Saturday, March 22, 2025

Avowed - 2025


I feel a little sorry for Obsidian Entertainment. I can't help but fail to shake the feeling that they want to make games that are just a little bit larger and a little more deep than they manage. Avowed is, on the whole, not a bad game at all. What it sets out to do, it does well. It just does a little less than players may have expected. Avowed is, perhaps, a victim of its marketing.

The world is easy to compare to The Outer Worlds. The game is divided into four open-world(ish) maps rather than one contiguous landmass. There is also a town within each map and additional dungeons to explore, usually as part of bigger sidequests. There is not a lot of enemy variation, which is a shame, but it is still an improvement over the very sparse list that The Outer Worlds had. I enjoyed the number of nooks and crannies there were to find, but it does start feeling more like a game and less like a natural world after a while.

I made a bit of a mistake with Avowed. I found the combat did not "click" at first, so accidentally swapped to a playstyle that completely trivialised the game: dual pistols. Like many action-based roleplaying games, the difficulty reduced as my toolset expanded and crystallised into my final built. I may return to the game to try it on the hard difficulty using a more melee-focussed built. Still, the combat became fun once I settled into it and I found myself jumping into groups of enemies that I really didn't need to bother fighting.

I was not blown away by the story. I found all the major story beats to be predictable (for goodness sake, the main "bad guy" is literally a skeleton with burning eyes), but I appreciate that not only are there two major routes through the story, but there are also a few moments where the world does change drastically based on your decisions. I felt a bit let down by the very end, however, as Avowed committed a cardinal sin: a skippable final boss followed by the usual powerpoint-slide-style reveal of what your choices meant. I can't think of a single game where I haven't experienced this exposition dump and not felt deflated.

Still, Avowed is a solid game with solid gameplay. I think that RPG fans should play it, but it's a harder sell to people less enthusiastic about the genre.

Is it Worth Playing?
Just about. Fans of The Outer Worlds will find a game of similar scale, but others may find it a little limited.
๐Ÿ‘

Loot for the Hoard:
A chunk of Adra Bรกn and 312,680 skeyt, made up of copper skeyt, silver fennings and gold scellings.


Thursday, March 20, 2025

Secret Mission - 1979


There's a name change here. Adventure #3 was originally called Mission Impossible, but copyright concerns led to a rebranding. Secret Mission was branded as a much harder adventure than the previous two; not something for a newbie. This time round, the player is attempting to stop the detonation of a bomb connected to a nuclear reactor.

1979 appears to have been a busy time for Scott (and Alexis) Adams. By the end of the year, there would be eight games in the Adventure series, one of them written by a fan!


Playthrough

Unlike the previous two titles, I find myself in the thick of things. I can play a tape to receive my briefing, but I'm described an envelope that seems to be missing. This game seems to be more dynamic too; there's someone else here with me moving around. I map out as much of the complex as I can for now and find a series of locked doors that require some sort of authorisation

The other entity wandering around, the saboteur, seems to kill himself after a random length of time and reveals a number of items. Most of them I assume are red herrings. The only other thing I have access to is a chair and strange device, which I quickly blow myself up with. I find myself longing for the verbose descriptions in Zork to help work out what I am looking at.

Once I understand how to take a picture (PRESS RED to activate the camera and then PRESS WHITE to gain a visitors pass), there's only a couple more sticky parts where I struggle to work out the next step. I'm blown up when I correctly guess that I need to break the window but have not brought the (dead) saboteur and his window maintenance pass to safely allow me through it. I also take longer than I would have liked to realise that I need to "KICK" the door to the control room. I appreciated that it was my own mess blocking the door though!

Finally, I mistakenly bring a pail of heavy water into the reactor core, ruining the bucket. It seems like there was a warning not to do this if I'd taken the film to the projector room, but that would have taken no less time than just playing from the beginning again.


Closing Thoughts

While described as a harder game, I didn't think Secret Adventure was that bad. Like Pirate Adventure, I had a single goal to work towards, and I didn't feel like there were any impossible to guess puzzles, apart from possibly realising I needed to break the window.

Is it Worth Playing?
Yes, as a small self-contained puzzle.
๐Ÿ‘

Loot for the Hoard:
The Anti-radiation Suit.

My Map:
(Click to view in full size)


Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth - 2024


Quick Review

Infinite Wealth is a mechanical improvement over its predecessor let down only a little by a story that gets a little flaky in the back half. Seeing what may be the end of Kazama Kiryu's journey and his memories from across the games hit hard, but I'm not sure Ichiban's journey felt quite as impactful.

Many of the little complaints from the first game—likely a result of being Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio's first turn-based roleplaying game—have been ironed out. I particularly liked the addition of skipping fights that are too easy for you. More games should do this!

Like all the other Yakuza games, Infinite Wealth has a silly amount of side content. Dondoko Island is an Animal-Crossing-esque highlight. I ended up completing everything I could within one playthrough (including the DLC dungeon), but I did not feel compelled to complete a legendary NG+ playthrough. I may return at a later date.

Is it Worth Playing?
Yes; it's a rock solid JRPG in an unusual setting.
๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘

Loot for the Hoard:
354,389,918 yen, from one very complete playthrough.


Pirate Adventure - 1979


Hot on the heels of Adventureland, Scott Adams leveraged the game engine he had made to create several more titles in quick succession. The first of these, Pirate Adventure, initially appeared as part of a full-page advert for "Adventure!" in the February 1979 issue of Softside. This listing offered both Adventureland and Pirate Adventure together for $24.95 with the following text:

It's not easy to put together the timeline, but I get the impression that Adventureland was made in mid-1978 as a sort of hobby project, there was a gap, and then Pirate Adventure was made a few months later around the end of the year. Both adventures were then formally sold starting at roughly the same time, but Adventureland had been in circulation for a bit longer. [For my timeline, I am estimating this as Q4 1978 and Q1 1979 respectively, but I am very conscious of my lack of accuracy.]

Pirate Adventure was the work of both Adams and his then-wife Alexis. It's difficult to paint a picture of the exact division of labour due to the intervening years and conflicting statements, but I think it can be said with confidence that Alexis had a not inconsiderable part to play. It's refreshing to play something at this stage that wasn't either an evolution of Adventure or simply a representation of Dungeons and Dragons.


Starting Out

Pirate Adventure starts with a surprisingly mundane setting. I'm in a flat (in London specifically), but I appear to be some sort of cosplaying pirate aficionado. I've got rum, I've got crackers, and it doesn't take me long to find a book as well. The book starts me on my journey properly and I am pleased to see that it functions in exactly the same way that the magic carpet did in Adventureland. Activating it (by typing "SAY YOHO") teleports the player to the ledge outside the flat, unless that's where they are already at which point they are taken to the game proper. The use of the ledge outside the window reminds me of Peter Pan.

I find myself on a beach with a couple of bits of boat nearby. There's not a lot of options for where to go—these Scott Adams are small and efficient rather than sprawling and verbose—so I quickly map the area. It seems like the bulk of the game is managing to collect the several objects required to build a boat. There's a tiny maze which I am more than pleased to map as it doesn't require any overlapping lines, along with an awkward squeeze puzzle that reminds me of the mine in Zork.

While I manage to find the plans for the boat with relative ease, I don't even consider the chance that there's a second item hidden within the same treasure chest. This leaves me with a completed boat but no map. This is one of the only two times I need to find some help online.


The Endgame

With the ship complete, the pirate located and the map held, I can set sail for *Treasure* Island. One treasure requires some slightly clunky command guessing with the map and shovel in hand, while the other is in plain view but protected by deadly snakes. There's a humourous message displayed when I make the mistake of dropping the mongoose here. It turns out that the player character doesn't actually know what a mongoose is. Luckily, I had also brought the parrot along on the ship as it had not had a use in the game up to this point.

Locating more rum and piling back onto the ship takes me back to the first island where I can pick up the book (and safety sneakers) to return home. That's the full 100 points; only two treasures required.


Closing Thoughts

I prefered this to Adventureland. It feels a little more focused, something I attribute to the relatively narrow inspiration. I think it probably also helped that it was a collaborative process. The ship was a nice clear goal to work towards and the underground section all felt completely fair. There was more interactivity too: both the pirate and the parrot moved around the map, if a little erratically.

Is it Worth Playing?
Perhaps, as an entry-level title for an enthusiastic beginner.
๐Ÿ†—

Loot for the Hoard:
The Dubleons[sic], found in a monastery.

My Map:
(Click to view in full size)


Monday, March 10, 2025

Temple of Apshai Trilogy - 1984


If one were to draw out a Venn diagram with one circle including the earliest game programmers and the other circle including players of Dungeons and Dragons, one would find that they were pretty much entirely overlap. With its requirements for personal bookkeeping, many dice rolls, and its piles of reference tables, D&D practically begs for digital assistance. Combine this with the need for a Dungeon Master making it impossible to play alone and you have a pretty good explanation for why so many early coders built what became known as "CRPGs", first for fun and later for profit. In the earliest days, these manifested as programs for mainframe computers — like dnd in 1975—a similar story to how Zork was built. Over the next five years, companies spouted out of the woodwork. Many were founded by these earliest coders, and all were hoping to sell to this wave of potential customers.

Dunjonquest: Temple of Apshai was one of the earliest commercial endeavors for the genre, releasing for the TRS-80 home computer in 1979. It was heavily inspired by Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, which had been published just a few years before. Automated Systems (which later rebranded as Epyx) released numerous follow-up games within the same game engine and the whole library was ported to various home computers.


Getting Started

First, the elephant in the room. Epyx remastered the three Apshai games into a single package for the Commodore 64. This is what I am playing, because the original release is staggeringly slow to play and having easy access to lots of dungeons is hard to argue against.

The game was sold with an expansive manual which lays out how character creation works. A player can let the game generate them a character, which is random, or they can import one from outside. The manual even explicitly instructs the player that they can transfer their already-existing D&D character into the game. It is worth noting, however, that all adventurers are fighters. There are no magic spells in Apshai. Neither are there thief skills, although the player can locate secret doors and traps.

I rolled a random character until I was happy with the results, spent my starting money, and finished with the following statistics and equipment:

I had spent every single silver piece on this equipment (thanks to the ability to haggle letting me punch slightly above my purse's weight), so it was clear that I needed to get started with the dungeon delving.

Gameplay is a little different to other early CRPGs. Rather than choosing between moving a single tile or taking a different action such as attacking, the player chooses their facing and then a number of steps to take. The manual implies that the player can wear themself out if they run around all the time, especially with heavy loads, but in my own play I never dropped below 100% fatigue. The game is also only pseudo-turnbased. An enemy gets a single action per player action but gets a free turn if the player takes too long to do something.


Early Gameplay

©EPYX Inc., 1985

Jumping straight into the first level of the original dungeon, I quickly found that not leaving myself any silver for healing salves was risky. It took me a few trips to just the first few rooms to gain a level and find some elixirs before I felt confident going further.

My first impressions are positive. I enjoy the sounds (particularly the short pieces of music) and the gameplay loop—while slow by modern standards—is compelling, especially as I am mapping as I go. Combat and traps feel threatening enough that I don't want to sprint through the hallways; it's hard to know how much I'll be hurt by something until it is too late. I do not die, but sometimes I limp back to the entrance with my tail between my legs. I attribute this to the game using an armor class system: I either get hit or I don't.

By the time I have explored, mapped and looted the whole of the first floor, I have enough experience points to count as a 3rd-level Fighter (running on the assumption that the game uses AD&D progression), I've upgraded my equipment to have the best the shop has to offer, and I have a small pile of healing items banked. I've also found a +1 sword but it isn't clear what the base, unenchanted item would be. I struggle with this when I return to the game and have to type my character statistics back in.

Several More Levels

As I play more and more, it's hard to shake the feeling that fully mapping the first floor and purchasing all of the items from the innkeeper's shop is the biggest victory. In most D&D settings, a warrior getting full plate and a magic sword is kind of a Big Deal. They are likely a local hero at this point. The second floor is similar to the first and I particularly enjoy the descriptions of the prison space.

As the manual suggests that levels 3 and 4 are harder, I move from the original temple to the game's first expansion, the Upper Reaches. This may have been a mistake. The tone is lighter and there's little challenge to be found for my increasingly experienced character. I fly through the first level and, by the time I have finished the second map of the second game, I am very nearly level 6, and I have increased my Intelligence to 18.

Winding Down

I think that at this point I had realised that I was likely to run out of motivation before I ran out of dungeon. It was not that I was not enjoying the game, it was that I had a creeping feeling growing in me that I'd seen all it had to offer.

I completed the third floor of both the first and second games (here and here respectively), and then poked my head into the final level of the first game where I was killed by the very first enemy on screen. I elected to try the final level of the Upper Reaches and finished up with my character at level 7 with only two ability scores not at 18. This was where I decided to call it quits for now.

Thoughts

I found Temple of Apshai Trilogy to be highly compelling and surprisingly tense during my first few hours. The slow, thoughtful process of entering a new room, reading the description within the manual, dealing with any enemies and then searching for secrets created a gameplay loop that remained fun up until I felt like my character was no longer improving. Unfortunately, a lack of an outlet for the large amount of money a player accrues combined with very little personal progression turns the later floors into a mapping exercise. I found that the more I played, the quicker I went and the more diminished the exploration felt. I don't think this is specifically an Apshai problem, though. When I hit a proper flow while gaming, it's easy for me to lose the detail and get locked into just the basic mechanical aspects.

With regards to the mechanical aspects, the opaque nature of the game system both helps and hinders. When actively playing Dungeons & Dragons, I can see when I roll poorly; no matter what, there's an unavoidable element of metagaming. I know more than my character does. With this game, I can only see results, so the opposite feels true. I can't tell how close I was to a successful hit, nor can I see my armour class or any bonuses from magic items. It feels like my character knows more than me.

Is it Worth Playing?
Yes, but only the first level unless particularly interested in the style of gameplay.
๐Ÿ‘

Loot for the Hoard:
144,891 silver pieces, and a magical lily with healing properties.


Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Temple of Apshai Trilogy - Benedic's Monastery Map

General Layout

The final dungeon to explore within the upper reaches is a monastery named after the friendliest NPC that can rescue the player when they are defeated. There are no unusual mechanics like one-way doors, but there is a large spiral staircase leading into the depths that I've represented on the map above as several small floors.

The bulk of this level is relatively peaceful—the monastery itself—with creatures that offer little challenge to the player by this point. Many of them are not even aggressive! We start in the main hall and can walk through the monks' accommodation to the west. Many of these small rooms contain traps and if the player is not careful, they may spawn Geb's Spirit—possibly the strongest creature in the game. Since these traps tend to summon additional enemies, the player can take advantage of the game only handling a single creature at a time. Treading on such a trap while another creature is onscreen causes nothing to happen.

The eastern region and the downstairs is a much less pleasant place. Undead roam the halls and seem able to reduce the player's attributes permanently. The level culminates in a fight with a vampire, something that is hinted within the description in the manual.


Notable Treasures

The main hall (Room 4 to be precise) contains another attribute-increasing item, the Empty Hand. This permanently raises the players Intuition by a point.

There's a few sources of elixirs within this level, but the easiest is in Room 19, just east of the entrance.

Possibly the best treasure yet, the Stale Bread can be found in Room 30. Retrieving this gives you a permanent point of Constitution.

Finally, the biggest source of silver on this floor may be found in the hidden Room 47. The money is probably useless at this point and it is guarded by a vampire. There's also a magic sword at the very bottom of the level in Room 60, but it isn't close to the entrance so repeatedly retrieving it is arduous.


Full Reference


Monday, March 3, 2025

Temple of Apshai Trilogy - Level 3

General Layout

Level three of the original dungeon is a mine filled with sources of gold and riddled with collapsing ceilings that do a surprising amount of damage. There is little else here, but it is a natural step up in difficulty from previous levels. It's particularly noticable here that the antmen are tougher than previous floors.


Notable Treasures

Every treasure in level 3 is cold hard currency. There are dozens of rooms filled with gold nuggets and gems, but by this point in the game, you will have no use for this much silver.

The heaviest haul from this level is found in Room 35. Two hundred gold nuggets in a pile! The ten thousand silver this is worth is really only good for keeping score, however.

Room 60 contains the other notable treasure pile: nearly twelve thousand silver's worth of gemstones. It is guarded by wraiths which may permanently drain the player's strength.


Full Reference


Sunday, March 2, 2025

Adventureland - 1978


I've taken a little break from playing (and mapping) the Temple of Apshai Trilogy to instead jump into a couple of much quicker games. First on the list is Adventureland, number one in the Adventure International series of games and arguably the earliest commercial text adventure. (Colossal Cave) Adventure and Zork were limited at the time to mainframe computers and would not have saleable versions until following years.

Adventureland is not viewed with much positivity through a modern lens, but at the time would have been very impressive, especially to those for whom the TRS-80 was their first experience using a computer for anything other than work. It's clear from its contemporary pricing that Adventureland was a premium product: SoftSide magazine (erroneously calling it "Adventure") charged $24.95 for a copy when it first appeared in their listings in their January 1979 issue. Very few other products within the issue cost more than $10 and no others crossed the twenty dollar threshold. In today's money (admittedly a flawed comparison), Adventureland would have cost around $110! [Edit: In the following month's issue, $24.95 would get you both Adventureland and Pirate Adventure together, so I'm inclined to think this might have been a mistake. Adventureland on its own was offered for $14.95.]

This naming confusion seems to have popped up from time to time. Dragon Magazine made a similar mistake in 1980.


Getting Started

Initially, I started playing Adventureland via the remake found on iFiction here. It became apparent, however, that this version does not match the original. I moved over to playing on an Apple ][ emulator instead for a more authentic experience.

It's worth noting that the game takes pains to tell me what it actually is. For most players there was no previous experience to draw from. I also enjoy the note about piracy. Bill Gates eat your heart out.


Playing Adventureland

Adventureland is far simpler than Zork I. It uses a two-word parser (actually telling the player off for starting to type a third word) and there are far fewer rooms, just 33 to Zork's 110. However, Adventureland fits into just 18kb of memory without any real trickery, so deserves some charity. The aim here is to gather thirteen treasures (indicated with asterisks), but the game doesn't tell you this until you reveal the underground by felling the tree in the swamp.

Rather than documenting a full playthrough, here are some thoughts I had while playing:

  • I was pleased I could climb two different trees, but was surprised that in the original version, "UP" does not work. Instead I had to "CLIMB TREE".
  • Adventureland is generous with signposts. Each of them gives a hint, usually about an object I am carrying or will end up carrying.
  • Death is gentle in this game. Once you work out how to leave Limbo, you are pretty difficult to kill.
  • I enjoy how darkness seems to work. You die if you travel in an illegal direction in the dark, but, if you have mapped effectively, you can travel around while blind and can even pick up items you cannot see!
  • Needing to rub the lamp twice to get all the available treasures is a little cruel.
  • After Zork, the maze was (thankfully) trivial.
  • There's a couple of spots I really struggled with guessing the correct verb. "SWIM"-ing out of the quicksand, "YELL"-ing at the bear and knowing to "DAM LAVA" in the chasm are probably the worst.
  • Finding the *CROWN* required a guide.
  • The few moments of pure luck weren't too bad. Being bitten by the chiggers forces the player to pick up the mud, which leads to needing to complete the bees/honey section. Putting the bees in the bottle was the worst example of this—there's a decent chance they will suffocate (and disappear) before getting them where the player needs to.
  • The Apple ][ can't backspace, so typos are ruinous.

In the end, victory:


Behind the Scenes

I think it's worth quickly seeing how a room is described in Adventureland. In a 1980 edition of SoftSide, a version of the BASIC source code was printed for readers to transcribe themselves. There were two files to make; first, a data file containing the content of the game and second, the adventure engine that will run it.

We can just about make out part of a room description: "BOTTOM OF A CHASM. ABOVE ME IS A PAIR OF LEDGES..." followd by six numbers. I originally thought these might be the six directions the player can normally move in (north, east, south, west, up and down), but it doesn't seem to line up. It does show how compact the code is though!

This early version of Adventureland is a little rough around the edges. There's instances of "a" when there should be "an", dropped punctuation and even a few spelling errors:


Closing Thoughts

Is it Worth Playing?
Maybe. It's impressive to see something so efficient, but the content hasn't aged well.
๐Ÿ†—

Loot for the Hoard:
The Golden Fish, found in the lake.

My Map:
(Click to view in full size)