Black Crypt: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

The box prominently featured the Ram Demon, the easiest of Estoroth's lieutenants.

              

Black Crypt

United States

Raven Software (developer); Electronic Arts (publisher)
Released 1992 for the Amiga

Date Started: 27 December 2018

Date Ended: 20 January 2019

Total Hours: 29

Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)

Final Rating: 37

Ranking at Time of Posting: 243/316 (77%)

Summary:

Black Crypt is a descendant of the Dungeon Master (1987) line. The player controls four characters of fixed classes (fighter, druid, cleric, and mage) on a quest to find four ancient artifacts necessary to defeat an ancient evil named Estoroth. Gameplay takes place across 28 levels of varying sizes, up to 40 x 40. Like its predecessors, it couples first-person, tile-based movement with fast-paced, real-time combat. Character development occurs by leveling and acquiring new spells and equipment, but (as with all games on the Dungeon Master tree) standard RPG considerations frequently take a back seat to a variety of mechanical puzzles involving buttons, switches, pressure plates, teleporters, and other navigational obstacles. Although fun, it breaks little new ground and thus offers few reasons to play it over the games that influenced it.

******

I should never underestimate my readers. I had resigned myself to putting together this final entry based on YouTube videos and had actually drafted a "Summary and Rating" without the "Won," but Zardas came through. He did a bit of surgery on my save disk and put together a save that worked out of non-corrupted parts of the disk.

Having found the four artifacts, I only had to solve a pressure plate puzzle on Level 13 to get access to the final levels, 27 and 28. The mechanical puzzles disappeared on those final levels, and they were small enough that I didn't bother to map them.

Level 27 had a couple of conflicting messages, one suggesting that Estoroth couldn't be damaged by magic, and one saying he could only be damaged with magic.
              

    
The "Reveal Truth" spell showed that the first message was the accurate one. Enemies on the two levels are completely immune to spells. That was a bit disappointing. I don't know what purpose it serves to render that aspect of character development meaningless on the final level. 

On Level 27, I had to defeat six skeletal guardians. Their magic attack was too powerful for my party to withstand more than two blasts, so I had to waltz them to death. (For new readers, the "combat waltz" is a maneuver by which you attack then quickly side-step and turn before the enemy can retaliate.) I can't see how it would be possible to beat them otherwise. All the videos I consulted online showed the players doing exactly that. I suppose I could have used two Potions of Invincibility on my front characters, but I was saving those for Estoroth.
              

These guys were so hard I couldn't stop for a screenshot without dying.

            
I can't remember if I mentioned in a previous entry that waltzing is a little harder in Black Crypt than other Dungeon Master clones, largely because the enemies don't follow a predictable pattern. You can't side-step until the enemy has already committed to turning and facing you; otherwise, he could easily go the other direction. For some players, this would mean simply adjusting their fingers and switching the direction of the waltz. For someone less manually dexterous like me, it means flailing randomly at the keys and, in a best-case scenario--running to the other side of the dungeon so I can catch my breath, settle down, and figure out a new pattern.

Once the guardians were defeated, I armed myself with the four artifacts and took a stairway down to Estoroth himself. At this point, I naturally forgot to use my Potions of Invincibility, but Estoroth was curiously easy. After I'd hit him just a few times with my melee weapons, the weapons began to sparkle. This was a sign to use their special attacks. It took a few tries to get the order right. Protector (the shield) protects the party from further damage; Soulfreezer (the staff) holds Estoroth in place; Vortex (the sword) opens a portal to another dimension; and Forcehammer (the hammer) sends him through.
           

Sending Estoroth to hell.

        
The endgame text is first a short paragraph:
           

What made this banishment of Estoroth successful permanently?

         
But afterwards, the player gets a scene-by-scene recap (about 15 scenes total) of the major game moments, including the various "boss" creatures defeated along the way: the Ogre, the Dracolich, the Medusa, the Possessor, the Ram Demon, and the Waterlord.
           

In case we had forgotten.

         
After one final concluding paragraph . . .
               

The final screen shows the Black Crypt destroyed.

            
 . . . the party has the option to reload the final save and just poke around the dungeon. There really isn't anything to do, but you can find the four ancient heroes' skulls on Level 28, plus a few high-powered items.

I had a reasonable amount of fun with Black Crypt. It's a clone, but there's nothing inherently wrong with clones. Without them, we'd have about a dozen total RPGs, and half of those would be weird one-off French titles. Clones allow you to get started without any confusion, let you settle in to familiar territory with a contented sigh. And despite the term, no "clone" is a 100% likeness. It's fun to see the different variations the developers take with a common template, like listening to a new jazz band improvise on a number you've heard a million times. Even when it's worse, it can still be interesting.

But Dungeon Master-style games face a unique challenge when it comes to this improvisation, because they're mostly about mechanics. They tend to feature framing stories--that is, stories that have few references in the game itself, and could easily be swapped with a different frame--and no NPCs. With an Ultima clone, even if the game plays the same as Ultima III or IV, you can still enjoy the new story and the variety of NPCs. Lacking such narrative options, a Dungeon Master clone has to rest all its improvisation on combat, exploration, and puzzles. That's where Black Crypt falls a little short.
            

Just like Dungeon Master, all I can tell about a weapon by looking at it is its weight. At least the door image is cool.

         

Only in its somewhat extensive ending does Black Crypt really distinguish itself from its predecessors. Oh, its graphics and sound are marginally better, but these are the things that an RPG fan--particularly a Dungeon Master fan--ought to care about least. Some of its puzzles also went in different directions, but rarely to the game's credit. More often than in Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder, I found it difficult to judge the results of various actions. I particularly didn't like the invisible pressure plates. There's little point to mechanical puzzles if you can't see the elements that make up the puzzle. 

Meanwhile, Black Crypt fixed none of the problems that I had with Dungeon Master--inability to see equipment statistics and a needless food system among them. Even worse, it went in Eye of the Beholder's direction with character development, while offering none of Beholder's improvements, such as NPCs and side quests. The magic system is done a bit differently here, although in the end I found it neither better or worse than its predecessors. For all of these reasons, I expect it to GIMLET lower than Dungeon Master or Beholder.

1. Game World. As usual, we have more of a framing story than a backstory--a fact not changed by a few call-outs within the game (mostly in the form of messages from Estoroth that you find). The plot is derivative, and like most Dungeon Master clones, there isn't much of a "world" here. But the levels are well-designed, with both textures and puzzles organized around themes specific to individual levels or small groups of levels. Score: 5.

2. Character Creation and Development. As noted, it takes a fairly major step back. You have to play four fixed classes. There are no significant choices during creation except for the portrait. Because the dungeon is linear and the number of enemies is mostly fixed, characters level at fixed intervals, and leveling doesn't really do very much for them. I vastly prefer Dungeon Master's action-based leveling, in which each character can attain various levels in all "classes," to Crypt's (and Beholder's) experience-based leveling. Score: 3.
             

Using single classes and experience-based leveling was a regression.

            

3. NPC Interaction. There are no NPCs in the game. Score: 0.

4. Encounters and Foes. There are about as many different enemies as the typical game of this genre, with about as much variety in strengths, resistances, and special attacks. Most of the monster types and portraits are original to this game (or at least not taken directly from its sources). I just wish they had names. As is my custom, I'll also use this category to throw in a couple of points for the puzzles, which serve in the place of role-playing "encounters" in this sub-genre. As above, I didn't always like them, but they were pitched at the right difficulty. Score: 5.

5. Magic and Combat. I'll never love combat that relies more on manual dexterity than attributes and tactics. Dungeon Master at least provided a variety of different types of attacks with its weapons, plus hand-to-hand combat, plus a more useful in-combat spells system, plus the ability to attack from the inventory screen, plus other useful tricks, like the ability to swing around and use the two rear characters to attack the rear. Black Crypt's only innovations are to make waltzing (and similar patterns) more difficult and to introduce a different take on the spell system. Its lack of buffing spells is also a negative. Still, it offers an arguably better experience than Eye of the Beholder, where you never got feedback on attacks, and waltzing made it possible to win with a single character. Score: 4.

6. Equipment. I liked the variety of equipment slots but almost nothing else. Looking at items offers less information than even Dungeon Master. I guess I'll give a point for some originality with the "false" messages and the ability to right-click on most weapons for a special attack. Score: 5.
           

As with most RPGs, I ended this one with plenty of unused equipment.

       

7. Economy. As usual for a Dungeon Master clone, none. Score: 0.

8. Quests. The main quest has some fun stages, with various boss creatures every two or three levels. It also offers a little nonlinearity in the order you approach Estoroth's lieutenants, but it otherwise has no choices, no alternate endings, and no role-playing. In this it under-performs its predecessors. Score: 4.

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. Some improvements here. The game is still a bit too mouse-heavy for my tastes, but at least you can customize the movement keys. I feel like there were a few more sound effects and slightly better graphics than Dungeon Master, at least, but perhaps not enough to make a difference in the score. The auto-mapping system is a nice addition, and I like how it's logically integrated with the spell system (even if it took me a while to figure out). Amiga-philes will want me to note that the game uses an enhanced graphics mode ("extra half-bright") that allows for 64 colors instead of the usual 32, but even the original 32 colors is about 24 more than I can discern. Score: 6.

10. Gameplay. It's as linear as most dungeon crawlers, but at least offers some flexibility after Level 13. Unfortunately, the fixed character classes make it less replayable than its counterparts. Otherwise, difficulty and length were both good. Score: 5.

That gives us a final score of 37, just north of my "recommended" threshold, but below the 41 I gave to Eye of the Beholder and the 47 I gave to Dungeon Master. (I must say, reviewing my Dungeon Master scores, I was a bit generous in several categories and I think it would likely rate closer to a 43 if I rated it now. I didn't have a lot of perspective during my first year.) Fans of this subgenre would argue (not entirely without a point) that perhaps it shouldn't be faulted for lacking NPCs, a dynamic game world, and an economy, since that's not what this subgenre is about. If it thus makes you feel better, you can think of it as rating closer to a 44 (and Dungeon Master closer to a 58) with those categories eliminated and the rest of the values rescaled accordingly.
            

As an Amiga game, Black Crypt was heavily promoted in Europe.

           

Computer Gaming World offered a "sneak preview" of the game in the February 1992 issue, but it never seems to have offered a review. The preview, written by Allen Greenberg, is extremely positive. Nothing he says is wrong, exactly, but he suggests that the game is better than Dungeon Master, and I find it difficult to imagine any fan of this subgenre agreeing with that. In particular, he seems too infatuated with fairly modest improvements in graphics and sound. Greenberg sets up the review by suggesting there's a war brewing between keyboarders and mousers, so I'm at least glad to see that the interface issue was heavily debated in the day. Amiga-specific magazines tended towards high scores, with .info coming in at a perfect 100 and Amiga Action giving it 93/100. Non-English Amiga magazines were, as usual, a bit more conservative, with scores in the 71-90 range.

Black Crypt was the first title from Wisconsin-based Raven Software, which still exists as a subdivision of Activision (it was sold in 1997) and is currently in charge of the Call of Duty series. The company's co founders, Brian and Steve Raffel, reportedly began outlining the game in the 1980s. They enlisted two programmers, Rick Johnson, and Ben Gokey, and had a demo ready for the 1990 Gen Con, where it was picked up for distribution by Electronic Arts. (I had originally thought that Crypt owed its lineage to Dungeon Master via Eye of the Beholder, but the game would have been mostly finished when Beholder came out.) It was the first game for almost everyone on the team.

An Amiga-only game in 1992 was bound to make a small splash in the United States, which probably explains why the company abandoned the platform for future titles. At the same time, they also mostly abandoned RPGs in favor of first-person shooters, some with light RPG elements. Whether we ever see them again on this blog depends how I rule on games like ShadowCaster (1993), Heretic (1994), Hexen (1995), Mageslayer (1997), and Hexen II (1997), all of which are on my list preliminarily. Today, the company is better known for its Soldier of Fortune (2000-2003) and Call of Duty (2010-2017) titles as well as its work on later entries in id Software's franchises including Quake 4 (2005) and Wolfenstein (2009).

Any RPG fan is going to want to read Jimmy Maher's survey of Dungeon Master descendants, published a few weeks ago. Based on his review, we only have four left (at least until a more recent surge of "retro" games): Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (1993), Dungeon Master II: Skullkeep (1993), Eye of the Beholder III (1993), and Stonekeep (1995). (And maybe Liberation: Captive II [1994]? I'm not sure if it uses the same engine and approach as Captive.) It doesn't sound like any of them are likely to outperform the original. It's too bad that this subgenre never reached a true peak before it was subsumed by real-time movement in the vein of Ultima Underworld (1992), but given its forthcoming demise, I'm not sorry that it had one decent 1992 entry.

Black Crypt: Playing it Straight

Putting on the Mask of True Sight allows me to see this disgusting foe.

           

It occurred to me recently that the two great loves of my life--jazz and CRPGs--have something in common. They both draw from a variety of templates, and the real joy in a performance is seeing how a particular band or artist has chosen to improvise on the template. (I should clarify that this is true of the type of jazz I like, anyway. It's less true of free jazz and other avant-garde styles whose appeal has always mystified me.) A new composition is always nice, of course, but it requires a depth of engagement and attention that you're not always ready to give. In contrast, you almost never mind hearing a familiar composition played in a new way.
           

That makes it all the more disappointing when you sit down for a performance and don't find anything new at all--a copy rather than an improvisation. No jazz fan wants to hear a number played entirely "straight," and no CRPG addict wants to start, say, a Dungeon Master clone just to find a literal clone. And that's largely what we have here. In its best moments, Black Crypt recalls good times playing Dungeon Master, but it offers too few variances to those moments.

             

The game has occasional moments like this to remind you of the plot, but they're few and far between.

             

I'm less than halfway through the game, and it thus might improve, but so far all Black Crypt has done is to make Dungeon Master a lot bigger; as I noted last time, it has 28 levels. I rather hoped that with so many levels, and with so much space devoted to each level (the coordinates go up to 40 x 40), Black Crypt might achieve a nonlinearity that previous games in this lineage have lacked. I thought we might see multiple ways up and down--a true three-dimensional maze rather than a steady progression of levels. Well, the game absolutely does have multiple staircases per level, but you still reach them in a somewhat fixed order. At any given moment, you rarely have more than two choices for your next move, and one of those will almost certainly resolve into a dead end.

         

I had also hoped that Black Crypt might do more with its story. As I noted last time, many of the mechanics owe more to Eye of the Beholder than to Dungeon Master, and I thus hoped the game might introduce some NPCs or in-game story development the way that Beholder did. Alas, there's been none of that so far. And I'm disappointed that the game didn't fix many of my other complaints about previous Dungeon Master-like titles, including a lack of enemy names and a lack of information on equipment.

            

The Bracers of Agility will, at least, reflect their influence in the character attributes.

            

What's left is not an unpleasant experience, just a highly-derivative one. Fortunately, it's been a while since the last Dungeon Master clone, so at least I didn't start this game exhausted with the entire sub-genre, the way I currently am with Ultima clones.

In this last session, I explored Levels 3-9 of the dungeon. I should perhaps say "partially explored," because there's a lot of unused space on each level, and it's entirely possible that some teleporter or staircase will later bring me to those unused parts. I doubt it however, mostly because the game occasionally makes a big show of loading when you transition between levels. It did this between Levels 2 and 3, between Levels 5 and 6, and between Levels 9 and 10. (In contrast, the game barely blips when you take a staircase between, say, Levels 7 and 8.) I think we can therefore regard each level "group" as a separate section of the dungeon. Indeed, as I explored Levels 3-5 and 6-9, there was a lot of interconnectedness between levels in a group--but only a single staircase between the major "group" transitions.

            

Level 3 had a "skull" theme going on.

             

Within each group, the specific level order was nonlinear (in the sense that progression didn't go in the specific order of levels; it was still a very narrow path). For instance, I couldn't explore most of Level 3 until I had a Mask of True Sight, which let me see the invisible enemies on that level. The mask was found on Level 4, but I had to make some diversions to Level 5 along the way. Among the next group, I spent only a small amount of time on Level 6 before a teleporter took me to Level 9. After a long time mapping that level, I finally went back up to Level 7, which had a lot of stairways up and down to Level 8. This interconnectedness within level groups extends to the game's puzzles. Pressing a button on Level 8 might open a wall on Level 7.
              

Regrettably, there has been nothing thematic to all of these levels. Again, I think to the Eye of the Beholder series, where you had the dwarf and Drow levels in the first game, and the clear distinction between the living quarters and basement in the second. Here, we don't even have much variation in texture--just the occasional use of a different color, as if the level was shot through a red filter or something. As a consequence, even a day after playing the majority of this session, I have to refer to my maps for reminders about the specific order in which I did things.

          

You really have to carefully study the walls for buttons.

         

If there's one thing that the game does a little better than Dungeon Master, it's perhaps greater variety in its puzzles (some true Dungeon Master fans may dispute that this is an improvement). There have been a lot of switches, buttons, and pressure plates, but none of them very complex--you just activate them, and something happens. The more memorable puzzles have involved a bit more creativity. Some examples include:

           

• A long north-south hallway of 12 squares with alternating east-west alcoves. Each alcove contained a skull. Nearby messages remarked, "A year of death counted in souls. One for each moon, four is your goal," and "February, April, July, October." It was clear that I had to regard each square in the hallway as representing a month, and to remove the skulls for the alcoves that represented February, April, July, and October. Choosing a wrong skull meant activating a trap. The order of months turned out not to go in a linear manner along the hall, but rather up one side and then down the other.

• Several magic mouths that required me to answer a question based on other messages found in the dungeon. For instance, Levels 6-9 had repeated messages about an archdruid named Oakraven (one of the four heroes from the backstory), who is buried below in a coffin of Whiteoak. Both words were answers to magic mouth riddles.

               

Getting some lore . . .

. . . and using it to answer a puzzle.

            

• On Level 4, I had to collect water from four symmetrically-placed fountains and then put those waterskins into special alcoves on Level 5. The hardest part of this mission was differentiating the "special" waterskins from the other waterskins in my possession.

• Two areas where a message said "HTCIWS" and presented me with two alcoves with different objects within them. I had to reverse the positions of the objects in the alcoves. This was harder than you might think, because the word "switch" made me think of wall switches and not "swapping" the items.

             

Solving puzzles can have a variety of effects. Locked doors might open, hidden doors might reveal themselves, wall spaces might open up, pillars might disappear, and new switches and buttons might appear on previously-blank walls. I've found that in this game, it really makes sense to map everything before touching anything, then search for the type of secret door that you can bump into, and finally try the switches and buttons, carefully noting the changes to the environment.

             

A lot of the game's puzzles involve removing pillars like this.

         

Let's talk about combat. Level 3's invisible enemies, when I wore the Mask of True Sight, turned out to be these giant grubs with teeth and claws. They're capable of inflicting poison, but fortunately there are a lot of anti-poison scrolls and potions on the level. Level 6 introduced these single-eyed things that appear to shuffle along the ceiling. Levels 8 and 9 had floating, metallic, horned heads as well as shape-changing slimes. 

             

This guy reminds me of something that I can't place.

The spellcasting version of this monster was very tough.

           

Of some annoyance is the fact that enemies in this game vary even among the same type. Some of the grubs moved faster, hit harder, had more hit points than the others. Some of the one-eyed ceiling creatures and floating heads are capable of offensive spells and some are not. These variances make it hard to find a consistent strategy.
               

One strategy that doesn't work very well is the old combat waltz. It can technically be done, and I've used it a few times to weaken a couple of enemies prior to the main onslaught, but rarely can I keep it up for the duration of an entire combat. Enemies are simply faster here than in most Dungeon Master derivations. They move faster and, more important, they turn faster. You don't have the same kind of pause between an enemy arriving in a square, turning to face you, and attacking. You really have to be prepared to fight head-on with weapons and spells. Occasionally, it's possible to enact some of the other "guerrilla" maneuvers possible with this combat engine, including "stair-scumming." Enemies that walk on the ceiling cannot pass through door frames, which offers some hit-and-run opportunities.
            

All told, though, combat is a less frequent experience with Black Crypt than with most games of this ilk. Sometimes half an hour passes without a single enemy. Character leveling is also a bit under-emphasized. My characters are all Level 7 currently, but that doesn't mean much more than more hit points. Spells are learned by finding books, not leveling (although level does affect spell power). There are a few pressure plates that cause enemies to spawn, in case I ever feel like I need to grind.

Miscellaneous notes:

          

• A lot of the mechanical puzzles are about lowering pillars that otherwise block hallways. This is slightly original, although when you think about it, there's little difference between a pillar and a door.

• Wow has the clicking-on-the-portrait-instead-of-the-weapon thing been a problem. I screw it up almost every time I'm fighting a new combat for the first time in, say, five minutes or more.

• Another interface annoyance: the function keys are in a non-obvious order. F1 and F2 activate the upper-left and upper-right characters, which makes sense. But F3 activates the lower-right and F4 activates the lower-left. There's a logic by which this makes sense, I guess, but it's still a bit unintuitive.

• When a character dies, in addition to all his equipment, he drops a "death gem." You need the gem to later perform a resurrection on him. The dungeon is strewn with the death gems of previous adventurers. The manual makes a point of saying that you can't resurrect the owners of these gems, but I wonder if there's any reason to collect them anyway. I have been, just in case.

           

A death gem next to a note from the adventurer who left it.

         

• The thieves from Level 3 (discussed last time) did end up dropping the stolen items when I finally tracked them down and killed them.

• The party frequently comes across glyphs (which activate traps when stepped on) and corridors blocked by force fields. These are removed with the "Remove Glyph" and "Dispel Magic" spells, accordingly, but sometimes the character level isn't high enough to cast strong enough spells. In those cases, you have to find scrolls with the same spells, with the scrolls encoded at a higher level.

            

My regular "Remove Glyph" didn't work here, but this scroll, encoded at the 15th level, will have no problem.

            

• The game is effective in its use of sound. Every enemy has an attack sound and a separate movement sound. The movement sounds help you determine how close an enemy is, and it can be freaky when you hear it unprepared.

• There was a large area of dark squares on Level 9. Dark squares are brightened with the "Light" spell, but the spell has a very short duration.

• The cleric's "Create Food" spell and the frequent appearance of fountains makes food, water, and rest less of a problem than they could otherwise be. It still annoys me that characters start taking damage from hunger and thirst when the meter has plenty of room to go. My general practice is that every time I find a fountain, I first rest to restore my fatigue meter, then cast "Create Food" and give everyone a meal, then drink water until I can't drink anymore. These occasional interludes generally keep the party happy.

• Level sizes have been extremely variable. Levels 3, 4, and 9 all used between 300 and 600 squares, but Level 8 only used 56 squares, and Level 5 only used 29. 

            

Level 8 was kind of like the unfinished basement of Level 7. Maybe more of these squares will get used later.

         

Black Crypt gives slightly more equipment feedback than its cousins, although not much more. I'm carrying a long sword +1, a "Hopeblade," an "Ogre Blade," and a blade called "Frost Razer," and I can't tell you which is the best among them, or by how much. However, there are little squares beneath each character portrait that provide some feedback on any magical effects an equipped item is conferring, such as fire resistance, cold resistance, magic shield, and water breathing. But these don't seem to tell the full story. For instance, my fighter has a helm called "Mage Bane" which has to have some anti-magic effects or some effects against mages, right? Not in any way that you can tell from looking at it or wearing it.

           

Arriving on Level 10. This game is really fond of one-eyed things.

          

As I close, I've just arrived on Level 10 and have encountered a bunch of little one-eyed spiders. There's still a lot of room for the game to introduce some plot and non-linearity, and I really hope it takes advantage of these options before the end. 

Time so far: 9 hours

            
*****

             
I haven't made zero progress with The Seventh Link, but there hasn't been enough to blog about. It's an extremely frustrating game. Simple math explains much of the reason: to explore the opening castle fully, I need about 1,200 gold pieces in keys. I might earn an average of 15 gold pieces per random combat. It takes me roughly 7 minutes to find and fight each combat, which I only have a 50% chance of winning, so we're looking at (1200/15) * (7/0.5) / 60 = 18.67 hours before I can even explore the castle, not including the money I need to replenish all the food I waste in the meantime, nor all the time it takes me to trek to the fountain under the castle to replenish spell points. I found a dungeon, but it turns out that exploring it at my level is not an option. I don't even know how to level up. The documentation suggests I ought to be able to do it at the mage's guild, but there doesn't seem to be any option there.
            

Hopefully, I'll get over a hump eventually and the entire game won't be like this, but overall Link needed to be more generous with its resources. Any game needs at least one generous resource to make progress manageable. If there was no need for food, for instance, or if chests respawned in dungeons (the way they do in the Ultima series), or enemies carried more gold, any of these options would loosen the formula a bit and allow some progress.

              

My mage and his new thief companion approach a dungeon door.

           

I did manage to find a second NPC to join the party, so perhaps things will move along a bit faster now. Otherwise, I'll probably have to add a third game to the rotation.

Game 313: Black Crypt (1992)

           

Black Crypt

United States

Raven Software (developer); Electronic Arts (publisher)

Released in 1992 for Amiga

Date Started: 27 December 2018

Games of the Dungeon Master variety will never be my favorite of the CRPG subgenres. I like my RPGs to have meaningful NPC interactions, economies, more role-playing options, and less linearity. I prefer creative puzzles requiring some lateral thinking to purely mechanical puzzles. I want immersive stories rather than framing stories. If you've been with me through Dungeon Master, Chaos Strikes Back, Bloodwych, Captive, and the Eye of the Beholder series, you've heard all of my complaints before.

On the other hand, Dungeon Master clones rarely offer a bad experience. They particularly satisfy my need to map. And they do one thing very well--something that fewer of the Wizardry or Bard's Tale variants do, even into the early 1990s: they actually show enemies in the environment.

It's weird to think how long it took this feature to appear. You forgive its absence in Wizardry, when CRPGs were new and games had to ship on a single floppy. You got used to just stumbling on enemy parties while exploring featureless corridors. But as the years go by and the subsequent lineage of games--The Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, the entire Gold Box series--fails to give you any environmental indication of upcoming combats, it becomes less and less forgivable. I'm not looking for these games to adopt Dungeon Master's real-time combat system--just to show me when a party of dragons is 10 feet away. Fortunately, Might and Magic III and Fate: Gates of Dawn finally united the lineages in 1991, and actually being able to see your foes became the norm thereafter.

Black Crypt is a decent game in the Dungeon Master line. It preserves most of the things people like about Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder (it seems to draw primarily from the latter) and introduces a few new innovations besides. I'm curious what a true Dungeon Master fan thinks of it. I could see preferring Dungeon Master's action-based leveling systems to Crypt's reliance on more traditional experience points, and Crypt's spellbook-based magic is less creative than Dungeon Master's rune system. I'm enjoying it about as much as I enjoyed Dungeon Master the first time, but I suspect I'd enjoy a replay of Dungeon Master a little more than this.

         

A bit of opening narration explains why we find equipment everywhere.

        

The framing story, written as an eight-page novelette, hardly breaks any new ground. Estoroth Paingiver, a former student of the Cleric's Guild, went evil, raised abominations, summoned demons, et cetera, and attacked the land of Astera. (Hypothetical dialogue among the Cleric's Guild faculty: "Hey, do you suppose that 'Paingiver' fellow is going to be bad news?") Astera's four guilds united to face the threat and succeeded in banishing Estoroth to another dimension, but the guilds' four champions died in the process. The Black Crypt was raised to inter their bodies and enchanted weapons. Now, Estoroth seems to be in the process of tearing his way back through the dimensional barrier, so four new champions are needed to enter the Crypt and retrieve the magic weapons.

           

Creating the four characters.

          

The player creates four characters: a fighter, a cleric, a magician, and a druid. A pool of excess points is allocated among strength, intelligence, dexterity, wisdom, and constitution. Names and portraits are chosen. Although some of the portraits are bestial or supernatural, they don't seem to have any impact on gameplay. The process is quick, and the player finds himself on Level 1 of the starting dungeon within a few minutes. Each character begins with a melee weapon suitable to his profession and a little bit of food.

         

Starting out. Right away, we find a shield and some food.

      

In defiance of any sensible rules of capitalism, the creators included 30 "cluebook" pages in the game manual. Each dungeon level is fully detailed. I'm avoiding these pages, naturally, but I glanced at them long enough to see that the Black Crypt is a whopping 28 levels, the largest occupying coordinates up to 40 x 40. Fortunately, there are a lot of small levels, too. The game adopts the "worm tunnel" approach to mapping (meaning that there's at least one square of "dead space" between adjacent walls), which also functionally shrinks the maps. Still, it's a big game.

          

Level 1 goes up to 26 x 21 but doesn't use anywhere near all those tiles.

        

The controls are okay. The game's primary strength is allowing you to map your own movement options. This is the first time I remember such a setting appearing, and I'm grateful for it. When you have to play with one hand on the keyboard and the other on the mouse, neither arrow keys nor the numberpad make for a comfortable configuration. I re-mapped movement to WASD, which works a lot better. But aside from this customization and the use of F1-F4 to swap between character inventories, there's no use of the keyboard. There are little annoyances like being able to enter a character's inventory with F1 but then having to right-click to get back out, or being able to enter the disk menu with ESC but then having to click on the appropriate option to leave. There are still no keyboard options for executing attacks, which is something I'm always hoping for in Dungeon Master games.

One particular issue is going to dog me until late in the game and then probably screw me up for the next Dungeon Master-style game. The creators made it so you click on the character portrait to execute the primary attack rather than the weapon. Since Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, and just about every other game does it the other way, I'm constantly clicking on weapons, which takes them out of the inventory slot so you can drop or trade them.

On the positive side, the inventory screens are well-organized. The lower-left corner has options for various containers: a backpack, a small chest, a large chest, a bag, and a quiver. You populate these spaces as you find the containers, then click on them to view their inventories. For wearable items, there are three screens, toggled by clicking the torso in the upper-right corner. The first has items of clothing, the second wearables like rings and belts, and the third the actual armor.

            

I face a locked door as I look at my fighter's inventory. He has a chest, a backpack, and a bag. I have the chest open, and I'm looking at the armor screen that shows the outer armor.

          

There's a food and water system, and I suspect it's going to be an annoyance until the cleric gets "Create Food." The mechanic really doesn't accomplish anything except impart a sense of urgency. If you want to explore carefully, you have to make a save, do your exploration and mapping, and then reload and cover the level faster, "for real." But it's worse than that because there's only one meter to track both food and water, but the game clearly considers them separately in non-visible statistics. When you find a fountain, you can't just gorge yourself on free water until the meter returns to its maximum because you need food, too. And if you don't eat but only drink, the characters will start losing points for hunger even though the meter is nowhere near the bottom.

The first couple of levels were moderately-sized, going into the 20s on both axes. Combats were infrequent--maybe 15 enemies total on the two levels--and there were really only two types of enemies: giant worms, and giant worms capable of casting some kind of "Magic Missile"-like spell. Many of the classic Dungeon Master tricks work here, including attacking and then darting away before the enemy can respond, backpedaling down a corridor as you fire missile weapons, "waltzing," and so forth. The famous "combat waltz" itself (check the glossary) seems a little harder here, it might just be a matter of getting used to a new game's timing. Crypt keeps one annoying characteristic of Eye of the Beholder in which once an enemy casts a spell, you're frozen until the animation completes.

            

The animation for the worms has them opening and closing their mouths. I only ever got screenshots when their maws were closed.

         

What you can't do--and this was a serious shock--is smash enemies in doors. That's such a longstanding trait of Dungeon Master-style games that not including it borders on sacrilegious. I'm not sure if enemies can fall victim to other environmental effects or not. I haven't encountered any others yet.

Killing enemies rewards you with traditional experience points, and levels increase automatically. I got to Level 4 on the first two levels. Leveling increases hit points and spell power, but otherwise there aren't any choices. Attributes are increased by occasionally finding items that do so.

          

My druid levels up.

         

Each spellcaster comes with Level 1 spells for their classes. Further levels must be found in spellbooks; you don't get them upon leveling up. There are only 5 levels and only 4 spells per level. You can "prepare" up to four spells and then cast them by clicking on them in the slate. I find the system a bit easier than both Dungeon Master, where you had to remember runes in the middle of combat, and Eye of the Beholder, where you had to fiddle around with that little book. You also frequently find scrolls with multiple spells that can be cast in lieu of learning them.

Among the first two levels, I experienced a variety of navigation puzzles and other mechanisms that I'm sure will last throughout the game. These include:

         

• "Alcoves" with treasure stashed in them. These go back to Dungeon Master. Items can appear on the floor, too.

           

I apparently found the Ogreblade here.

         

• Messages in plaques on the wall. Some can only be read after the druid casts "Read Rune."

• Scrolls that give you hints. But some of them are "false scrolls" and should be ignored. You can reveal these by casting the cleric's "Reveal Truth," which causes false scrolls to dissolve. 

         

This turned out to be a "false" scroll, but I think I could have figured that out.

         

• Locked doors that only open with certain keys.

• Pressure plates that open walls.

• Spinners. There's an obvious "transition" animation when you step on them, though, so it's hard to get fooled.

• Force fields that require you to cast "Dispel" to pass them. You don't have this spell at the outset, so you have to rely on found scrolls.

• Teleporters. They also have a clear "transition" animation.

• Buttons or switches that open secret doors or make pillars disappear.

• Buttons or switches that activate teleporters

• Buttons or switches that change the destinations of teleporters.

          

It's hard to tell what this will do.

        

• Holes in the floor. Falling through them takes you to a lower level and causes damage.

• One-way walls.

• "Glyphs" in the middle of corridors that serve as traps. You have to cast "Remove Trap" on them.

          

Dispelling a glyph trap with a scroll.

          

• Walls that open and close on a cycle.

• Doors that won't open until you pass a copy-protection exercise.

          

The "copy protection" riddle breaks the illusion a bit.

         

The second level had a two-headed ogre who is impossible to defeat with regular weapons (they don't even hit him). A message on the first level warns you about him: "The one below is his own twin. Only a magic blade will pierce his skin." This refers to an "Ogreblade" on the first level, though you have to get there via a teleporter on the second. (A "false" scroll warns you not to pick up the Ogreblade.) Until you find it, exploring the second level is tough because the ogre is constantly chasing you and pounding you to goo every time you pause for a few seconds. Once you have the sword, it doesn't take long to kill him, and he drops the key necessary for the next level.

         

The ogre kills us as we try to crush him in the door. Apparently, you can't do that in this game.

        

Miscellaneous notes:

             

• The opening theme, which you can hear at the beginning of this video, is catchy. I found myself chair-dancing to it. It's credited to Ken Schilder, who stayed with Raven and is credited on a couple dozen other titles. But it always surprises me that composers so often went with rock and techno themes for title music, when an older style would better fit the setting. There's a "special topics" post in here some day.

• The fighter has an ability, activated by clicking on his "glyph" in the inventory screen, that tells your current coordinates. The glyphs are otherwise used to activate class-specific objects.

           

Checking my position.

         

• A lot of the game's messages are delivered as scrolling text at the bottom. It's annoying and hard to screen-capture.

• The manual brags about making use of the Amiga's "halfbrite" mode that apparently allows for more colors than normal. The Wikipedia page on the mode shows two photographs, and they look exactly the same to me. This is why I don't talk about graphics that much.

• A trait that I wish the game hadn't adopted from its predecessors: I have no idea about the relative damage on different weapons. On the first two levels alone, I'm juggling hammers, warhammers, axes, and swords. Should I keep the Ogreblade--is it effective against non-ogres?--or dump it for a more conventional weapon? No clue. If the cluebook had that information, I wouldn't be able to help but look at it.

• There's an auto-map, available with the magic user's "Wizard Sight," but it shows so little detail that I can't imagine not making my own maps.

            

Level 3 is patrolled by invisible enemies and a (true) scroll on the level warns you not to try to engage them until you've found the "Mask of True Sight" on a lower level. (A false scroll on the same level encourages you to attack the unseen enemies after removing all of your weapons and clothing.) Other than a couple of other locked doors, there wasn't anything to do on the level, so I pressed on to Level 4.

         

This message wasn't kidding.

         

Remember the annoying gigglers in Dungeon Master? Well, Level 4 of this game has similar creatures who steal your stuff. Worse, they teleport away after stealing it, so you can't chase them. I hope they turn up later in the level, or I'm out of shields.

           

Level 4 also has these monsters that walk on the ceiling.

          

In the end, I suspect I'm going to find that the game is too long and too confining. I mean this not just in terms of physical space but also in character development. To require that the player have four specific classes and offer so few options in both creation and development largely means that every player arrives at the same place with essentially the same party. But for now, it's fun enough, and with a dungeon crawler, you don't waste a lot of time puzzling over your next move. It's always the next unexplored square.

Time so far: 3 hours