Black Crypt: Le Soleil, La Lune

The rest of the fourth floor was relatively simple for the most part. Nothing really new popped up, just more of the semi-invisible worm enemies. I got another character level. Curiously, my party doesn't all do it at once despite never having died, but it doesn't really work quite logically. Fighter and cleric both do it at the same time, but it then goes wizardess, then druid. I mean, I guess that makes sense, neither is using their weapons anymore, no point when they never seem to hit, but shouldn't my cleric be ahead of my fighter, since he fights and casts spells?

At this point, I end up stuck a bit. There's a magic wall I can't cast dispel on, so I assume I'm just missing something. Based on past evidence, I need to find some hidden button. Once again, I succumb to weakness and look it up the map. Nothing. The walkthrough? There are two scrolls of dispel I dropped because I don't need that when two of my spellcasters can do that. A lot of the more generic magic items which seem to serve no purpose I've just been ignoring. I don't need health potions I'm not going to use.

Inside is more armor, a remove glyph scroll I have a funny feeling I know where it goes, a key and another magic user spellbook. Reminder, my Druid still only has his first spellbook. All he has is a measly attack spell I'm not sure is doing the 2-8 points of damage per caster's level it alleges, a dispel magic spell which apparently isn't that helpful, a read runes spell which is actually useless, and a protection spell I keep neglecting to use. Second he gets another spellbook he'll actually be useful. Probably.

Anyway, this Wizard Word spellbook is a mixed bag. Create Wall, create a illusionary wall for some purpose, Ethereal Shield a better protection spell which affects the entire party, Refresh, "remember all spells below 4th level", which I can't use yet, but sounds insanely useful when I do and Lighting Field, damage spell. Wait, Lighting or Lightning? Oh, well, we'll find out when we use it.

The scroll of remove glyph works on the skulls from earlier. Though since it only has one use, I have an awful feeling I might be accidentally screwing myself over. There's nothing that special here, just some armor my frontline fighters can't really use and a few odds and ends. That's okay, I knew this could be a possibility. The key, meanwhile, opens a door near the start of this section and it's straight down three more floors to the next section. Which prompts another disk swap.

The very first thing I see on this floor is this plaque. Oh, good, does this mean the game is going to go after me for using spells? Wait, can plaques lie to me? Since the game is introducing the possibility, that's a valid theory. I can reload if it kills me for casting fireball.

Oh, look, it's my new most-hated enemy. Kidding, mostly. Even if the game can get frustrating, this is some top notch enemy design. I spam spells at it until it dies with a few melee attacks. My fighter and cleric are starting to become less useful in a fight and more like meat shields. Oh, well. There's another glyph blocking my path after this, but fortunately this is done in by a spell. There's also a plaque warning me that there's something dangerous in the dark.

Further up is another plaque, one which I have to switch to my cleric to read. A druid needs me to complete his task, presumably, not my druid. "For sun and moon", which by examining the nearby...door/wall relief, I believe refers to two items to do something here. I probably would have figured this out on my own, but the explicit statement does make it all easier. Two teleports lead the way onward.

My first choice is the nearer of the two, which leads to the blue walls. Shades of the level with the first boss in Shadowcaster, but either way, very cool. You start off in a circle with three paths blocked off by pillars along with a door which has a gold lock. To advance, you have to step on a tile with an invisible pressure plate, which opens one. There's another pressure plate, visible this time, which hurts my party, then spawns a bunch of flying skulls. They cast spells, but in a fight they aren't worth much individually. Of course, in a bunch, that's a bit more troublesome.

This is a whole set of strange pressure plate traps that lead around a switch. The first one spawned a horde, while the second one spawns one, but forces your items one space away. This opens a door which leads to a key, and more importantly, the Manual of the Planes, the second druid spellbook. We get Light, self-explanatory, Swarm, attack spell, Dismiss, "sends enemy to another plane", probably works against planar enemies, to use DnD terminology, and Disrupt. I can't use the latter two yet, since they're 8th and 9th level respectively. In-between all this is a pit and a stairway down leading to a small area.

The door opens, revealing another door with a gold lock. Okay, I get the point here. And I start back on the area I was, only to realize I can't go anywhere else. Okay, I'm missing something, I know it. But what? Examining a block which disappeared when I returned reveals a button which opens another pathway.

In here is another plaque, this one reads "HCTIWS", which is not misspelled and when I looked at the screen upside down it showed me nothing. On the left side is a coffer, a storage item I don't need, on the right is a regular bow, which I don't need. I leave, do a few other things, and then it occurs to me, hey, does that mean SWITCH? The nearest switch is back in the last area. Nothing, and then the answer comes to me, switch where the items are.

Another fight with a horde of floating skulls, I once again run out of spells and fight them in melee, not very fun. This area has a pillar blocking a passage and three stairways down. There's another death gem and a scroll. This one tells me that there's another passcode wall, this one asking about how long the Black War lasted. The scroll says 10 hours, but checking the manual, it says 40. Gotta love that, making the copy protection require you to pay attention to the manual, and I'm saying that even though I didn't really read the backstory part.

Oddly, two of the stairs down lead to dead ends and the other one just has a skull guarding a magic robe, which I give to my wizardess. Knowing this game at this point, okay, where's the button I missed? Pixel hunting in blue screens is an experience, let me tell you, and does take away the cool factor. But I find the button, which removes the pillar and leads to a fourth stairway down...which actually just leads back up. Huh.

This area has four more stairways down and this slime monster. As per usual, I spam magic attacks, and try not to get hit. It doesn't seem to be anything special, but I prefer not to play with fire. It's the only one in this section, so what it does will have to wait for later. One of the other stairways leads to another corridor which should lead back to the area I was just in, but is blocked by a pillar. The actual meat here is that there's another "HCTIWS" puzzle, which reveals a chest with the second key.

The third pillar is removed by another newly revealed button, this has two paths. One is locked off by a plaque asking the question about the Black War, but the other is guarded by a glyph. This leads to a strange puzzle with two different plaques, here and today. I figure there's something else I need to find, so I start to double back, only to find there's no way out except a teleporter which wasn't there before.

This leads to another room, which throws a trap at me, with two more plaques. Tomorrow and gone. I'd like to solve the puzzle, Pat. "Here today, gone tomorrow." Well, what that means is beyond me for now, because there's nothing that can interact with this, and the way forward just leads to another snaking pillar, this one giving the solution to the Black War question. It's still requiring you to look stuff up in the manual, but the manual gives the answer, so I don't understand the purpose.

The path behind the puzzle plaque leads to a locked door and one I can open. The one I can open has another one of the nasty-looking fellows on-top, but no way to enter. Until I check the map and notice one of the walls is strangely colored. It's a one-way wall, kind of, and on the other side I have to fight this thing without magic. That's not a mistake or anything, there's a note from Estoroth telling me that I'm too reliant on magic. He's not wrong or anything, but this was the first time I've had to actually use the combat waltz since the ogre.

He's guarding another a key and another druid spellbook, Force of the Elements. This has Shadow Shield, party protection spell, Ice Strike, heavy but non-scaling attack spell, Blast of Cold, scaling attack spell, Quake, heavier but non-scaling attack spell. Kind of limited selection, no fire or air spells? I guess the magic user spellbooks cover that, but it is strange. The rest of this area is just a few more token enemies and better items, along with the final key.

This leads to yet another of the red ceiling crawlers. This one seems tougher than the others, a more or less full shot of spells doesn't kill him and I'm not in a position to actually fight him. Considering that a lot of the higher level spells have something like a 10-80 damage difference, it could just be bad luck. He dies quickly when I came back.

This is it for this section, the moon key is here, along with some nice, shiny plate armor for my fighter. Returning to the relief/door, and a wall is removed, revealing a Frost Razor. This, alas, I think shall be my stopping off point for this particular entry, Easter weekend and all that.

This Session: 2 hours 30 minutes

Total Time: 8 hours 50 minutes

Black Crypt: Going Around in Circles

What I eventually ended up doing to deal with the goblin thief and poison crawler issue was to just wait and give myself plenty of attack spells to blast them to bits. Once again, there's a bit of DNA that Shadowcaster got, waiting before advancing further. Only this was much more abstract. Taking out one, going back to a safe spot and doing something else while it runs off to the side until a spell regenerates, repeat until I'm prepped for the next one. In something like a couple hours of total time spent, I got this far.

There are, of course, multiple options to this. I got fooled into thinking I couldn't sneak past the invisible enemies by just dropping my weapons and there's a spellbook with cure poison in it there. There's a trick I'm not quite getting yet. It could be that I've hit on the safest and also most boring way to get through this. Yes, for the crawlers, I can use arrows and knives to fill out the damage, but that isn't going to help me against the goblins. Even compared to those obnoxious guys in Dungeon Master, these guys are a pain to fight.

So beyond the usual objectives, I found a plaque on the wall which told me that I needed to find the water of four fountains in order to continue. It's possible that the game is going to be cruel and force me to get water from two fountains earlier on, then two down here, but I'm hoping these are just puzzle items rather than waterskins I need to sacrifice.

The primary floor is such that each little section of the map I take feels like immense progress even if I'm barely moving. So much so that I start to get trouble when I go away from the door I've been using as a stopper, the crawlers don't go through it, so I can safely use it for kiting. At which point I find I've cleaned the area out and can now go hunting for stuff. Beyond some food, there's a scroll of cure poison, a key and a switch.

The switch opens a path to this. Neither dispel magic or remove glyph does anything, so I decide that it's best to just return later and instead focus on the key. There are a lot of doors this key could go in. A lot of doors. Fortunately I've already cleared the area out, so it's just a matter of hoping there isn't anything else around. This leads to a hallway with a button behind a barrier. The button reveals a switch which opens a hallway with a pit downward. No points for guessing what I'm supposed to do.

At the bottom is a small hallway with a teleport to exactly where I was. There are no hidden buttons or switches, just the teleport. The pathway back is blocked off. I look around the upper hallway, a loud thumping sound happens when I stop just before the pit, but happens again if I step off that area. The actual answer, which I had to look up, is that there's a hidden button which closes the pits. Definitely wasn't hard to find even after being told. This leads to a portal, a key and another scroll of cure poison. I'm actually doing pretty well now.

This key, despite how several locks all have the same design, only opens one door, a room with a niche and a water fountain. The niche contains another helmet, some bracers of agility and a waterskin. Which is not so obviously the item I need in that little area where water from four fountains needs to go. At which point I don't know what to do until I realize that one switch now seems to open another area, which allows me to go further.

This leads to a rather strange pressure plate puzzle. At first I assume it's a sequence I need to press to get out through a door, but when I do that I only reach an area with a switch. A bit further experimentation allows me to go back to the area I was just in...which has a pillar blocking the way out. So it's more than that. I mess around for a while, then look up a walkthrough. Naturally, this doesn't do it like I'm starting from a ruined playthrough, but from scratch. I reload an earlier save, which thankfully isn't too far back, and end up doing it exactly as written in the walkthrough. It still doesn't work.

So I check the guidebook to confirm what's going on. It isn't 100% accurate, sometimes they'll spawn a ceiling crawler, but it does tell me that the pressure plates down here don't have anything to do with what's going on upstairs. I check that walkthrough again and think that it means I've got to do it fast...but it actually just neglects to mention that there's an invisible pressure plate in one part of this area which then allows me to get out. Here I am thinking the game is cruel in an unwinnable sense and instead finding out the game is cruel because it's hiding things in obtuse ways! I even reloaded to try to do it fast and right.

This spawns another switch, in the same area as the last bunch. Even if they're disappearing afterwards, it's still cluttered. This opens up another area with more crawlers and...oh, it's dark. I got slaughtered the first time because the light spell hasn't been helpful the entire time, and now it is. It gets worse, because the spell only works within the dark and for some reason it's only three tiles here which are dark, so walk out and it deactivates. This isn't going to be annoying later when it's actually important.

Behind the darkness is another puzzle. There's a barrier, so I cast dispel magic on it. Doesn't work, neither does remove glyph. (I have no idea what's special about the second spell, but it's going to do something eventually) There are buttons on either side, neither of which do anything obvious. The pillar blocking the path out permanently moves afterwards, but I'm not sure that's related. Nothing else is fixed, so I end up looking up a walkthrough again. Oh, one of the buttons removed an anti-magic field. I didn't realize that was something you could use to defend against dispel magic. Doesn't work that way in other RPGs.

This gets me another key which opens up another fountain. There's a nice shiny new mace and a waterskin, but no more keys or anything. I go back to the area with the four doors and place the second waterskin. Nothing new pops up. I'm perplexed until I realize the mace's name is Sightgiver. Thinking this is something I can use against the invisible enemies, I go back up only to find myself once again troubled by invisible enemies. Sigh...

The answer is that another lever popped up. This is getting to be obnoxious level design, it's just a long path that loops in on itself a dozen times when it could have been just a bit more open. This leads to an area with five barriers, behind three of which are enemies. I dispel one, take the enemy behind it...only to find out when I turn around that all the barriers were dispelled at once. Nice. There's another key and a switch, allowing me to advance further. Among my loot is a +1 longsword (Is that better than my previous weapons?), potions of cure disease and at the next fountain, a +1 bow.

The next area is easy to find, because the switch is near the level entrance. A winding path for once, leading to a small fork with switch with a plaque on one side, a button activating a teleporter on the other. Telling me that when I activate the switch that I should move quickly to go inside it. This leads to an area with the final key. A wall drops down when I get close, but when I'm one tile away, it disappears. There are niches in the wall. It takes me longer than I would have liked to figure this out, but I'm used to strange solutions, put items in the niches, the final one of which will retract the wall. Finally, the fourth water skin. Also, a potion of cure poison and invincibility.

This takes me to a room I was previously in, which now has two blue gems in a niche. The Eyes of True Sight. Aha, this must allow me to advance against the invisible enemies. Only, I can't equip them. So what can I do? It must solve a puzzle, that strange door on that floor! That works, and I then can go into a room in which I have to find the true path. AKA, guess or risk damage or teleportation. Oh, well.

Now I have the Mask of True Sight and the spellbook Cult of Magic. Which is for my wizardess. Reminder, I'm still waiting on a second for my druid, and she gets two additional spellbooks. The spellbook has, Haste, "Battle at a quicker pace", which I guess means decreased recovery time, Mind Strike, damage, Death, a lot of damage, but not until we're level 8, and dispel illusion, destroys false scrolls. Which I'm not using. Well, let's go take out some of those previously invisible enemies!

Oh...they're still invisible. Why? Because my wizardess, who I gave the mask to by happenstance but it turns out she's the only one who can use it, is supposed to be the leader right now. Why that's the only way it works, I don't know, but at least she isn't about to get slaughtered by an enemy because of it.

I liked them better when they were invisible. These guys are annoying, it's hard to hit them and it's hard for them to hit me. When they do though, they hits like a truck. Still, they're less troublesome to fight than the thieves and crawlers simply because they don't cause any nasty status effects. They also run away if they get too injured, which I foresee causing some trouble.

This is where I'm going to stop for now. This is going slowly, which I admit is annoying. This session in particular felt like one constant stream of being stopped by something I wasn't expecting. I just don't understand dungeon crawling as much as I'd like, so I assume I'm just not as good at this as I should be. Either this week or next week, I'll interrupt this for a look at Spear of Destiny, but otherwise we're probably going to ever so slowly see this one until the end.

This Session: 3 hours

Total Time: 6 hours 20 minutes

Black Crypt: What Genre Was I Playing Again?

So some interesting things happened with food and rest when I started this entry. After a certain amount of water, it started saying my characters were full. Which is kind of obnoxious in more simulationist RPGs, but here it's bizarre. I'm guessing it's here to force you to not just drink water alone, but it seems to remain in place for a considerable length of time.

Resting, on the other hand, is very fast to heal your wounds but not quite as fast to heal your stamina. The game gives zero sign of how long you have left and I sense that if you're in an area that isn't cleared this is an incredibly bad idea. It seems like it's going to take a very long time to restore the meter by any real margin.

Enough of me stalling, it's time to go down a floor. And we're pretty much straight next to that two-headed ogre, because once you head down the stairs there are two doors leading to a large area with pillars. It's not there right away, but I know it's there. I know it. The game even gives subtle clues that something's wrong, a death gem, leather leggings and a pack.

Death gems, as the manual explains, are basically the corpses of your dead characters that you lug around until you can resurrect them. Outside of scrolls, only the cleric can do anything with them. I have a life scroll, which can resurrect a character three times, but it's not supposed to work with the death gems you can just find. Which I confirm after trying it. Probably too difficult to code in a friendly NPC.

The pack has a scroll saying that he died to the double-headed ogre and how he wished he had the Ogreblade. Gotta love that this guy, knowing of his impending doom, just started scribbling on this scroll. I double check upstairs again, but no, I'm pretty much stuck up there, there must be something down here I can interact with. So I carefully look around.

This doesn't really work out, because once I get close enough he can apparently see me in the darkness. I can hear his thudding footsteps, so I run behind the door...which he destroys. I was kind of expecting him to open it, but no, just tear it away. Against my guys he isn't doing too much damage, but none of my attacks are doing anything, so I reload. If only the game had signposted that I need something to fight this thing.

Since the solution to this is either that I missed a switch somewhere on floor 1 or there's something behind the two-headed ogre, I continue to run around the guy on my second try. In one corner of the big open space is a switch next to a pair of chain leggings. This teleports you to an area next to the arena with two one-way walls into it and a path elsewhere.

This hidden area is a maze, complete with a few spinners. I was wrong, despite the obvious screen movement and noise, I got tripped up by them a few times. Not very nice. Unfortunately this area doesn't seem to have much of anything I can actually use. Just a switch which doesn't seem to activate anything and a chest with a few potions in it. Useful for the future, but for now I just have to find out what this switch opened.

After a bit more exploration, I find a newly opened passageway which leads to a plaque on the wall, and another wall which opens. The plaque says "patience is a virtue", which doesn't quite seem right when the wall opens right away. A couple more eyes, starting to get dangerously low on both food supplies and health, and then...another resurrection scroll and a throwing dagger. It does bring my wizardess's supply up to a full bag of spares. The very end of this section has a belt...which is a...belt. It then loops back into the maze.

I wander around some, before trying for the hidden area again, only to find out there are multiple areas hidden behind the walls that disappear. The second doesn't have much, just an eye and some food, but the third. It's here that I get my hands on some fancy new gear, +1 throwing daggers for my wizardess, and a rune which looks like the fighter's symbol. Taking a chance, I used it on my fighter and he got an addition point of strength. Then a key. I think I can find where this goes.

There's actually a teleporter nearby, which I didn't realize was supposed to be a teleporter design, which leads back to a door on the first floor. This, finally, leads to the little area where the Ogreblade is, along with the Necromancer's Guide. A spellbook for the magic user which adds a strength spell, +2 to strength, remove glyph, which removes a glyph in front of us, dispel and freeze, another attack spell. Note, none of these have anything to do with the words necro or mancy.

The fight with the ogre goes better than I expected. Which is to say that my fighter doesn't take any damage and protects the nice and fragile druid behind him. My cleric gets murdered, can't hurt him any, and soon enough the same happens to my wizardess. But the ogre goes down. Fortunately, scrolls of life have three uses of raise dead, perfect for this situation. That gives a resurrected character very low health. I decide this is a good time to start exploring, after giving back the dead characters their stuff and making them memorize their spells again...only for them to quickly die again.

I reload my save and realize, hey, this is a Dungeon Master clone, why am I not doing a combat waltz? This time around I get in a dozen shots without him ever landing one, and this time my guys once again get another level. Man, by the time I get some of these spellbooks, I'm going to be able to use all the spells. The ogre drops another key, this is his sole contribution, and I'm not sure where it goes. Also, the ogreblade isn't hurting me yet, so I'll hold onto it for a while. 

The moment after I wrote that, I find the door. Which I could swear I didn't see before, but it was under threat of a dangerous foe. There's also another area with a door, which I'm guessing was destroyed. There's only a teleport scroll there. The locked door has an eye which deals a surprising amount of damage, but otherwise isn't special. Really hoping there's going to be another regular enemy at some point. Plenty of stuff, better armor, magic bracers, magic crown, and oh, a rune wall. I click on it randomly.

Oh, shoot, was one of those things cursed? Wait...is this copy protection? It's one of the spells. It is, and it's blocking the path down. I still take the opportunity to fill my party's rest meter, which surprisingly doesn't remove full status. I forgot that I just found another spellbook, Prayers of Orlin.

There are two spells I can't use yet, healing 2, self-explanatory, and God's Fury, high level damage spell. The two I can use is Chant of Orlin, a scaling attack spell, 2-8 +2 per level past 3, not sure if that's going to be the most useful spell, and create food. Which creates food. I'm a perpetual motion machine now, baby!

Floor 3, at least what I can access, has a lot of information and a lot of doors I can't enter. One needs a key, another is a strange gold design, but two others are just closed without a switch. There are lots of notes warning me about the unseen, which based on a slight flicker of the sprite when they attack, are giant centipedes. One note says they only attack if you have weapons, another says to come back with a mask of true sight, and either way, I see no point in aggravating them. Floor 4 is right there. Oh, and there's a ring of location that I gave my cleric. 

Floor 4 starts with a noise and as I approach the passage, I try to get a sideways view. Then this thing steals my druid's bow. I'm glad it wasn't an important weapon. I go through my currently prepared attack spells and it goes down after most of them. No damage, but that could be because my fighter is now an iron wall of defense. By the time something can hurt him, everyone is screwed.

Around the corner is what appears to be another teleporter and a niche with more stuff. A Hopeblade, which I give to my fighter. The Ogreblade hasn't drained his health, but better safe than sorry. The worrying part is the continued noise and a potion of cure poison. There's another enemy, this one hangs out on ceilings but doesn't seem too tough. Another one of those neat little hangers that Raven loves so much.

There's another scroll here. This tells me that in the nest of thieves, the skull glyph is an illusion. Okay, I feel like this is a bit early to tell me that when I have no idea what I'm supposed to be worried about. And then I realize what the problem is in both respects. The hanging enemies poison you, but worse, as if there's something worse than poison with only one cure, is that the nasty-looking goblins can leave before you kill them. My massive assault on the first one was sheer luck, if it goes away that's just it, that weapon's gone until I find out where they leave them. Those hangers ain't going to be kind to me.

Now, there is an option I can do, two actually, fakeout weapons and just not having one out, but I'd prefer to try the overwhelming force technique again. And, you know what? That's not working out for me. I either got very lucky with the first one, or there's some heavy randomization with enemy stats. I think I'll need to just wait out a full selection of attack spells and hope for the best.

Meanwhile, the hangers are poisonous. I got in another fight with one, I won, but if they poison you, it's over. Poison doesn't wear off on its own, you need to cure it. There's only one cure so far, and that's not even enough for one fight. I repeat, that's not even enough for one fight. One of my two guys needs to completely avoid getting hit, which as much as I liked it, still applies to my fighter, he just isn't going to die in a fight unless he gets really worn out or gets poisoned.

Since I'm done here either way, I look up in the guide when I'm going to get the spellbook with a cure poison spell. I couldn't find it, but I saw the maps of this floor. It's very complex and I'm not looking forward to it. I had to look up one on Lemon Amiga, which says it's floor 10. This last part was clearly the training wheel section, because the difficulty has jumped up. I may have to go back up if water is truly its own thing and not tied into food.

My completed map of floor 2.

There are a few other things I've noticed this session. While reading the guides, I found out that the false scroll bit is applying to the text scrolls, not the spell scrolls. I actually think this is neat, that some scrolls are full of false information, that's probably what the life-stealing bit was. I like this, I'm not going to use the spell to reveal if its true or not. The other is that I don't seem to need the read rune spell to read the walls. Not sure what it's actually for.

This Session: 2 hours 20 minutes

Total Time: 3 hour 20 minutes

Black Crypt: Introduction

Going back to Raven Software's debut after years of having covered one of their later games feels like a fitting statement on the game in general. If you've ever played it, it was generally something you did after playing their other games. 1992 was arguably the Amiga's final commercial hurrah, but in America, that feels like it already passed and DOS had already begun its inescapable domination. Why such a strange choice to develop a game on?

Well, when you read about the development of this game and find out that instead of being into action games like you'd expect, they wanted to make Dungeons and Dragons modules and then decided to make a computer RPG like Dungeon Master. As in, Dungeon Master just came out and they changed their plans. From first steps to out the door, it took five years, three before EA agreed to publish it. A far cry from what they would do at any other time.

Reading the manual, it's very clear that this is DnD-derived. Our antagonist is a cleric, Estoroth Paingiver, who was cast out from the country of Astera. Twenty years ago he brought forth an army of foul demons and "other undead creatures", until four men from the Four Guilds of Astera defeated him. Now he's back and you control four champions who shall take him on! Not sure why demons seem to be related to demons, but the idea of a cleric leading demons and undead is very DnD. The Four Guilds, incidentally, are fighters, clerics, magic users and druids. An odd selection, if I do say so. I am probably going to refer to the magic users as wizards, since I've already forgotten it once and magic user is a lame class name.

Now there is some backstory, but I suspect it's just mood. Basically just hyping up Estoroth as a magical protege whose lust for knowledge let him to the dark arts. If I thought this game's story was going to matter, I might care more. But there is some...interesting bits hidden here. It describes four lieutenants, a sea beast, a medusa, a "possessor demon" and a ram demon. (That last one is probably a normal-looking demon) That said, a sea beast? I feel like that sort of creature is an oddly prominent theme in Raven Software games.

There's no intro, just a credits and then the title. The Raffel brothers, along with Gokey, Johnson and Schilder would be the core of Raven Software for most of the '90s, though the two programmers would eventually leave. The soundtrack is starting off very well, Schilder is handling the Amiga very well. I am feeling very hyped up right now.

So, our actual objective is to head into the Tomb of the Four Heroes, where the last four guys fought and presumably died against Estoroth. For some reason there are words, items and symbols on the right. Not sure if this is something I'm supposed to be writing down or not. It sort of conforms to the four classes, except that a fighter has a shield and a wizard has a sword...unless that's a wand. You can tell this is their first game from the pixel art.

There's a configuration menu, mostly just to select your keybindings. Which is rare for Amiga games, now that I think of it. But first I have to make my party, and uh...gotta say, looking at the portraits, I'm wondering if Mr. Paingiver is actually the hero here, because it's looking like I'm about to play as a rag-tag team of villains. Also, the symbols don't quite correspond to how they appeared on that last screen, which makes more sense. The shield belongs to the druid and the sword belongs to the fighter. 

Before I get into the characters themselves, I'd like to talk about the portraits. Each class has nine of them and as you can see in this helpful bit pasted together image, there's some reuse between the classes. Some are explicitly reused and others are very, very similar. It's very possible to have "Angry mustache man" and his three brothers, along with "The chain coif twins" and "The green elf twins". (But not the last two in the same party)

That said, there are some semi-consistent ideas spawning throughout the portraits. The undead or otherwise evil-looking dudes, facial expression aside. The token woman character, and then there's the anime-esque dude. Not sure if that one's intentional or just coincidental. I'm more interested in the echoes of future Might and Magic games by the random minotaur and vampire portrait.

As to the characters themselves, we get three magic characters and one attack character. Technically, all get spells, but the only fighter spell is "show coordinates". Assuming that this is going to be like Dungeon Master, fighting in the front, magic in the back, I've made the cleric a second front-line fighter. Since you get twenty five points and no attribute can go over twenty, this isn't as hard as it sounds. The primary stat can easily be maxed out, the question is, what else do you do? I'm guessing that magic runs off DnD rules, wisdom for divine spellcasters, Cleric and Druid, intelligent for arcane, wizard/magic user. Bears out with the starting stats, anyway.

After some time figuring out how to save to disk and waiting for said saving for disk, I make it to the game world. No real explanation of anything beyond what was in the manual. No music either, lame. Here's my four guys, they're in the Black Crypt! (Or something) From upper left, fighter, cleric, magician and druid. Decided to go all in on the "maybe they're bad guys, maybe they ain't" theme I got from the portraits.

The interface here is mostly explainable by what you interact with. Very smooth too, to the point that its smoothness is far better than a game at this point should have. As in, this is so smooth that I fear the game may sacrifice something else for it. Neat little animations and scrolling text when you click on an item. Or rather hold one. There's a niche in front of the starting point with a wooden shield and a backpack.

Right-clicking on the status box with the AC (Armor Class) on it and you get the inventory. The backpack is a subtle sign that there are inventory items. Basically, items that allow you to carry other items. Something that usually only happens in really simulationist games. Why I get multiple item pouches on a character here I do not know. I do know that it feels odd here. Certainly, it's typical for DM-clones to have food meters, which I can already see is here, but this amount of inventory feels at odds with what seems like a more simple game. Just give everyone the same number of slots. 

The book icon, which was greyed out on my fighter, shows what spells my guys get. Or rather which ones they can use from the starting spellbooks they have. Since everyone is level 1, that means the most basic of basic spells. Click on a spell to memorize it, which means you can then use it. Two get a simple protection spell, the requisite healing spell for my cleric, a light spell. The two odder choices are "Chaos", an attack spell from the druid, the only one at the start, and the wizardess gets "Wizard Sight", which maps out the dungeon. Finally, taking the clunky mapping process out of a game genre which revolves around mapping!

I guess I need to travel around a bit first, but one square ahead isn't...terrible I guess. It's more that you'll have to go into every nook and cranny in order to figure out what is what. More terrible is the loading screen when you press F5 to open or close the map.

There's also a read rune spell, which reads this stuff. Glad I did, because a rhyme about my likely death is definitely helpful. You only get one use of a spell per memorization, and some length of time must pass before you can use it again. But if you let enough time pass, you can actually memorize a spell multiple times. Which undoubtedly will be useful when I pick up a spell that isn't just "light attack" or "little bit of healing".

Speaking of which, monsters are already roaming on this floor. I'd complain, but eh, it wasn't very troublesome. Left-clicking on a character's portrait causes them to attack. If they're able to. This is very much Dungeon Master rules, guys in the front attack, guys in the back cast spells and shoot arrows. In this case, because I wasn't about to waste a spell on my first enemy, my druid did nothing. My wizardess didn't do much either, but at least the throwing dagger she has was an attack. The damage screen for your characters is a tad overdramatic, since it shows a skeleton. Gave me the wrong impression the first time I noticed it.

The stairs further down are also in plain sight, right next to another set of runes I need to cast a spell to read. This time with a rhyme about needing a magic blade to pierce a twin's skin. Guessing that means that whatever it is my fighter is using won't work. Good to know.

The starting area is a small side section, with an unlocked door and the stairs down. There's another alcove with stuff, including a dagger pouch for my wizardess. The path out without the door is to a small, ring area with little niches and another of these eye enemies. There's another passage leading to another unlocked door. The ring is where I concentrated my effort on first, there's another niche with an eye blocked off by a pillar and a little fire trap preventing a complete ring around. Careful search reveals a switch.

Pulling the switch causes a wall to disappear, possibly more than one. Another eye pops up, but this one isn't the pushover his brothers are. Instead, he just slaughters us. Twice, the first time I thought I just got accidentally shanked, but no, he's properly tough. Guess my efforts are better spent elsewhere.

So, I find a few more items on the ground, a key, no idea, a "life scroll", which might be for resurrecting dead characters, and an old scroll which warns me that the "Ogreblade" is cursed and drains the wielder's lifeforce. If so, I like that one of these style of games is actually warning me of an item's effectiveness.

The path off the side of the circle is where I go next. It has this thing that is so obviously a trap I decide to step on it for giggles...it's a pressure plate. A really, really, stupid-looking pressure plate. This opens a nearby door which has leather armor and a waterskin. Food is a concern, but I think this waterskin is just counting as food. Another normal eye.

As I continue through the south of the floor, I notice two standard dungeon crawler hazards and how the map feature actually acknowledges them. The first are the spinners, the things that spin you around on the spot you're at. Very noticeable, but more importantly, the map actually shows them. The other is that some walls will disappear to allow you to go on a one-way path. It's kind of annoying because what state the wall current is in, existing or not, is what you see on the map. The only way to know if that's a bogus wall is to go through it the right way.

I also level up. This doesn't change much in obvious ways, except give me more spells. My cleric gets a poison cloud spell along with reveal truth. That one exposes if a scroll is a fake. My wizardess gets compass...because I needed that with wizard sight. My druid gets dispel magic, which the manual implies is only useful for trap squares. Guess there's not going to be any negative effects I need to cancel, then.

That level up was behind a passage I can't go back, and the only way forward is down. Oh, well, I'll just find a way back. My cleric dies on the landing, and I hear strange noises. Could be the landing, could be something else, I don't know where I am.

Ah, I've gotten myself another game over. Good thing I saved before the spinner section.

Going back to the other door, there's another door behind it, which doesn't have the usual chain to open. Taking this as a clue, I use the key I've been dragging around to open it, success. This is a wide open area and I have no idea how many enemies are here. The first eye I spot feels like it almost cost me my team, but I manage to take it out. Unfortunately, I have to go after some of the knives my wizardess threw.

As I find it, I spot this strange rainbow barrier. Before I get a chance to examine it, I'm accosted by another eye. I feel through the door I can actually open and cost. Gotta let my guys rest somehow. There is a rest function on the menu, but I wager on just waiting around to be able to healing spells again. Curiously, it's at this point that I realize I have no mana meters. At first I assume it's a water meter, but after I found one later, I realized that it had to be something else. The manual sort of alludes to it, but it's a stamina meter, or rather, rest meter.

Speaking of the inventory screen, there are various options, to simulate multiple sets of equipment. Your armor, clothing, then accessories. Just press the torso to the upper right to switch between them. Since I've only seen about four pieces of armor, two of which are shields, this seems to be overcompensating.

When I no longer feel in danger of dying, I go back to the rainbow barrier. The eye has gone in front of the closed door. He's another regular one, which thankfully brings my characters back up to level 2. Now I can dispel that force field. I continue back in, finding a water fountain, which prompts my realization about how the blue meter can't be a water meter either. Lots of items, including a bow, which I give to my druid. The manual implies that some weapons can only be used by some characters, but the druid hasn't hit that problem yet.

The room doesn't take much more effort to clear out, since individual eyes usually aren't troublesome. There's another barrier blocking the way out and a switch nearby. Thinking this might be a puzzle, I pull it and cause another barrier to pop up. Huh, guess I need to wait to get another use of dispel. Or because that forcefield was guarding a scroll of dispel, use that?

That leaves the ring area and the switches that spawn the super eyes. Now that I have a decent attack spell, I try it again. It works, not entirely sure if it's because I overestimated them or because the poison cloud was the edge I needed to handle the fight. Since all this does is expose a few more switches, one of which reveals another door I can't open, the other seems to do nothing, I decide to see if the cluebook included with the manual includes monster statistics. (Shadowcaster's did, in case you forgot.)

Which accidentally reveals that this is more like Shadowcaster than Dungeon Master, nearly thirty levels, and judging by the map of level 1, 25x25 in scope. No signs of monster statistics, but I did find out I missed an area which has the Ogreblade and a spellbook. Well, I can take another look around and see if I just missed that.

Turns out I missed something more, a whole area in the center of the ring. Another eye spawns when I make my way in, as in, it comes up from somewhere behind me. Interesting. There's a helmet here along with a "glyph" scroll, whatever that is. This is pretty much all I can do for the moment, so I'll end it here.

Final observations for this session include, I am mildly annoyed by the movement controls. It's arrows + delete and page down. It's just enough that I don't feel compelled to try to change them but not good enough that I actually like it.

This Session: 1 hour

Cad-Cam Warrior (1984)

Name:Cad-Cam Warrior
Number:257
Year:1984
Publisher:Taskset
Developer:Andy Walker
Genre:Top-Down Shooter
Difficulty:5/5
Time:1 hour
Won:No (115W/85L)

Another game from the world of weird gravity, which somehow is a theme with developer Taskset/Andy Walker. We've seen him before on Gyroscope, and while I didn't know it at the time, Taskset published the more well-known Bozo's Night Out. Note, published, since Walker himself was the developer of all but three games currently listed on Lemon64.

And I have to say, that despite all of them coming out in three years, that's some impressive work. All of them have something uniquely interesting about them, even if they probably aren't as good as one might think. Cad-Cam Warrior is in the middle, probably not too far away from when Gyropod was made given the whole gravity focus.

Cad-Cam, which is supposed to be CADCAM, or Computer Aided Design Computer Aided Manufacture, is a type of processing unit in the vague future of the game's very long backstory. Seriously, this has a lot of pages for an action game from 1984. A fancy, newly designed one has stopped interfacing with humans, and it's up to the player to figure out why. You play as a robot, Micro Assembly Droid 2 sent inside the CAD CAM, trying to reach screen 8192. By defraging every screen you go through with a gun or something that makes sense.

After the title screen, you're thrown into the first of many of these screens. Controls are simple, they just use the joystick, move and shoot. It's very stiff, but I don't know if that's just me using a keyboard instead of a gamepad. One shot on-screen at a time, and nothing I encountered takes more than one hit. By the same consequence, so do you.

The big gimmick the game has is the split-screen level design. The top half and the bottom half are linked by various holes, go in one, you come out the same way you came in. Once you go in, you're locked in until you finish the animation going out. Because of the nature of this, it's very easy to accidentally get yourself into a loop of going back and forth. If an enemy does an inopportune movement, it's over for you.

Enemies are weird. I think there's a difference between the four kinds, but in practice I'm not sure I've ever seen any do anything differently. There seems to be a bit different in their behavior, but it's mostly variations on randomly wandering around. They all shoot and just move to their whims. There are also meteors which pop up after certain amounts of time to hit the location you were at when it spawned. Hope you weren't pinned down. 

These factors combined make getting very far in the game difficult. It's hard to not die on a screen, and each time you do, the screen restarts completely. Every enemy is back. I can't use save states to store my process. Which means, this game expects you to play all the way through, in one session. There's no pausing either. Hope you don't need to pee halfway through the game.

Levels aren't just variations on where the holes are, there's actual different elevation. Unfortunately, all this means is you walk up to one edge and jump up to it. Nobody can shoot over it, and because touching means your death, this is actually to your disadvantage. I didn't feel like the controls were smooth enough to handle this sort of thing, I was just gambling that I'd get lucky and an enemy wouldn't camp out near an edge.

Normally, at this point, I'd say how far I got, and then talk about how it had an interesting idea but just couldn't do anything with it. There's some genuine tension to having the screen divided up like this and having to multitask. It's just that you're so fragile and the controls are so stiff that there's no reasonable way to do this without cheating in some manner. The tape I got offered unlimited lives, which I naturally took advantage for.

This actually allowed me to reach somewhere I wouldn't have otherwise reached. The second zone, which is at about the thirty level mark. At first, nothing seems different, then you fire and a mine drops on your current position. This will explode if you or an enemy step on it, no friendly fire avoidance here. You seem to be able to use an unlimited number of these at the same time.

The thing about mines in most games is, they're a specific item in a game full of useful tools. Most people won't ever really use them properly, and otherwise just use them quite simply. Exploit simple AI so you can take them out without really thinking about them as traps. This doesn't work here, because the AI is too random to properly bait. You're spamming this in the hopes it'll take one out. One badly thought out level and you could very well be stuck forever. 

This was about as far as I could get just casually picking it up, and a dedicated playthrough would have to be a one time affair. More than one, and frankly, I'll just find the game far more annoying than it should be. But it's on this playthrough that something interesting happens. I start picking up the random letters that spawn in sometimes...and it starts revealing information about the level I'm about to go to. Two of these are dedicated to it, one to the rules and another to other information. The ability to understand what screen you're about to go on is a power-up so obtuse you might not even realize it exists.

Despite feeling like I was going to be stuck there forever. I get to the third zone quickly enough. More interesting, there are paths. This is connected to another power-up, the branch. A third power-up, zapper, functions as a smart bomb, killing everything on-screen. Not sure what the others do, but the manual helpfully tells me that I'll need to write down passwords and the ilk soon enough.

Zone four switches up to a stun and drag attack. You stun an enemy, then touch it and bring it to a hole. Good thing I had the information icon, or I'd take a while to figure that out. It's a very finicky method. Hitboxes are small for very good reason, and if an enemy is on the edge of anything, like one of the holes or a raised area, you won't be able to reach it. At this point I could either fight through this tedium or give up. Guess what I chose? Both, actually, I gave up then but tried again. 

And finishing that rewards me with an advance to the next larger grouping of levels. This time with broken graphics which I believe are supposed to be bigger holes. Which means I get another set of levels with plain old shooting to kill, then another mine, and so forth. Then repeat it again and again and again. There aren't any new levels at this point, each smaller grouping repeats the same levels. I suppose something changes eventually, but I was disgusted at this point and just gave up.

This is a very frustrating game. I could never see much consistency to the enemy behavior, and the gave loves throwing you in situations where you can't easily get out of their path or just stuck behind a hole. If the game didn't have an infinite live mode in the version I played, I never would have gotten anywhere in this game. Not that there was much point in doing so, but at least I saw something.

Weapons:
Basic gun, except when the game forces you to use mines. 1

Enemies:
I'm still not sure what the difference between the different enemies is. 1

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
A hundred versions of ten levels. It's like Lemmings if the developers were very limited in what they could do. 1

Player Agency:
I can do everything I expect from a game of this style, but not very well. 2

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
The game has a real sense of get up and go thanks to the fact that you're always on a timer. On a level, not just with how many levels you can go ahead, but also avoiding meteors. In-between levels, because if you wait too long, you gradually lose your place on the circuit board. It's especially frantic because if you aren't using infinite lives, you basically get no rest. 2

Graphics:
There are graphics and animation. I had no trouble distinguishing anything. It didn't look very nice though. 1

Story:
None in-game.

Sound/Music:
Simple bleeps and bloops, with one very strange heartbeat mechanic whenever an enemy gets close to you. It doesn't really add much, but I guess it's something. 1

That's 9...the exact same score I gave the last 1984 game. Huh.

From what I saw, reviews could be described as "Hey guys, the check from Taskset cleared" or "Putting the eh in meh". Most of them were short blurbs, so I guess this went by mostly unremarked.

That's about it for Taskset. I was thinking about covering Seaside Special for the sheer oddness of a political game from the early '80s, but decided that I wouldn't have much interesting to say about that.

Next time, something I really should have started a long time ago, Black Crypt, Raven Software's first game.