Dungeon Campaign for the Apple II

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Highretrogamelord

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14,100

Published on November 22, 2010 6:10:00 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xY7bZJ1LOQ

Game:

Pac-Man (1980)

Duration: 11:14

2,516 views

15

Released in 1978 for the Apple II, Dungeon Campaign is one of the earliest role-playing games for home computers, and in a way again, like Beneath Apple Manor of the same year, an obscure Rogue-like -- two years before Rogue actually coined the term. Dungeon Campaign is a basic fantasy dungeon crawl that doesn't even care about a background story -- enter dungeon, slay monsters, amass treasures, find exit. Not even a fabulous all-powerful item to be found here! Unusual is that you do not control a single character, but rather a fighting force of 25 men -- who, effectively, represent your "hit points".

The game starts out by generating the four random dungeon levels you'll be exploring. This takes a few minutes, but as the maps are shown on-screen while generated, you can try to memorize them.

After this "introductory cutscene" begins the game proper. In a classic top-down view, you guide your party (a red block) through the level's maze. All commands are entered by key presses, using "LRUD" for walking left, right, up or down which needs getting used to.

You'll soon encounter green blocks -- groups of werewolves, vampires, orcs, goblins, basilisks, giant spiders, gargoyles, trolls, griffons and whatnot. Walk onto them to pick a fight, walk the other way to try evade -- some monsters are slow an can be evaded, while others will catch you.

Combat is done in a basic manner: Dices are rolled for you and the opponent; depending on the result, your and the enemies' losses are computed; last man standing's the winner. An interesting twist is that the dice rolls are interactive: Random numbers scroll up the text window, with you pressing a key to stop them when you feel lucky.

After a successful fight, you can search to find and grab any treasure carried by the defeated enemy. Sometimes you'll find a magic carpet, with which you can fly, making you randomly fly about the current level -- great for exploring, and indispensable for reaching parts of the map that cannot be reached. (Yes, map-generation isn't so sophisticated ;)

After a certain time spent on a level, you'll wake a special monster (grey block) who'll begin to chase you. If he catches you, you'll lose one of your party. On earliers levels, this block represents a "man-eating dragon" who is quite easy to escape, deeper levels feature a giant snake chasing you in real-time, or a spectre who, not being restricted by walls, goes directly for you and is sure to get you after some time.

Other hazards found in the maze include pits, necromancers or pteridactyls (sic!) that transport you to other parts of the level, or even to other levels (the abundance of these makes this game somewhat similar to the "Snakes and Ladders" board game), or areas with poisoned gas that you'll have to leave quickly (in real-time, again). You get a warning if you're next to one of these danger, but not you're not told where exactly it is. You can try to jump over a square where you suspect some dangers -- this feature can also be used to move quickly, for example to escape enemy monsters.

The main goal, of course, is to find the stairs down to the fourth level and find the exit.


Neat game ...

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