even a few hundred combat points, I can whittle him down and force him to flee despite having far less power than he does, although I usually lose in one of his returns. But if I begin combat with Ra with a high combat power, I'm likely to win, even if Ra knocks me down to a few hundred points after a few rounds. In other words, the amount of power you start with seems to have a continuing impact on the battle even after those allies are dead. Meanwhile, Ra always seems to lose the same number of allies per round no matter how strong you technically are. 

      

The game instructions explain the uses of each item.

       

Attributes are a bit mysterious, too. You always start with a combat power of 57 and an "eloquence" of 85. Because of that relatively high latter figure, almost all your "persuade" attempts work. Every once in a while, those numbers go up or down by some amount, but I could never quite figure out why.

   

That's about the size of it. Make good choices and get lucky in your 55 rounds, and you'll win. If not, you'll lose. I have to wonder if the later Braminar (1987) wasn't influenced a bit by the game. Although none of the encounters are quite the same, the overall approach--walk along, trigger random encounters, slowly improve your army, defeat the evil warlord--is.

    

I feel like "glorious victory" deserved an exclamation point, at least.

       

Sword of Zedek is credited on some sites to John O'Hare, who wrote a trilogy of 1980 adventure games called Adventure for the Commodore PET. He also did a PET conversion of The Wizard's Castle, which must have provided part of the inspiration. I can't find him. Not for the first time, I think all people who want to develop games should have names worth at least 50 points in Scrabble. "John O'Hare" can hide 40 years later. "Zigquoft von Bharketzhausen" would be easier to track down.

Oh, I suppose we'll have to have a GIMLET. Lacking a backstory, any character development, NPCs, and an economy, I wouldn't expect much. I suppose I can spare a couple of points for "encounters," a main quest, a workable interface, and brief-but-somewhat replayable gameplay. 0 + 0 + 0 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 0 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 10. I don't mind the approach, but the game needed a more interesting and less confusing showdown.  

Krell advertises Sword of Zedek in a 1982 issue of 80 Micro, alongside some other games and S.A.T. preparation software.

      

[Ed. A year or so after I played this, I learned that Krell Software re-released it in 1983 under the name Pythagoras and the Dragon with minor changes to the proper names but essentially no change in gameplay.]

That's about all I can think to say. Less than 1,100 words. I generally like my entries to be longer than that. I'm trying to think of anything else to talk about. I've been having trouble getting the Sidney Bechet song "Si Tu Vois Ma Mère" out of my head; here's an excellent version by Tatiana-Eva Marie and the Avalon Jazz Band. Ha--nearly wrote "Avalon Hill Jazz Band." I'm enjoying The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and that new sci-fi show, Resident Alien. I recently finished re-reading every book by Nick Hornby and wouldn't mind recommendations for similar authors. 

    

I had an idea for a time travel short story the other day. The main character is a decorated Army veteran suffering from PTSD from his time in Afghanistan. He is an alcoholic and drug addict, and he has hit rock bottom. He is estranged from his wife, having been arrested and evicted from his home after he got drunk and struck his young son. This is particularly horrible for him because he himself was assaulted by a stranger as a child: a man ran out of the woods while he was playing in his back yard, shoved him to the ground, and stomped on his leg, breaking it. The episode left him in constant pain and made him vow to never hurt a child. Despite his vow, this is not the first time he's hurt a child; he shot one by accident in Afghanistan, an event that he recalls constantly. We learn that he was motivated to join the Army by another childhood occasion when a man saved him from an attacker. He wanted to be a hero like that, not a murderer.

   

As the story goes on, the character finds that when he reaches a certain depth of grief and regret, if he concentrates hard enough, he can go back in time. He only has moments--less than a minute--but long enough to change aspects of his life. He begins by going back a few days and throwing a rock through the window of his house, stopping cold whatever stupid argument he was having with his son and preventing the assault and arrest. This is good. But further attempts don't work out. He tries to go back to Afghanistan and save the boy, but he ends up making the situation worse. He tries to stop himself from trying pills the first time, but he just delays his addiction for a short time. In this middle section, his memories start becoming muddy and more confused as the time traveling rewrites previous experiences. He remembers a doctor telling him he will never walk right because of his leg injury, which should have precluded his service in the Army. He can't remember if he started taking pills before he enlisted or after he got back; he seems to remember both. He can't remember if his wife and son are real; sometimes, he seems to be living with them; other times, he seems to be living with fellow drug users in an abandoned building.

   

Finally, in a moment of crisis, he snaps and takes himself all the way back to his childhood home. He sees himself playing in the yard and realizes that it's that day: the day he was attacked; the day he was saved from an attacker. He vows to break his younger self's leg so that he can never join the Army. He vows to save himself from the attacker who broke his leg. He vows to stop the savior so that he'll never grow up to believe that people can be "saved." As infinite realities blossom from this fateful choice, the end is ambiguous, but perhaps with a thin thread of hope that by not acting at all, the boy can live his life free from the weight of the past.

 

I'll never have time or skill to write it. Someone feel free to take it if you like it. I get 15% of any royalties or rights payments above $1,000.