Game 504: NetHack [3.1 Series] (1993)

 

I love these moments in which my character is new and full of possibilities.

      

NetHack [3.1 Series]

United States

Independently developed and released in four versions between January and July 1993

Date Started: 11 February 2024

     

There was nearly a two-year gap after NetHack 3.0.10, the last release in the 3.0 series, which I covered--good lord--eleven years ago, in a series of entries that took 262 total hours. (Coverage starts here.) Version 3.1.0 was released in January 1993, and three bug-fix releases followed, culminating in 3.1.3 in July 1993. After that, it would be nearly three years before the next release, 3.2.0, in April 1996. Thus, the 3.1 series occupies a clear temporal pocket.

   

At this point, I've won Hack 1.0.3, NetHack 2.3e, and NetHack 3.0.10, none of which felt terribly different from the others. But from what I'm reading, NetHack 3.1.0 represents the most significant update in content and mechanics since Rogue. This is the first version to feature a branching dungeon, with multiple separate worlds such as the Gnomish Mines and the Elemental Planes. My understanding is that the Wizard of Yendor, now found in "Gehennom" rather than Hell, no longer has the Amulet of Yendor, but rather a book that you need to enact a ritual to get the Amulet of Yendor. There's a stronger mythology to the game, including a backstory. Mechanically, there are changes to the lighting and encumbrance systems. There are new objects, monsters, and artifacts.

    

A more detailed backstory distinguishes this latest edition of the long running series.

      

(If you're just joining us, NetHack is a freeware "roguelike" game, meaning that it adopts the conventions of Rogue [1980], including ASCII characters for graphics, randomly-generated dungeon levels, a wide variety of inventory items to identify and find, a large number of commands called by individual keyboard letters, and--most important--permadeath. When you die in the dungeon, your character is erased and you have to start over completely.)

        

At the outset, I'm going to tell you that I don't know if I have the stamina to replicate my "honest" win from 2013. My greater knowledge and experience with the game should mean that it doesn't take quite as long, but then again, that experience is over a decade old now. Moreover, it simply doesn't feel like a feat that I have to replicate. Thus, my current plan is to do my best with the first 10 characters to reach Level 3. After that, assuming it comes to it, I'll allow myself to save every couple of levels.

    

NetHack 3.1.3 opens the same way as the previous one. The game offers you the opportunity to play an archaeologist, barbarian, caveman, elf, healer, knight, priest, rogue, samurai, tourist, valkyrie, or wizard. Each has its own starting attributes and inventory. Other than "caveman" no longer being hyphenated, nothing has changed here. The game will also choose for you, which I'm going to do for the first 10 characters, so I get a sense of their strengths and weaknesses. In this case, the game chooses a samurai.

     

A new game begins.

    

But for the first time in the series, after character creation, we get a backstory:

     

After the Creation, the cruel god Moloch rebelled against the authority of Marduk the Creator. Moloch stole from Marduk the most powerful of all the artifacts of the gods, the Amulet of Yendor, and he hid it in the dark cavities of Gehennom, the Under World, where he now lurks, and bides his time.

      

The story goes on to say that I am a newly-trained Hatamoto, heralded from birth to be the instrument of my god, Amaterasu Omikami. I am destined to recover the amulet for my god. The name of the first level of the character and the name of the god differ by class. For rogues, it's Footpad and Kos; for healers, it's Rhizotomist and Hermes; for priests, it's Aspirant and Shan Lai Ching. The game mixes a lot of mythology: Marduk was the patron god of Babylon; Moloch is a Canaanite god in the Bible; Amaterasu is the goddess of the sun in Shinto mythology; and Hermes is of course Greek. As for "Shan Lai Ching," I'm guessing it's a play on Shan Hai Ching, the classic Chinese text also known as Classic of Mountains and Seas. NetHack has always been a bit of a melting pot that way. I'll cover other characters' gods as I get to them. I understand in future versions, they differ by the character's alignment.

   

As usual, the character begins on Level 1 of a randomly-generated dungeon, with the character represented by an @ symbol. I'll go ahead and recount Chester the Samurai's adventures in detail. I'm playing with NetHack version 3.0.10 open in an adjacent window so I can note the differences. I start by checking the command list to refresh my memory. The only difference I can see is that the new game has a "farlook" command (;), but it just seems to duplicate the existing "whatis" command (/), identifying an object by cursor.

        

Like its predecessors, the game benefits from exhaustive documentation, called up with the ? key.

       

I'm standing on a magenta potion when I start, which I pick up. Until I identify or swallow it, I won't know exactly what it does. Ditto the nearby scroll labeled PRIRUTSENIE. I find it's usually best just to read scrolls right away, at least early in the game, since it's the only way to find a Scroll of Identification, which you need to identify most other things. In this case, it turns out to be something else: "You feel like someone is helping you." The game prompts me to give it a name (for when I find the next one), so I put "helping." Eleven years ago, I would have remembered exactly what that message meant.

For other equipment, my character started with a +0 katana, a +0 wakizashi, a +0 yumi (bow), 27 +0 ya (arrows), an uncursed +0 splint mail, and 4 fortune cookies. The yumi and ya replace shurikens from the previous version, and I got one more fortune cookie than 3.0.10 allowed. It's soon joined by a cream pie, on the floor next to the scroll. There's nothing like eating a cream pie found on a dungeon floor.

   

Finally, a little dog is following me. NetHack always gives you a little pet to help at the beginning. I'm aware that there are ways to make the pet awesomely useful, but it's just a little more micromanaging than I want. I'll probably abandon him when I go down to the next level, if I don't accidentally kill him first.  

     

The samurai is not a stealth character. That's a ninja. Get your Japanese archetypes straight, gaijin.

         

I exit the room and take a hallway to another room, where I find a closed door and my first enemy: a newt, represented by a colon (:). I attack him with my katana by moving into him. He dies in a couple of hits but I lose 3 hit points in the process. These will regenerate at a rate of 1 per every 15 moves at my current level. The newt leaves no corpse.

    

A corridor leading from this room dead-ends. I hold down the S)earch key for a few seconds, but I do not find the door I suspect is there. I loop around to the other side, picking up a magic marker and 15 gold pieces. I k)ick open a nearby door which won't open with the O)pen command. The next couple of rooms are empty except for 7 gold pieces. On the way back to an earlier area, I kill another newt in the hallway, which leaves a corpse. I don't remember that newt corpses do anything for you, but neither do I remember that they do anything negative. I e)at it. The game says it "tastes terrible" but doesn't otherwise affect me. At worst, I just staved off hunger for another few rounds.

A kobold zombie (Z) randomly spawns as I pass through a room, and I destroy it in one hit. Another newt falls to my katana in a corridor. I miss a message and try using ALT-P to bring it back, forgetting that the appropriate command is CTRL-P. The game says that I pray to my god, who is displeased with me, probably for praying when I didn't need it. Praying can get you out of some sticky situations, but I don't remember the specifics.

   

Another room has a sewer rat, killed in one hit, and a "grid bug," which I don't remember from previous versions. My dog manages to get that one. I find a purple-red potion, get caught in a bear trap for a few turns, and find some more gold. One of the rooms I explore is dark, meaning I can only see a few squares around me. I have no lighting source, so I just have to deal with it. I find a gunyoki, which is what the game calls a food ration for a samurai. I don't think the previous version gave special terms for the samurai. Anyway, I'm good on food for a while, which makes me feel less worried about holding down S)earch to get the last couple of rooms.

      

My dog experience-jacks me.

      

I keep accidentally not picking up stuff because the last roguelike I played (Crypt) did it automatically. There's a way to set automatic pickups in NetHack, but I don't want to do it because at some point it becomes annoying.

   

As I wrap up the first level (minus an area I can't access because of a boulder blocking the corridor), I get hungry already. I e)at my cream pie.

   

I had hoped to find some more useful stuff on Level 1 and make it to character Level 2. It's not an auspicious beginning as I head down, leaving the dog behind me. I can always go back for him; NetHack doesn't delete the stairways like Rogue does.

     

Beginning Level 2.

    

Level 2 begins in a room with a spiked wand, some gold, and another newt, which I swiftly kill. There's also a statue of a kobold; I seem to remember that you can't really do much with statues. I get hungry again within a few minutes, so I eat a goblin corpse. Killing the goblin gets me to character Level 2, which raises my maximum hit points by 6 and my maximum power (spell energy) by 5. 

   

I find a bronze plate mail, which overloads me. I risk that possibility that it's cursed by trying it on. Oddly, it affords no better armor class than my splint mail (which I think means it must be -1), so I drop it. 

   

In further rooms on Level 2, I pick up a brown gem, a red gem, and a few more piles of gold. I kill two jackals and another newt and trip a trap that causes a rock to fall on my head. When I've finished exploring the level, I haven't found the stairs down, so I have to start searching every wall multiple times. This accelerates hunger, to alleviate which I eat the dead newt, which is rotten, which causes me to go blind for about a dozen turns. Eventually, I find the hidden room I missed, kill two more grid bugs, and pick up two spellbooks in the same room. The books turn out to have "Cause Fear" and "Detect Unseen," both of which could be useful. I typically don't rely too much on spells in NetHack, but maybe I'll try harder this time.

      

If something is unseen, how do I know to cast "Detect Unseen"?

     

Since I make it to Level 3, this first character is going to "count" against the first 10. I thus start walking more slowly and considering things more carefully. This means searching for traps occasionally, switching to my bow to shoot enemies from afar when they're more than a few squares away, and not taking unnecessary chances like kicking doors (which can injure you). Unfortunately, I still blunder into a water trap and my katana rusts; I switch it for my wakizashi. A chest has a dagger, some gold, and another wand.

   

Hunger reasserts itself as a problem. I blow through all of my fortune cookies, which have the following hints:

    

• They say that greased objects will slip out of monsters' hands.
• Extra staircases lead to extra levels
• Eat your carrots. They're good for your eyes.
• Ever tried reading while confused?

    

But soon I'm starving and fainting because I'm starving. In desperation, I try the two potions. One causes me to levitate; the other paralyzes me for a few rounds. I run up against a floating eye, who can paralyze, so I stand away and shoot arrows at him. Killing him gets me to Level 4, but I won't be able to enjoy it long if I can't find any food. In desperation, I eat an acid blob, which causes me to lose 10 hit points, but I don't think it does anything for my hunger. Neither does the corpse of a giant rat that I kill in the hallway. I pray to Amaterasu, but it says he's displeased.

     

This is always a bad message.

      

I manage to get from "Fainting" to just "Hungry" by eating some more rats and a floating eye corpse. I got lucky with the floating eye. They can paralyze, but I killed him in one hit. I ate his corpse, too, and the game said I felt a "strange mental acuity." This indicates that I gained the ability to detect monsters if my eyes are closed; I believe I need a bandana or another way to blind myself to activate it. Anyway, it's one of the many things on the long "ascension kit" list.

   

I enjoy that good fortune for about 5 seconds before I run into another floating eye, get paralyzed for about five turns, then awaken to find a giant rat on the other side of me. In desperation, I use one of my unidentified wands. It turns the floating eye into a Mordor orc, which promptly kills me when I faint again. Identifying my equipment shows that the dagger was a blessed +1 elven dagger, my ring was a cursed Ring of Polymorph, and my wands were of Cancellation and Polymorph. After I see my intrinsics, the game asks if I want an "account of foes vanquished." That's new to this version. I killed 28 creatures during my brief foray. 

    

A new post-game option gives you an account of your conquests.

       

That's Character #1. What lessons can I take from the experience? I'm not sure I did anything "wrong"; I just got unlucky with the availability of food.

   

I start again with Aamanz the Caveman, a Troglodyte of the god Anu (Mesopotamian god of the sky). He begins with a +1 club, a +1 bow, 15 +0 arrows, and a +0 leather armor. I seem to recall they suffer fewer penalties for eating bad things. We'll see how he turns out.

 

Time so far: 2 hours

Game 503: The Shadow of Yserbius (1992)

         

The Shadow of Yserbius

United States

Ybarra Productions (developer); Sierra Online (publisher)

Multiplayer online version released 1992 for DOS on the Sierra Network (later the ImagiNation Network)

Solo offline version released 1993 for DOS

Taken offline in 1996

Date Started: 9 February 2024 

      

I often wonder why the makers of MMOs don't try harder to ensnare MMO-shy audiences (like me) by adapting them to solo audiences. If it weren't for the simultaneous presence of other human players, I would be all over World of Warcraft or The Elder Scrolls Online, probably to my ruin. In fact, there are many things I find attractive about the sub-genre, including constantly-changing worlds and near-endless expansions. I would happily pay a monthly fee to experience a world like Skyrim in which there were always new quests and surprises. But you'd have to pay me to experience it with other lunatics who think it's acceptable to put digits in their character names.

    

I was thus initially glad to see that the fondly-remembered Shadow of Yserbius had offered an offline "solo mode" version that included the game's first expansion, The Fates of Twinion (1993). And to be clear: this game was specifically marketed for a single player; it's not just an example of a game where offline play was technically possible but not encouraged, like Neverwinter Nights (1991). Given that, it's a little disappointing that at least one of the features (the tavern) demands that you connect to the Sierra Network and you can only adventure with a single player even though the game is clearly balanced for a party.

      

This is a pretty cool cover. There's also no doubt that you're buying a "solo" version.

       

The Digital Antiquarian published a long piece in 2018 about the genesis and growth of the Sierra Network. He recounts that Ken Williams, Sierra's co-founder and president, got excited about the possibilities of online gaming in 1988, when he first signed on to Prodigy. In 1989, the company created a kind of "shell" for accessing CompuServe called "Sierra's On-Line"; shortly after, they launched a Sierra BBS. Finally, the Sierra Network went online in 1991, offering flat rate access for $12 a month to California residents and $5 per month plus $2 per hour to the rest of the nation. In 1992, the company offered three "premium" services on the Network: SierraLand, LarryLand (a casino), and MedievaLand; unlimited access to all of them cost $150 a month. Yserbius was the "centerpiece" of the latter service, the Network's better-looking answer to Neverwinter Nights. In 1993, the Sierra Network changed its name to the ImagiNation Network.

    

Yserbius was designed by Joe Ybarra, a former Apple and Electronic Arts employee with production credits on Starflight (1986) and The Bard's Tale (1986), among others. As a designer, we've only seen his work on Spellcraft: Aspects of Valor, which I did not finish. The design team included Karl Buiter (Sentinel Worlds, Hard Nova) and Michael E. Moore (Mars Saga, BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception). Given the unconventional choices in the developers' earlier titles, it's surprising to see here what is essentially a nice-looking Wizardry clone.

      

I never like to see "1.0." It suggests to me that no bugs have been fixed.

       

An introductory cinematic establishes the setting as Twinion, once a "prosperous port ruled by the Galabryan Kings." They made the mistake of hiring a wizard named Arnakkian Slowfoot, who killed or arranged the killing of King Leowyn. Leowyn's son, Prince Theowayen, succeeded him, but he became a puppet of the evil wizard. Seeking immortality, Arnakkian summoned the Time Elemental, En-Li-Kil, to pump him for knowledge, but En-Li-Kil escaped his bonds. With the help of some demonic friends, the elemental raised a volcano--the titular Yserbius--right next to the royal palace and buried it in lava. Presumably, Arnakkian and Theowayen were killed, but the text doesn't explicitly say. Later, King Cleowyn the Cruel forced dwarven slaves to carve a castle into Yserbius, but after he took up residency there, the king and his court mysteriously vanished. Now adventurers occasionally mount expeditions into the mountain, seeking fabled treasures.

       

I'm guessing a wizard is about to get involved.

 

Jazz hands!

That is an innovative form of revenge.

            

The game begins in the guild, where the player chooses from a slate of existing adventurers or creates his own. There are human, orc, elf, troll, gnome, halfling, and gremlin races and barbarian, knight, ranger, cleric, thief, and wizard classes. The player chooses between harmony and chaos alignments and allocates a small pool of bonus points to the established rolls for strength, defense, agility, and initiative. You also see your starting spells and skills and can add a few bonus points to those, too.

       

Character creation.

       

I created a human knight (I know--boring), who started with "Shield" and "Resist" spells and the skill of "Binding" (wounds). You can also buy and sell goods in the guild, but you start with a decent set and not much money, so that's best saved for later. Once you leave the guild, you're on a pretty view of Yserbius and its environments, but the only things you can do are re-enter the guild, enter the dungeon, or quit the game. A "tavern" option is unavailable for offline play.

   

The mountain has two entrances. At first, I was confused when both led to the same place. It turns out that if you save the game in the dungeon, the lower entrance takes you back to your save point while the upper entrance takes you back to the dungeon's entry hall. The top entrance also restores your health and mana while the bottom does not.

       

To clarify: the volcano is actively spewing lava, but we can somehow go explore its caves?

       

Once you enter the dungeon, the game switches to a familiar first-person view. I agree that it looks nicer than Neverwinter Nights, but it's still tiles and still textures. 

   

There are things to love and hate about the interface. On the "love" side, you move, turn, and strafe using the numberpad. On the hate side, none of the other actions have keyboard shortcuts, so you have to do everything but moving by clicking around with the mouse. This becomes particularly tedious in combat. But on the plus side again, the automap and paperdoll inventory system both work very well.

        

I guess I'll come back.

     

But the best part of the interface is that you can right-click on anything to get more information. Right-clicking on command icons gives you a description of what they do. Right-clicking on spells tells you about their effects. Back on the negative side, right-clicking on weapons and armor tells you nothing about them. Neither does equipping them. You have to go by relative prices, I guess.

Most of all, having only a single portrait where four are clearly intended makes the offline version feel unfinished. You start to notice the consequences almost immediately. The 11 x 9 entry hall has doorways to three dungeon levels, titled Soldiers' Quarters, Hall of Doors, and the Mines. There are no battles in the entry hall. Random encounters in the other dungeons are with one or two enemies, typically, but fixed encounters usually have multiple parties with more than half a dozen foes. I had to grind to Level 8 before I could even hope to win any battles against these fixed foes sometimes.

      

Battles against single snakes are winnable at this level. This one is not.

      

And yet the character development process was rewarding. Sometimes, I'm just embarrassingly simple. All I want is to hit orcs with sticks, pick up shiny things, and buy bigger sticks. So somehow I didn't mind the first couple of hours of the game, in which both character leveling and equipment improvements were relatively brisk. I danced back and forth in the corridors, let the enemies come to me (you don't see them in the environment; they just suddenly appear, like in The Bard's Tale), and killed them one or two at a time.

Early game enemies would be familiar to any CRPG veteran. There are a lot of animals (wolves, snakes, mountain lions), fantasy creatures (imps, goblins, skeletons), and humanoids, including combinations of the game's races and classes (orc ranger, hobbit thief, dwarf knight). Their graphics are well-drawn and lightly animated. 

      

This is a nice picture of a skeleton, but I feel like we've seen it before.

      

Combat is okay, but again clearly meant for a multi-character party. There are six "slots" on your side of the screen and six on the enemies', but the enemies can have multiple foes in each slot. You go in order of initiative. Available actions are attack, cast a spell, use a skill, use an item, or flee. For most offensive actions, you have to choose what enemy stack to apply them to, though I suspect later there will be spells that affect all enemies. I haven't faced any parties using more than two slots so far. The combat system is identical to Wizardry or The Bard's Tale in that both sides line up their attacks and then they all execute at once, in order of initiative.

      

Combat can take a while in the early game.

      

I died in about 50% of combats when I was at Level 1, unable to even hit the foes half the time, my own hit point total easily wiped out. However, I soon learned to use the game's advantages. First, even classes that don't sound like they're spellcasters have spells. My knight started with "Shield" and "Resist." "Shield" turned out to be a life-saver; it subtracts directly from enemy damage and ensured that I often took no damage even when enemies hit. Second, my "Binding" skill could heal me to full health in the middle of combat. Third, Potions of Healing are absurdly cheap and work about 5 times before they run out. 

        

Looting treasure at the end of battle.

      

But perhaps most important of all, making the game fundamentally too easy, is the fact that death has no consequences. When you die, you appear back outside the dungeon, having lost no items, gold, or experience earned. I'd say that it's a shortcut back to town, but when you save the game in a dungeon and quit, you reload back in town anyway.

   

After only a few victories, I leveled up. Leveling up gives you a couple of points to allocate to your four attributes, a few points to allocate to spells, and a few points to allocate to skills. Plus, you get new spells and skills. As I went from Level 1 to 8, I got the spells of "Heal," "Lightning," "Dissipate," "Poison Cloud," "Cure," "True Seeing," "Energy Field," and "Bless," and the skills of "Detect," "Rune Reading," "Deflect Magic," and "Fencing." Some of the skills are passive; for instance, "Fencing" adds to my attack abilities when I use a sword.

 

My skill list by the time I reached Level 7. Note that I've right-clicked on "Detect Magic" to see how it works.

        

As I leveled up, I started by putting most of my points into spells I was already getting a lot of use out of, like "Shield," but in addition to improving the spell's effectiveness, it also increases the casting cost. My knight can cast maybe six "Shield" spells (if I cast no other spells) before I have to leave the dungeon and rest, or find a mana potion, so later I adopted more of an even distribution of points.

   

Equipment upgrades were also steady, though equipment is a little odd in this game. If you favor a sword, for instance, you can buy a short sword for 25 gold pieces, a broadsword for 125, a longsword for 1,500, or a katana for 6,000. The most expensive weapon is, oddly, a "war hammer" for 65,000. Similarly, helmets go in order of leather cap (35), head chainmail (700), war hat (4,500), and helmet (40,000). So the steps are pretty significant between upgrades, though with four primary things to upgrade (helms, armor, weapon, and shield), I managed to buy something new almost every couple of levels. I'm currently saving for a ¤40,000 helmet and a ¤125,000 breast plate.

     

Looking over the item list.

      

Eventually, I got to the point where I could at least try some of the fixed battles, so I started exploring each of the three dungeons. As I did, I started encountering NPCs. They exist in fixed squares and just have one thing to say, with no interaction.

    

• In the Soldiers' quarters, a human barbarian said, "This area is called the Soldiers' Quarters. Why it is so named is beyond me. I've wandered these halls for weeks and have found nothing resembling living quarters, much less any soldiers." 

• In the Mines, an orc ranger: "King Cleowyn had a special lockpick which opened a set of doors in the Vestibule, leading to his Palace. He was the king of thieves, or so my father told me."

• In the Hall of Doors, a human wizard: "The lone adventurer is often at a disadvantage in this cursed dungeon. Those deeper levels . . . oh, they are very dangerous, indeed."

      

I'm curious if he shows up in the MMO version.

      

• Also in the Hall of Doors, a gremlin wizard: "The volcano Yserbius roils the sea and makes it unnavigable. We are doomed to live out our miserable lives, unknown to other peoples. I would give my left eyetooth for a way to escape this dull island."

• Back in the Soldiers' Quarters, an elf cleric: "You may think you are limited to only those skills you acquire through your Guild. I know there are places in this dungeon where you may acquire new and different skills."

• And still later in the Soldiers' Quarters, a troll knight: "Under Cleowyn's palace is a strange maze. The maze is infested with thieves, and they seem to be the only ones who know how to get through the thing."

          

Apparently, Cleowyn somehow built a "palace" in the volcano.

      

I really enjoy the automap, which keeps track of your overall progress, annotates things clearly, and will stay active while you move. 

   

When I was strong enough, I decided to go all-in on the Soldiers' Quarters. Every level has some unskippable fixed combats eventually. Here, for instance, the first one I have to get past has three vicious orc barbarians and three ornery human thieves. With a combination of "Shield" and healing in combat, I just make it. The good and bad news is that fixed combats don't "clear," so you can keep entering the same space for grinding. But if you barely survived a battle, you'll have to face it again if you hit a dead end on the other side.

    

An orc barbarian pops up in a hallway to tell me that a dwarf knight told her that there were polar bears and ice lions deep in the dungeon. She wants to know how that's possible in a volcano. I agree with her confusion. Around the next bend, I'm killed by a party of troll rangers and halfling clerics.

       

Who ever heard of "ice lions" at all?

     

Battles are deadliest during the first round, when the enemies' generally-superior initiative lets them get in a bevy of attacks before my "Shield" goes up. I find that if I can survive that without losing more than half my health, the battle is usually winnable after that. Every once in a while, you get lucky with a "crippling wound" or "devastating wound" attack and clear out an entire stack of enemies in one blow.

     

I clear out one group with a single attack. They kill me anyway.

       

Now that I need thousands of experience points between levels instead of a couple of hundred, I think I might lose my enthusiasm for the game a bit. The game needed a better ramp for enemy difficulty. It's like the creators adjusted the difficulty of random battles to account for a solo player but not the fixed battles.

      

The graphics are better, but what we have in Yserbius is a classic Wizardry experience from 12 years earlier: A combination of fixed and random battles; enemies do not appear in the environment; threaded, turn-based combat; and no memory within the game that fixed encounters have been "cleared." To extrapolate, I suspect that progress through the dungeon is going to rely exclusively on having certain inventory items in your possession. I grant that Yserbius has more interesting character development and a much more forgiving death system. Also, some commenters have suggested that there are Dungeon Master style puzzles to come.

        

A slightly different character creation window--or maybe it's the same as the original Yserbius and the solo version is different.

     

Meanwhile, a super-fan of the game going by the handle of "ZaneDubya" has re-written the game in C++ and has made it available online for multiple users, thus replicating the original MMO experience. You can read about it, download it, and play it at the MedievaLands web site. I created an account and created a new character (the creation interface was faithful in spirit but looked a bit different). No one was around when I popped into the tavern. The dungeon graphics were a little better than the original game, and the interface was modified to put the automap and a GTFO cluster on the main screen.

         

Dying in the MedievaLands remake.

         

I got killed by a scorpion almost immediately in my first battle. I'm not sure how you join with other characters. I'm toying with asking for volunteers to meet at a specific time and check it out as a multiplayer game, but I don't know how faithfully we'd be recreating the original experience. I'll think about it. If I do, no numbers in your character names.

       

Time so far: 4 hours

Game 502: Scepter of Kzirgla (1982) and Two BRIEFs: Arena (1988), and Explore (1980)

Sometimes it feels like the Color Computer wasn't a platform so much as a cult.

        

Scepter of Kzirgla

United States

Independently developed

Released 1982 for TRS-80 Color Computer by Rainbow Connection Software; 1983 for TI-99 by Kuhl Software

Date Started: 9 February 2024

Date Ended: 9 February 2024

Total Hours: 2

Difficulty: User-definable from 1-9; difficulty of 5 is easy (2.0/5)

Final Rating: 12

Ranking at time of posting: 57/508 (11%)

    

This is a pretty bad game, even by the standards of 1982, even by the standards of Color Computer owners. "At last," the manual boasts, "a real-time graphics adventure game with arcade sound!" The thought of any player firing up this game, looking at the blocky, low-resolution graphics, listening to a few dits and bloops, and saying "at last!" is too depressing to contemplate.

   

The Kingdom of Kzigla used to be ruled in peace by kings who drove away evil with a magic scepter. But the usual Evil Wizard used stealth to steal the scepter and usurp the throne. The scepter wouldn't obey him, so he tossed it into the bottom level of a 13-level dungeon, and it's up to you to retrieve it.

   

Character creation has you choose from wizard or warrior classes. The game then randomly divides 30 points between hit points and strength, which you can accept or reject. You then set a difficulty level from 1 to 9. With no other choices (even a name), the game begins.

       

"Character creation."

     

Each level is 9 x 30, the walls and treasure locations randomly generated, with the entrance on the left and the exit on the right. Squares that could either contain traps or treasures are annotated in light blue or maybe purple. Your character is a dark blue upside-down "L" while enemies are red backwards "Ls." Your job is to cross from left to right, fighting or avoiding enemies and gathering treasure if you feel like it. 

   

Enemies don't show up until you're next to them. I don't think the game seeds them; there's just a random chance with every action for an enemy appearing in an adjacent square. Sometimes they appear behind you. Sometimes two or more appear at once on opposite sides. There are 10 enemy types: zubus, ildors, gremlins, elves, dwarfs, lizard-men, berzerkers [sic], zombies, skeletons, and kcash-oidars (an anagram for "Radio Shack"). I only typed those all out because there's so little to say about the game. The enemies aren't even any different. They all hit for the same amount on their respective levels; they all die in one hit; they all provide you with the same boost in hit points when you kill them.

     

Fighting against a dwarf or something.

     

Combat has you just attack, choose a direction, and choose a weapon from sword, axe, mace, dagger, club, magic pendant, or bare hands. You start the game with a few of these and find others in treasure chests or on enemy corpses. A single treasure chest might give three or four weapons. There's a chance that they'll break when you use them, but you generally have plenty. Wizards can't use anything but magic pendants and daggers; warriors can't use the pendants. If you use a pendant, you get the choice of two spells, one of which blasts everything around you and the other of which blasts everything in a straight line.

       

The wizard gets to choose from a couple of spells but is physically weak.

       

You can try to bribe enemies to go away--the only use for treasure--but it  never worked for me. I didn't try it often.

   

Maybe I'm just cheap.

     

As you move down the levels, you gain both hit points and strength, but even with plenty of both, you can die in a couple of hits from monsters. There's a strong case to be made for just avoiding all treasures (since they carry a 40-50% chance of being a trap), running away from all monsters, and just heading for the doors. You can find flying carpets that speed up this process, allowing you to travel across open areas without triggering encounters or traps in one move (you stop at walls). For traps, I only ever found poison gas (reduces strength) and trap doors, which dump you to the next level. In fact, my winning fighter transitioned levels through trap doors far more often than by making it to the actual exit. I found that wizards seem to take damage faster and often die from trap doors.

      

Getting a free ride to Level 10.

     

As you go down, there are increased chances that the exit will be blocked by one or more walls, and you have to attack the walls to get through. It's an annoying addition to the game since it takes a few hits to destroy a wall and you can "miss" while attempting it. 

       

Beating at the wall with a mace.

     

I died twice at low difficulty levels while I figured out how the game worked. After that, I managed to win with a fighter on difficulty Level 5 in about 25 minutes. You win as soon as you go down the stairs from Level 12 to Level 13. "You did it!" the game congratulates, then shows a picture of a scepter, which I didn't manage to capture. "You have recovered the powerful scepter and taken the kingdom back from the evil magician! All hail the king!" The game then shows you final statistics but doesn't try to aggregate them into any kind of master score, beating which would be the only reason to play another game.

            

Not just some of you, now. All.

      

It gets a 12 on the GIMLET. The game was published by Rainbow Connection Software out of Rochester, Minnesota, which sold a number of low budget titles by mail in plastic bags. "Gaming After 40" blogger Dale Dobson identifies the author as Paul Penrose, but I'm not sure how he knows that, as I can't find the name anywhere in the documentation. In his coverage, El Explorador de RPG thought that the author drew inspiration from Robert Clardy's Dungeon Campaign (1978), but I don't see the resemblance except for the low-res graphics. A reviewer in the May 1982 Rainbow thought it was "a good buy" and in particular that "the fighting is the best . . . real-time and pretty authentic." God help us.

      

That guy is about to cut his own hand pretty badly.

      

A 1983 sequel called Conquest of Kzirgla cannot be found and has been added to the Missing and Mysteries page.  It supposedly tells the second half of the story, elided in the endgame text for Scepter, in which the hero uses the artifact to defeat the evil wizard, named "Kolobarr."

The game was reviewed in the April 1983 Rainbow and was sold (along with Scepter) in multiple issues, so it definitely existed. The review mentions that its graphics, in contrast to Scepter, are high-res. The game seems to have consisted of a large maze containing the evil wizard and  his minions, who had weird names like Cellapod, Centapor, Mantoid, Jartrex, Cadaver, and Tantrite. You have to get stronger against the minions before you can take on the wizard. The description makes it sound like it had action-oriented gameplay. It also apparently had no treasure, and the reviewer found it "monotonous."

  

*****

     

           

Arena

United Kingdom

Independently developed; published by Cult Games

Released 1988 for Commodore 64

Rejected for: No character development

      

Arena is another misclassification by GB64, which seems to think that any game in which a character is represented by a little icon is an RPG. It is instead a strategy game in which between two and eight wizards--all of which can be human-controlled or computer-controlled--compete in an arena for the dominance of a kingdom. 

During character creation, the players choose names, icons, and colors for the wizards and set a difficulty level. You're then presented with a list of spells to examine or choose. They include summoning spells like "Bat," "Gnome," "Wyvern," and "Crocodile," plus other defensive ("Magic Armour" ), offensive ("Fireball") and terrain or exploration ("Grass," "True Sight") spells. Each spell is aspected to an alignment: neutral, law, or chaos. The spell selection is different for each character; it may have something to do with the icon or color choice.

       

Creating a wizard.

      

The game begins in a large, walled arena. Each wizard takes turns doing several potential things during their rounds, including casting spells, moving units (in addition to any magically-summoned creatures, you start with a few armies). Some summoned allies are capable of casting their own spells. When you cast a spell, the game asks you to pick from "Reality or Fantasy?," and I'm not sure what that means. I had trouble with the control scheme and am thus not sure that I explored every available option.

        

The armies of two wizards near each other and clash.

       

The game continues until one wizard remains. He is the victor. 

      

It was on "easy" mode.

     

Each wizard does seem to have different strengths and weaknesses in different spellcasting powers, and the summoned characters have attributes like attack, defense, ability, and magic--but these are fixed from the beginning of the game. After a winning battle, the winning wizard is discarded. He does not level up and continue on new adventures. 

     

A bat's "attributes."

        

The game strikes me as likely based on Julian Gollop's Chaos (1985), whose 1990 sequel, Lords of Chaos, had more RPG elements. Here, you don't even have a persistent character.

    

This was an odd fantasy outing for Hertfordshire-based Cult Games, whose 1986-1991 titles are almost entirely about football. (We previously saw them with SoccerStar.) None of the individuals in the credits for Arena, including programmer Tony Gould, show up in other Cult titles, so I suspect they just published it rather than developing it.

****

     

       

Explore

Canada

Independently developed; disseminated through the Toronto PET Users Group

Released 1980 for Commodore PET

Rejected for: No character development.

    

El Explorador de RPG already covered this one, and I can tell from his coverage that the game doesn't meet my definitions of an RPG. It's an adventure game in which the player explores a fixed dungeon, collecting treasures, and fighting monsters from a fixed pool of vitality. He does not improve during the short, small, all-text game.