Hello and welcome to the start of what will be a long and infuriating journey. I'm good at sugarcoating my words in spanish, but I do not feel like sugarcoating them in English, so let's get to it already.
The first game on my list is, allegedly, the oldest surviving cRPG ever made. Its name is pedit5, also known as "The Dungeon". You can read more about it on
Wikipedia, but I'll quote a relevant section of the article:
[QUOTE
=Wikipedia]
pedit5 was created by Rutherford while he was a member of the Population and Energy Group at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. There, each group was assigned a limited number of program slots on the school's mainframe, with the Population and Energy Group having program slots names "pedit1" through "pedit5". The group had used the first three slots, and Rutherford was able to code his game into the fifth slot, which became the game's default name. Because at the time the game was not seen to be an appropriate use of the resources by system administrators, but Rutherford would continue to add it back.[/QUOTE]
The first cRPG offers, accordingly to the genre, some bit of background for our upcoming adventure. Of insignificant notice is the fact that Caer Omn reminds me a lot of The Witcher's Kaer Morhen, in name only. Fun!
The goal of The Dungeon is to earn 20.000 experience points, through defeating enemies, finding gold, silver, and jewelry (which all translate into experience), as well as new swords. The catch of The Dungeon is that your experience is computed ONLY when you leave The Dungeoon. Early on, you will be leaving and returning the game so that your experience computes, your health and spells are restored, and you can level up.
As you start the game, you get to create your first character. Now, there's no "reroll" button. BUT, with a bit of intelligence, you can make your own reroll button. It's a matter of pressing ALT+B to return to the previous screen, and pressing ALT+L to go back to character creation, with new stats. Here's my first (of many) character, aptly named "Sigourn". It's my favorite made up character name, I've been using it for some time already.
With my character now created, it's time to enter ze dungeon. I should say I will be using the (legally) free version of Grid Cartographer to help guide my way around the game, and I will say it: I will be using the (legally) free version of Grid Cartographer to help guide my way around the game. This will help me get better acquaintanced with The Dungeon.
The graphics are crude, but surprisingly appealing. I'm a sucker for games that are graphically simple, since they tend to look and age much better than games made during the 80s.
The game loads on section of the dungeon at a time. The small openings represent doors which you have to (B)reak your way through in order to enter the following room. My ignorance tells me this is some kind of limitation the game has, else I don't really see the point in having to break through doors (and repeatedly failing in the attempt, I should add). Hence, we already find the first annoying thing in the first cRPG! Hurray!
And now you see the second. The game happily throws level 5 enemies at you, which in the early stages of the game (first 30 minutes, let's say) is a death sentence. As you can expect, this particular scenario ended like this:
It will become a regular sight in the game, but a necessary one: as I mentioned, the goal is to get 20.000 experience points. The real challenge in the game is having enough luck to make it to the 20.000 experience points. If enemies were limited to areas based on their level, I could easily grind my way up through the game.
Let's get back to character creation. It is important to know, in this game, that Dexterity is a very relevant attribute. In the game, you basically press (F)ight and the game determines the outcome of the battle. A higher Dexterity allows you to strike first. How I suppose the game works is through "turn-based" combat, but you never see any of it. You either win, or die. So I try to have my characters have good Dexterity (above 10), "good" Strength (above 10) and good hit points (7 or more).
It's a good head start to The Dungeon, but because of how encounters work, you may well die on your first room after creating an incredibly character.
Which is basically what just happened. R.I.P. Sigourn2, you won't be remember.
Now, Drake here has great stats, except for Constitution. Let's see how he fares!
In this game, as I said earlier, treasure equals experience if you manage to exit the Dungeon. Gold has more value than silver, which is practically meaningless, but the real treats are jewelry, which are in the value of thousands of gold. I kid you not: it is possible to level up finding just one piece of jewelry and returning to the entrance.
You can even find enemies defending treasure! You can cast (M)agic, my favorite spell is Sleep as it allows you to (NEXT) your way into the enemies bowels... asuming the spell lands in the first place, that is.
Of course, the magic of pedit5 is that not everything is as simple as it appears, and you have to constantly recheck your stats to see how much hit points you have left. This time, however, I forgot to do that.
And the consequence is well known by now.
Rashomon, another character with great stats. I usually spend less than a minute rerolling my characters. I figure that spending more is pointless when you can die to a level 5 enemy if you are unlucky enough to run into one at the beginning of the game. The programmers added a (R)un command to give you the chance to exit an encounter. However, it appears it only works (and sparsely) in corridors.
Naturally, this time it didn't work, so cue "With great regret" screen...
Overall, it is a fun game. My highest score so far has been 8900, maybe a little more. Here's my last screenshot, displaying my stats, my experience, equipment (you can find only two swords in the game, +1 and +2, and it is automatically equipped when you find it). It also displays how many spells do I have available: there are two tiers, tier 1 and tier 2, and it works pretty much like magic works in D&D: once you cast a spell, you have to rest (exit the game) to be able to cast it again.
I haven't finished it yet, but I'll try to do it today. There's excitement in defeating enemies, amassing gold and experience, and running back into the entrance hoping you don't accidentally come across a new enemy ready to beat you back to the death screen.
Join later (if you want to, senpai) to know more about Lucas' Fantastic cRPG Adventure!
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