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