Game 11: Dungeon Campaign (1978)

Dungeon Campaign, designed by Robert Clardy, was release by Synergistic Software in 1978 (a date confirmed by Clardy himself, despite the copyright on the title screen saying 1979).  Much like Beneath Apple Manor (which I played previously), it's a maze-based dungeon exploration game, almost a proto-Roguelike.  The game was explicitly based on Dragon Maze, which was one of the programming examples given in the Apple II documentation.  Dragon Maze featured a randomly drawn maze, and the goal of the game was to escape before the titular dragon caught you.  It's not hard to see the influence.

A screen shot from Dragon Maze.

I wasn't able to find a manual for Dungeon Campaign (assuming that one ever existed).  The closest there is to a backstory is this, taken from the back of the game box:  "Dungeon Campaign is a game of high adventure wherein the player directs an expeditionary force as it ventures into an underground labyrinth.  The catacombs are filled with treasures and hazards, poisonous vapors and evil necromancers, stairways and pitfalls, sorcerous devices and an incredible assortment of monstrous inhabitants.  The dungeon's monsters may pursue or wait in ambush.  They have a variety of powers, strengths and modes of attack, and they become increasingly dangerous in battle as lower levels are reached.  As the secrets of the dungeon are uncovered by your force, a color-coded map is generated until you find your way safely out with your treasures."  It's pretty self-explanatory, and about all that's needed for a game of this type.

Epic.

The game begins by generating all four levels of the dungeon.  They're generated on the screen right in front of you, meaning that people with a good memory (or a quick drawing-hand, or a screen cap) will be able to navigate more easily.  Not that it makes much difference; the stairs up and down aren't marked, so even if you know every detail of the maze you still won't know where to go.  The only level worth memorising is the fourth, because the exit is clearly marked at the bottom of the screen.

Generating the map.

You control a party of 15 men, as well as one elf and one dwarf.  The influence of early Dungeons & Dragons is strongly felt here, as in those days the game was geared towards larger parties with lots of hirelings and henchmen.  The number of men you have determines how strong you are in combat, and also doubles as a form of hit points.  When all your men are dead, the game is over.  I never lost all of my men during the course of a legitimate game.  I managed to get to the death screen shown below, but I really had to work at it.

"Hmm, where is it... birthday, get well, wedding... 
Ah, here we go, dungeon massacre."

Movement in the game takes some getting used to.  Instead of using the arrow keys, you have to press L, R, U and D for Left, Right, Up and Down.  Thankfully the game is turn-based, so fumbling over the keys rarely results in anything drastic or fatal.

There are plenty of hazards to be found in the game.  The most common are monsters, which appear next to you before they attack.  Some are faster than you, but there are others that you can escape from simply by moving in a different direction.  There's a decent variety of monsters: orcs, skeletons, basilisks, cyclopses, and the usual assortment of D&D-inspired beasties.  There doesn't appear to be much of a difference between any of them.  There's no tactical component to combat at all: you simply take turns attacking until one side is dead.  The main novelty is that you attack by hitting the space bar as numbers scroll by at the bottom of the screen.  It gives at least a small feeling that you're able to influence the battle, even if in practice the numbers go too quickly.  Monsters can kill anywhere between 1 and 3 men a round, while the party needs two successful attacks to wipe out any band of monsters.

(When the game begins, your strength in battle is equal to the number of men you have.  I noticed that after winning one battle this number is doubled, and after winning another it is tripled.  The multiplier increases for every battle you win, which is a nice simple method of advancement.)

Triumphing over some werewolves.

Also fairly common are the various dangers that can transport you to different levels, or to a different place on the same level.  Pits will dump you on a lower level.  You can also wake up a Necromancer or a Pteridactyl (sic) that will teleport you.  None of these are particularly worrying.  Dropping a level or two just brings you closer to the exit on level 4, and none of the levels are particularly more dangerous than the others.  Being transported back to an earlier level is more irritating, especially when you are trying to escape level 4.  You can avoid these dangers by using the jump command to skip over the square they are on.

The most interesting dangers encountered are the special monsters that awaken if you linger for too long on the same level.  On the first two levels you will awaken a dragon, which is easy to avoid.  Level three features a giant serpent, which moves around in real time and is a bit more difficult to get away from.  Level four's boss is a spectre, which can move through walls and makes a beeline directly for your party.  This guy is pretty much impossible to get away from, unless you're able to climb some nearby stairs.  Fortunately, none of these monsters is all that deadly.  If one of them touches you, it drags away one of your men (the dragon eats two).  Losing one guy isn't that big a deal unless you're numbers are already depleted.

In addition to the various monsters, there are gas traps.  When you stumble into one a countdown begins, and you have to escape before it counts down to zero.  The timer never resets, so if it goes down to 3 before you escape, it will start at 3 if you go back into the gas.  If you are caught in the gas when the timer reaches zero, one of your men will die every second.

Being gassed to death.

Treasure (measured in "quadroons") can be hard to find, but persistence pays off.  As far as I can tell, you find treasure by using the Search command, but there are no clues as to it's location.  I've only been able to find treasure by hitting Search on every square I pass through, and hoping for the best.  A strange quirk of the game that I've noticed is that some treasures become visible when you are transported back to a level that you've already explored.  I'm not sure why, but it's a handy way of tracking it down.

The only mystery remaining in this game is the dwarf that accompanies the party.  I think I have the elf figured out; normally when you move next to a hazard you are warned about it, and I stopped getting those warnings after my elf died.  I haven't had a game where the dwarf died, though, so I'm a but mystified.  (A look over at CRPG Addict tells me that if the dwarf dies, your automap stops updating.  Sounds unpleasant.)

Dungeon Campaign isn't a great game, but it does have its merits.  Probably the greatest of these is that it's short: a game should only take around ten to twenty minutes.  Like most primitive RPGs, it is focused more on the resource management elements of early D&D, and less on tactical combat and story.  It does well for what it is, but it's not likely to command your attention for long.

Final Rating:

Story & Setting: None and none.  Oh, I guess it does have a setting, but a featureless four-level maze is hardly the stuff of legends.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: There are no characters to speak of, and most of the monsters are distinguishable by name only.  The special monsters that appear are cool, but not cool enough to merit an extra point.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Aesthetics: It's a Lo-Res Apple game, so it's rather more functional than pretty.  There are some well-placed sound-effects, such as the fanfare when you escape the dungeon, and the ascending and descending  scales when you go up or down stairs.  Still, it's primitive stuff.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Mechanics: The game does what it does very well, but it's awfully simplistic.  There are no tactics to combat, and not much to the other dangers either.  Rating: 3 out of 7.

Challenge: I found it quite difficult to die in this game, which is unusual for games of this vintage.  It's also quite a short game, and making it to the exit on level 4 poses little trouble.  The main challenge comes from locating treasure, and even that's not too hard.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Innovation & Influence: As one of the first RPGs I have to score it highly, but most of what it does isn't carried forward by later games in the genre.  Rating: 5.

Fun: It is amusing for a short time, but as I said above, it didn't hold my interest for long.  It's main strength is that a game doesn't take very long.  Rating: 3.

No bonus point for Dungeon Campaign, as I doubt I'll play it again.  The scores above add up to 16, for a final score of 32.

Final Rating: 32 out of 100.

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.

Combat: You can flee by moving away from monsters, or press space bar over and over again to attack. That's the extent of combat in this game, and no amount of scrolling numbers at the bottom can give the illusion that there's any more to it.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 1. It's an approach to D&D-style computer games that had it's own style, one more related in its war-gaming roots.  It's ultimately something of an evolutionary dead end, but the novelty nets it a point.

Dungeon Campaign's RADNESS Index is 25. That puts it second from the bottom, and makes it the lowest-rated of the CRPGs. It was definitely the simplest CRPG I'd played on the blog to this point.

NEXT: Next I'll be tackling the text adventure Voyage to Atlantis, which has the distinction of having been programmed by a twelve-year-old boy.  I'm looking forward to this one.

Pirate Adventure: Victory!

Well, that didn't take long.

At the end of my last post, I had just constructed a pirate ship and was ready to sail to Treasure Island.  I took a break there, because I had assumed that the bulk of the game lay ahead of me.  As it turned out, there were only a few locations left to explore, and just a couple of puzzles to deal with.

Treasure Island consisted of a mere four locations: the beach where my ship landed, a graveyard, a barren field, and a monastery.  (This was incorrectly spelled as "monastary" but I'm going to have to stop now when it comes to pointing out bad spelling in text adventure games.  I'll just say that there's a lot of it to come, and leave it at that for the sake of my own sanity.)

Before I took off for Treasure Island, I made a point of loading my ship with every inventory item I could find.  Everything from maps to tools to a parrot to a mongoose to a big pile of sand got shoved in the cargo hold.  I was convinced I would need it all.  The pirate from earlier in the game, who was now serving as my sole crew member, refused to take off so long as the magic book was aboard.  The book was the only way I had of returning to my flat in London, so I was reluctant to leave it behind.  I had no choice in the matter, so it became the sole item left on Pirate Isle as I set sail.

I disembarked on Treasure Island, and the pirate followed me into the beach.  He looked expectant, but at this point I had nothing for him, so I headed south.

He didn't follow me into the graveyard, which was full of broken glass for some reason.  I did a bit of digging with my shovel, and turned up some moldy bones, which I dutifully added to my inventory.  I considered trying to rebury them, but couldn't come up with any verbs that would work.  The upside of having a simple two-word parser is that you can rule out any actions that seem too complicated.

I headed east, into a barren field.  There was nothing here, and digging didn't help.  There was nothing for it but to head north.

There I found a monastery, and the first of the treasures I needed: a pile of "dubleons".  (Funnily enough, if you google this spelling of the word, a walkthrough for Pirate Adventure is one of the first hits.)  Alas, they were being guarded by some deadly mambas, and any attempt to get them resulted in my death.

My first instinct here was to release my mongoose; as soon as this guy showed up in the game I knew there would be snakes.  It was a red herring though.  My mongoose was actually a squirrel, and the snakes poisoned him to death.  This was a momentary head-scratcher, but then I remembered back to the snake in Colossal Cave Adventure, which was dispersed by a bird.  I threw my parrot at the snakes, and sure enough it drove them away.  The "dubleons" were mine, and I had just one more treasure to claim for success.

Swerve!

There weren't any places I hadn't explored, and there was no obvious location for the second treasure.  I tried digging everywhere.  I tried dying, and dropping the mouldy bones in Never Never Land.  Nothing worked.  It was only when I started examining my inventory that I remembered the treasure map, and the message scrawled on it: "30 paces then dig!"  I was in the graveyard at the time, and I typed GO 30.  Rather to my surprise, I got a positive response, but upon digging I found nothing.  When I tried the same thing in the barren field, though, I found the second treasure: a set of rare stamps.

I still can't quite believe this worked.

With both treasures in my possession, all I had left to do was to return to my flat in London.  For this, though, I would need the book, and the book was back on Pirate Isle.  I couldn't sail back, because the pirate was waiting around on the beach for some sort of payment.  The solution was actually quite simple: all I had to do was dig on the beach, which uncovered a cache of rum.  The pirate drank some, then went for a nap in the graveyard.  I woke him up, we sailed back to Pirate Isle, I used the book to return to London, and placed both treasures in my living room.

Totally worth it.

So that's the underwhelming ending to Pirate Adventure.  I shouldn't complain too much about it, as I only devoted about three hours to the game in total.  A short game can get away with a lackluster finish.

All in all, I feel like Pirate Adventure is a very slightly better effort than Scott Adams' first game, Adventureland.  The progressive structure makes it feel like it has a more in-depth story, even though it doesn't.  My only real complaint is that the game felt far too short, and too easy.  I was just gearing up for it, and it was over.  I'm interested to see where this falls in my ratings, so let's do it.

FINAL RATING:

Story & Setting: The progression of this game from London, to Pirate Isle, to Treasure Island made it feel like there was a story, but in retrospect it was just another treasure hunt.  The pirate vibe was refreshing, and the setting was much more cohesive than that of Adventureland.  I'm tempted to rate it higher than that game, but that would put it on equal footing with Colossal Cave Adventure, which doesn't feel quite right: the setting of Colossal Cave had a lot more atmosphere.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: The annoying parrot and the wicked-looking pirate are the sole characters in this game, with some snakes and crocodiles serving as obstacles to victory.  The pirate shows a bit of personality, but his one character trait is "pirate", so I can't exactly award extra points for that.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Aesthetics: It's a text adventure game with no sounds and minimal descriptions.  The pirate setting gives it a modicum of atmosphere, but not enough to elevate it.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Mechanics: This has exactly the same parser and screen layout as Adventureland, but despite its simplicity it works very well at what it sets out to do.  I rarely had trouble figuring out which verb to use in a given situation, and that's always a bonus for me in any text adventure.  Rating: 4 out of 7.

Challenge: This game was short, and it was easy.  Perhaps I have an advantage in that I've played the only two text adventure games that precede this one, but none of the puzzles troubled me for more than about ten minutes.  I like my games to be a bit more challenging.  Rating: 3 out of 7.

Innovation & Influence: This one is a bit hard to gauge.  It's a very early game in the text adventure style, and it's the first such game in the pirate milieu.  That said, it's derivative of Adventureland, and doesn't offer much new aside from the setting and some structural flourishes.  I think I'll split this one right down the middle.  Rating: 4 out of 7.

Fun: Again, the brevity and ease of this game bring it down.  It started well, and never became frustrating, but it didn't last long enough to really engage me.  Rating: 3 out of 7.

I won't be returning to this one, so it doesn't get the bonus point.  The scores above add up to 17, which doubled gives a score of 34.

Final Rating: 34 out of 100.  This puts it significantly below Adventureland, which was unexpected.  I guess the areas in which it exceeded that game weren't improved enough to gain it extra points, and it lost out on innovation, challenge and fun.  At least it rated higher than Space.

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 in this game were fair, but none of them were particularly clever or gave me all that much trouble.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 0.

Pirate Adventure's RADNESS Index is 30. So far that puts it 7th overall, and 3rd out of the three adventure games I've played so far.

NEXT: It's back to the world of proto-RPGs, with a look at Dungeon Campaign.

DND v8 Update: I'm still conservatively grinding away during the times I watch pro-wrestling.  Strider is level 22, and advanced enough that I can farm XP without any danger.  Only a lack of patience can stop me now.

Game 10: Pirate Adventure (1978)

It's a brand new year, and what better way to kick off 2016 than with a text adventure from 1978.  Pirate Adventure is the second game from Scott Adams.  I enjoyed his first effort, Adventureland, well enough.  It was short, not too difficult, and a fine diversion for a day or two.  It wasn't a classic, but nor was it the terrible game I'd expected based on Adams' reputation.

Pirate Adventure was released on all the major platforms of the late 70s and early 80s, and even a few not-so-major ones.  (What's an Exidy Sorcerer?)  Its original release was on the TRS-80, so that's the platform I'm emulating it with.  (Not that it really matters for text adventures, but I like to keep things as authentic as possible.)  Some sources cite Pirate Adventure as a 1979 game, and others have it in 1978.  I've gone with 1978, because that's what's in my database, and I can't remember why I chose it in the first place.  I'm not overly fussed about the dates at this point, because all of these games have an official date of "prehistoric".

Much like Adventureland (and its inspiration, Colossal Cave Adventure), the goal of Pirate Adventure is to find various treasures and return them to a set location (in this case, your flat in London).  Whereas Adventureland had thirteen treasures to gather, this game has a mere two.  That hasn't made the game any easier, though; I've yet to find either of the treasures I'm looking for.

As mentioned above, you begin the game in your London flat.  The time period is a bit ambiguous.  The game has all the trappings of the pirate genre, but a "flat in London" hardly feels authentic to the 1600s.  Nevertheless, that's where the game begins, and in said flat there is a sign that says: "Bring *TREASURES* here, say: SCORE".  That's it for setting up the plot.  There's a sign in your house, and by golly you're going to obey it.

The flat is pretty small, with only a few areas to explore: a downstairs room, and upstairs room with a bookcase, a window ledge and a secret passage that opens when you take a book from the bookcase

The downstairs room contains a bottle of rum, a sack full of crackers, a pair of sneakers, and a rug.  Adventure game veterans will be trying to lift that rug straight away, but for the moment it can't be done, as the rug is nailed down.

The upstairs room contains an open window and a bookcase.  As mentioned above, taking a book results in the opening of a secret passage.  The book, inevitably, is a copy of Treasure Island.  The word YOHO is written in blood in the flyleaf, and there is another message inside:"Long John Silver left 2 treasures on Treasure Island".

The secret room contains an unlit torch, a smashed rum bottle, and a pirate's duffel bag that contains a box of matches.  There's also a sign that tells you how to extinguish your torch, because UNLIGHT isn't the most intuitive command.  The torch and matches are the obligatory adventure game light source, and the smashed bottle is a mystery for now.

The goal in the flat is simply to gather all the items you can, and read the word YOHO from the book.  The first time you read the word it transports you to the window ledge, and this can be deadly.  If you aren't wearing the sneakers you can slip and fall, which results in death and a trip to Never Never Land.  This doesn't necessarily mean your game is over: you can use the book to escape from Never Never Land.  But if you hang around in there for too long, you are declared dead and that's that.

About to escape Never Never Land.

If you say YOHO while on the ledge, you are transported to a beach on Pirate's Isle, and that's where the adventure really begins.  There is a ship's mast and a keel on the beach, and it soon becomes apparent that your goal is to build a ship (The Jolly Roger, what else), and sail to Treasure Island.  There are a number of interesting locations on Pirate's Isle, which I'll list below.

• Near the beach is a lagoon, with a rusty anchor half-buried in the sand.  The tide goes in and out fairly frequently, and if you get caught here when the tide comes in it's off to Never Never Land.  A sign on the beach warns you about the tide, and you can even look at it from afar to see where the tide is before you enter.  The only way to be really safe here, though, is to carry a set of Water Wings.
• At the top of a hill there's a crack, and you can squeeze in here as long as you're not carrying too many items.  The cave beyond contains many of the items you'll need to build the ship: a set of sails, some lumber, and a tool shed where you'll find a hammer, a shovel and the above-mentioned water wings.  You can't fit the shovel or the lumber back through the crack, but there's a door here that they can fit through.  Unfortunately, it's locked from the other side...
• There's a wicked-looking pirate who lives in a shack with his parrot and a treasure chest.  The pirate won't let you take the chest, but he's easy enough to get rid of by giving him the bottle of rum.  You can take the parrot, and he'll stick around as long as you have crackers for him to eat.  Occasionally he speaks, but so far it hasn't been helpful, just messages like "Pieces of Eight!" and "Check the book!".  The chest is locked, and you can't open it without the key.
• At the base of the hill is a network of caves, and when I entered I felt a cold shiver of dread at the following room description: "I am in a maze of caves."  It wasn't as bad as I feared.  The maze only had four locations, and a pit full of crocodiles.  Beyond the crocodiles was a locked door, which presumably led into the tool cave, but first I had to distract the crocodiles.

The first task here was finding the key, and that wasn't too difficult.  With the claw hammer from the cave in my possession, I returned to my flat and pulled out the nails holding down my rug.  (The nails were also an inventory item, and needed to build the ship.)  Under the rug was a set of keys, but before I could return to the island I was distracted by a noise.  I decided to investigate the secret passage, and I found the pirate from the shack asleep there, with an empty bottle next to him.  (I guess this explains why there was a smashed bottle and a pirate's bag in the room earlier.)  I took the bottle and woke the pirate, who said that it would soon be time to set sail.  Then he vanished, which was weird.  A magical pirate?  Lazy writing?  Or just system limitations?  I guess we'll find out later.

Equipped with the keys I needed, I was able to open the chest.  Inside was a set of plans that told me what I needed to build the Jolly Roger: a hammer, nails, lumber, an anchor, sails, and a keel.  I knew where all this stuff was, I just needed to gather it together.  There was also a map in the chest that showed the location of Treasure Island.

Now it was time to deal with the crocodiles.  This was the trickiest puzzle so far.  I figured that I needed to feed the things, but giving them crackers did nothing.  When I threw the parrot at them, the bird actually tried to fight them off for me, but it wasn't successful.  (A call-back to Colossal Cave Adventure? Probably.)  Nothing I tried was working, so I wandered around just trying random things.  That was when I tried using the water wings in the lagoon, and discovered that they allow me to survive high tide.  From there I swam further out to sea, and found a fish.  This was obviously the solution, so I gathered some sea water in my empty bottle (the fish would dry out otherwise), took the fish, and fed it to the crocodiles.  Sure enough, the crocs let me past, my key unlocked the door, and I was able to retrieve the parts I needed to build the Jolly Roger.

Getting past the crocodiles.

With the ship assembled I climbed aboard, and was a little surprised to see the pirate waiting for me.  I wasn't entirely sure what to do next, but the pirate helpfully told me to WEIGH ANCHOR, and then to SET SAIL.  With the help of the map we sailed to Treasure Island, and that's where I left off.  With the final adventure location ahead of me, it felt like a good time to take a break.

Treasure Island awaits.

  

Pirate Adventure is a leap ahead for Scott Adams, and feels a lot more sophisticated than Adventureland.  Not that it's any better technologically speaking: the parser and interface are exactly the same.  But the structure of the game feels far more advanced.  I like the way it's separated into distinct areas, it gives the game a flow and a sense of progression that was lacking from Adventureland.  I'm actually rather looking forward to getting back to it, and unless a puzzle really stumps me I expect that I'll be done with it by next week.

DND v8 Update!

I was going to do a full post on DND, but instead I decided to forge ahead with my list.  Rather than devoting full psts to DND, I'm going to give a quick update on my progress at the bottom of my posts on other games, which could be amusing given how balls-hard this game is.  I wonder how many other games I'll get through before I finish this one?

As of New Year's Eve, I was doing very well.  Axebeard (a dwarf, naturally, and successor to his brother Beardaxe) was 53rd level, and I was exploring level 11 of all three dungeons.  The earlier version of DND had a twenty level dungeon, so I figured I was about halfway through.  Later on I used a potion of Astral Form to take a quick trip to the bottom of Whisenwood Dungeon, and discovered that the dungeons are 30 levels deep.  Bugger it.

Most of the chests in this game are trapped, but if you're on one of the easier dungeon levels it's not a problem.  I was doing most of my XP grinding on Level 3 of the Tomb of Doom, which has a nice spiral pattern conducive to random wandering without needing to consult my map.  (Incidentally, I've discovered that wrestling is the perfect thing to watch while XP grinding.  I watch a lot of wrestling every week, so it works out well.)  On the deeper dungeon levels the traps can kill you, but if you have a ring of protection or some sort of magical armour you will usually survive an otherwise fatal blast (albeit with the loss of said item).  I had gotten complacent, and while exploring level 11 of Whisenwood with no protective items I opened a chest and was obliterated instantly.  On New Years Eve!  On my bloody birthday!!!  That was fifty+ levels of grinding down the drain.

I had to go back to the start, but I've managed to get my new character Strider up to level 20 by grinding on the first level of Whisenwood.  It's slow going, but now I am taking no risks.  I'm not even going to touch chests when I'm deeper than level 3.  My plan is to grind myself to about level 100, then make a run for the three items at the bottom of the dungeons (the magic fountain, the grail, and the orb).  Before I tackle each item I'm going to buy a Revival Potion from the alchemy shop - this ensures that if I die my character won't be erased.  It's going to take a long time, but I have patience, and I'm determined to beat this bloody game.  All I have to do is resist the urge to take risks.

The Games of Summer: 2016 Edition

You may have noticed that I haven't posted in a while.  It's for the usual reasons related to this time of year: Christmas, school holidays, and the family commitments that stem therefrom.  Still, even though I haven't been writing, I've found a decent amount of time for playing games, and a bunch of new games to play.  I don't have a lot of love for Christmas, but it does have the benefit of providing me with new games in the form of gifts.  Those gifts are mostly for my son, of course, but I plays 'em all the same.

The major addition to our household this year was a WiiU.  I'd been reluctant to fork out for one, because it didn't seem that much better than the Wii.  My son wanted one, though, and once we got it I was pleasantly surprised.  Not by the system's capabilities: it really isn't that much better than the Wii.  I think my favourite thing about it is the controller, which has a touch screen embedded in it, and can be used to play games independent of the TV.  It's pretty great to be able to pick up the controller and play Mario Kart 8 while my wife is watching 'Heartland' or some other such drivel.

We got three games with the system: Mario Kart 8, Splatoon and Skylanders.  To be honest, we haven't even tried Skylanders yet; my son isn't interested in it, and I haven't been moved to try it out either.  Mostly I've been playing Mario Kart 8.  I spent much of my teenage years playing Mario Kart on the SNES obsessively: it's still my favourite multiplayer game of all time.  None of the sequels have ever matched up to the original, and to be honest I don't enjoy this one as much either.  The fault lies more with me than the game itself: I'll be holding the SNES Mario Kart up as the pinnacle of the franchise until the day I die, regardless of any evidence to the contrary.  Mario Kart 8 is reliably fun, even if it's a little too easy at the outset.  It's getting more difficult and more fun as I progress through the different engine classes, so I figure I'll be at it for at least another few weeks.

I haven't played a great deal of Splatoon, but it has the same addictive quality that I find in a lot of mobile phone games: quick games with constant rewards.  It's a third-person shooter from Nintendo, so it's predictably non-violent: the goal is to help your team splatter the environment with more paint than the enemy.  My major gripe about it is that it's trying a little too hard to be cool.  It has a touch of the Poochies about it.  The gameplay is fun though, and it's easy to get sucked into "just one more game".

I also went and bout some X-Box 360 games now that some have been made compatible for X-Box One.  I think I chose a very solid selection: Bioshock, Mass Effect, Fallout 3 and Assassin's Creed 2.  The trouble here is going to be overcoming my natural aversion to playing game out of order.  How can I possibly play Fallout 3 without finishing the first two?  It's a sickness I have.

So far I've only played a bit of Mass Effect and Fallout 3.  Mostly this is due to the absurd times it takes to download the game the first time you load the disc.  Seriously, I have to wait four hours before I can play a game?  What the fuck is even on the disc?  If someone could come out with a current-generation console with no internet connectivity, no need for profiles, and games that load instantly, I'd be on that in a second.

I can't say I'm particularly sold on Mass Effect yet.  The conversations at the beginning weren't all that interesting, and I had a hard time coming to grips with the gameplay.  I've never played a game in which I have to control the camera as well as my character, so for me it was tricky.  I guess from what I'd heard about the series I was expecting more role-playing/adventure elements and less shooting/action.  I'll probably enjoy it more once I've mastered the controls.

Fallout 3 grabbed me straight away, though.  It has a quirky, morbid sense of humour, and I loved playing through character creation.  Come on, it let me play as a baby!  I only made it up to my character's terrible birthday party, but I'll be coming back to this before too long.

That's it for new games (or new-ish games, I should say).  I also played plenty of The Game of Dungeons, which I'll be writing about in my next post, and I've started on Pirate Adventure.  At the very least I'd like the blog to be out of the 1970s by the end of the year.

Game 9: Space (1978): Victory.

Space, created by Steven Pederson and Sherwin Steffin and published by Edu-Ware Services, was released in 1978 or 1979 for the Apple II.  Sources differ on which year it was released.  I've seen it cited as being possibly the first commercial CRPG release, although that credit most often goes to Beneath Apple Manor.  To be honest, it may not even qualify as a CRPG at all.  But, assuming that it does, it's definitely the first ever sci-fi CRPG.

Before I begin discussing the game, I should talk about it's similarities to the tabletop RPG Traveller.  Published by Game Designer's Workshop. Traveller was the first sci-fi tabletop RPG.  Many of the elements of Space can be found in Traveller, not least the in-depth (and sometimes fatal) method of character generation.  GDW eventually sued Edu-Ware for copyright infringement, and production of Space was discontinued, to be replaced by the Empire series.  I may get to those in time, but for now let's get stuck into Space.

This being Version 2.5 makes me mildly irritated.  I want to play 
these games in their original forms, whenever possible

I'm not entirely sure what the end goal is in Space.  You begin the game with a lengthy character creation sequence, and after that there are a number of scenarios you can choose to play through.  The goal for most of these scenarios is to amass money and resources, but it's not clear why.  Yes, the accumulation of in-game wealth can be a motivator all on its own, and I guess it works as a sort of career simulator, but it would be nice if there was an endgame in mind, or even an indication that there is an endgame.  I've no idea if Space has an ending at all.

Creating a character is the first thing the player will need to do, and this was by far the most involved character generation method seen in a CRPG at the time.  You begin by selecting a name, and then you are taken to a screen that displays a letter informing you that you've been chosen for compulsory military service.  From there you get to choose which branch of the military you want to work for: Navy, Marines, Army, Scouts, or Merchant Marines.  There's an option for "Other Services" which I'm unsure about, and also an option to just be drafted at random.  As far as I can tell, the military branch that you select mostly determines what skills you are able to learn.

The game then takes you to a menu from which you can review your character.  The first option takes you to your stats.  Characters in Space have six stats: Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education and Social Standing.  I assume that these are randomly generated; I've had scores as low as 2 and as high as 12.  I haven't been able to find a manual for the game, so I'm not entirely sure what effect these stats have on the game.  At the very least they seem to affect the character's physical and mental well-being, as described below, and low stats can also limit which skills you have access to.

The second option shows the results of your character's physical examination.  You get rated in the following categories: cardio-vascular, pulmonary, skeleto-muscular, neurologic, vision and hearing.  I've had characters that were robust and healthy, and I've had one character who was blind, deaf and had a severe heart problem.

The third menu option gives you the results of your psychological evaluation, and this is where the most amusing results come from.  It's not uncommon to have characters with severe personality flaws.  I had one guy who was classified as a "pervert", with recommendations that he be kept away from domestic animals.  You can see below a character who is listed as completely psychotic.  Sometimes it feels like the Space universe has more crazy people in it than sane ones.

(I won't discuss the rest of the menu options yet.  They have to do with your current skills and training, your service record, and your financial accruals, and are basically blank at this stage of character development.)

Despite the warning that this character should be discharged immediately, I was still able to go on with my training.  Your character must do at least four years of military training, and for each year you get to select a stat or skill to improve.  For the first year I tried to study Gun Combat, but due to "psychiatric instability" I wasn't allowed to do so.  I chose Electronics instead, which was deemed as being fine.

For my second year of training I chose Navigation, but again was rejected for psychiatric reasons.  I had to settle for Mechanical.   I was rejected in year 3 for the Jack o' Trades and Streetwise skills, and due to a lack of education I was also unable to choose anything from the Professional Education list.  During the course of those rejections my character got injured, and I was given the offer to restart the game.  Being injured during training results in some significant drops in your stats.  I chose to continue, and eventually I was able to train myself in the Vaccuum Suit (sic) skill.

In year 4 I was unsurprisingly rejected for training in Gunnery and Blade Combat.  With a very small set of skills available to me, I opted to raise my Strength score instead.

At this point my initial enlistment was over, but I had the option to reenlist.  The risk of reenlistment is that your character can be injured or killed.  You can also opt to retire, with either a cash or material reward.  (I'm not yet sure what the material reward might be.  Every time I've tried to take the material reward, circumstances have forced me to take a financial one instead.)  I tried to reenlist, but due to my "psychiatric disability" I was discharged for medical reasons, with a retirement pay of about $16,000.  (Sometimes there will be a state of galactic war, and in that case you won;t be able to leave the military until the war is over.)

As mentioned above, you can die during training.  This hasn't happened to me too often.  Mostly it seems to occur when I have a character with severe heart problems, and attempt to train him in physical skills.

After character creation the game proper begins, and you can choose which of the five scenarios you want your character to play through.  I'll describe them a little below:

FIRST BLOOD

In this scenario you engage in single combat with a character controlled by the computer.  It seems as though you can select either a generic enemy named "Adversary" or any of the other characters on your disk.  I like to think that at least one pair of brother got into a fist-fight over a dead character in this scenario.

You will either be attacking or defending; it seems to me that the computer decides which.  You're able to choose your weapon and armour types, the terrain you'll be fighting in, as well as your general combat tactics.  From there you just sit back and watch as the results scroll by round after round, until one of the characters is dead.  Apparently the winner claims all of the loser's money, but I'm not certain because I've yet to win a bout.  In fact, the character I just created above got killed so that I could get some screen shots, so I hope you're happy with them.

Selecting my tactical approach to the coming battle.  I went with 
"Uses Counterattack."  It didn't go so well.

A typical combat round during First Blood.

Addendum: I managed to win one of these battles, and you do claim the loser's money.  Here's proof that I won.

DEFEND

In this scenario, you're placed in charge of a remote planet under alien attack.  I've tried this one over and over, and to be honest I have little idea of what to do.  Here's the main screen.

As far as I can figure out, you need to allocate power to the shields for each region (sensors, defenses, starport, residences, energy banks and control center), as well as your weapon strength.  That seems simple enough, but after a round or two I always find that my energy is completely depleted, and there's nothing I can do but wait for the inevitable.

As far as my Jack Manley novels go, this is strictly non-canon.

Occasionally my characters have had psychological breakdowns while defending.  When this happens you are stripped of command, and there's nothing you can do except watch until the colony is destroyed.  You have the option of making a getaway on your own, which I've done once.  I felt pretty bad about it, but at least I was still alive.  You can also surrender, which didn't go so well for me the one time I tried it.

Personally, I think the situation merits at least one more exclamation point.

I've given up on this scenario, because I've tried at a dozen or so times, and I'm getting no closer to success.  If I could find the game manual (assuming there is one) I'd give it another shot.  As the situation stands, I'll have to leave this scenario incomplete.

Addendum: Success!  I was able to get through this scenario by pumping the maximum amount of energy into my weapons.  This hadn't worked for me in the past, but this time around I fluked it.

I'm happy now that I've managed to successfully complete all five scenarios in the game.  Without a proper endgame, I'll consider that my condition for victory.

EXPLORE

Exploration involves seeking out uncolonised planets and mining their resources.  You are initially given the choice of a few planets, with some minor details to go on: how dangerous the planet is, the status of animal life and natives, how much fuel will be readily available, and the estimated value of any resources found.  The amount of information you get varies from game to game, but most of the time it gives a fair idea of how dangerous the planet is, and its level of resources.  There's even a category for the likelihood of a supernatural occurrence; I've played this scenario a lot, and have yet to encounter one, unfortunately.

Each round upon the planet lasts for a year.  During that time you may experience harsh weather, attacks from hostile animals, and encounters with the natives (either friendly or hostile).  You may also find fuel, food, and mineral resources.  Harvesting food and mineral resources costs energy.  Success in this scenario is a matter of managing your resources.  As long as you don't run out of food, and you keep enough energy to make the return journey in your ship, you'll be fine.  Sometimes the weather will destroy some of your food, and I've been wounded by animals and had vacuum suit mishaps, but on the whole this is one of the easiest scenarios to do well in.  If you find a planet with abundant resources, you'll be able to make a lot of money.  The only time I've died is when I ran out of food due to carelessness.

Wedge was also 106  years old, which may have had something to do with it.

TRADER

Once you've accumulated a decent amount of money, you'll be able to buy a ship and become a trader.  There are two types of ships available: a scout ship costing 1 million credits, and a merchant ship costing 8 million.  The former can carry up to 10 passengers and 10,000 tons of cargo, while the latter can carry up to 70 passengers and 100,000 tons.  Saving up the requisite money isn't all that difficult (it should only take one or two trips to a resource-rich planet in the Explore scenario), but you can also borrow money (with interest, of course) to buy a ship.

Once you have a ship, you can start trading.  You begin on the planet Xenon-12, where you can load your ship with weapons and electronics.  Once you've done that, you purchase fuel for the trip, and head off.  A number of passengers will also pay to come with you to the next planet.

The second planet is Y732A, where you can purchase drugs and crystals.  My initial thought here was that trafficking drugs might get me into trouble with the authorities, but I never encountered any.  Basically, this scenario involves loading your ship with goods and flying back and forth between the same two planets.  It's all a bit dull, but it's a surefire way to gradually increase your credits.  Once I was boarded and robbed by space pirates, but that's the only excitement this scenario has to offer.

HIGH FINANCE

This is where the big bucks come from, as this scenario sees you playing the stock market.  The stock prices are super high (in the millions), so you'll need to have some success in the earlier scenarios in order to play this one.  Each of the companies you can buy stocks in has a brief description.  They range from weapons manufacturers, to electronics, to food, to security.  Some are more dangerous to invest in than others: the security companies in particular may see you visited by goons and beaten up.

When I played this, I bought about 20 shares in Milkyway Munitions and sat back.  Each round of this scenario takes place over a financial quarter.  Messages displaying certain galactic events will appear during each quarter.  Sometimes its the breakout of a war, or a plague, or some invention, and each event has an effect on stock values.  My shares just kept going up, and I continued to sell out and buy more.  In the end I accumulated an ungodly sum of money, as shown below.

195,627,000,000 credits!  Of course there's nothing to spend it on except for more shares, so it does all feel a bit pointless.

Sometimes the Gallactica Financial Family shows up to offer you a loan.  I borrowed five million from them, and tried to get myself into negative credit, but my shares just kept going up.  I'd like to see what happens if I can;t pay my debts, but I don;t have the patience to keep going.

Occasionally you will get messages that your character's health is failing.  Most of the time you will recover, but not always.  When I grew near death in this scenario, I got the following message.

I wasn't willing to lose my billions of credits, so I didn't take the offer.  I died, but at least I died filthy rich.  I'm not sure who this guy making the offer is supposed to be.  Just a lord, as he says?  God?  The Devil?  It's all a bit vague, but I should probably just take it at face value rather than trying to ascribe this to mythical entities.

THE ENDGAME

There isn't one.  The only goal is the accumulation of wealth, with no purpose at all.  I tried to see what would happen if  one of my character died of old age.  I got one to 160 years old, and he died of ill health during the High Finance scenario.  It seems that there's no special ending to this game, or at least none that I could find.

FINAL RATING:

Story & Setting:  It's all very bare bones.  The suggestion of a setting is there, an interplanetary sci-fi civilisation set around the year 5,000, but it's just that: a suggestion.  There's no story to speak of either.  You simply play through your character's life, accumulating wealth until he or she dies.  Rating: 1.

Characters & Monsters: You don't really interact with anyone else in this game.  You can do battle in the First Blood scenario, or fight various hordes of space nasties in the Defend scenario, but they have no personality to speak of.  There are animals and natives in the Explore scenario, passengers in Trader, thugs and financiers in High Finance, but none of them are at all fleshed out.  Rating: 1.

Aesthetics: The game is presented almost entirely in test, with the occasional graphical representation of space, or your ship taking off.  Sound is restricted to a few beeps here and there, with a not-unpleasant fanfare on the title screen.  I considered granting this game an extra point for its extensive use of memos and letters to convey information, but even so I couldn't give this more than the minimum rating.  Rating: 1.

The graphical beauty of a starship takeoff sequence.

Mechanics: This is a hard one to rate, because the scenarios are so different, and so much of how the game works is hidden from the player.  I would rate Explore and High Finance as decent, Trader as adequate, and First Blood and Defend as poor.   Defend is very confusing, and it's difficult to know what effect your choices have in First Blood.  On the whole, I have to say that the game hinders the player more than it helps. Rating: 2.

Challenge: As with mechanics, the differing scenarios make this hard to rate.  Some are easy and a bit dull (like Trader), some are reasonably challenging (Explore, High Finance) and some are baffling and deadly (First Blood, Defend).  The game also relies far too much on random events for its own good, and playing it - even in character creation - can sometimes feel like navigating through a land mine.  Rating: 3.

Innovation & Influence: I considered knocking this down a point for its blatant Traveller rip-offs, but I reconsidered.  If I did that, I'd have to penalise every fantasy CRPG in existence for stealing ideas from Dungeons & Dragons.  As it is, this is the first ever sci-fi CRPG (even if its genre credentials are a little suspect), and the level of depth in character creation alone nets it a good rating.  Rating: 6.

Fun: While I can't say that I hated the game, it was never what I would call enjoyable.  Most of the fun came from the bizarre results found in character creation, to be honest.  Two of the scenarios I never properly figured out, and the rest were repetitious and unexciting.  Rating: 2.

Needless to say, this doesn't get the bonus point, as I'll never be going back to it.   The above scores add up to 16, which doubled gives me a total of 32.

Final Rating: 32 out of 100.

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 CRPGs with a category for Combat.  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.

Combat: This game is more of a strategy game than a CRPG, and it has several different combat systems. The First Blood minigame has options at the beginning, but then it takes control away from you completely, and I could never figure out which tactics worked.  Defend I found to be very confusing, and although I won a game I never did work out what I was doing.  There are battles in the Explore minigame, but those play out more like random events, and give you no control over what happens.  I didn't find any of them all that enjoyable, and was confused by them more often than not.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 1. It gets a point for being the first ever CRPG in the sci-fi genre.

For Space, the RADNESS Index is 23. This makes it the lowest-rated game so far, and it was the game I enjoyed the least up to this point in the blog.

NEXT: For the moment I'm concentrating on The Game of Dungeons v8.  I've managed to grind a decent character (about 20th level), and I'm making good mapping progress, so I want to try to power through and clear this game out of my backlog.

Current Final Ratings

I've now done Final Ratings for all the games I've completed.  More detailed write-ups are in the Victory posts for those games, but here I present the leaderboard as it stands currently.  And yes, I realise that it's ridiculous to compare RPGs and adventure games.  I'm doing it anyway.

Position	Game	Final Rating
1	The Game of Dungeons (aka dnd)	54
2	Beneath Apple Manor	50
3	Orthanc	46
3	The Dungeon (aka pedit5)	46
5	Colossal Cave Adventure	44
6	Adventureland	42

Some of the results here were expected, but there were some genuine surprises. I was pretty sure that The Game of Dungeons would be right at the top, as it's easily the most enjoyable game on the list so far.  I'm surprised at how high Beneath Apple Manor rated.  Perhaps it benefited from being short, but it's also a really tightly designed game.  Orthanc is an expanded, improved version of The Dungeon, but because of that it lost points in the Innovation category.

It's surprising that the text adventures are both languishing at the bottom.  I expected Colossal Cave Adventure to rate higher, but certain factors (most notably its absurdly obtuse final puzzle) brought it down a little.

It's also a little disheartening to see that after almost two years I've only completed seven games.  The pace is going to pick up now that I'm into the era of the home computer, thankfully.  I'm already done with Space, and should have a post ready for later in the week.  (Here's a spoiler for you: it's probably going to end up at the bottom of the list.)

Game 8: Beneath Apple Manor (1978)

Before I begin the post proper, I need to give special thanks to Chester over at The CRPG Addict.  Without his help I'd never have been able to find and play the original version of Beneath Apple Manor.  So kudos to you good sir, your help is much appreciated.  Now let's get on with it, shall we?

The front cover art.  Someone got the set square 
out for this one.

Beneath Apple Manor is probably the first commercial CRPG, so I've decided to play it early on in my list of games from 1978.  (Besides. I really wanted to play the first commercial adventure game and CRPG back-to-back).  It was programmed by Don Worth, and published by The Software Factory.  Worth is a significant figure in the history of Apple computers: he wrote the book Beneath Apple DOS, which exposed the inner workings of Apple's operating system, and became an essential tool for programmers and hackers.  The Software Factory is less significant, it seems.  I can't find any information about them, possibly because they have a name that is almost impossible to google effectively.

The manual gives a short backstory to set up the game.  For three centuries the Apple family had ruled in Apple Manor, sending monsters out to terrorise the people and steal their wealth.  Now the family is dead, and the manor lies abandoned and gutted by fire.  Rumours abound that the source of the family's power was a golden apple.  Many have sought it in the tunnels below the manor, but few have survived the attempt, and none have succeeded.  (I'm not actually certain that this backstory was present in the original documentation.  The only manual I've been able to find is for the Special Edition rerelease.)

The first impression given by this game is impossible to avoid (at least in retrospect): it's very similar to Rogue, a massively influential game that it predates by two years.  It has the same randomly generated dungeon levels, the same macguffin-at-the-bottom-of-the-dungeon plot, and similarly - shall we say - "functional" graphics.  I'd hesitate to call it a true Rogue-like, though, as it doesn't have perma-death.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Rogue doesn't come out until 1980, and there'll be plenty of time for me to discuss that game when the time comes (probably because it's going to take me a hell of a long time to beat it).

Your character in Beneath Apple Manor has four stats: Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity and Body.  There is no character generation, as every character begins with a score of 20 in each stat.  Your Strength determines how much damage you deal in combat, and how much gold you can carry.  Intelligence determines the effectiveness of your spells.  Dexterity is used to determine how accurate you are when attacking.  Body is simply your hit points, and when these reach zero you're dead.

There are various activities in the game that deplete these scores.  Strength is depleted by attacking monsters in melee, and if your Strength drops to zero you can't attack at all.  Your Intelligence drops whenever you use the Zap spell in combat.  I'm not certain, but I believe the amount of damage you deal affects the amount of Intelligence lost, and much like Strength if your Intelligence gets too low you can't cast spells until you rest.  Dexterity is depleted simply by moving around.  These scores can be restored by resting, which has a novel mechanic.  You use the number keys to rest, and the number chosen determines how many rounds you want to rest for.  The longer the rest the more your scores are restored, but the greater the chance you'll be attacked by a monster.  You can also press 0, which restores all of your scores to their maximum (except for Body), but runs a similar risk of monster attack.

Advancement comes via the accumulation of gold and experience points.  You gain a small amount of experience from defeating monsters, but most of it is awarded by finding gold.  Whenever you leave the dungeon you can choose to spend experience points to increase your four stats, at a rate of 10-to-1 (i.e. if you spend 1000 experience you can raise a stat by 100).  You'll need to increase your stats significantly to win the game, as the dungeon levels are generated based on how strong your character is, and the Golden Apple doesn't appear until you reach a certain power level.

The dungeon levels, as mentioned above, are randomly generated.  At the beginning of the game you can set the number of rooms per level, and also assign a difficulty rating of 1 to 10.  The levels contain monsters, of course, and chests that contain traps and treasure.  Once a level has been generated, though, it remains static, so you can continue to leave and return, making yourself stronger in the process, and the level doesn't scale up with you.  It just means that the next level will be that much tougher when it gets generated...  The square you start on contains the stairs back to town, where you can buy equipment, increase your stats, save your game, or head to a deeper dungeon level.

The levels are navigated by using the NESW keys, for North, South, East and West (you get used to it).  Doors can be bashed open by pressing B (another activity that drains Strength), and you can even (L)isten at a door to hear if there are monsters lurking behind.  There are also secret doors, which are discovered by pressing I for Inspect.

The game in Colour mode.  I'm the blue square.  Right next to me is a light 
purple Worm.  On the other side is a brown door, and the dark purple 
block beyond that is a Dragon.  This is not a good place to be.

There are five monsters in the game.  Originally I had some trouble identifying them, because when you play in Colour mode the monsters are represented by coloured blocks.  It was easy enough to figure that the green block was a slime, and the white block was a Ghost.  The red block was probably a Troll.  But what about the light purple block, and the dark purple one?  Matters were further complicated because I only had the manual for the Special Edition, which adds a few new monsters.  Eventually I figured out that if I play the game in black & white the monsters are represented by letters instead of colours, and the two mystery monsters were revealed: W for Purple Worm, and D for Dragon.  The Special Edition (which I'll do a post on eventually) adds Vampires and Invisible Stalkers, but thankfully I didn't have to deal with those in the original game.

The game in B&W mode.  The Y is me, the T is a Troll and the 
W is a Purple Worm.

The slimes are weak, with few hit points and a low damage range.  Ghosts can only be affected by a magic sword or the Zap spell, and their attacks permanently drain your Strength score.  They only drain 1 or 2 points at a time, and you can easily replenish your Strength by spending experience, but it is a nuisance.  Trolls, Worms and Dragons are all just big piles of hit points, each progressively stronger.  There's not a lot of variety to be had in fighting them, and combat is largely a matter of deciding between (A)ttacking with a melee weapon, or using your (Z)ap spell.  You can also (R)un away, but that causes you to drop your gold.  (Dropped gold instantly returns to the chest you found it in, so it can always be reclaimed.)

Having my Strength drained by a Ghost.

In addition to Zap the game has a small selection of spells, each of which costs Intelligence points to cast.  Heal restores your Body points (which aren't replenished by resting).  XRay reveals everything in a three-square radius, which is good for scouting.  Teleport moves you to a random spot in the dungeon.  It's good for escaping a tight spot, but like running it makes you lose all of the gold you're carrying.

You can upgrade your equipment, and there are magic items to be found in the dungeon chests.  You begin the game armed with a dagger, but you can spend gold to upgrade to an Axe or a Sword.  The best weapon is the Magic Sword, which you'll find in a chest eventually.  You can also buy armor, with Leather, Chain Mail and Plate available.  Again, there's Magic Armour to be found in the dungeon, which is the best defense available.  The chests also contain wands and potions.  Some of them will double one of your stats, but there are also cursed items that reduce a stat by half.

This is always welcome.

One of the best items is the Zap Wand, which allows you to cast Zap without losing any Intelligence.  There's also a wand that lets you open doors without losing Strength, and a potion that causes you to lose your memory.  The memory loss is represented by the disappearance of your dungeon map, which I thought was very clever.  There could be more items, but those are all the ones I discovered.

I had a lot more of the screen filled in before I drank this potion.  
I think there might have been whiskey in it?

Death in the game is not permanent: whenever your character dies you are reincarnated at the entry stairs of the current level, and you can keep retrying as often as you want.  Your stats will be reset to the last time you had a Brain Scan, which is the equivalent of a saved game.  When you're in town you can pay gold to have a Brain Scan, which saves your current stats.  The higher your stats, the more expensive it is to have a scan done.  If you haven't had a Brain Scan done your stats reset to the beginning (all 20) which is pretty much a death sentence on the deeper levels.  After so long playing PLATO CRPGs, which all delete your characters permanently when you die, using the Brain Scan almost felt like cheating.  I got over it quickly though.  It's a feature of the game, and I feel no shame in using it.

Getting drained to death by a Ghost.

With a decent amount of saving it's not difficult at all to win this game.  The toughest monsters (Worms and Dragons) start appearing when your stats get to approximately 100.  I had a habit of keeping my stats on an even footing, but there's nothing stopping you from pushing one stat sky-high and ignoring the rest; in that case I don't know when the endgame would begin.  But for me, the Golden Apple started to appear when my stats got to about 120.  I've encountered a fake Golden Apple, which blew up and killed me instantly.  Luckily, I had saved just minutes before.  Finding the real Golden Apple is something of an underwhelming experience.

Hitting enter takes you to the command prompt.  How I laughed!

Basically, it's a big old terrible pun.  The Golden Apple... is a computer!  Geddit?  An Apple computer!  I don't know what it is about vintage games, but they love getting self-referential.  The Game of Dungeons had monsters that were programmers.  Colossal Cave Adventure had a final area that was a storeroom for the various elements of the game.  In Adventureland you could wander inside a computer chip.  It's weird, but I suppose it's an accurate reflection of what the creators of these games were obsessed with..

I completed the game on difficulty level 1, and on level 5.  I had a crack at level 10, but I wasn't able to get too far.  Maybe one day, but for the moment I have too many other games to tackle.

So that's that: a one-post game!  A few more of these wouldn't go astray.  Time for the final rating.

FINAL RATING:

Story & Setting: The backstory described above is evocative enough, but like other CRPGs of this vintage it doesn't factor into the gameplay in any way.  The dungeon is just a collection of featureless rooms and corridors, and randomly generated at that.  It's functional, but it's not all that interesting.  Rating: 1.

Characters & Monsters: With just five monsters in the game, and nothing else to interact with, I can't rate this category highly.  The monsters aren't even particularly varied.  Rating: 1.

Aesthetics: The graphics are primitive, and not all that appealing.  It's either coloured blocks, or black & white ASCII characters, and neither looks very good.  I forgot to mention that the game has sound, and that's probably because I spent most of my time playing it with the sound turned off while listening to Turbonegro.  It's just beeps from the PC speaker every time you move or attack, and they got irritating after a minute or so.  Rating: 1.

Mechanics: It's a tight, simple game where everything serves a purpose, and every feature does what it's supposed to do.  Combat is a little simplistic, but the way that stat depletion ties into the gameplay is excellent, and I liked being able to choose which stats to advance when spending experience.  Rating: 5.

Challenge: I have to rate this game highly for its varying levels of difficulty.  It's dead simple on level 1, mildly challenging on level 5, and balls-hard on level 10, which feels exactly right.  Rating: 6.

Innovation & Influence: It's the first commercial CRPG, the first CRPG with a save game feature, and the stat depletion system is novel as well.  There's no doubt that this is going to score high.  Rating: 6.

Fun: Beneath Apple Manor is an enjoyable way to pass an hour or so if you happen to have a taste for prehistoric CRPGs.  It never wore out it's welcome for me, and to be honest I'd quite happily fire it up now and have a game right now.  Rating: 4.

I'm awarding this game the special bonus point, because I still want to play it; I never did beat it on difficulty level 10, after all.  With the scores above added up, and the bonus point as well, that gives a total of 25 out of 50.  Doubling that (because I'm anal and want my rating system to give a score out of 100) gives me a final rating of 50 out of 100.

Final Rating: 50 out of 100.

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 CRPGs with a category for Combat.  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.

Combat: The combat in this game is extremely simplistic when considered on its own. The only actions available are Attack, Zap or Run.  The way your stats are depleted by combat is the most challenging aspect, and I'll bump it up for that, but there just aren't enough options here to make the combat otherwise interesting.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 1. It's one of the earliest commercial CRPGs, and deserves a bonus point despite not being hugely influential.

Beneath Apple Manor's RADNESS Index is 41.  This puts it second on the list so far, just ahead of Orthanc and below The Game of Dungeons v5.  It's a simple game but I remember really enjoying it, and thinking that it had a lot of replay value.

NEXT: The next game on my list is Space, a sci-fi game for the Apple II that is heavily based on the tabletop RPG Traveller.  I've already been tinkering with it, and I'm pretty sure that this will be another single post job.  Progress!