Priority Adventure Game 1: Mystery House (1980)

The cover to the original packaging of Mystery House

I was supposed to post this on the weekend, but with quarantine happening and nothing to do but sit at home, my sleep cycles got so messed up that I basically lost a day or two.  I've been playing a lot of games and catching up with a lot of stuff for the blog, but what I haven't being doing much of is writing.  So today I'm getting back on schedule, and hopefully I'll be able to keep it that way.

Today's game is Mystery House, the first adventure game on my Priority List.  I considered leaving it off, along with the other Sierra Hi-Res Adventures, because I was going to get to them in reasonable time in my regular chronology.  I left the Scott Adams adventures off the Priority List for that very reason.  But the post-King's Quest Sierra games are a definite priority, and I couldn't really justify playing those before covering the company's earlier work.  So the Hi-Res Adventures are in, and the first of those is Mystery House.

The cover of the 1982 re-release, with a playing
card motif that has nothing to do with the game.

Mystery House is often touted as the first graphical adventure game.  It's not, technically; The Atlantian Odyssey, which I covered not too long ago, came out in 1979, so it has Mystery House beat by at least half a year.  It is, however, the first significant graphical adventure.  As history shows, sometimes it doesn't matter if you got there first, what matters most is getting there first in a way that people notice.  Hardly anyone played The Atlantian Odyssey, but a whole heck of a lot of people played Mystery House.

The game was written and designed by Roberta Williams, and programmed by her husband Ken.  Ken Williams had spent the 1970s working in the business side of computers, bouncing from company to company, always seeking a bigger paycheck.  He'd mostly worked on mainframes during that time, and he bought an Apple II with the plan of creating a version of the FORTRAN programming language that would work for it.  As it happened, among the applications he had for that Apple II was a copy of Colossal Cave Adventure.  Roberta, who is usually described as the model housewife and mother before this moment, became obsessed with the game, and even she admits that she neglected her children while playing it.  After she finished it there were few options for similar games, and she thought that she'd be able to make her own, as long as she had someone to do the coding.  Ken eventually came around to the commercial potential of making such a game, especially when the idea of adding graphics came in, and it became the first hit for On-Line Systems, later known as Sierra On-Line.  Overall it's said to have sold about 80,000 copies, which is a huge number for the time. You probably know the rest: Roberta would go on to spearhead the King's Quest series, Sierra would be the biggest force in adventure gaming throughout the 80s and into the 90s, and the two of them combined would be major players in helping video games to become a part of pop culture at large.  (For a more detailed look at the early years of Ken and Roberta, check out this article over at the Digital Antiquarian.)

The original title screen. The re-release adds a few more with the Sierra
logo, and a page of text about the public domain release.

Mystery House was released on May 5, 1980 for the Apple II, and later ported to a bunch of Japanese computers.  (I do find it odd that the game wasn't ported to any other computers in the US.  It seems especially strange that money-hungry Ken Williams wouldn't have seized the opportunity to get his games onto, say, the Commodore 64.  Perhaps there was a technology issue, but I have no idea.)  I am, of course, playing the Apple II version on an emulator.  I couldn't find the original; all the versions out there are from 1987, when the game was released into the public domain to celebrate Sierra's 7th anniversary.  (Why celebrate the 7th?  You couldn't wait three years?)

The plot of Mystery House was apparently inspired by the Agatha Christie novel And Then  There Were None.  I've never read any Christie, but looking at a plot summary it seems that the connection is very loose.  Both stories feature a group of people who've been invited to a house, and are murdered one by one.  There all similarities end.

In addition to its credit as the first graphical adventure, Mystery House also sometimes gets credited as the first adventure game to have a mystery story.  That's probably not the case: the similarly-named Mystery Mansion (which I covered back here) has it beat.  Of course, Mystery Mansion was developed over a span of years from 1978 to 1981, so there's a small chance it wasn't quite playable by the time Mystery House was released.  It's only a small chance though; evidence points to Mystery Mansion being played in the 1970s, and there are some claims that it was created even earlier than 1978.  Regardless of that, Mystery House gets the credit for being the first mystery game that a large number of people played.

This is probably the best-looking screen of the game.  Just ignore the tree.

The game begins with the player standing outside the titular house.  There's nothing else to do but go up to the front door and enter, after which the door is slammed and locked behind you.  You are now trapped in the house, along with seven other people whose depictions I could best describe as amateurish.

They all look identical here, but will get unique depictions later on.

You can't get descriptions of any of these people during the game, but the instructions have more details as to who they are:

• Tom, a blond plumber
• Sam, a brunette mechanic
• Sally, a red-headed seamstress
• Dr. Green, a brunette surgeon
• Joe, a brunette gravedigger
• Bill, a blond butcher
• Daisy, a blond cook

Is it weird that there are three blokes here described as brunettes?  I always thought that was more of a female descriptor.  Regardless, as soon as I saw these descriptions, I figured that hair-colour would play some role in solving the mystery.

As well as the seven other guests, the entry hall also has a crude note on the floor.

They were going to write "losers weepers" but they ran out of space.

"Valuable jewels are hidden in this house.  Finders-keepers."  This level of atrocious hand-writing at first led me to suspect Dr. Green, but then I realised that the writing was legible, so I abandoned this theory.  Besides, you can't accuse anyone of the murder, or even talk to the other guests.  You can't even kill any of them yet, and it's not like an actual crime has been committed at this point.  There's nothing to do but leave the room by one of the three doors, or by the stairs to the top floor.  As soon as you leave, the other guests all disappear from the entry hall.

West of the entry hall is a kitchen, which has a fridge, a cabinet, and a stove.  It has a sink as well, which is shown in the graphics but not mentioned in the room description.  This stumped me for a little bit, because I was only interacting with the items that the game went out of its way to mention.  I opened the cabinet, and found some matches.  I opened the fridge, and found an empty pitcher.  I ran into some problems here, though, because I just couldn't figure out what to call the thing in the fridge.  I tried JUG and GLASS and even EWER, because I read far too much fantasy fiction with old-timey words.  It wasn't until much later that I hit on PITCHER, and I can't even tell you why it took me so long.  I can say that it's not the word I'd use in that context: it's a god-damn JUG, I tell ya!  None of this would have been a problem if it was described in the text.

I also tried lighting the stove, and got a very terse message telling me that the stove exploded, and I was dead.  One quick reload later, I determined that the stove was probably unimportant, and not to be tampered with.  Chalk that up as my first arbitrary death in a Sierra game.  Alas, this one didn't have the charm of their later games.

You can leave the kitchen by a back door, but that just leads into a forest maze, and I wasn't prepared for maze mapping at this early stage, especially without a full inventory to leave a trail.  I couldn't figure out how to get back to the kitchen though, so after getting hopelessly lost I had to reload again.

This time I went east from the kitchen and found the library, complete with seven whole books.  There is a cobweb in the corner though, and most of the windows in the house are boarded up, so I assume the place has been abandoned for some time.  I found a note on the floor, which had another crudely written message: "7-6 = 1. THEN I AM DONE!"  Ooh, foreshadowing!  What could this possibly mean!  (Obviously it means there will be murders.  But if there are seven guests plus me, this murderer's math is all screwed up. Perhaps I was not expected?)

Another door led outside where I found the first murder victim: Sam the mechanic, who had been hit on the head by a blunt object. Look, you can see the big lump on his head!  And those X's for eyes, he's as dead as a doornail.

Alright, one less person looking for the treasure!

I went back inside through another door, into a dining room. I could see that there was a candle on the table, and... something in the background.  A christmas tree?  A tent?  Eventually I figured out that it's a lamp, but it doesn't matter, because it's irrelevant.  It does highlight one my biggest gripes with early graphical adventure games though, and it's their expectation that you'll know what the objects depicted in the graphics are supposed to be.  It happened earlier with the pitcher, and it's happened again here with the lamp.  This won't be such a problem later, when graphics get better and room descriptions get longer, but in this era of crude images and terse descriptions it really sucks.

An illuminati symbol?  A dwarf holding a kite?

After a short time the sun goes down, and if you don't have a light source by then it's pretty difficult to navigate (although you can still fumble around in the dark).  I used the match to light the candle, but when I lit it in the dining room I tripped on the rug and started a fire.  I tried leaving by the back door, but that only resulted in my fiery death.  After a reload, I figured out that you can take the candle out of the dining room first before you light it. Crisis averted!

Having explored all of the ground floor I went upstairs (a floor which is inexplicably larger than the one below it, unless the rooms on the bottom have a much bigger volume).  Heading east and west I found four bedrooms.  In the nursery I found the body of Dr. Green, which disproved my bad hand-writing hypothesis.  He had been stabbed, but there were no other clues to be found.

In a boy's bedroom I found another note, that said "YOU WILL NEVER FIND IT! IT'S ALL MINE!!"  In a large bedroom I didn't find anything, but someone tried to kill me with a thrown dagger.  I grabbed the dagger and gave chase, but whoever it was had quickly vanished.  (Replaying the game to get some screenshots, I just had this dagger thrown at me even though I'd already taken care of the murderer.)

The last bedroom had another body, that of Sally the Seamstress.  She'd been bumped on the head just like Sam, but this time there was another clue: a blond hair!  My list of suspects was rapidly dwindling: only Tom, Joe, Bill and Daisy were still alive.  Of those, Joe was a brunette, so he was probably ruled out.

Heading north I saw a stairway up to the attic, but I decided to explore a doorway at the end of the passage first.  It led to a study, with nothing inside but a desk that I couldn't interact with, and a window with a lovely view outside.  Next to the study there was a bathroom, where I found yet another murder victim: Bill the butcher, who had been strangled with a pair of pantyhose.  I mean, it's possible that this is a Michael Hutchence situation here, but it's probably safer to assume that this guy was murdered.  Based on the graphics, I miraculously figured out that you can take a towel from the rack.  You can't use the toilet, though, which is a bit of a black mark on the game.  If you're putting a dunny in a game, you better let me take a shit in it, that's all I'm saying.  (Actually, this game doesn't even let you type any cuss words.  Try it, and you get hit with an instant game over.)

Heading up to the attic, I found a hammer, which I took, and a ladder that was too heavy to move.  In a storage room just off the attic there was a chest, which was locked.  I guess I'd have to go looking for the key.

At that point I'd pretty much explored everywhere, or so I thought.  I mapped the maze, but I didn't find anything there: it was just a pointless maze of trees that didn't seem to go anywhere.  I did figure out that you could leave the forest by going UP from the initial location, which doesn't make much sense, but it did come in handy later.  I also noticed the gate in the back yard, which led to a graveyard.  There I found Joe the gravedigger, who had just finished digging six graves.  I tried to take his shovel, thinking that maybe I needed to dig somewhere in the forest to find the key.  Joe wouldn't let me, so I stabbed him to death.  Him digging six graves was highly suspicious behaviour, so I'm sure he deserved it.  Digging in the forest didn't turn anything up though, so I was a little bit stuck.

Hahaha the giant X's on his eyes.

Eventually I noticed the sink in the kitchen, and figured out that I could turn the taps on with the dubious command of WATER ON.  That one's pretty rough, but it was singled out in the instructions so I remembered it pretty quickly.  I gathered some water with the pitcher, and also took a butterknife that was lying in the sink.

With some water in my possession I figured that I had some fire-fighting capabilities, so I went back to the dining room, where I once again tripped on the rug and set it ablaze.  Pouring water on the fire put it out, which left a hole in the rug.  In that hole I found a key, and with that key I was able to unlock the chest, in which I found a handgun with one bullet.

I'll never turn down a gun in any game, but this wasn't the clue I was hoping for.  I'd found four dead bodies, and made one myself by killing Joe.  That left Tom and Daisy, one of whom was probably the murderer.  They weren't coming to me it seemed, so it looked like I'd have to find them.  And what's a murder house mystery without a secret passage?

I started rechecking all of the rooms, and eventually I found my solution in the study.  Here's a picture of that room, with it's lovely window view.

It still looks like a window to me.

While I was looking around the house I tried to look out this window, and was told that all of the windows on the house were boarded up, except for the one in the attic.  The attic window only gives a view of the forest, with nothing helpful to impart.  But if all the other windows were boarded up, what about this one in the study, which was very clearly open?

Well, it turns out the graphics fooled me again, because this was not a window but a painting in a picture frame.  The picture was bolted to the wall with four screws, but I was able to loosen them with the butterknife from the kitchen.  (The dagger should maybe work here, but it doesn't.) Behind the picture was a button, and pressing it opened a secret door.

This secret passage led down to the basement, where I found the final corpse: that of Tom the plumber.  He'd been stabbed, and was clutching a daisy in his hand.  Even I could understand such boneheaded symbolism, and with this clue and the process of elimination I figured out that Daisy was the murderer.  Now I just had to find her.

Poor Tom, he'd only just been awarded the key to the city.

It was impossible not to notice the huge key on the table, which was a skeleton key.  Obviously it's called that because the ginormous bloody thing was carved out of an elephant's thighbone.  The door out of the room led to a pantry, with no way through.  Later on I figured out that it connected to the kitchen, through a hole behind the cabinet that was bricked up.  I had to used the hammer from the attic to smash the bricks to get through.

There's also a tunnel leading from the basement, which somehow led to an area with a large pine tree.  I tried climbing the pine tree, and found a telescope.  Looking through it, I could see into the attic through the open window, where I spotted a trap door in the ceiling.  Why I could see this through a telescope from outside better than three feet away with my actual fucking eyes I have no idea.  There was nothing else to do but head back down the tree, which dumped me in the middle of the forest maze.  I was thankful at this point that I'd mapped it out, and getting back to the house wasn't too hard.

Heading to the attic, I climbed up through the trapdoor, and found myself in a tower with the murderer, Daisy.  Examining her gave me the unambiguous message "She is going to kill you", so I unloaded by gun right into her face.  I'd stopped the murderer!  And well, murdered a couple of people myself, but they deserved it.  I still think Joe was in on it.  (My replay only strengthened this theory, because somebody threw a dagger at me after I'd already shot Daisy's head off.  I reckon she killed the victims that were stabbed, and Joe killed the ones that were bashed on the head using his shovel.)

This worked, actually.

In the attic I found another note, that said "It's in the basement!"  So I went down to the basement, and started typing things like BREAK WALL and FIND SECRET and END ALREADY.  I noticed that the walls were covered with algae, and I even tried CLEAN ALGAE, but that didn't work.  I was stuck on this for quite some time, until I eventually caved and looked up the solution.  It was WIPE ALGAE, or RUB ALGAE, so I was on the right track, I just hadn't gotten the wording right.  You need the towel here as well, or the game tells you that you have nothing to wipe the algae with.  With the algae cleaned away, I found a loose brick, and behind that I found the jewels.  With the murderer dead and the jewels in my possession, I was able to leave the house and win the game.

A guru wizard?!?

So, Mystery House.  I can't say that I enjoyed it, exactly.  Wrangling with the combination of a primitive parser and bad graphics was a trial at certain points. It's not like the mystery story was any great shakes either, and you don't even really solve it except by the process of elimination. But there were certain aspects of the game that were impressive, most notably the graphics.  Not that they look good; they are, in fact, rather terrible.  But the changes to the game environment being reflected graphically is definitely impressive for the time.  Doors open and close.  Items disappear when you pick them up, and will appear in any location when you drop them.  I don't recall any games doing this before.  It's one impressive thing in a see of irritations, though, and I can't really recommend Mystery House as anything other than a historically significant curiosity.

RADNESS INDEX:

Story & Setting: The mystery story is still a novel one at this point, and I appreciated the change, but it's really not at all well executed.  And, of course, there just has to be some treasure to find, doesn't there?  The house isn't particularly well realised either, although adding the graphical dimension makes it a little more memorable.  I'm wavering between 1 and 2 here, but I think perhaps I'll be generous. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: This category starts promisingly, but it turns out that the characters here are little more than corpses to be strewn throughout the game.  Only Joe and Daisy are found alive after the initial room, and they can barely be interacted with.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Aesthetics: This is a pretty ugly game, and the novelty of the graphics doesn't really mitigate that.  There's no sound, and the writing is terse.  The game does do some novel things with its graphical interactivity, but I'm dealing with that down in Mechanics.  Plus you lose points here when I have to spend significant time trying to figure out what an object actually is.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Puzzles: The puzzles in this game aren't actually too bad.  Most of them are pretty simple and logical, they're just hopelessly obscured by the graphics and the parser.  None of them are particularly clever though.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Mechanics: The parser is really not all that good, and as I've said the graphics don't help it.  It's not hopelessly broken though, and the interactivity of the graphics earn it an extra point here.  Rating: 3 out of 7.

Challenge: It's an often-baffling game, but I wouldn't say it's a particularly hard one.  Without the graphics and parser issues I've already mentioned it would probably rate a little better here, but with them I would have to say that this game is a frustrating experience. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Fun: I didn't enjoy Mystery House a great deal once I got through the initial exploration, mostly due to the issues above.  It's pretty short though, and that's usually enough to get a game out of a minimum score in this category.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 2.  For graphical innovation and historical significance I grant this game the full amount of bonus points.

The seven categories above add up to 13, which doubled totals 26.  Add the two bonus points, and Mystery House gets a RADNESS Index of 28.  That places it equal 24th overall, and 15th out of 26 adventure games.  It's even with Voyage to Atlantis and just above The Cottage, which was probably an even more frustrating experience than this one.  So it's down there with some of the games I've not enjoyed much, but not right down there with the very worst.

NEXT: My next game was going to be Empire of the Over-Mind, Gary Bedrosian's follow-up to Lords of Karma, which I rather liked.  But although he wrote it in 1979, it wasn't released until 1981, so I'm kicking it down the list by a couple of years.  After that I had Enchanted Island by my boy Greg Hassett, but it looks like that's his last game for 1979: before that he wrote Sorcerer's Castle Adventure.  So I'm swapping the two around, and by the weekend I should have a post up on Sorcerer's Castle.

Futurewar: Stuck in the Future

Remember in my last post, when I was worried that I might be playing Futurewar for months on end?  That this game would consume all of my free time and monopolise the blog, just like several other PLATO games have done before?  That the orange glow of PLATO would once more become the only warmth in my drab, grey life?  Well, nothing to worry about folks, because for now I'm done with Futurewar.

Unfortunately this doesn't mean that I've completed the game.  I'm not even sure what completing the game entails, aside from making it all the way to the bottom of the underworld.  No, I haven't finished it, but I have hit an impasse.  For whatever reason, the stairs down from level 7 (The Battle Zone) won't let me pass.  When I enter, the game goes through its usual process of loading the next level, but then it just dumps me back in level 7.  So I'm stuck, with no way forward.  I've left a message in the game's note files, and I see that the creators have responded to stuff there as recently as January.  There's a good chance they might fix the problem, assuming it is a problem that needs to be fixed.  After all, it could be that there's something I need to do (like maybe gain more experience points) to advance.  I don't know, and I'm not going to keep playing just in case.  I'll check back in on the game periodically to see if my question has been answered, and maybe one day I will have completed the game.  Today... is not that day.

LIES!!!

I managed to fully explore all of the human-occupied zones, as well as the War Zone and the Battle Zone.  There's nothing particularly noteworthy to find in any of these levels, and I suspect that there won't be any special encounters in the lower levels either, except perhaps at the very bottom.  All I found were hazards like radioactive waste and sewage, random encounters with mutants and robots, graffiti, and stairs leading down.  Even so, I was rather enjoying the process of mapping.  The levels are mostly quite open and not all that time-consuming to explore.  There are also no spinners, teleporters or darkness zones, so it's a lot less frustrating to map than a lot of later games will be.  My only gripe on this score is that the Barbarian Zone wraps around, but the coordinates are off by one when you cross from one side of the map to the other.  I'll put all of my maps below, so anyone who wants to can take a look.

American Zone

Guerilla Zone

Barbarian Zone

Martian Zone

Cyborg Zone

War Zone

Battle Zone

The game never ramped up in difficulty like I expected.  Once I found some armour, I was untouchable to all but a few enemies, and the vast majority of those that could hurt me were only doing 1 or 2 points of damage per hit.  There was just one enemy that I feared: Man-Beasts.  For some reason, while all of the other monsters were trivial, Man-Beasts could hit me for around 30 points of damage per blow.  At level 30 my current character Dutch has 169 hit points, and that doesn't last long against a group of Man-Beasts. I learned to run away from them the hard way.  Thankfully, Man-Beasts are only found in the Cyborg Zone and the War Zone, so once I was done mapping those I never had to deal with them again.

The monsters I encountered can broadly be grouped into four categories: human soldiers, mutants, robots, and giant bugs/larvae.  (I guess there are skeletons too, but I can classify them as former soldiers if I want.)  It's very much a charming hodge-podge of late 1970s pop culture.  The robots include R2-D2 and Cylons from Battlestar Galactica.  The mutants include one called an X-Man; the character from the X-Men that it most resembles is Cyclops, so I don't feel too bad gunning down hordes of them.  The monster sprites (if they are sprites, I'm not sure how the graphics of PLATO work) look good, and some of them even have animations, moving their mouths and such.  That surely must be a first for a CRPG..

You can also hit CTRL-H during combat, and it brings up the complete stats of the monster you're fighting.  I was tempted to go through and catalogue them all, but that would be a little too much work. I wouldn't risk it against the Man-Beasts, anyway.

Scanning a pair of Slime-Mutants

The game has a wide variety of weapons and armour, but I only found a few of each.  For armour, I found baseball caps, bullet-proof vests, flak jackets and ballistic vests.  The ballistic vest seemed to be the most effective of those, but even the lowly baseball cap was enough to make me nigh-invincible on the levels I explored.  I found three types of weapons: clubs, rifles, and a sub-machine gun.  None of my characters were able to equip the club, and the rifle is just the default weapon that a new character starts the game with.  I was able to use the sub-machine gun though, and I was pleased to see that equipping a new weapon changes the look of the gun barrel at the bottom of the screen.  It even fires multiple bullets per attack.  Unfortunately, I found the sub-machine gun a little glitchy.  It kept defaulting back to the centre aiming position, and it wasn't as accurate as the rifle.  I ended up switching back to the default weapon, and then that character died, so I don't even have a sub-machine gun now. Weapons have been the hardest item pick-ups to come by.

I also found some other items that aid in exploration.  The first was a flashlight, which took me a little while to figure out.  In my last post, I'd mentioned that I was able to see the locations where there were encounters.  That doesn't last; there are levels that are dark, and on those the encounter locations are hidden.  If you use the flashlight, however, you can see them, and it also lets you see more squares into the distance.

The other items I found were a metal detector and something called "super-hearing".  The metal detector will tell you when there's a mine on the square in front of you.  At first I thought that there was nothing I could do about these mines but avoid them, but eventually I tried shooting them.  Much to my surprise, it worked.  The super-hearing enhances an ability that you already have.  If you press shift-H, it brings up a display that shows what's around you for about three squares in every direction.  With the super-hearing that range increases.  Unfortunately, both of these items stopped working for me after a while, and I'm not sure why.

Using my hearing. The o is me, the E is a base, the m's are monsters
and the x is a mine.

I'd been finding money after some encounters as well, but as of my last post I hadn't worked out what it was for.  There are no shops, at least none that I encountered, so it seemed to be pointless.  An old D&D-head like myself should have worked it out faster, but eventually I twigged that the money you take back to base converts into experience points, at a rate of one experience per dollar.  If I ever doubted this game's CRPG credentials, I have none whatsoever after figuring that out.

Aside from the occasional Man-Beast encounter, I hadn't been discouraged in my mapping by combat, but I had been blocked by hazards such as sewage and radioactive waste.  Some of my first few characters had died after walking into them, so I was reluctant to try it again, but once I'd exhausted all other mapping possibilities I had to bite the bullet.  With enough Hits I was able to survive walking through them, and explore the areas I'd missed on my first pass.  There wasn't really anything to find beyond them, but filling in my map was satisfaction enough.  There are still some infuriating areas that I can't get to, because they're blocked by pits or rubble.  Apparently I can get past those with a jetpack, but I never found one.  (Oh, and the squares that I thought were fire last time were actually rubble.  I blame that misconception on the game's Help file, which mentions the former but not the latter.)

Here's the current status of my character:

I gained a level while I was getting some screenshots for this post.

That's about all I have to report on the game, I'm afraid, unless the current game administrators come to my rescue.  I've tried going down every set of stairs on the first seven levels.  I've tried falling down every pit.  I advanced myself to level 30 on the off chance that would unlock access to the lower levels.  None of that worked, which is a shame, because I've been enjoying the game.  I think I was appreciating having something to sink my teeth into.  As much as I complained about the length of time that the other PLATO games took to beat, something like that is a lot more satisfying than the string of one-post games I've been on lately.  I was getting into the challenge, and the tension of perma-death.  Perhaps I'll be able to get back to it in time, but for now there's nothing for to do but move on.  (I won't assign a RADNESS Index just yet, though. It's possible I'll be back at Futurewar sooner rather than later.)

NEXT: My next game is Mystery House, the first of the adventure games on my Priority List.  I've also been replaying some of the earlier games from the blog, so expect some more back-tracking posts on those.  I'll try to schedule those as a bonus, rather than as replacements for my now-standard Sunday/Wednesday posts.

Back-Tracking: Journey to the Center of the Earth & Voyage to Atlantis

I know I said that I'd start on Mystery House, but I've been so caught up playing Futurewar that I haven't gotten around to it yet.  So instead, I thought I'd use this post to clear up some minor issues that have been nagging at me.

Some years ago I played through Journey to the Center of the Earth Adventure and Voyage to Atlantis, both text adventures written by Greg Hassett.  For whatever reason I wasn't able to find these games for the TRS-80, so I played both of them for the Commodore 64.  It's been bothering me on a very minor level, but I'm at home for a couple of weeks now, so there's never been a better time to clear up niggling trivialities like these.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH ADVENTURE

This was Hassett's first adventure, and I covered it in a post from four years ago.  The Commodore 64 version of the game was quite messy, with a lot of elements in it that served no purpose.  As I expected, the TRS-80 original is not much different.

Stark. Powerful.

The game begins by asking your name, which is something that the C64 version cut, because it never comes into play.  Otherwise the two versions of the game play almost identically, except for one thing: the location of the sword.

The sword is probably the most important item in the game.  Before you find it, you're at the mercy of randomly-occurring bugs that will show up and kill you.  Once you have it the bugs become a trivial nuisance.  The C64 version put the sword on the north side of a chasm.  This necessitated first finding the wand, and then using that wand to magic yourself across that chasm.  But in the TRS-80 version, the sword is found on the south side of the chasm.  It makes finding the sword much easier, and really takes the sting out of the frustrating first stage of the game.

Finding the sword in a surprising location.

I played through the whole game, and got a winning screen just for the satisfaction of it.

The C64 version mercifully changed "adventurerdom" to "adventuredom".

I also made a Trizbort map while I was at it.

Click to super-size it

The TRS-80 version of this game wasn't significantly different from the C64 port, so I'm leaving its RADNESS Index untouched.  It's perhaps a touch easier, but not enough for me to change the score.  I also tried to find the Commodore PET and Apple II version, but with no luck.

VOYAGE TO ATLANTIS

For some reason this was the first Greg Hassett game that I covered, as I had it mistakenly pegged as a 1978 game.  If you want to read more about it, read this post from four years ago.  It's one of the better Hassett games I've played, with decent puzzles and a relatively tight structure.

Greg has upped his presentation game a bit, as the title lowers from the top of the screen and his name comes up from the bottom.

The title screen mid-animation

This version of the game has just one difference that I could find from the C64.  There's a plaque in the C64 version that plugs Hassett's other games, and also causes the game to crash.  In the TRS-80 version it doesn't crash, and it also gives you a clue that makes finding one of the treasures even easier: there's an iron statuette that you have to SCRAPE to reveal that it's made of gold, and in this version the plaque says SCRAPE IRON.  It's a pretty direct hint, and one that wold have saved me some grief a few years ago.

Also, the game doesn't crash during the victory sequence, which is a bonus.

This should be a fairly concrete timeline of Hassett's games.

As with Journey, I trizbort mapped the hell out of this game.  It's really pleasingly laid out, and doesn't have any screwy messing around with the connections between rooms until you get to the Strange Room in the north-east.  That room is specifically flagged up as being weird, so it makes sense for it to have some weird geography.

A click makes it bigger.

Voyage to Atlantis is a slightly easier in its original form, but not so much so that I'd change its score in Challenge.  I'm was tempted to bump it up a point in mechanics, because it doesn't have those game-ending bugs, but I marked it as high as I can justify on my first pass.  So it's RADNESS Index for both versions remains at 28.  And as with Journey, I was unable to find the PET version.

NEXT: I'll probably have started Mystery House by then.  I've also got some other games I want to give another pass, just to clear up some minor stuff.  If this lockdown persists I'll get to them.  And I will, of course, continue plugging away at Futurewar.

Game 42: Futurewar (1977)

The square in the centre shows one of a few different 
images each time you start.

Ah, the warm orange glow of PLATO.  On the one hand, I spent so much of my gaming time a few years ago playing PLATO games that it has a certain nostalgic factor. On the other hand, I spent far too much of my gaming time on PLATO during those years.  Those of you who've read the blog from the beginning will know what I'm talking about. Games like Moria and The Game of Dungeons took me roughly a year each to complete, and as historically interesting as they were I'd rather not get bogged down in a similar scenario.

That brings me to Futurewar, a game that I wasn't entirely sure qualified as a CRPG, mostly because when I googled it I saw it described as a primitive 3D shooter.  Which it is, sort of.  But it also has randomly generated statistics that affect your chances of success at various activities, experience points, level advancement, turn-based combat, and the explore/fight/loot/return game loop that is the bread and butter of the CRPG genre.  A part of me want to say "alas, it qualifies as a CRPG", but really I started this blog to play more games of the genre (and more adventure games, of course).  So instead I will give a tentative "huzzah, it's a CRPG!" and hope that I can finish it in a matter of weeks rather than months.  Or god forbid, years.

The first version of Futurewar, created by high-schoolers Erik Witz and Nick Boland, was made available to play circa 1977, and it was updated a number of times between then and 1980.  The version at Cyber1 (the PLATO emulator that I'm using) is based on a printout dated December 1979.  If I'm reading the intro correctly, the game code is the same as that used in 1979, but some of the graphics had to be recreated from memory.  Apparently there are still some bugs, and it doesn't run on Cyber1 exactly like it used to on PLATO, but it's the only version out there so it's the closest I'm going to get.  It was re-released for the game's 40th anniversary in 2017, which is why I didn't cover it on my first pass (and presumably why it doesn't seem to have been covered on other chronological CRPG blogs).

A brief history of Futurewar.

Futurewar has a first person view and grid-based movement, and in those respects it's similar to  other PLATO CRPGs like Moria and Oubliette.  I was pretty delighted to discover that I'd be breaking out the mapping tools for this one.  Hazards and monsters are scattered throughout the mazes, along with treasure, and aside from some aspects of its combat it feels much like many other first-person CRPGs I've played.  Although Oubliette was the obvious primary inspiration for Wizardry, I wouldn't be shocked to discover that there's a bit of Futurewar DNA in the mix as well.  It's also similar to Moria and Oubliette in that it allows for players to team up in multiplayer parties. On PLATO, it seems as though the multiplayer CRPGs outnumber those that are designed for single players.

The backstory begins in 1978, with the player as a member of an elite SWAT team sent on a secret mission to infiltrate the lair of the evil Doctor Brain, who is gathering an army of mutants from Earth's post-apocalyptic future.  Before he can be stopped, Doctor Brain escapes to the future in his time machine, and the player is caught in the time warp as well.  In the far-flung future of 2020 AD (gasp!), a nuclear holocaust has devastated the Earth, and the remnants of humanity live in the mutant-infested underworld.  It's up to the player to navigate to the lowest depths and thwart the plans of Doctor Brain.  It seems that Futurewar does have an endgame, although what exactly that entails isn't elaborated upon.  What it does mean is that, even if it ends up being geared more for multiplayer parties, I won't be abandoning it as lightly as I did Oubliette, which had no goal.

It also appears that Futurewar might be the earliest sci-fi CRPG.  It's certainly the earliest one I've played for the blog.  The previous holder of that title was Space for the Apple II, which was released in 1978, so Futurewar definitely beats it.

The game begins with a poem, of all things.  It's called "Monstrosity", and it's by an actual poet named Steven Curtis Lance, who seemingly gave his permission.  It's a little overblown for my tastes, but by the standards of 1970s video game writing it's tremendous.  Too bad that the cursive font makes it hard to read.

More like Fontstrosity, am I right?

Following that there's a short animation that shows your character being caught in the time warp, then it's on to the title screen and character creation.

The first step in character creation is to pick a team.  Humanity has banded into five distinct groups: Americans, Guerillas, Barbarians, Martians, and Cyborgs.  The Americans are a mixture of patriotic rednecks, bikers and ex-convicts.  The Guerillas are what remains of the police and the military.  The Barbarians are those humans that have returned to a more primitive state.  Martians are the remnants of a Mars colony that have returned to Earth, and teamed up with the last nerds and dorks, apparently.  Finally, the Cyborgs are those that have been enhanced using the latest cybernetic technology.  The group you pick determines which zone of the underworld you start in, and seems to affect your starting stats as well.

Character stats are randomly generated, generally ranging from 5 up to the low 20s.  These stats are Strength, Quickness, Endurance, Technology and Intellect.  I'm not entirely sure what these all do, and there's no explanation of them in the game's Help file. I'm pretty sure that Strength helps with bashing down doors, and Quickness with running away from monsters.  Endurance seems to affect the player's resistance to damage.  I only know these because the stats increase with use, and I've occasionally seen them go up after certain activities.  I haven't figured out what Intellect and Technology are for yet.

Characters also receive scores in Power and Hits.  Hits are just hit points, while Power is your ammunition.  Weapons use up power when you fire them, so you only have a limited number of shots before you have to return to base and recharge.

The character status screen.  The image of the character in the middle
revolves with a pseudo-3D effect.

There are eight occupations to choose from, although the ones offered are dependent on the character's stats.  The occupations are: Leader, Techno, Soldier, Hunter, Spy, Medic, Assassin, and Holy Man.  Hunter is the occupation that I've qualified for most often, so I suspect that it's the one with the lowest stat requirements.  I've also played as a leader and a medic, though I didn't notice much of a difference in gameplay.  Then again, I didn't survive all that long with either.

Each of the human groups has it's own zone, a 20 x 20 dungeon level that's populated with weaker mutants.  These are the levels where I've been doing most of my exploration so far.  Below those is the War Zone, which is said to be the place where players will most likely meet members of the other groups.  Players in Futurewar can meet each other in the underworld, and form teams if they want. I haven't encountered anyone else so far, and much like my experiences with Moria and Oubliette I suspect that my time with Futurewar will be a solitary one.

Below the War Zone are fourteen more levels, each with its own title.  The lowest level shown in the Help file is "The Pits", but it mentions that there's rumored to be another level below that.  Perhaps I'll never see it, but I'm going to give it my best shot.

"The Lethal Zone."  Don't beat around the bush, then.

There are lots of hazards throughout the dungeon levels, including the human zones.  Sewage, fire,  and radioactive waste all deal damage to the player, but they're visible and easily avoided.  Sometimes they block passages though, and there are certain areas that I've been unable to map because of this.  Mines can't be seen, and will simply explode when stepped upon.  I've had some deal 1 or 2 points of damage, and others deal as much as 20.  Characters begin with around 15-20 hit points, so they can be deadly.  Pits will drop the player to the level below, but they're also visible (even though the Help file says they aren't).  Apparently there are transporters as well, but I haven't encountered one yet.

I think that's fire ahead of me, but I haven't walked into it to make sure.

The squares where mutants are lurking are also visible, so it's rare that the player will be taken unawares by an encounter (it basically only happens when going through a door).  Opponents range from humanoids, to mutants, to robots.  I've even encountered groups of R2-D2s, and some skeletons.  So far I haven't met any groups with more than four monsters, but I expect that will change when I delve deeper.  I also haven't met any creatures with special abilities, like poison or breath weapons.  The Help file has warned me to expect this kind of stuff, so I figure the game's been going easy on me in the various Human Zones.

There's a combat encounter in the square ahead of me.

Combat is turn based, although opponents vary in quickness.  Against some foes, I've been able to make four or five attacks before they can act.  Against others, I've had to wait while the enemy attacks me four or five times.  The player begins the game armed with what appears to be a rifle.  It sticks up from the bottom of the game window, which is part of what makes Futurewar feel like a 3D shooter.  When it's your turn to attack you press 's' to shoot, and a tiny bullet can be seen before your informed whether you hit or not.  I assume your stats play into this process somehow, but your gun's positioning is important as well.  The monsters move about during their turn, and you have to reposition your gun in order to have a better chance of hitting and doing the most damage.  Like a lot of games of the era it boils down to hitting the "attack" button repeatedly, but the importance of gun positioning does make it a little more engaging.

I should mention here that, like every other PLATO CRPG before it, Futurewar has perma-death.  If you lose a character, it's gone for good.  So far this game has been a little more forgiving than its contemporaries, but I suspect that won't last.

Aiming my rifle at a "Bone".  You can see on the right that my Endurance
just went up to 23.

The Help file has a list of technological devices that appear to be usable in combat: things like sleep canisters and thermonuclear warheads.  They appear to be the game's equivalent of magic, but I haven't found any yet so I don't know how effective they are.  The Help file also says that only Technos and Holy Men can use them, but I've yet to qualify for either occupation, so I may never actually get to try them out.

Killing monsters earns you experience, which can be used to gain levels when you return to base to recharge.  Gaining levels increases Hits and Power, and also grants the occasional boost to your stats.  Some monsters I've fought only grant a single point of experience, while others are worth hundreds.  My current character, an American named Chuck, has 34,726 experience and has reached 6th level.

Some monsters also guard boxes or chests.  Some of those explode and deal damage (because of course they do) and others contain money and items.  I'm not sure what money is used for.  I've found thousands of dollars, but every time I go to recharge it disappears.  I'm not paying for the recharge, because you can do that when you have no money at all.  I've also found one weapon (a rifle) and two pieces of armour (a baseball cap and a ballistic vest).  The only other item I've found is a flashlight, although I haven't found a use for it yet.

One nice touch that makes exploring the game a little more interesting is the graffiti that's scattered around the dungeons.  I'm pretty sure it's made from combinations of stock words, but I haven't seen a duplicate yet. They look cool, and some of the are quite amusing.

They can be a little hard to read, though.  I think this one says "end of burn".

My progress has been reasonably slow.  I started playing on Sunday night, and I have mostly complete maps of the Martian Zone, the Guerilla Zone and the American Zone.  I suppose mapping three out of twenty dungeon levels isn't bad, but I expect that my mapping progress will get much slower when I hit the actual dungeon.  I'm on my ninth character, so the game hasn't been overly deadly, but I've also been exploring what are effectively the town levels.  Most of my deaths have come at the hands of super-fast enemies, especially ones called "Worleymen".  That changed when I found my first piece of armour; somehow wearing a baseball cap made me impervious to all damage.  It ain't logical, but I'll take it because I just know that this game is going to get much harder in the War Zone and below.  My hope is that it's doable for a single player.  If the game difficulty is geared for multiplayer parties, I'm going to have to abandon it eventually, and I'd really rather not do that.

Either way, it looks like I'm sticking with Futurewar for a while.  My current plan for as long as I'm playing it is to post about Futurewar on Wednesdays and whatever other game I'm playing on Sundays.  The next game on my schedule is Mystery House, the first graphical adventure from Roberta Williams, and the first adventure game on my priority list.  Looking further ahead, I can see that my next priority CRPG is Rogue, which is somewhat daunting.  I could get into a situation where I'm alternating between Futurewar and Rogue for weeks on end, which could destroy my sanity.  Still, I got through Moria.  I got through The Game of Dungeons v8.  If I can beat those games, I'm ready for just about anything.