Rethinking the System (Again) and a Wrap-Up of Akalabeth

THE FINAL RATING SYSTEM, REDUX

I mentioned at the end of my last post that I was considering revamping my Final Ratings.  I'm not happy with a lot of the results that I've been getting, and the Innovation & Influence category seems to be the primary culprit.  I tested some ideas over the last few days, and mocked up some scores to see how the charts came out.  I'm fairly satisfied with what I've come up with.  (For an explanation of the old system, check the sidebar on the right.  It's still going to be roughly the same.)

The Innovation & Influence category has always been a problematic one, in hindsight.  I put it in there to recognise games that are of particular historical importance, or that innovated a game feature. Both of those things are worth recognising, but neither of them are necessarily markers of whether a game is good or not.  I still think they should be a part of my rating system, but not a part that's weighted as heavily as my other categories.

Another problem is that while I do have a decently broad knowledge of CRPGs and adventure games, not a lot of that knowledge comes first hand.  Most of the games I've played are from 1998 and before.  I think the most recent CRPG that I've played to completion is Might & Magic VI.  I couldn't even hazard a guess as to what the most recent adventure game I've played is.  I don't think I actually have the knowledge to rate games in this category accurately.  Perhaps I might if I pursue this blog for another decade, but right now?  Probably not.

So out goes Innovation & Influence (though not entirely, as you'll see below).  What I'm replacing it with is Combat & Puzzles.  To me, these seem like the two primary activities of the respective genres I'm tackling.  Previously, they'd been folded into Mechanics and Challenge, but I think both are important enough to merit their own category.  For the most part, CRPGs will be rated on Combat, and adventure games on Puzzles, but there are going to be cases in which a game has plenty of both.  When that happens, I'll make a judgement call on which of the two is more important to the game in question.

(I considered an Exploration category, because I do love games with interesting worlds to explore.  I don't want to overhaul the system too drastically though, and I have to stick to seven categories if I want a score out of 100.  I'll just have to settle for this being part of Story & Setting.)

The other thing I'm changing are the Bonus Points, which were an arbitrary addition so that my 7 categories with scores out of 7 could add up to 100.  Previously I've been awarding bonus points for games that I feel like I'll revisit in the future, but it feels a bit like I'm just giving extra weight to the Fun category there.  If I like a game, I'm going to go back to it, you know?  Instead I'm using the bonus points for games that are innovative, influential, or that have some other quality that wasn't covered in my other categories.  Replayability perhaps, or multiplayer functions that I couldn't experience.  We'll see.

The other change I'm making is that I will now allow scores out of 0, for games that are so heinous in a particular category that they have no merit at all.  I don't think I've encountered one so far, but this opens up the possibility of scores below 14.

Obviously this means that I need to go back and re-jig the scores of the games I've already played.  I'll do that over the next few days, and hopefully will be finished before my Sunday post.  Luckily, I only have 38 games to rate; if there had been many more I probably would have persisted with the old system.

Hopefully the new system will produce results that I'm happier with.  I realise that it's still somewhat flawed: any rating system designed for both CRPGs and adventure games is bound to have some cracks in it.  I won't be changing it again, though: if this one isn't satisfactory, I'm just going to have to grin and bear it.  After all, I started this blog to play more games, not to jigger around with numbers.  With luck, this will be the last time I do something like this, and I can get on with making some progress on my list.

Oh, and I'm also renaming the whole thing, because "Final Rating" is bland and doring. From now on, it will be the RADNESS Index, standing for Righteous Admirability Designation, Numerically Estimating Seven Scores.

AKALABETH: RADNESS INDEX

I was supposed to rate Akalabeth in my last post, but I held off until I'd decided whether I was changing things or not.  Consider this an example of the new system in action.

Story & Setting: The story here is mostly non-existent, despite some extra detail from the manual.  Lord British tells you to kill some monsters, you go kill some monsters, the end.  At least it's not a treasure hunt. As for the setting, I have to resist the urge to mark this up for being a precursor to Ultima.  Regardless of any future connections, this ain't Britannia just yet.  That said, I have to take into consideration how expansive this game is: it's the earliest game I've played that has both an overworld and an underworld.  (Moria doesn't count, because it's "overworld" was just another dungeon.)  The dungeons are the most immersive seen yet, mostly due to the large first-person view.  Unfortunately, these dungeons are all random, and there's nothing to find in them except for monsters and chests.  I can't quite bring myself to rate this a 3.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: Lord British probably shouldn't count here, as he's nothing more than a quest-giver, with the personality of a generically good king.  The monsters are a decent selection, and two have special abilities that can make them something of a pain (the thief and the gremlin).  Mostly, though, they're just lumps of hit points, and your tactics rarely change dependent on which you're fighting.  All of that becomes moot once you've Lizard Manned up anyway.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Aesthetics: By modern standards this is an ugly game, with wireframe dungeons and very crudely drawn monsters. That said, it's the first 3D CRPG with any sort of immersion and there is a certain claustrophobic quality to the dungeons. Just the fact that you can see the monsters advancing down the corridors towards you must have been quite something in 1979, even though they can look a little ridiculous.  I've already mentioned the intro sequence in my last post, but it bears repeating here that it's impressive for the time, and like no other CRPG before it.  The sound is sparse, merely the odd beep here and there, and not frequent enough to be truly irritating.  Despite some positives, though, it's still too primitive to rate very highly.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Combat: In essence, combat in Akalabeth boils down to pressing A for attack over and over again as your opponent strikes back at you, until one of you drops dead.  But because combat is integrated into the same system you use for exploration, there are plenty of other actions you can consider.  Perhaps you can turn around and flee?  Or use a Magic Amulet to cast a Kill spell or create a ladder to another level so that you can escape.  If the monster's at a distance, you might want to pepper it with arrows or axes.  Positioning also matters, because monsters can attack you from the back and sides, or corner you in a dead end.  It's still not terribly complex, but it has enough options to put it into the top tier for games of its vintage.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Mechanics: On the surface, there are plenty of things to praise about Akalabeth.  It has a functional overworld, even if it is a little superfluous, and multiple dungeons that extend down further than any sane person could possibly explore.  The spells provided by the Magic Amulet are few but they're all useful, providing options in combat and exploration.  Food is a little irritating and rudimentary, however, and when the game's running at the regular speed of an Apple II the dungeon draws painfully slowly.  (I played it at normal speed for an hour before cranking it up on the emulator.)  And it all falls apart once you realise how the game's randomisation works.  Overall, the flaws outweigh the good points.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Challenge: If you ignore the Magic Amulet this game might score pretty well here, at least on the lower difficulty levels.  I have to factor in every element of the game though, and Akalabeth is utterly broken by the Magic Amulet and the easily gamed randomisation.  Once you've turned yourself into a Lizard Man multiple times, you're in no danger at all.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Fun: Despite all its flaws, though, there is a certain charm that comes through, and I can enjoy a quick game of Akalabeth every now and then.  It doesn't hold my attention for very long, but look: I can't hate a game where you win by turning into a Lizard Man and wrecking house.  Garriot's youthful enthusiasm shines through, and drags this up out of the basement.  Rating 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: I am giving Akalabeth the full two bonus points. It's a precursor to the premier CRPG series of the 1980s, it does loads of things that CRPGs hadn't done before (especially in terms of visuals) and it has some replayability if you want to challenge yourself to a no-amulet run.

The first seven categories add up to 13, which doubled gives a total of 26.  Add the two bonus points, and Akalabeth gets a Final Rating of 28.  In the old system, that would put it 30th out of 39 games total.  In terms of CRPGs, that would put it equal 14th, with only Devil's Dungeon underneath it.  However in the old system it probably would have got a 6 or 7 in Innovation & Influence, and jumped up into the middle somewhere.  No doubt once I've recalculated the chart it'll jump up a decent amount.

ADDENDUM: With all the games I've played recalculated, Akalabeth lands equal 22nd overall, and 10th out of sixteen CRPGs.

(For some further reading on Akalabeth, check out this post at The Data Driven Gamer, where Ahab really delves into the code to find out what makes the game tick.)

NEXT: I'm on the cusp of completing Dog Star Adventure, so I might have a post for it up on Sunday. I do want to hold off on it until I've redone all of the Final Ratings though, so it might not appear until Wednesday.

Akalabeth: This Time With Actual Gameplay

The title screen

Woah, a two post game? Haven't had one of those in a while.

Anyway, I'm currently posting this from a hotel balcony, enjoying some traditionally changeable Melbourne weather.  I have some mild cold symptoms and a too-cautious family, so here I am in luxurious solitude.  I'm quite certain that I don't have coronavirus, but I do have a Corona in my hand that I'm drinking right now, and it's pretty good.  If I seem to be in a good mood throughout this post, that's probably because I'm an introvert basking in enforced solitude.  I'll try not to let my good vibes influence the rating for Akalabeth too much.

In my last post I got through the preamble, with some quick notes about Richard Garriott and the creation of his first commercial game. (Here's where I congratulate myself for writing perhaps the first biography of Garriott that doesn't once bring up the words "Lord" and/or British"). Today I'm looking at the game proper - as previously noted I'm playing the Apple II version - but before I get to that I'll look a little bit at the manuals.

The manual that came with the game's original self-published release is predictably simple, being a recreation of the instructions found at the start of the game.

The original manual

This version of the game is credited to "Shamino Salle Dacil", which was Garriott's name in the Society for Creative Anachronism.  No doubt most readers will know this already, but he got the name by rearranging the brand name of his bike. (I know a few SCA people, but alas, they're not familiar with Richard Garriott. Also, people will tell you that the SCA is about medieval recreation, but as far as I can tell it's mostly an excuse for people to either drink or do politics while wearing funny clothes.)

Here's the backstory as given in the manual:

"Many, many, many years ago the Dark Lord Mondain, archfoe of British, traversed the lands of Akalabeth spreading evil and death as he passed.  By the time Mondain was driven from the land by British, bearer of the White Light, he had done much damage unto the lands.

'Tis thy duty to help rid Akalabeth of the foul beasts which infest it, while trying to stay alive!!"

So far so standard, but it is interesting in how it connects to the larger Ultima saga.  I'd forgotten that Mondain - the villain of Ultima I - was mentioned here.  He's apparently already been defeated by this point, but I guess he stages a comeback later on.  Akalabeth being the name of the land is another odd one, as this world will later be known as Sosaria, and more famously Britannia.  Nations and landmasses changing names isn't unheard of though, I can roll with it.  I'd love to have the chance to sit down and grill Richard Garriott about his old D&D campaigns, and find out how much of this stuff is drawn from those.

The second manual, published by California Pacific, is an altogether more professional affair, with a delightfully visceral cover from Dennis Loubet.  It's also credited to Lord British, which was the nickname Richard Garriott got at computer camp for being a touch too formal, and became his gaming alter ego.

I'm not sure, but is this guy just wrecking that skeleton barehanded?

The gameplay information given in this manual is about the same as that from the original, but it does have an extended backstory that gives us some more information about Mondain.

"'Tis said that long ago peace and tranquility covered the lands, food and drink flowed freely, man and beast lived in peace, gold and silver abounded - it was the Golden Age of Akalabeth.

Mondain, second born of Wolfgang, a great king of old, wished to gain his brother's inheritance and so he used his great powers for evil. Many years had Mondain traversed the lands of Akalabeth spreading evil and death as he passed. He created deep dungeons, so deep and extensive that their lower depths had never been explored. In these dungeons he unleased more evil.  He sent thieves, skeletons and snakes to dwell near the surface, and daemons and balrogs to guard the depths. Now blood flowed freely in Akalabeth, and foul creatures soon came to roam near the surface. Mondain cast such sickness and pestilence upon Akalabeth, that both man and beast lived in constant fear.  Thus was the Dark Age of Akalabeth.

There arose from the land a man, pure and just, to battle the Dark Lord.  British, Champion of the White Light, did battle with Mondain deep within the labyrinth of dungeons, eventually driving him from Akalabeth forever. British of the White Light was proclaimed Lord British, Protector of Akalabeth.  Alas, much damage had been suffered unto the lands.  The revival of Akalabeth has begun.

'Tis thy duty to rid Akalabeth of the foul creatures which infest it, whilst trying to stay alive!!"

That's possibly more than ever gets revealed about Mondain in the later games.  I think it fits with Ultima continuity (such as it is), but I'll keep an eye out for discrepancies as I get to those games.  I think the only thing I'll definitely have to ignore is that bit about him having been driven from the land "forever".  What's most interesting to me is that this is a game where the big evil dark lord has already been defeated.  This is a much smaller story, where the goal isn't to vanquish Mondain but to mop up the dregs of his armies.  I like a modest goal in a CRPG now and then.

One thing I've always thought that Garriott excels at is presentation. That's evident in the lavish boxes, maps, manuals and trinkets his games were originally packaged with, but it also comes through in their opening moments and introductory sequences.  Most of the Ultima games I've played have openings that are impressive for the time, whether it be the charming icons adventuring across the map of Ultima IV or the more elaborate cutscenes of Ultima VI and VII.  Akalabeth is similarly impressive, with an opening unlike any CRPG before it.

The protagonist prepares to enter the dungeon.

Akalabeth is a World of Doom, shouldn't the sign point in all directions?

This doesn't represent any of the monsters, so I've decided
it's the player in Lizard Man form.

Look, I did say "impressive for the time".  I know I'm skipping ahead in my chronology for this, but technically Akalabeth is a 1979 game so I'm not skipping that far ahead.  There are only a handful of known CRPGs released before this that I haven't played, and I'm pretty confident in calling this the best CRPG opening title sequence to this point.  Hey, it beats out all of the adventure games as well.

Character creation is dead simple.  The game asks you for your lucky number, which acts as a seed for random number generation and pretty much lays out the whole game: the wilderness map, the dungeons, and every random roll in the game are determined by this number.  I chose the number 7, because I use it so much in my Final Ratings score.

After that it asks you for a level of play, from 1 (easy) to 10 (hard).  As far as I can tell, the only thing this influences is how many hit points the monsters have.  If you beat the game on a level lower than 10, though, Lord British challenges you to step up your game.  You only get the "best" ending for beating level 10.

After that you receive a number of randomly generated statistics.  I say randomly generated, but they're actually the same sequence every time, dependent upon what lucky number you chose at the start. You can keep rerolling them until you get scores you like, but the number sequences will be the same every time you play.

Hit Points work much as they do in every other game in existence: when you get hit you lose them, and when you have none you die. Strength determines how much damage you do, Dexterity determines how accurate your blows are, and Stamina determines your defense.  Wisdom is a trickier one: it relates to the quests that Lord British gives you, and I'll talk about that a bit more below.  The last score is Gold, which you use to buy equipment on the next screen.

Before that, though, you have to choose whether you will be a Fighter or a Mage.  Both have advantages and disadvantages.  Fighters can use all of the weapons, but aren't able to fully control the Magic Amulet.  Mages can't wield rapiers or bow, but have much more control over the Magic Amulet.  The Mage is probably the best of the two, but for various reasons which I'll get to eventually it doesn't matter which one you pick.

Buying weapons is the next step.  Rapiers do the most damage, Followed by the Axe, and then the Bow and Arrow, but the Rapier has no range.  The Axe can be used in melee or thrown, and the Bow can be used at range with no limit on ammunition.  The Shield improves defense, and can also be used as a weapon (albeit a weak one).  The Magic Amulet is the most expensive item, and as you'll see later the most important one.  For now, though, the most vital thing to buy is food.  The early Ultimas are notorious for their stringent food requirements, and Akalabeth is no different: if you run out of food, you drop dead on the spot. My recommendation at the start is to buy one weapon, and spend the rest of your money on food.

Buying equipment before the adventure begins.

After that the game begins, and you are dumped into the wilderness with no other guidance beyond the manual's note to seek out the castle of Lord British.  The wilderness is 20x20 squares, and ringed by impassable mountains.  Scattered around are other mountains (similarly impassable), trees (passable, and presumably there in the game as landmarks), Adventure Shops (where you can buy gear) and Dungeons (where you can kill monsters for gold). Lord British's castle is also there, of course, and that's where you go to receive quests.

The map is presented from an overhead view, with your character represented as a small cross.  Movement uses the arrow keys for left and right, with Enter to go up and / to go down: an odd configuration necessitated by the Apple keyboard's lack of Up and Down arrows.  It's a little awkward, but coming off Super Dungeon I was already accustomed to odd movement controls, so I got the hang of it quickly.

This is what the wilderness map looks like with Lucky Number 7:

My map of the wilderness, done in Excel.

I lost my first character to starvation while mapping this out, but to be honest once you've found the castle there's not much point to further exploration.  Just find the closest shop and dungeon to the castle, and you have everything you need.  I was unlucky enough that the castle was pretty much the very last thing I found, but it was clustered very close to a shop and dungeon, so I had very little wilderness movement to do after that.

At the castle, Lord British asks you for your name, and whether you desire adventure. You can answer no here, and he tells you to get lost, but if you answer yes he gives you your first quest.

If Lord British can just increase people's stats, why doesn't he buff me up
into the hundreds and let me rip? 

The goal of Akalabeth is to keep killing monsters at the behest of Lord British, until he decides that you are worthy of knighthood.  The beginning quest depends upon your Wisdom score: the lower your Wisdom, the further down the quest progression you begin.  With a high Wisdom, you'll start with perhaps a quest to kill a(n) Mimic, and have only two quests to fulfill after that to beat the game.  With a low Wisdom, you'll start all the way at the bottom, and have ten quests on the path to victory.  The progression is as follows: Skeleton, Thief, Giant Rat, Orc, Viper, Carrion Crawler, Gremlin, Mimic, Daemon, Balrog.  That's also a list of every monster type in the game, from weakest to strongest.

The dungeons are presented in 3D, from a first person perspective, with simplistic wire-frame walls. We've seen this before in games like Moria and Oubliette, but those had views that were cramped into tiny windows.  Akalabeth's view is big, and doing it for the first time in a CRPG that was widely available.

The dark fire will not avail you, Flame of Udûn!

Every level of the dungeon is 9x9 squares, which doesn't take long to map. The main trick with mapping is to remember that the doors count as a whole square on their own.  To be honest, you could probably get away without making maps, because the stairs up and down are always in the same place: two diagonal squares away from the top left and bottom right corners. (This excludes level 1, where the stairs to the surface are in the bottom left corner.)  Aside from the stairs, you can find holes that you can jump down, taking a little damage to descend to the next level.  There are also traps that dump you a level below without warning, which can be deadly if you get stuck on a level you're unfamiliar with.

As well as regular doors there are secret doors, which you can only find by bumping into walls (although sometimes you'll find one because a monster comes through it).  The levels have loads of secret doors, and you can usually find a path around any trap. Sometimes you can use them to skirt around monsters you don't want to fight, but they pursue you pretty relentlessly.  There's a pattern of sorts to where doors will appear on the maps. They are always in alternating squares, and you'll never find doors that are side-by-side, so finding the secret doors is never hard.

Maps of the first ten levels of Dungeon 6 (D6 on my map above).

The monsters get stronger the deeper you descend.  They are visible on the screen, impressive in their size despite being crudely drawn.  There are only a limited number per level, with the same ones being generated each time you enter.  The dungeon I frequented, for example, had no monsters on level 1, an Orc and an Thief on level 2, and a single Giant Rat on both levels 3 and 4.  Combat is a simple matter of pressing (A)ttack and then choosing the weapon you want to use, while the monster attacks in return.  There are some rudimentary tactics: you can use the Bow or the Axe to attack from a distance, cast a damaging Kill spell with the Magic Amulet, or simply turn around and flee.  Monsters will flee if their hit points drop below half of their total.  It's not much, but it's  more than many other games of this vintage.

Most of the monster's don't have special abilities, except for two that are particularly annoying: Thieves and Gremlins.  Thieves steal your items one at a time while you are fighting them. For this reason it's important to have multiple weapons, or you'll end up having to fight your way out of the dungeon with your bare hands.  They die pretty easily though, so they're not too bad.  Not like these hateful bastards:

Don't let the cute hat fool you.

Gremlins.  They are, without a doubt, among my most hated video game enemies of all time, because they attack the one thing you need most to survive in this game: food.  Every round one of them can steal half of your food storage, regardless of how much you're carrying.  I've never had one drain my food down to zero, but they don't need to.  All it takes is a few rounds and you'll be so low on food that your chances of getting back to the surface are next to nothing.  I hate them so much, and unfortunately they're going to be plaguing me all the way up to Ultima V, at least.

The dungeons also have chests, which contain treasure (referred to here as pieces of eight) and items.  The items found are just the same ones you can buy from the shop, but they can come in handy sometimes in an emergency.  The main purpose of finding chests though is to build up gold to buy more food.

Characters don't advance by level in Akalabath.  Instead you simply gain more hit points when you exit the dungeon, based on how many monsters you killed while you were down there.  It's a rough approximation of how experience points work in other CRPGs, it just hides the math.  You can also increase your other stats: when you visit Lord British after completing one of his quests, he will raise all of them by 1 point.

Gaining hit points as I leave the dungeon.

Except, well... that's not the only way to raise your stats. There's also the Magic Amulet, which I've been avoiding talking about until now.  Because, to be honest, it completely breaks the game.

The Magic Amulet can cast four spells.  If you're playing as a Mage, you can choose which of these spells you want to cast whenever you use the amulet, and each time you cast there's a chance the amulet will disappear. If you're a Warrior the amulet will never disappear, but you have no control over the effect you get when you use it.  The spells are Ladder Up (creates a ladder you can use to climb to the next level), Ladder Down (the opposite), Kill (an offensive spell that can blast monsters at a distance) and one labelled as "Bad??".

The first three are very handy, but it's that last one that breaks the game.  Whenever you cast it, you get one of three effects: it backfires, draining half of your hit points; it turns you into a Toad, setting all of your stats to 3; or it turns you into a Lizard Man, multiplying all of your stats by 2.5.  You can keep casting Bad, and keep increasing your stats as long as the Lizard Man result comes up. On their own those effects would be fine, because more often than not you'd be penalised when you use the amulet. The problem is, the game isn't truly random.  Once you enter a dungeon level, the "random" numbers used will always be the same, so fights will always go the same way and you'll always get the same effects from the magic amulet (as long as you do everything in the same order). The trick is to find a level where using the amulet turns you into a lizard man without first giving you a negative effect, then you can climb up and down a ladder repeatedly and spam lizard man until you are unbeatable. Once your stats are in the hundreds you are unkillable, and the only danger comes from starving to death.

Using the amulet, I was able to beat Akalabeth with my fifth character.  The first starved because I was using him to map the wilderness.  The third got killed by a Giant Rat on dungeon level 3, because I hadn't yet figured out that the random numbers are always the same sequence.  I knew the Magic Amulet was key to winning the game, but without save-scumming (because this version of the game has no save feature) I didn't know how to exploit it.  (I wouldn't use save-scumming to do that now, anyway.)  My third character had his food eaten by a gremlin deep in the dungeon, and I managed to limp all the way back to the surface only to drop dead one square away from the shop.  With my fourth character I beat the game on difficulty level 1, and with my fifth I achieved victory on difficulty level 10.

I reported my amazing feat to Lord British on Twitter, but he hasn't responded.

I wasn't entirely satisfied with winning like that, so I did have a stab at beating the game without using the amulet.  On level 10, it was pretty much impossible.  Even with maxed stats (if you reroll 133 times on lucky number 7, you'll get Strength, Dexterity and Stamina of 24) I couldn't do it.  The monsters just have too many hit points, and there's no way to kill a Gremlin before it will steal all of your food. You can't even snipe it with arrows, because the monsters heal between each move, and often I'd have one gain hit points when I hit it with an arrow.  (I did discover that you can shoot monsters through walls, though)  I tried it on difficulty level 1, and that was a lot more manageable.  I reckon I could do it if I made more of an effort, but on this attempt I fell afoul of Gremlins.  I could have spent today trying to do that, but I opted to write this post instead.

Before finishing with the game, I tried to see how deep the dungeons go.  I loaded up on food and made a mad dash down, avoiding Gremlins wherever possible.  I got to level 35 before I starved to death.  I've heard it said that the game has infinite levels down, but surely that can't be right.  Is the Apple II really capable of that?

So, fairly or not, I'm done with Akalabeth.  There's a lot to like about it, at least presentation-wise: it's probably the most immersive game I've played on the blog to this point.  It really falls down mechanically as a game, though, especially once you figure out that the numbers aren't at all random.  On the whole, it's more of an interesting piece of gaming history than a game that's fun to play.

FINAL RATING

Okay, here's the thing about the final rating: I think I've had it with the Innovation & Influence category.  I put it in as a way to recognise games that are important, and doing things for the first time, but my ratings for it have been all over the place.  It's skewed a lot of results, and I'm tired of justifying it to myself.  So I'm thinking of replacing it with a new category that's somewhat more about objective quality (as much as these types of ratings can be).  I'm thinking Combat/Puzzles, one applicable to CRPGs and the other to adventure games.  Those were wrapped up into other categories before, but they tend to be the central activities of each genre, and I don't think it's such a bad idea to make them more important in the final score.  I'm going to think on it for a couple of days, and my Wednesday post should let you know what I've decided.  If it's my Final Rating for Akalabeth, then I'm leaving things alone. If it's a post about the new rating system, obviously it's getting changed and I'll need to rejig everything.

NEXT: My next game is Dog Star Adventure, by Lance Micklus who previously gave us the not-particularly-great Treasure Hunt. It's a text adventure with some Star Wars elements by the looks of things. Might be fun!

Priority CRPG 1: Akalabeth - World of Doom (1979)

For those who missed my earlier post on the subject, I've decided to prioritise some of the games and series that I really want to play.  I'll still be going through my chronological list, but after every four games I'm going to jump ahead a little in the timeline to play a classic.  The first game on the Priority List is Akalabeth: World of Doom, the first ever commercial release from Richard Garriott and the first game in the Ultima series.

I have a pretty long history with Ultima, although I only played Ultima IV as a kid (on the Sega Master System, which is an excellent and faithful port of the game).  The rest of the series I came to as an adult, when a friend of mine loaned me a collection of all nine games when I was 21.  Akalabeth was the first game I played out of that collection, making this another first for the blog: a game that I've actually played before.  I played it back in 2000, and maybe once or twice since then, but probably not for over a decade.  I  also only ever played the DOS port.  For the blog I'm going back to the original Apple version.

Do I need to go into Garriott's history?  Probably not; for those who want to do a deep dive on that, the Digital Antiquarian has written it up better than I ever could.  The short version is that Garriott grew up in Texas with an astronaut father and an artist mother, got into computers as a teenager at computer camp, and managed to get school credit for creating CRPGs on a teletype machine.  Garriott was an avid player of Dungeons & Dragons, and used it as inspiration for the games he created, calling the first one DND.

That first game was created in 1977.  Over the next two years Garriott continued to iterate upon it, eventually creating 28 different versions.  Most of these are lost to the ages, but a few years ago he released the source code to the very first one, and some implementations of it were put up on the internet. I covered it a while ago, in this post.  After he finished high school, Garriott made a deal with his father that allowed him to purchase an Apple II, and it was on that machine that he created Akalabeth.  (Whether he did so before or after starting college has been a point of minor contention, as has the initial release date. I've listed it as a 1979 game in deference to Garriott's longstanding version of events, but there's compelling evidence to suggest that it might have been 1980.)

Akalabeth was inspired by a game called Escape!, a simple 3D maze game on the Apple II.  With artistic help from his mother and some mathematical help from his father, he was able to implement a similar system, and wed it to a port of his most recent version of DND, giving it the rather prosaic name of DND28b.  Garriott spent some time over the summer working for the local Computerland store, and the owner saw the game and suggested he should package and sell it in the shop.  This he did, renaming it Akalabeth, and sealing the disks in ziploc bags with an art insert drawn by his mother.  (It's been said that Akalabeth was the name of one of his D&D worlds, but obviously he nicked it from Tolkien's Akallabêth, the tale of the rise and fall of Numenor. Regardless, the content of the game has little to do with Tolkien's work.).  The games - somewhere between 15 and 200 according to various sources - eventually sold out.

Perfect perspective?! I gotta buy that game!

This was enough to gain the attention of California Pacific, a software company of the time. This version of the game received new cover art from Dennis Loubet, and a much wider distribution.  According to Garriott it sold approximately 30,000 copies, netting him the tidy sum of $150,000.

The California Pacific cover, and Garriott's first dabbling with Satanic imagery.

I did want to cover some gameplay in this post.  I played it for a good couple of hours on Saturday while I spent the day in quarantine. (I don't have the coronavirus, but I did have some hayfever sniffles, so my wife put me in timeout just in case.)  Alas, it's 2:30am right now and I do have to go to work tomorrow, so I'll be back with more on Sunday.  Perhaps I'll have finished it by then, perhaps not; I'm not looking to rush through this one.

Game 38: Super Dungeon (1979)

Believe it or not, this is the title screen for Super Dungeon, not the
exciting new game PROGRAMMA SOFTWARE

Today's game is Super Dungeon, a CRPG released only for the Apple II. Like most of the CRPGs released commercially around this time, it has no particular goal beyond venturing into a dungeon and escaping with as much loot as possible. (Of those I've played so far, I think only Wilderness Campaign and Beneath Apple Manor have a non-monetary quest.)  What it also has in common with the other games of this time is that it's implementing Dungeons & Dragons-style gameplay in its own way; we're still in the era before there have been any widely influential CRPGs, so everyone has their own ideas about how it should be done.

Super Dungeon was created by Rodney Nelsen, who we'll see on the blog again at some point, as he has at least one more more RPG to his name (Dragon Fire, released in 1981). He also worked on some Carmen Sandiego games in the 90s, so he had a decently lengthy career in the games industry. It was published by Programma International, who must be among the earliest video game companies.  They went out of business in 1983 but in that time they published loads of games, almost exclusively for the Apple II. None of these appear to be of particular significance, although Dragon Maze was influential on a number of early CRPGs, including Super Dungeon.

I was immediately impressed after booting up the game by the extensive in-game instructions. The space limitations of the time usually prevent this sort of thing, but Super Dungeon does a very good job of explaining itself up front. It might be a tad too lengthy for someone who just wants to start the game, but you can skip it with no trouble.

It starts with the story, if you can call it that, which I'll reproduce here: "There have been numerous rumors of huge deposits of gold, hidden in a maze of caves, deep beneath the Earth. It is said that this gold is guarded by thousands of demons, monsters and other sorts of evil beings. Well, these rumors are true, and you are about to descend into the depths of these caves that we call the D U N G E O N S ! ! !" I don't know if it's worth those three exclamation points, but it is the classic D&D set-up.

Character creation is fairly simple. You type a name, and then the game gives you two stats: Constitution and Strength. Constitution, which appears to range from around 10 to 30, is this game's equivalent of hit points.  Strength ranges from about 10 to 25, and is part of what determines whether you score a hit in combat. Creating a character right now, I got a Constitution of 28 and a Strength of 12.

There are then five character classes to choose from: Warrior, Wizard, Elf, Dwarf, and Hobbit. Each of these, of course, has their own strengths and weaknesses, but what differentiates this game from others is that each class has certain doors it can pass through.  Seriously, doors are way important in Super Dungeon.  Your stats don't limit your choice of character class, but they may have an effect on how many experience points you earn. For example, a Warrior or a Dwarf will earn more experience if their Strength is over 15, and a Wizard earns more with a Constitution over 30. Hobbits are penalised if their Constitution is over 30, and Elves likewise if their Strength is greater than 15. With my scores of 12 and 28, I don't want to choose a Warrior, a Dwarf or a Wizard, so I go with an Elf.

After that you get more stats: Life Points and Armor Class. Armor Class ranges from 0 to 10, and wearing armour improves it. Unlike old-school D&D, a higher number is better.  Even wearing no armour my Elf begins with 3.  Life Points are like stamina, and may be the most important stat in the game. Every move you make drains a Life Point, and going through certain doors will drain from 5 to 10.  If your Life Points hit 0 you drop from exhaustion, and the last monster you encountered gets the honour of killing you.  Each class begins with its own range of hit points; Hobbits are the lowest with 50-60, while Warriors get 90-100. The main reason I chose the Elf over the Hobbit as my class above is that Elves get more Life Points (74, in this case).

Nathan the Elf, I feel like I'm insulting myself

The last part of character creation is buying equipment. You begin with a number of copper pieces determined by your class, and from that you can buy weapons, armour, a horse, and food. Weapons add to your Strength in combat, while armour adds to your Armor Class as I mentioned above. Food grants you more Life Points. A horse increases your Speed, which begins at 1 but can be raised to 2 with a draft horse or 3 with a light horse. It's pretty weird to imagine an adventurer galloping around the dungeon on horseback, but having a good speed is essential for getting the first strike in combat.

You have to buy two weapons for some reason. Most classes can use whatever weapon they want, but Wizards are restricted to non-magical daggers. They get a +3 Strength bonus to offset this due to their magic, and to be honest I never noticed them performing particularly worse than the other classes. There are no restrictions on the other items. With 106 copper, I bought my Elf a sword, a dagger, chainmail armour, a light horse, some iron rations and a quart of wine. This increased my Armor Class to 5, and my Life to 109. I don't know if you get the Strength bonus from both weapons, but the sword is worth 5 and the dagger is worth 2. There's no point saving any copper at this point, because you can't do any more shopping once the game begins.

Super Dungeon looks visually quite similar to Robert Clardy's Dungeon Campaign, which makes sense because both games were influenced by Dragon Maze.  Each level of the dungeon is created at random. Your character begins near an exit on the right of the screen, and the entrance to the next dungeon level will be found on the left. (It never occurred to me while playing, but progress being right-to-left is slightly odd from a Western perspective.)  Your character is represented by a brown rectangle, and you move around using the U, D, L and R keys to represent Up, Down, Left and Right. (I'm pretty sure this is done because the Apple keyboard didn't have all four Arrow keys.)

Scattered throughout the maze are various kinds of doors: red, blue, and white. The red doors are normal, the blue ones are secret doors, and the white ones are bolted.  You can get through the red doors for free, but depending on your class the blue and white doors will drain your Life Points: Wizards and Elves can get through the blue (secret) doors for free, while Dwarves and Hobbits suffer no penalty for going through a white (bolted) door.  Warriors are drained by both blue and white doors, but they get a bonus 25 Life Points at the start of every dungeon level. (In my opinion, it's not enough.)  You don't always succeed at opening doors, and more than once I lost loads of Life Points trying to batter down a white door that was blocking my way forward.

Randomly creating the next level of the dungeon.

Beyond every door is a room where you will find some treasure and/or a monster, so you want to explore as many of those doors as possible.  On the other hand, you don't want to lose too much Constitution or Life before you reach the exit, or you'll be starting the next level at a major disadvantage, unless you've earned a lot of experience points along the way. Balancing your Life and Constitution against the experience you earn is probably the most important factor in surviving the game.

The rooms beyond the doors aren't shown on the map, but when you enter one you get a crude graphical depiction of what treasure lies within. This can include coins (gold pieces, naturally) as well as various kinds of magic items. If there's no monster in the room you can claim the treasure, but if there is a monster you'll have to fight it first. You can only loot the treasure from a room once, though; if you try to go through that door again the game will inform you that it's illegal, and erase any doors you've already been through from the map.

The game has treasures as follows:

• Gold pieces, either loose or in a bag
• Magical swords and daggers, which increase your chance to hit (and give you the ability to fight certain monsters)
• Magical armour, which increases your Armor Class. You can keep finding magic armour, and it keeps raising your AC, which is welcome even though it makes no sense.
• Magic rings, which increase your stats
• Magic potions, which give you a Life or Constitution bonus
• Maps, which give you the ability to get through any door of your choice for free. The class description for the Wizard mentions that they can always read maps, but I never found a map that I was unable to read with the other classes.
• Keys, which allows you free access through the white doors.
• Chests, which might be trapped. I think they only contain gold, but don't quote me on that.
• Coffins, which might contain gold, magic gas that increase or decrease your stats, or skeletons that you have to fight.

This room contains a pile of gold and a magic ring fit only for thin, rectangular fingers.

Combat is extremely simple.  There are lots of different types of monsters, all drawn from D&D, but they don't have any special abilities.  Monsters have scores in Speed, Strength and Armor Class. These function in much the same way as they do for the player, although the monster's Strength also doubles as its hit points.  The combatant with the highest Speed goes first, and then you simply trade blows until one or the other dies. This can take a while at first, because your maximum damage is equal to the dungeon level you're on. When you're fighting a monster with a Strength of 20 and doing 1 point of damage with each hit, it can get a little tedious. Thankfully you can blast through it quickly by holding down Enter, but there's always the risk of a surprise death when you do that.

Pretty much your only option other than attacking is to run away, which you get the opportunity to do at the end of every round (or at the beginning of combat if your Speed is higher). When you flee the monster gets a chance to hit you in the back. You shouldn't need to run unless your Constitution is very low, the monster has loads of Strength, or it has a Speed of more than 1. High Speed monsters are the ones you really want to watch out for, because they get multiple attacks per round. A monster with a Speed of 3 gets three attacks to your one, so they're best avoided; some monsters have Speed as high as 5.  You might beat them, but sometimes it's better to leave the room than lose too much Constitution. If possible, your best bet might be to circle around and enter the door from the other side, because doing that will give you a different room altogether.

This room has a bag, two coffins, and a Dragon that I would probably run away from.

Oh, there's one more reason you might want to run away: some monsters can only be damaged by magic weapons. This isn't a problem for the Wizard, who gets to kill them with spells, but every other class is outta luck. Even the Elf (who is described as being both a Warrior and a Wizard) needs a magical weapon in these circumstances. The game gives you the option to fight, but it's a suicidal one.

Defeating monsters gives you half of their Strength score in experience. When you reach the entrance to the next level you also get a bonus equal to the level you just defeated, modified by whatever bonus or penalty you get for your stats and character class. You can then spend this experience to raise your stats, with 1 point buying 1 Constitution or 3 Life points.  Getting the balance right here can be difficult, but for the most part I found it better to prioritise Life over Constitution.  Unfortunately, all this balance went out the window once I figured out that the process could be cheated.  You can return to the level you just beat, and then pop back to the next level and get more bonus points. Keep going back and forth between levels and you can get your stats as high as you like. It's time-consuming, but that's what upping the cycles on emulators is for. (I did cheat a little bit using this method, but the character I finally beat the game with was 100% cheat-free.)

Spending experience between dungeon levels. This is pretty deep into the game.

There are dangers outside of the rooms as well, that pop up at random. You can't see them on the map, you just have to deal with the consequences of the encounter as it happens.

• Wandering monsters: These don't appear on the first dungeon level, but after that there's a chance that a monster will attack you while you're exploring the tunnels. You can't flee from them either, so it's just pure luck as to whether you're strong enough to win. It would be terribly unfair if a monster that can only be affected by magic weapons popped up in this way, but I never encountered one.
• Tremors: Occasionally a tremor hits, which causes some tunnels to be blocked and others to open up. Fairness isn't a consideration here: sometimes the path to the next level is completely blocked, sometimes the way back is blocked, and sometimes (rarely) both ways are blocked. If this happens, you're probably dead unless you can find a teleporter.
• Teleportation: Some squares will teleport you to a random location on the same level. If you're low on Life Points, this can be a death sentence; more than once I lost a character by being teleported away just as I was about to reach the exit and restore my Life with experience points.
• The Witch: There's a witch who pops up at random and zaps away some of your Constitution. Usually it's a small percentage, like 1/10, and not too troubling.
• The Thief: This thief occasionally appears to steal your gold. This isn't a big deal, unless you're playing for points: gold has no effect on the game aside from measuring your success at the end.
• Pits: Sometimes you will stumble in the dark into a pit, and climbing out will drain a certain percentage of your Life. I've had it drain as much as half, and when your on the deeper levels that can mean hundreds or thousands of points. Along with being teleported this is the deadliest random occurrence.
• Magic Wand: The only good thing that happens at random is that you can find a magic wand you can use to obliterate any one enemy. Handy to have in emergencies, or when you find a Speed 5 monster with a Strength score in the triple digits.

Getting zapped by a Witch.

As I mentioned above, there's no goal to this game beyond amassing as many gold pieces as possible. You win by escaping the dungeon with your treasure, which can be done in two ways. The first is by retracing your steps all the way back to Level 1 and leaving via the exit.  The other is by finding a secret passage, which looks like a black square on the map. (Well, the instructions call it a secret passage and the game calls it a transportation chamber.)  Entering a secret passage takes you all the way back to the surface, but they appear at random so you can't always rely on having one around.

In general I found that the Wizard was the most effective class: they get a decent amount of Life Points, they don't need magic weapons, and they can get through blue doors for free. At the beginning the ability to get through the blue doors is about as useful as the ability to get through the white ones, but eventually you're going to find a key that opens all of the white ones anyway. The Warrior is the weakest class: they can only go through regular doors, and their 25 point Life bonus isn't enough to offset that limitation. If you pick the Warrior, you're playing on hard mode.

I lost a dozen or so characters before I figured out the balance of the game (and also how to cheat). The first character I "won" with got down to Level 10 before I found a secret passage and left the dungeon with around 13,000 gold pieces.  I was ready to declare the game beaten at that point, but I thought that just for fun I'd make a mad dash and see how deep I could get.  I had an expectation that the game might be infinite, but I hadn't taken into consideration the fact that it remembers the levels you've previously explored; there's a limit to the number of levels a PC of this era could remember. When I got to Level 20 I noticed that there was a secret passage right next to the exit.  I cleared out the level, and when I stepped on that secret passage I got the following victory message:

This was followed by a summary of my character's status, including how much gold I had amassed:

Having reached the bottom of the dungeon, there's really nothing left to do but try to do it again with more gold.  I'm not particularly into achieving high scores, so for me Super Dungeon is done and it's time to give it a Final Rating.

FINAL RATING:

Story & Setting: I mean, let's be real, this game doesn't have a story, and it does nothing to flesh that non-story out with some setting flavour. The dungeon doesn't even have a name!  Random doors and walls do not an intriguing setting make.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: The variety in the monsters is pretty high: there might be as many as a few dozen.  They're all from D&D or mythology, which is a hackneyed thing to do but works when you don't have graphics. It's not original, but at least I have some idea what a Rust Monster looks like.  There are some deep cuts as well: I don't think I've ever encountered a Su-Monster before (in video games or tabletop, to be honest). There's not much done with that variety, though. None of them have special abilities, beyond the few that are only damaged by magical weapons. In many ways, the variety is in name only, because there are no tactical options in combat.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Aesthetics: The graphics are functional, but not exactly easy on the eyes. The only sound comes from the internal speaker, with different variations of beeps and bloops that are occasionally amusing but otherwise don't do much for me. As for atmosphere, there ain't none.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Mechanics: Exploration is rudimentary, while combat is a rote affair at best.  The strongest aspect of this game is the balance between Constitution, Life and experience, which can be tricky to master when you're starting out.  It's an adequate game that's a little too repetitive.  Rating: 3 out of 7.

Challenge: This game was a challenge at the beginning, before I learned how to best conserve my Life and Constitution (and before I learned that you can earn free experience by going back and forth between levels like a cheating cheater). This took me a couple of hours.  After that, it became far too easy.  I had thousands of Life points, my Constitution became too high for any damage done by monsters to trouble me, and eventually I found enough suits of magic armour that monsters could barely hit me at all.  The only challenge that remained was from random factors such as pits, teleportation, and the dreaded game-ending tremor, but these aren't the good kind of challenge. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Innovation & Influence: Like most of the CRPGs of this vintage, this game is trying to recreate D&D. It's not really doing anything that previous games haven't done, but it's doing the same things in different ways. I'd say it's moderately innovative, mostly because it came out early enough in video game history that it's not drawing from anything that came before. As for influence, there aren't any significant CRPGs that take inspiration from it (only its sequel/remake Dragon Fire), and it doesn't appear to have made much of a historical mark.  Rating: 3 out of 7.

Fun: This kept my interest for a couple of hours, and to be honest most of the fun I got from it was after I became super-powerful: there's something to be said for being able to stomp around the dungeon killing everything in your path.  Even so, that fun was mild at best, and it didn't hold my interest beyond those initial hours.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: I probably won't ever play Super Dungeon again, so it doesn't get any bonus points.

The above scores total 14, which doubled gives a Final Rating of 28.  That puts it 30th overall, and 14th out of 15 CRPGs.  It's only above Devil's Dungeon, which is perhaps unfair; it's better than a number of games above it, but that's a consequence of me rating a bunch of stuff way higher than it deserved in the blog's early days.  In the end, the exact ratings and positions are a little meaningless, as long as it's in the right ballpark.

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.  For CRPGs I'm using a Combat category.  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: Combat in this game really is a process of hitting attack repeatedly, until one side is dead. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 0.

That gives Super Dungeon a RADNESS Index of 24. It's equal 28th overall, and 12th out of fifteen CRPGs.  It ended up a point behind Dungeon Campaign, which doesn't seem quite right, but I marked that game little too high in a couple of categories if I'm being honest.  They're in the same ballpark, though.

NEXT: The Priority List kicks in, as I get to the game that's a prologue of sorts to what is probably my all time favourite CRPG series: Akalabeth!

An Explanation of My Final Ratings System

I don't have a post about a game today (remember, I promised to update on Sundays and maybe Wednesdays). I'm cracking on with Super Dungeon, which should be another blessed one-post game, but I'm not ready to write about that one yet. What I do have is a new page that goes into greater detail about the Final Ratings that I give to the games I play. It explains the seven categories, and what I'm thinking when I assign a score between 1 and 7, and why the hell I decided on a 7 point scale in the first place.

It's a bit of a work in progress, and definitely doesn't match up with a bunch of the games I've rated so far, but it should be helpful if you have any questions about the system. It should also be helpful to me in keeping my scoring consistent. It's up in the sidebar on the right: have a look, if you're so inclined.