Telengard (HQ Remake) - Title (1 Hour Extended Version)
17Released in 1982, 2 years after the great Rogue itself. Telengard is a very early CRPG and one of the first to be professionally produced according to gaming historians. It was originally developed as "DND" by Daniel Lawrence starting in 1976. After several years and ports to different machines, it was discovered, rebranded, and distributed by Avalon Hill.
While available on the Apple II, TRS-80, Atari 8-bit, PET, Commodore 64, CP/M, and IBM PC, it became most popular on the Commodore 64.
"The game has 50 levels with two million rooms, 20 monster types, and 36 spells. It has no missions or quests, and its only objective is to survive and improve the player character." -Matt Barton, Gamasutra
Telengard was a very unforgiving game. Your character's stats (which are the same as Dungeons and Dragons) are randomly generated. At this point you will begin the process of rerolling for far too long until you got something you could live with. You always start the game penniless, but equipped with armor, sword and shield. Monsters are randomly generated, and encountering them in real time you are given 3 options: Fight, Use Magic, or Evade. Killing monsters rewards experience points, which in turn leads to improving your character. They also drop treasure, and of course there are many riches to be found by exploring.
If the game wasn't already unforgiving enough, there is no pausing in Telengard. This was a design feature held over from its university roots, encouraging players not to hog the shared terminals while playing the game. The instructions are not always descriptive enough, forcing the player to discover its secrets through trial and error. Additionally, the game features a permadeath mechanic, which could be defeated through the use of a cheat code.
Either way, your inglorious end was met with a not-so-friendly message:
"Another not so might adventurer bites the dust"
For the era, you got a lot of game packed on a tiny floppy, and an incredibly addictive one at that. Telegard would go on to influence other 'Rogue' clones that followed, eventually culminating in the creation of such series as Ultima, Wizardry, and Diablo. For this reason, the influece of early Roguelike games such as Telengard's historical importance cannot be overstated.
Original score by David Lawrence, coded by Chuck Cochems ©1982
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Where applicable, All Rights Reserved
This game is abandonware.
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At present, Pieces of 8-bit's HQ Remakes has 2,978 views spread across 4 videos for Telengard, and about an hours worth of Telengard videos were uploaded to his channel. This is 1.90% of the total watchable video on Pieces of 8-bit's HQ Remakes's YouTube channel.