Adventureland: Victory!

As of my last post I had gotten a bit stuck in Adventureland, but it turns out that the puzzles I was having trouble with weren't so difficult at all.  To recap the puzzles I had yet to solve:

1) The sleeping dragon, which is the first puzzle you will encounter in the game.  It will probably be the last one you solve, which is a structure that I often enjoy.

2) The bees.  As I mentioned in the last post, I can capture the bees in a jar, but they suffocate and die when I try to leave the room.

3) Getting the mirror without using the honey.  The magic mirror is guarded by a bear, and you can make the bear go to sleep by feeding it the honey.  As I suspected, the honey is one of the treasures needed to finish the game, and this is not the correct solution to this puzzle.

4) The lava flow at the bottom of the maze.  Obviously there's something inside it, but it's too hot for me to approach.

Okay then, let's tackle each of these one by one.

The Bear: The bear is found on a ledge over a chasm, guarding a magic mirror.

I was able to solve this without resorting to a walk-through, but in order to solve it I needed to fail it first.  The hint I needed came from the magic mirror.  I had mentioned in my last post that when I dropped the magic mirror on the persian rug, it gave me a hint: "DRAGON STING".  Later I tried it again, and it gave me an entirely different hint: "Don't waste honey, get mad instead! Dam lava!?"

This provided me with help for two of the puzzles I was stuck on, but for the moment I'll stick with the bear puzzle.  I restarted the game (with some minor grumbling), and played my way back to the bear.  With the clue being to "get mad", I tried typing YELL.

Success!  I had claimed the mirror without losing the honey, though I have to call foul on this puzzle.  While it's not impossible to solve without failing it first, it's not exactly obvious either.  The only way to really do it is to start trying random stuff, and see what works.  I'll give it props for leading in to my favourite joke in the game though.

That "slightly woozy bear" gets me every time.  I suppose he's lucky that he didn't land in the lava.

The Lava: Speaking of the lava, I was able to solve that dilemma with the other half of the clue I mentioned above.  Using some bricks from a wall I blew up earlier in the game, and the command DAM LAVA, I was able to stop the lava flow.  This revealed a glowing Firestone, which was initially too hot for me to pick up.  Pouring water on it cooled it down, and I was able to claim my twelfth treasure.

The Bees: This puzzle was easier to solve than I had thought.  I'd previously thought that the bees died as soon as I left the room, but it turns out that the length of time they survive is variable.  It was enough time that I could use my magic rug to teleport to the dragon, which is where the bees come in useful.  Oh yeah, remember to drop the mud before going to the dragon.  You need the mud to survive the bees, but it makes the dragon wake up and kill you.

The Dragon: With some living bees in my possession, this was a simple matter of typing RELEASE BEES.

I say simple, but if I'm being honest this is the most frustrating past of the game.  Forget the mud when you go to get the bees, and you're dead.  Forget to drop the mud, and the dragon kills you.  Sometimes the mud dries and falls off you before you get to the bees.  Sometimes the bees die before you can get them to the dragon.  All of these factors combine to make what can be an intensely irritating experience.  Generally I'm against random factors in adventure games, and this one of those puzzles that suffers from it.

As you can see from the screen shot, the dragon flies away to reveal some eggs, which are the final treasure.  All I had to do was take my ill-gotten gains to the room below the tree stump, drop them all on the floor, and say SCORE.

Underwhelming, isn't it?  I'm not sure what I expected from a game of this vintage, but this is probably the most disappointing end game screen of the games I've played so far.  But, I have finished it, and that means it's time for a final rating.

FINAL RATING:

A Final Rating, you say?   Yeah, I know, I haven't given ratings to any of the previous games I've blogged.  I was reluctant to do so, given that I'm playing games from very different genres.  But I've been reading a lot of The CRPG Addict, and The Adventure Gamer, and I decided to jump on their bandwagon.  Besides, there's something fun about giving hard ratings to games, and comparing them against each other.  At the very least, it's bound to make someone angry.

As I said, though, I have to rate both CRPGs and adventure games, genres with very different play-styles.  The rating system I've developed is, by necessity, a bit more generalised than those used at CRPG Addict and Adventure Gamer.  I'm rating games in seven categories: Story & Setting, NPCs & Monsters, Challenge, Aesthetics, Mechanics, Innovation and Fun.  Each of these categories is scored out of 7, which is a lovely mythological number, and also has the added benefit of having an exact mid-point.  I'll also award a bonus point based on whether I still feel like playing the game after I've completed it.  This gives me a potential top score of 50, and I'm going to double it just so I an satisfy my obsessive-compulsive desire to make it a score out of 100.

Story & Setting: The story for Adventureland is barely there.  There are thirteen treasures, and for reasons unknown (though we can assume pure greed) the protagonist is out to collect them all.  There's no background, and very little in the game to give it context.  I understand that the technical limitations of the TRS-80 would necessitate this lack of detail, but could it have hurt to throw a little something into the manual?

The setting isn't overly large, and it's similarly low on detail and description.  The text sticks solely to the items and scenery that are important, and leaves out extraneous details.  This makes the puzzles a lot easier to solve, but it doesn't do a lot for the game's atmosphere.  The areas above-ground feel particularly disjointed, with the protagonist moving from meadow to swamp to lake to quicksand with no transitional areas between.  Again, it's a deficiency born of technical limitations, but I can only rate what's there.  Rating: 1.

Characters & Monsters:  Adventureland doesn't have a lot of characters to meaningfully interact with, but there are a few monsters around.  Let's see, there's the sleeping dragon, the chiggers, the bees, and the bear.  It's not a lot, though I do have to give it props for the ability to blow up the dragon, and the bit with the woozy bear.  Rating: 1.

Aesthetics: This category covers the game's graphics, sound and general atmosphere.  Adventureland, being a text adventure with no sound, is not going to score very highly, though I'm willing to stretch higher for text adventures with particularly evocative descriptions.  Adventureland is not that game.  Rating: 1.

Mechanics: This category measures how well the game functions.  For RPGs, that will include things like character creation and combat.  For text adventures, it will include how well the parser works.  Adventureland has a simple two word parser, and only recognises the first three letters of any word.  (This has resulted in amusing situations, such as SCREW BEAR working to startle it from the ledge, as opposed to SCREAM BEAR.)  That said, the basic nature of the parser puts a limit on the number of actions you might think to try, and I found that I was rarely in a situation where I was searching for the exact phrasing needed to solve a puzzle.  I also came to like the split-window interface (with my input in the lower window and the room description at the top) the more I played it.  Having the room description visible at all times is really very handy.

I thought about knocking the game down a point for its random elements, but on further thought they're not so bad.  They're restricted to the mud and the suffocating bees, and really only affect one puzzle, so I'm going to be generous.  Rating: 4.

Challenge: This is a good game for text adventure beginners.  The puzzles aren't overly difficult, and the game is full of clues in the form of signs and the magic mirror, not to mention the HELP command which can be used if you get stuck.  There's only one puzzle that I thought was unfair, and that's the bear.  Even so, that one gives you a clue after you fail.  This makes for a mildly challenging game.  Rating: 4.

(A note about the above rating.  It's not so much about rating how difficult a game is, but rather how well-balanced it is.  A super-hard game won't necessarily score a 10, and a super-easy game won't always score a 1.  Indeed, games that are too easy or too hard will no doubt get low scores here.  Games that are challenging without becoming frustrating will score high.)

Innovation & Influence: Adventureland is the first ever text adventure game on a home computer, so I have to give it a high score here.  It's very derivative of Colossal Cave Adventure however, so it loses points for that.  Rating: 6.

Fun: And now, the most subjective rating of them all: how much fun did I have playing this game?  Adventureland was a mild distraction.  I enjoyed it, but it was short, and it didn't have a lot of jokes (I like text adventures that have a sense of humour).  I'll bump it up a point for the ability to blow up the dragon.  Rating: 4.

I didn't award the bonus point for Adventureland, as I doubt I'll ever play it again.  The above scores add up to 21, which gives me a final rating of 42 out of 100.  That seems a bit high, but it did score very highly for innovation, and given its limitations it achieves its goals quite well.

FINAL RATING: 42 out of 100.

I'm going to go back and rate the other games I've finished; expect that to be done within the next few weeks.  Then I can set about making a leader board, and give you the definitive, not to be questioned rankings of every significant CRPG and adventure game.

ADDENDUM:

Somewhat later in this blog I made the decision to overhaul my Final Rating system, so I'm going back through and fixing all of the games I've already played as of March 2020.  I've ditched the Innovation and Influence category, and replaced it for adventure games with a category for Puzzles.  I've also changed the purpose of the bonus points, saving them for games that are important, innovative, influential, or have features that are otherwise not covered by my other categories.

Also, the Final Rating is a boring name.  The CRPG Addict has his GIMLET.  The Adventure Gamers have their PISSED rating.  Data Driven Gamer has his harpoons.  So I'm ditching the generic name and calling my new system the RADNESS Index: the Righteous Admirability Designation, Numerically Estimating Seven Scores. It's a pretentious mouthful, but I'm going with it.

Puzzles: The puzzles to this game are a mild challenge, and pretty much all of them play fair. There are hints via the magic mirror, and a HELP command for when you get stuck.  The only really obtuse puzzle was the bear.  I'm also tempted to ding this for the randomness of the bees; failure by random chance in an adventure game is usually bad design, and it's one of the few genuine black marks on this game.  Overall, though, this does impressively despite its limitations.  Rating: 3 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 1. It's the first Scott Adams game, and the earliest significant adventure game on a home computer.

Adventureland's RADNESS Index is 37.  That puts it fourth so far, just one point below Colossal Cave Adventure.  I think that's fair actually.  It's a smaller tighter game, with fewer bugs and loose ends, and puzzles that play a little fairer.

NEXT: Beneath Apple Manor!

Game 7: Adventureland (1978)

Adventureland, programmed by Scott Adams and originally released for the TRS-80 microcomputer, is a milestone on a number of levels.  It's the first ever text adventure released for a home computer (and may very well be the second text adventure ever created).  It's the first game commercially released by Scott Adams, a significant figure in early game design.  And, perhaps most importantly for this blog, it's the first game I'm playing that wasn't designed for a mainframe.  I still have a few games designed for the PLATO system to get through (including Moria and The Game of Dungeons v8.0, both of which I am in the middle of), but I feel with this game that I've turned a corner.  Games designed for home computers should be shorter than those on mainframes, so maybe now I can start getting through my list a little faster.

Before I get into Adventureland proper, I should probably write a bit about Scott Adams.  Adams was one of the pioneers of gaming in the late 1970s.  As I mentioned before, Adventureland is the first ever text adventure designed for a home computer, and even if it turns out to be terrible it's still significant.  He designed a total of eighteen text adventure games between 1978 and 1984, all published through his own company, Adventure International.  Despite his pioneering work, I've often seen Adams disparaged by fans of the genre.  I've played a few of his later efforts (most notably the baffling Incredible Hulk game from the Questprobe series), and found them to be a bit crude in comparison to their contemporaries.  Hopefully Adventureland and his other early efforts will hold up better.

Adventureland was released on a lot of different platforms, but I opted to go with a TRS-80 emulator in order to get the most authentic experience.  It was rereleased in 1982 with added graphics, but I've decided not to play that version.  That's probably a stupid idea for a blog that relies on images, but I'm sticking with it.  I want to play the game as it was in 1978, or as close as I can possibly get to that experience.

The plot of Adventureland is basic to the point of nonexistence: there are thirteen lost treasures, and you have to find them all and return them to a safe location.  No reason is given for why the hero is looking for these treasures, or how they got lost, or what they are.  It's just the objective of the game, and that's that.  It's the exact same plot as Colossal Cave Adventure, and you'll discover as this article progresses that this game owes a heavy debt to its predecessor.

One thing unique to Adventureland, however, is it's screen layout.  The screen is split into two text windows.  The window at the top displays the area descriptions, and the objects that can be seen, while the bottom window displays the results of your actions.  I found this disorienting at first, but after playing for a short time I became accustomed to it.  It's not what I'm used to from text adventures, but it works well enough, and it's nice to always have the relevant room details in sight.

One thing I quickly noticed about the game is that it's parser feels a little less sophisticated than the one in Colossal Cave Adventure.  This is to be expected, I suppose, as home computers were at that time far less powerful than the PDP-10 mainframe that Colossal Cave Adventure was designed for.  Adventureland only accepts two-word commands, and only recognises the first three letters of any word.  It feels limiting, and frustrating in a way that any fan of old-school text adventure games will be familiar with.

That said, the sense of relief I feel to be playing this game instead of Moria is palpable.  There's stuff in this game.  There are things.  Stuff and things I can interact with.  Sure, the interaction is crude, but it's there nevertheless.  I'll run down some of the things I've discovered, and the puzzles I've solved so far.

• The game begins in a forest, with some wilderness areas surrounding it and a small underground dungeon.  The setting has a sort of generic fantasy/fairy tale vibe.  I'm pretty sure that I've mapped out most of the game, and so far I've visited a mere 28 separate locations.  It's not a large game, and the detail is sparse.  It lacks much of the character and sense of place that Colossal Cave Adventure had.  That's probably due to technical limitations, and the fact that Colossal Cave Adventure was based on a real cave system.  Adams does pretty well here, crafting a number of interesting locations to visit, but it's all a bit disjointed.
• The first thing I encountered was a sleeping dragon, but I haven't been able to wake it up without being killed.  It wakes up if you enter the area carrying mud from the swamp, and kills you with fire. I've also been able to blow it up with swamp gas, but that didn't seem all that helpful.

• The first puzzle I solved involved retrieving one of the treasures from out of a pool of quicksand: a statue of a blue ox.  Getting the ox is easy enough, but you can't leave the quicksand while carrying any item.  To get the ox statue out of the quicksand you need to be carrying an axe with the word BUNYON carved on it.  (The axe is found in a pool just south of the quicksand.)  Saying that word while carrying the axe and the ox will transport both items to an area marked as "Paul's Place".  It's not that difficult to figure out, though a knowledge of the legend of Paul Bunyan certainly helps.  Being Australian I'm only vaguely familiar with the story, but it was enough to put me on the right track.
• Getting out of the quicksand isn't as easy as typing a direction.  You need to SWIM, which takes you to a nearby lake, but you can't do so while carrying any item.  Getting stuck in the quicksand with any item other than the ox and the axe is a bad idea, as you'll have to drop them in the quicksand to get out again.  If you do this the items dropped are gone forever, so you might as well restart.
• In the lake is a Golden Fish, one of the thirteen treasures.  I'm able to catch it with a Golden Net I found in the dungeon, but it dries up and dies if you're not also carrying a bottle of water.
• I had some trouble getting into the underground dungeon.  I figured out that you need to chop down the cypress tree in the swamp, and climb down the hollow stump, but I wasn't able to unlock the door at the bottom.  It turns out that you need to climb the cypress before cutting it down, so that you can find the skeleton keys.  If you cut down the tree first the keys vanish into the swamp, and the game becomes unwinnable.  The game does give you a message that something has fallen into the swamp, though, so at least it's playing somewhat fair.
• The swamp is home to creatures called "Chiggers" (which is a word that I'm somewhat uncomfortable typing).  Occasionally the Chiggers will bite you, but the bites are easily cured by taking mud from the swamp.  I'm not sure if the Chiggers are needed to solve any puzzles, but I do rather enjoy picking them up and dropping them in the quicksand.
• I've found some Royal Honey, which is one of the 13 treasures, but it's guarded by north african bees.  When I first tried to take the honey the bees stung me to death, but later on I figured out that the bees don't attack me if I have the mud from the swamp.  Even later I tried taking the bees themselves, and you can do so if you have en empty jar.  Unfortunately, the bees instantly suffocate when you leave the room, so I'm a bit stuck with this one.
• There's a weird bit where you wander into the memory chip of a computer.  There's nothing to interact with in this area, and I suspect that it's just a bit of programmer's humour.  Not that it's very funny, but it is memorably strange.

• There's a maze in the dungeon, though thankfully it's not composed of "twisty passages, all alike".  This maze is dead simple, because it only has six areas, and they're distinct enough that you always know which one you're in.  I panicked a little when I first wandered in, but it wasn't as harrowing an experience as I was expecting.
• I found a Persian Rug in the maze, and a sign saying that the magic word was AWAY.  I've worked out that, by carrying the rug and saying AWAY, I can teleport between the sleeping dragon to the bottom of the maze.  Indeed, this seems to be the only way to escape the maze at all, and it's a very handy navigation tool. 
• I've managed to blow a hole in a bricked up window by igniting swamp gas.  Beyond it is a bear guarding a magic mirror, and I'm not sure if I've solved this puzzle correctly. The bear goes to sleep if you give it some honey, but the royal honey is one of the treasures needed to complete the game.  I feel like there should be another solution.  (It's not the axe.  If you throw it, the bear dodges and the mirror gets smashed.)
• Dropping the Magic Mirror causes it to smash.  In order to drop it safely, you need to first drop the Persian Rug.  When you do so, the Mirror flashes and gives you the following message: DRAGON STING.  Obviously this is related to waking the dragon, but I'm not sure exactly how.  It may have something to do with the bees, but as I said I'm having trouble keeping them alive in my bottle.
• There's a lava flow at the bottom of the maze, and there appears to an object hidden within it.  It's too hot to do anything with, though, so I'm stuck for now.
• The game has a lamp, which is required for exploring underground without falling and breaking your neck.  It runs out after a time, like the one in Colossal Cave Adventure.  If you rub the lamp while it's turned off (it's too hot to rub when lit), a genie appears and gives you a diamond ring.  Rub it again, and the genie leaves a diamond bracelet.  Rub it again, and it kills you for being too greedy.
• Sometimes when you die, you go immediately to Hell, and the game is over.  Sometimes, you find yourself in Limbo, with a chance to choose a direction and return to the game if you pick correctly.
• So far I've been able to claim the following treasures: a Golden Net, a Golden Fish, a Pot of Rubies, a Jeweled Fruit, a Persian Rug, a statue of a Blue Ox, a Diamond Ring, a Diamond Bracelet, some Royal Honey, a Crown, and the Magic Mirror.  So far that means I've found 11 of the 13 items required.  I suspect there's another in the lava, and that the dragon is guarding one, but otherwise I have no idea.  I've also had to sacrifice the Honey to claim the Mirror, which doesn't seem right.

With the majority of the treasures claimed, and only a few unsolved puzzles, I feel like I'm just about done with this game.  I haven't had to resort to a walkthrough either, something that I needed for Colossal Cave Adventure.  So far I'm having fun, and it's refreshing to be playing a game that feels short.  The end is in sight, and that's fine by me.

The Game of Dungeons v8 and Moria: Impasse

It appears that I've reached something of an impasse in regards to Moria and The Game of Dungeons.

Not that I've stopped playing them.  On the contrary, I'm progressing slowly but surely through both.  The problem is this: all of these PLATO games are incredibly front-loaded.  There's no plot progression, little in the way of interesting new places to explore, and no features that become available as you advance.  The games are what they are from the very beginning, and they don't change all that much as you progress.

Needless to say, this is a problem for a blogger trying to maintain a weekly schedule.  I've tried to have two games on the go at once to make sure that I'd always have something to write about, but currently I'm tapped out on both.  I've milked them dry.

So I'm probably going to abandon Moria for the time being, and focus my PLATO-time on finishing The Game of Dungeons (it doesn't feel like as much of a futile slog).  In the meantime, I'll move on to the next game on my list.  If I follow my list strictly chronologically, the next game is Oubliette, but that's another PLATO game.  I don't want to get bogged down in a third one of those.  There's also DND, written by Daniel Lawrence for the PDP-10 mainframe, but that seems to have been a port of The Game of Dungeons.  It got reworked and released as Telengard in 1982, so I'll pick up that thread when I come to it.

Given that I'm kind of burned out on these prehistoric RPGs, I think it's time to pick up another text adventure.  I have Adventureland on the list for 1978.  I see that it's the first text adventure game for microcomputers, and the first game from Scott Adams, so it seems like the perfect game to play next.

The Game of Dungeons v8: Widening My Scope

After a few weeks of focusing on one dungeon, trying to explore as deeply as possible, and dying repeatedly, I've changed tactics.  The Game of Dungeons has three dungeons, after all: Whisenwood, the Tomb of Doom, and the Caverns.  I've decided to broaden my focus, and explore all three dungeons in parallel.

This is working pretty well so far.  None of the three dungeons is more dangerous than the others, so there's no reason to avoid any of them.  After exploring the top levels of all three dungeons (and doing a decent amount of grinding) I have a 9th level character, with a decent selection of magic items.  If I proceed with the appropriate caution, I think that Geoffrey will do well.

Caution is the key word, as I'm taking very few risks.  I'm determined to grind until I'm perfectly safe on dungeon level 2 before I descend any further.  I've stopped reading magical books altogether, as there's really no protection against Explosive Runes.  I don't drink potions unless I know they're safe, and I don't open chests that I know have traps in them.  It slows my progression a bit, but not as much as starting over from scratch.

The Tomb of Doom and the Caverns aren't significantly different to Whisenwood, but I've noticed that they have their own quirks that make them more difficult to navigate.  The Caverns are loaded with areas that cause hallucination, while the Tomb has a lot of transporters leading up and down.

I've taken a look at the Hall of Fame to figure out what level I need to reach to finish the game.  The lowest level there is 68, and the highest is over 700.  The majority are around level 80, so I think I should be fine if I advance to about level 100 or so.

And now, a selection of things I've observed in the last week of gaming:

• Once you get strong enough, monsters of low levels pose no threat at all.  My character, currently at 9th level, can't be harmed by monsters of 3rd level or below.  You can even set it so that your character automatically fights monsters below a certain level.  It's very satisfying to watch your character mow down enemies without ever having to press the Fight key.  In a smart move by the developers, auto-combat turns off for Rust Monsters and Eyes of Thieving.  Those enemies are best dealt with via magic, and fighting them is never a good idea.

Geoffrey is set to Auto-Fight monsters below level 3, and to ignore books.

• Not only can you set the level for Auto-Combat, but you can turn some other options on and off as well.  I don't want to risk reading books any more, so I've turned them off: they don't show up at all while I'm exploring, and that removes any temptation to read them.  You can do the same with chests and potions, too.
• I forgot to mention this, but during character creation you must choose an Order that your character belongs to.  The Orders have names such as Black Knights, Ruby Crown, and Ivory Tower.  My favourite is the Dead Moose Order.  As far as I can tell, this has no effect on gameplay whatsover, and I wonder why anyone bothered putting it in the game.  If you look at the Hall of Fame, the vast majority of characters there have chosen Emerald, which suggests that players are just automatically hitting 1 when the option comes up.  I like to choose my Order based on my character's stats and race; I can't resist the urge to do role-playing.

• I had thought that the Cleric spell Dispell was the most effective against Eyes of Thieving, but for some reason it hasn't been working so well lately.  I've switched to the Pray spell, and it seems to be working better.
• I haven't mentioned them yet, but sometimes you will randomly find Symbols.  Some of these will increase your stats, and there are ones that gives you more experience, money and hit points.  They take effect on you automatically.  There are a lot of negative symbols as well, but I haven't encountered those yet.  Apparently they don't affect you automatically, but there seems to be no way to avoid them except by chance.
• Using the PG-UP and PG-DN keys, you can teleport up and down between levels, at the cost of 1 magic and 1 cleric spell.  This comes in very handy when you get lost, or fall down a chute, but occasionally it backfires and does the opposite of what you want.
• Similarly, you can hit the P key to pass through any wall, at the cost of a magic spell.  It's another handy navigational tool.
• You can use your Clerical magic to restore hit points.  Even better, the option is there to do it on the Open Chest menu, so you can heal yourself before risking a trap.

The Game of Dungeons v8: Monsters

I've been splitting my gaming time (usually about an hour each night) between Moria and The Game of Dungeons, so I haven't been making a great deal of progress in either.  (Indeed, when it comes to Moria my progress has been backwards, as I died very stupidly and have to start from scratch.)  The majority of my time on The Game of Dungeons in the last week has been spent grinding for experience, which isn't the most interesting thing to write about.  Instead I thought I'd describe the various monsters, and their weaknesses.  Here is a screenshot showing every monster in the game:

Shadows: Rather than attacking your hit points, Shadows drain a point from your Strength on a successful hit.  This means that they don't pose much of a threat to your mortality, although they can apparently kill you if your Strength is drained to 0.  This hasn't happened to me yet, mostly because Shadows aren't all that difficult to kill.  The Cleric spell Light Candle kills them quite easily.

Rust Monsters: If a Rust Monster attacks you, it will eat your sword.  If you attack it, you will also lose your sword.  This isn't much of a problem if your sword is normal: you just have to go back to the surface to get another one for free.  If your sword is magical, that magic is gone forever.  The best spell to use on them is the Magic spell Eye of Newt; this turns the Rust Monster into a newt, allowing you to step on it (often with a satisfying "Squish!" message).

Mind Flayer: Mind Flayers drain your IQ rather than your hit points.  They're a little more difficult to deal with than Shadows, as I haven't worked out a good spell to use against them.  They are strangely susceptible to being charmed, though, and they're great to send into battle against Wizards.  My current character has a really low IQ, so I always get a little concerned whenever I have to fight a Mind Flayer.

Vampire: Vampires drain your experience points, which is just the worst.  If you lose enough XP your level will drop, and if they drain you below 0 you die.  This can be used to your advantage, though: if you gain a level and don't get many extra hit points, you can always get drained by a vampire and try again.  Like Mind Flayers, they're easy to charm, and the Cleric spell Holy Word is effective on them as well.  Apparently you can defeat them with a cross as well, but I've yet to find one. 

Dragon: Counter to most games, Dragons aren't all that difficult.  You just have to remember that the Magic spells Fireball and Flaming Arrow barely affect them.  I usually go with Eye of Newt.

Wombat: I live in Australia, and I've seen a lot of wombats in real-life.  Threatening they ain't, and I'm quite mystified as to what they're doing in this game.  Regardless, a Flaming Arrow spell is usually enough to kill them.

Death: Actually not all that deadly.  Their only special ability is that it's impossible to run away from them.  A Holy Word spell works well on them, as do the usual damage spells (Flaming Arrow, Fireball, Lightning Bolt).

Spectre: Thankfully, unlike in tabletop D&D, Spectres don't drain experience.  They simply damage your hit points.  A Lightning Bolt spell won't work on them, but Flaming Arrow and Fireball do, as does Holy Word.

Eye of Thieving: If you get into melee combat with an Eye of Thieving, there's every chance that it will steal one of your magic items.  It's chances depend on the difference between its level and yours.  The only way to avoid it for sure is to use magic, and I've found that the Cleric Dispell is the best against them.

Phantom: Strangely for an undead creature, it's resistant to Cleric spells like Holy Word.  I find that a Flaming Arrow works okay, or just plain melee.  I've had a lot of trouble with Phantoms; I haven't found a spell that's super-effective against them, and they seem to do a lot of damage in combat.

Warrior: It's almost refreshing to encounter one of these guys, and to know that you're just fighting a regular dude.  If they're 4th level or under a Sleep spell will defeat them, otherwise Flaming Arrow is good.  I find that Charm also works well, and will net you a versatile minion with a decent number of hit points.

Balrog: The first time a Balrog attacks you can be a bit scary, but any reputation they have from Tolkien hasn't translated to this game.  They're not all that tough, and a Holy Word or an Exorcise spell does well against them.  I'm pretty sure they're resistant to fire spells.

Wizard: Wizards are very susceptible to the Magic spell Mind Blast, and the Cleric spell Light Candle.  I don't think they have any particular special abilities, and I've never had all that much trouble with them.

Demon: Demons are resistant to fire spells, and most of them will be killed by an Exorcise spell.

You might have noticed that I didn't detail the various Slimes.  That's because it's quite difficult to figure out which type you've encountered.  You can see their icon from one step away, but to actually discover what type of slime it is you have to enter their square.  I've been blowing them away with spells where possible, so I haven't gone about cataloging their abilities.

(Oh, and while I was tooling around in the dungeon trying some things out for this blog, my 10th level character got blown up by a trapped chest.  Fuck this game.)

The Game of Dungeons v8: The Death Spiral

I've been caught in something of a repetitive loop playing this game: create a character, grind until it's about 6th level, delve to the lower levels to do some mapping, die, start all over again.  I'm not quite sure how to break out of it, to be honest.  After 6th level, advancement slows considerably, and I don't feel as though the difference between 6th and 7th is all that significant.  Perhaps I just need to grind it out until I reach 10th level, or even higher.  It's just a matter of time, if I'm patient enough.  I just hate sinking time into a game and making no progress.

Currently I'm mapping the 4th level of Whisenwood Dungeon, but I don't really have much to write about that I haven't mentioned already.  In lieu of genuine content, here are my maps of the first three levels:

Whisenwood Level 1

Whisenwood Level 2

Whisenwood Level 3

As you can see, every dungeon level is the same size: 15x15 squares.  I should have marked it on the map, but your starting location on level 1 is always the square just south of the Excelsior Transporter (marked with a T).

The game is difficult to map accurately, as you can see from the arcane notations above.  I've used different colours to denote walls, doors and transporters.  The walls, of course are black, and the doors are brown.  The light blue borders are transporters that take you up a level, and the green ones take you down a level.  As in the earlier version of the game, when you go to a new level you appear in a random location.  This is part of what makes mapping the game difficult: you have to start by mapping little bits and pieces, because you won't always be transported to the same sections of the map.  Gradually the map can be pieced together, but until that happens it can be hard to get your bearings, and even harder to find a transporter that takes you back up.

(Luckily, there's a feature that's carried over from the earlier game: a spell that can teleport you up or down a level, by pressing SHIFT-PGUP or SHIFT-PGDN.  It uses up both magic and cleric spell slots, and it can also backfire and take you deeper into the dungeon, but it's vital for getting out of an unfamiliar level.)

The Excelsior Transporter that I mentioned earlier is great: you just have to step on it, type what level you want to go to, and it whisks you there instantly at the cost of a few hit points.  Also on the first level is an alchemist and a weapon store, but the prices are exorbitant; at this point I'm much better off converting that gold into experience points.

You may also have noticed a lot of arrows all over my maps.  If an arrow is pointing at a wall, that means the wall exists from one side, but not from the other; you can walk through in the direction that the arrow is pointing.  If an arrow is pointing at a transporter or a door, it likewise only exists from one side.  Sometimes the other side will be a wall, and sometimes it will be an empty space you can move through; I haven't figured out a good way to mark that on the map.  So the maps aren't 100% accurate, but they're good enough to tell me where I need to go.

The Game of Dungeons v8: Two Steps Forward...

As you may have gathered from the above screen shot, I've been dying quite a bit while playing The Game of Dungeons.  Like all the PLATO RPGs, death in this game is irreversible, but at this stage it's not such a major setback.  I'm currently mapping level 3 of Whisenwood Dungeon, which requires a character of about 5th or 6th level to explore in reasonable safety.  Reaching 6th level can be done quite quickly with a bit of grinding on the entry level of Whisenwood, so exploration has not been much curtailed by my frequent deaths.

Let's examine some of the ways that I've been dying.  The screenshot above is an extreme example of my own stupidity.  I had been exploring level 3 of the dungeon, when I was attacked by a  level 5 Spectre (there are a limited variety of monsters in the game, but they get stronger the deeper you explore).  I decided to hit it with a fireball spell, but the spell backfired on me (regular readers may recall that fireball and lightning bolt are the two most powerful spells in the game, but have a tendency to damage the caster).  Not only was I reduced to 18 hit points, I was also blinded.  While I sat waiting for the blindness to wear off, I was attacked by another monster.  Because I was blind I had no idea what type of monster was attacking me, so I decided to chance using the fireball again, as I wanted to make sure of killing it.  It backfired again, and killed me, resulting in the embarrassing screen shown above.  It was my best character so far, done in by a series of bungles and misfortune.  Such is life and death in the unforgiving RPGs of the 1970s.

I've had a few deaths caused by monsters, but not too many; a decent knowledge of the spells, and the addition of the ability to charm monsters, has served me well.  Most of my deaths have come from other sources: explosive runes from trying to read magic books, drinking potions of degeneration that drain hit points with every step, falling down chutes to lower dungeon levels and running out of spells.  It's a lot of the same stuff that was killing me in the previous version of the game, to be honest, but I would say that v8 is a bit less deadly on the whole.

The last thing I wanted to talk about was character progression.  In the version of The Game of Dungeons that I played before, character progression is constant.  So long as you survive your dungeon trips, you'll gain more hit points and items, and will steadily grow more powerful.  Version 8 is different.  There are Vampires that drain your experience points, Slimes that eat your boots, Shadows that drain your Strength, Mind Flayers that drain your IQ, and Eyes of Thieving that steal your magic items.  It's inevitable that these monsters will get you at some point, so the progress of your character won't always be upwards.  I spent a while building one character up to level 7, only to be drained by a Vampire and swarmed by Eyes of Thieving.  I escaped the dungeon, but I was back at level 5 and all of my magic items were gone.  It's frustrating, but there's nothing to be done about it but head back into the dungeon.  What else am I going to do, stop playing?

I don't mind these setbacks, because the game is fun.  The constant threat of losing things permanently, with no safety net, is a big part of the appeal of these games.  If you don't like the idea of playing without a saved game, then the PLATO RPGs probably aren't for you.