The CRPG Addict

Game 577: Yendorian Tales: Book I

2026-05-08T12:00:00.008-04:00

Yendorian Tales: Book I

United States

SmithWare (developer and publisher)

Released 1994 for DOS

Date Started: 6 May 2026

You would think that the title Yendorian Tales is a reference to the Amulet of Yendor from Rogue (1980), itself an ananym of "Rodney." But it rather seems to be a case of the same thing happening twice: two of the primary authors of the game were named "Rodney." All belonged to the Smith family of Fort Worth, Texas, the eponym of SmithWare (later abbreviated "SW Games"). I'm guessing that Rodney R. Smith was the father of Timothy and Rod Smith II, but I haven't been able to confirm yet. I'd like to reach them because paying the full shareware fee of $22 supposedly got the player a full manual. The text file that comes with the game doesn't explain a lot.

Their game is a competent shareware title in the vein of Ultima V/VI. Its backstory is told in a series of title cards with light animations. It takes place on the island of Yendor, which is cut off from the rest of the world by a thick mist. It was populated a century ago by a collection of wizards who fled tyranny in the kingdom of Thaine. They set up a free educational institution called the Athaneum, established a benevolent republic, and attracted a lot of commoners from the mainland.

The third game has the character return to Thaine. It will be a while.

Happily, Yendor is also rich in Nuore, the reagent that forms the basis of all magic. It must be mined. Hence, the population of the land is divided between the mages and clerics who study at the Athenaeum and the miners who supply them with Nuore. Lately, however, the miners have been experiencing frequent attacks from monsters, which has jeopardized the production of Nuore. The governors of the island are looking for heroes to investigate the source of the attacks and stop them.

This is what we call "book smart."

The game supports a party of up to six members, both men and women, in four classes: miner, rogue, cleric, and wizard. Each has six attributes: strength, intelligence, dexterity, wisdom, stamina, and charisma (which roll on a scale from 30-60), plus the derived attributes of accuracy, damage, and absorption. I created a party of two miners, one rogue, two clerics, and one wizard. You can choose from a selection of 20 portraits during this process.

Assembling a party.

The game begins in a tavern in the town of Saccate. The party is represented by a single icon. The interface uses a combination of overhead and axonometric graphics, with the perspective from the southwest (instead of Ultima VI's southeast). The game uses tiles but manages to achieve the illusion of a continuous surface by blending them well and putting leg animations on character movement. Movement is with the arrow keys or numberpad. Other commands are accessible from an icon bar with keyboard backups, including (T)alk, (P)ick up, (A)ttack, (C)ast, and (L)ook. Targeted commands bring up a cursor that you can use anywhere within a three-square radius

Characters have an active weapon, armor, and shield that can be set by scrolling through possibilities. My miners started with cloth armor and no shields. The miners have knives; the rogue has a dagger; the priest has a staff; and the wizard has a sling shot. We have 300 gold pieces and a lock pick set. All unequipped items are stored in a collective inventory.

My lead miner and his equipment.

A problem becomes immediately clear: the game buffers all keyboard inputs, so delayed inputs keep executing even if the key is released. That means if I hold down an arrow key too long (and everything is too long), the character bumps into the nearest object in that direction until the buffer clears. You have to mince one step at a time.

NPCs scurry around the screen. They enter and leave buildings, sit down at tables, and occasionally go to sleep in beds for a while. The game doesn't have a day/night cycle or any way (that I can tell) to tell time, but the NPCs are definitely operating on a schedule. Interaction with them uses an Ultima-style keyword system, though with all the messages crammed uncomfortably in a small window in the lower right. NPCs all respond to HELLO, NAME, JOB, and BYE and of course often respond to keywords that come up during the conversation.

In real life, if a bit of track is broken, beating it with a pick doesn't help.

I work my way around the city, meeting NPCs and investigating services:

The tavern is run by Donovan, who sells ale and wine.

Neil: Works in the mines. Had a bad day. Everyone in my party can mine if we have enough mining tools. We'll also need a mining cart. If we come across a section of broken track, we can use mining tools to repair it.

Garret: Wants me to buy him an ale. The governor is looking for people to enter the mines. I can find him in his house.

Dean: Fights in the mines. They're becoming tough. Recently, he fought a bunch of giant rats.

Tyler the Guard: Confirms the name of the town and says that the Athaneum is to the south. Tells me the laws of the towns: You cannot get drunk, attack or kill an innocent person, or enter a building while mounted on a horse. If you do any of these things, you'll be stopped and arrested when you try to leave.

The blacksmith shop sells horses for 200 gold.

And at a sensible horse-to-character ratio.

A mining company store sells carts, mining tools, and torches. It will buy ore.

Marcus: If I want a job, I should talk to the governor in the northwest part of town.

Norma: Works in the mines with Osgood. One can find gold, Nuore, and other ores in the mines, which the mine shop will buy.

Osgood: Works in the mines with Norma. They're full of monsters. Most of them die quickly. He can increase my charisma by 6 points for 2,000 gold pieces.

I'll have to remember that.

Barton: Works in the mines repairing broken track. Mine shops will pay for fixing broken track.

Zeke: Works in the mines. If I find something in a spot, I should move on, as there won't ever be anything else.

The inn has rooms for 30 gold pieces. You can also ask for the BOOK, which takes the player to the main menu, where he can create characters and change the composition of the party.

The "book" continues the storybook theme inherent in the interface.

Arlo: Protects the governor. The governor is a member of the Council of Governors, which meets at the Athaneum to the south.

Dewey: Governor's aid. Asks if I'm willing to put my life on the line to help the Governor and Yendor. When I say YES, tells me to go see governor.

Governor: Annoyed that I'm bothering him until I speak to Dewey first. One of four governors on the Council. There are mines in the Northern Mountains, the Coastal Caverns, and the Eastern Mountains. Recaps the main plot of the game.

The governor is in bed when I talk to him, but that doesn't seem to be a problem.

Lynn: Can see into the future. For us, sees great battles, a big group, important people, a dark cave, and a celebration. She says that very soon we will "join with many people and witness a great tragedy," and that she and I will speak again.

Alexander: Owns the weapon and armor shops, which are run by his sons.

The armor shop sells wooden shields, copper shields, gold shields, cloth armor, robes, leather armor, ring mail, and steel shields +1. Each item has a minimum required strength.

Browsing the armor selection.

The weapon shop sells bolts, staves, daggers, clubs, hammers, maces, flails, knives, short swords, spears, hand axes, broad swords, morning stars +1, and cross bows +1. They have both minimum strength and dexterity requirements.

Bailey: Looking for a flail to defend himself against thieves. There are several bands northeast of Saccate, "around the thieves' town."

Warren: Guards the gates at the south end of the town and watches the horses tied up there. You cannot take horses into any of the shops.

My starting gold doesn't go very far. I buy everyone except my wizard (who can't carry one) wooden shields, then upgrade the wizard and one of my clerics to robes.

When I go to leave the town, I get a taste of the justice system. Apparently, while testing the controls, I tried to attack an NPC earlier. This results in the party being arrested and send to jail in the town of Mantov, where they can pay a fine (I don't have enough gold) or "serve time" by literally just sitting there and letting a few days pass in real time.

Still superior to Arena's system of inflicting capital punishment for every offense.

When I get out, rather than immediately exploring another city, I just head for the exit to get a sense of the bigger world. Mantov turns out to be on the coast, with water to the south. I start heading east and soon run into the entrance to a mine. I start to poke around a bit, but I can't get far without a mine cart, so I save it for later.

If you say so.

A few steps down the road, and I encounter a group of archmages. I'm absolutely slaughtered before I can even act.

This did not go well. They were all capable of spells from a distance.

On a reload, I try going the other way, and this time meet battle against two spiders. At least they don't have ranged attacks. Battle in this game mimics Ultima V: It takes place on a separate screen that provides an inset of the terrain in the main exploration window. Each round, characters can move one space, attack, or cast a spell. Attacking and casting brings up a targeting cursor. Adjacent enemies can be attacked on the diagonal.

Targeting a spider in combat.

One annoyance is that when it's a character's turn, a selector blinks exactly once and then disappears, so if you lose track of whose turn it is, you have to guess. Also like Ultima V, the two spiders nonsensically drop treasure chests when the battle is over. Each contains multiple items: gold, Nuore, and different types of ore. Each one tells me that there is "no trap," so I guess traps are possible. Clerics have spells to safely open chests.

Unfortunately, I'm killed in my next battle against two alligators, a snake, and a swamp troll. On subsequent reloads, I get slaughtered by skeletons and goblins and ultimately end up restarting the game so I don't get hijacked from the starting city so soon.

Some miscellaneous notes:

The game has only one save slot.

I can't find any way to interact with things that look like they ought to be interactable, like chests and items in shops. (U)se only applies to inventory items; (L)ook just gives you a description; (P)ick up simply doesn't work. There's no command to search or open.

You can rest and heal in the outdoors (in towns, you have to stay in the inn).

Resting right in front of the city.

There is no food system.

I'm going to wrap up there, a little earlier than I'd like, because I'd really like to have a map and manual for the game. (I already have the "Readme" document that came with the game; it begins with a section called "Game Information" and ends with one called "ATTENTION." I get the impression that registered users got a more complete manual.) If not, I'm sure I'll figure it out.

Time so far: 2 hours

****

Further Reading:

My coverage of the games that I think most influenced Yendorian Tales: Book I:

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988)
Ultima VI: The False Prophet (1990)

05/08/2026

The Elder Scrolls: Arena: Summary and Rating

2026-05-06T00:00:00.225-04:00

It's a good thing this is a single-character game, because three of these people would be fatally distracted in combat.

The Elder Scrolls: Arena

United States

Bethesda Softworks (developer and publisher)

Released 1994 for DOS

Date Started: 9 March 2026

Date Ended: 29 April 2026

Total Hours: 43

Difficulty: Moderate (3.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

Summary:

The first Elder Scrolls game lays out a surprising amount of the series' geography, history, and lore, including the races and provinces of Tamriel and the basic history of the empire united hundreds of years ago by Tiber Septim. Now, Emperor Uriel Septim VII has been kidnapped and sent to an alternate dimension by his evil BattleMage, Jagar Tharn. To rescue him, the player has to find the 8 pieces of the Staff of Chaos, each hidden in a dungeon in a different province, then confront Tharn in the imperial palace.

The game has all the trappings of a modern CRPG, including attributes and leveling, a full set of weapons and armor, a detailed spell list (and the ability to craft your own spells), monsters with various strengths and weaknesses, NPCs, side-quests, and a robust economy. Despite these assets, the experience mostly falls flat, likely because the developers relied too much on bland procedural generation of most dungeons and NPCs and all cities and towns. The first-person graphics and free movement are decent for the era, but alas they don't age well. Overall, Arena tries to build on its famous predecessors—primarily Ultima Underworld (1992) and Legends of Valour (1992)—but fails to equal them, let alone surpass them.

****

I'm glad they didn't give up after one game, but Arena is a bit of a misfire. It is more impressive (from a programming standpoint) than fun. Roguelikes show that procedural generation can work when done well, but it has to be coupled with solid mechanics and logistics. Bethesda made a good effort at both but didn't quite clear the bar. The company will continue to struggle with the balance between handcrafted content and generated content straight into the modern age, and many of the complaints I have about Arena are the same ones I have about Starfield (2023).

Arena's handcrafted content is limited to its 18 main quest dungeons. The problem is that few of those dungeons are terribly interesting. Even the "handcrafted" locations feel like they started with a procedural base and then just added title cards, welcome messages, furnishings, and riddle doors. Even in this regard, I feel like they got less interesting as they went along. The cities and NPCs, meanwhile, have no character at all beyond some skins specific to their provinces. If I had been a consultant on Arena, I would have advised them to handcraft at least the capital cities of each province, and to sprinkle them with a dozen or so non-generic NPCs.

This, for instance, is a "handcrafted" level. As far as I can tell, it may as well have been procedurally-generated.

On the other hand, if the mechanics had been better, it might have been a pleasure to explore a few more side-dungeons, gaining a few more levels, finding a few more artifacts. There are modern games for which I wouldn't mind the occasional procedurally-generated level at all. The Infinity Engine games come to mind. If Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale had featured some optional, repeatable dungeons with random selections of enemies, particularly ones that you don't get to fight often in the main campaign, I might never have started this blog.

As for those mechanics, Arena almost always has a good base but doesn't go far enough in some areas and poorly balances others. The equipment system (likely influenced by Might and Magic III-V) offers not quite enough variety, particularly for certain classes. The economy is just a bit too generous. Combat goes on just a bit too long against not-quite-enough enemies who are not quite interesting enough to hold my attention. The combat interface is innovative but gets a bit exhausting. Graphics occupy that unfortunate valley between the best of the previous primitive age and the worst of the forthcoming immersive age.

I meant to include this shot from Ebonheart in my last entry. That volcano is visible in the distance from everywhere in Morrowind.

My repetitive uses of "a bit" and "not quite" are poor English, but they work for a game that landed just shy of the threshold of victory. I've always tried to follow Strunk & White's recommendations to eschew negative verbs and adjectives (e.g., "did not respond," "not unattractive") in favor of positive ones (e.g., "ignored," "pretty"). But Arena almost begs for the former. It's not a bad game; it's just a not good one. I don't necessarily not recommend it, but I don't really recommend it, either.

In the 1980s, I established a rating of about 35 as my "recommended" threshold, but by the mid-1990s, I think it needs to be up to 40. A score of around 40-43 would reflect the way I feel about the game. Let's see what happens.

GIMLET

Category	Assets	Liabilities	Score
1. Game World	A detailed backstory with history and lore. An intriguing map with interesting place names. Evocative names and historical tidbits dropped into conversation, quest messages, title cards, exploration messages.	A laughable explanation of the game's name. Most of the name drops are just names; later games will flesh them out but Arena doesn't deserve that credit. Races in this early game are mostly fantasy archetypes. Outdoor areas completely wasted. Forced fast-travel.	4
2. Character Creation and Development	Fun, Ultima-like character creation process. Character classes are well-differentiated and create unique gameplay experiences. Class-based roleplaying options for thieves and spellcasters.	Leveling is boring, involving a simple allocation of 3-6 attribute points with consequent increases in health and mana. Awful character portraits. No roleplaying options for fighter classes.	4
3. NPCs	Towns are full of them and you learn a fair amount from them.	They're almost all randomly-generated with no personalities.	3
4. Encounters and Foes	About 20 monsters with some strengths and weaknesses. I found the riddle doors a fun diversion but others will want to subtract more for that.	Monsters are a bit boring. No major variance in tactics necessary to defeat them. No other special encounters.	3
5. Magic and Combat	Spell variety offers most of the tactics in combat. Other tactics found in use of terrain.	Combat is otherwise a bit boring. Different types of attacks don't seem to make any difference. Ranged combat under-developed. Most of the "use of terrain" tactics feel like exploits.	3
6. Equipment	Lots of equipment slots. Easy to understand relative offensive/defensive value of items. Items mostly randomized in game world. Almost anything can be enchanted. Variety of potions serve as a money sink. Powerful artifact items.	Not quite enough variety in equipment to put in those slots, particularly for certain classes. Limited to one artifact item at a time unless you use an exploit.	5
7. Economy	Several ways to make money: selling looted items, side-quests, thievery. Lots of things to spend money on.	Economy gets a bit generous by the halfway mark. Silly haggling mechanic. Treasure in dungeons weirdly limited to 99 gold pieces.	5
8. Quests	Clear main quest. Artifact quests. Side-quests with various levels of complexity in each town.	Main quest stages are overly repetitive and predictable. Side quests are boring and don't reward enough to bother. No different main quest outcomes.	4
9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface	Almost everything on the screen has a keyboard backup. Decent sound effects. Limited voice acting is good. 3D continuous movement. Nice automap and journal.	Graphics are good for the era but ugly by the standards of even 5 years later; do not age well. Dragging mouse to swing weapon in combat gets a bit old, particularly where precision isn't required. No ambient sound.	4
10. Gameplay	Geographically nonlinear. Replayable to experience different classes.	Narratively linear. Otherwise not replayable. Repetitive nature of main quest process gets old. Game is a bit too long.	3
Other/Total	Lots of procedurally-generated content	Lots of procedurally-generated content.	38

That final score is a bit lower than I expected, but not so much that I think something's wrong with the rating. I really wanted to like Arena, which infused some of the enthusiasm of my early entries, but it showed all its cards early. By the time you've found the third piece of the Staff of Chaos, you've really experienced all the game has to offer.

Why would you not include a single shot of combat?

Scorpia's review in the May 1994 Computer Gaming World echoes many of my own thoughts about the game. "Everything eventually becomes mechanical and repetitious," she says, referring to the interchangeable towns, NPCs, and dungeons, as well as the limited number of enemies. She points out, more than I did in my coverage, how utterly useless the entire outdoor experience is. Bethesda spent a lot of time on pretty outdoor maps with structures, dungeons, monsters, even weather effects, and there's no reason whatsoever to ever experience these things.

On the other hand, she liked the combat a lot better than I did: "It's the most natural way of fighting that I've seen in a first-person game." She also spends more time talking about the side quests (I guess some had unachievable time limits) than I spent playing them. Her final comments are almost prescient:

The game is impressive as a first effort. Most of the pieces of a good CRPG are there. What is needed now is a tightening of the code, a little polishing up of the basic engine, a little scaling back of the size, and the inclusion of some real role-playing elements . . . with a solid storyline. These are well within Bethesda's abilities, and their addition to future products would make The Elder Scrolls a dynamite series.

I'm glad she was still around to review Daggerfall two years later. Despite her misgivings, the Arena won CGW's "Role-Playing Game of the Year" award.

According to MobyGames's roundup of reviews, the game's best review (in its age) came from the March 1994 Joystick (a French magazine) at 91%; its worst from the May 1994 PC Zone at 62%: "The cities are dull. The interaction is dull. The playing area is too large. The quests and money-earning too laborious. There is no wit." The mode is around 80%, or a B- in my profession, which makes sense to me.

Just a shot of me fighting a fire daemon. I liked it, and I didn't get to use it earlier.

What strikes me about almost all the reviews is the mention of size. None of them seem to have caught on that Arena's supposed vastness is completely illusory. Maybe some of the European magazines that I can't easily translate covered it, but nowhere in the English reviews did I see any acknowledgement about the extent of procedural generation. Maybe they weren't aware of it. Maybe the idea was just too new to them.

A ton has been written about both the game and the Elder Scrolls series. I like to try to synthesize everything in these "Summary and Rating" postings, but this is one of those games for which there is far more content out there than I have time to assemble in a single entry. Here are some highlights of what I've found elsewhere:

The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages confirms what commenters contributed to my last entry: The original conception was for the PC to be the ward of General Talin Warhaft, leader of the imperial guards, also confusingly named "Talin." This explains why in the manual, Ria refers to the PC as "Talin" while the cinematic shows Talin Warhaft being captured along with the Emperor (and the original endgame cinematic shows him being returned). There's even a cut slide from the opening narration that explains this.

The cut content.

I only experienced a small percentage of the types of random quests available. They include delivery, retrieval, and escort quests (which always take place in towns), and dungeon quests in which you rescue a captive, capture a criminal, or slay a particular creature. I didn't experience any of these and indeed questioned whether they existed. I suppose you could have fun with the game without ever doing the main quest. Although the times I was given were always generous, apparently you can be given a deadline that's impossible to achieve.

If you fail a palace quest, for some reason the game changes the entire palace and ruler, with males always switching to females, and vice versa. Those are some serious consequences.

There are plenty of people online who claim that if you're willing to put in the time, you can walk from one city to another. They claim it takes dozens of hours. I'd like to have some confirmation of this, but I'm not willing to put in the time.

Any volunteers?

The full list of artifacts are Auriel's Bow, Chrysamere (two-handed sword), Ebony Blade (katana), Staff of Magnus, Voldendrug (hammer), King Orgnum's Coffer (gives gold once per day), Necromancer's Amulet, Oghma Infinium, Ring of Khajiit, Ring of Phynaster, Skeleton's Key, Warlock's Ring. They all appear again in subsequent games. I think Skyrim has them all except the Warlock's Ring and King Orgnum's Coffer.

Bethesda began an expansion pack to Arena set in Mournhold in Morrowind. It morphed into The Elder Scrolls II before its setting was for some reason changed to Daggerfall.

Unused or cut content for the game includes art for beholders and balrogs, a slave market, and support for up to four party members at once.

I'm sorry we didn't get to see this guy.

The official cluebook for Arena was called Codex Scientia, written by Judith Weller and Ted Peterson. I didn't learn a lot from it, but here are some tidbits:

"Resist Fire" lets you swim in lava. I suppose I should have guessed that, but I never tested it.

Different classes have different casting costs for different spell types.

The experience table in the cluebook goes only to Level 20. From what I read on various web sites, if you make it to Level 27, you get enough attribute points to max out all attributes at 100, which makes further leveling impossible because you can't leave the "level up" screen until you've distributed new points.

There are apparently 16 annual holidays in Tamriel, each with effects on the local economy. For instance, on the New Life Festival (first day of the year), ale is free in the taverns. On Second Planting (7 Second Seed), temples heal for free. These are cute bits of world-building, but the odds that you'd be in town to enjoy the benefits of a particular holiday are lower than the likelihood you'd even need their benefits, given the generous economy. It's impossible to imagine a player saying, "Well, I need to buy a new sword, but I think I'll wait until the Merchant's Festival" (when all prices are discounted 50%). It's too bad that later Elder Scrolls games didn't implement them, though. It would have been fun to enter Whiterun or the Imperial City and find a different arrangement of NPCs, as Jester's Day would have required, or to find all NPCs mute, as Tales and Tallows requires.

Shots from the hintbook. The emblem on the cover reminds me of something I've seen before, but I can't place it.

I struggled with whether to include the game in my "Must Play" list despite the low score. The list includes the first games in a large number of series, including Ultima, Wizardry, The Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, Pool of Radiance, and Hero's Quest. I have so far not included any sequels in series whose first titles were not on the list. I think The Elder Scrolls is going to be a "first" in that regard. While it undoubtedly had a certain legacy for its own series, it's hard to detect a general legacy for Arena. Please let me know if you know of any games directly inspired by it, but my own search came up short. (There was notably no explosion of procedurally-generated content in the later 1990s.) Finally, in those earlier cases, I honestly think the first game of the series was a superlative example of that series. This is not true with Arena.

But I am certainly grateful for the series it spawned, which we'll have a chance to re-engage in a short time with The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall in 1996. And we might have a little more follow-up on Arena specifically. I have been in touch with developer Ted Peterson, who didn't have a chance to answer my questions for this entry. When I receive his contributions, I'll post a follow-up.

***

Previous entry in this series

For Further Reading:

The two primary influences on The Elder Scrolls: Arena:

Ultima Underworld (1992)
Legends of Valour (1992)

05/06/2026

Game 575: Arena of Death (1991), Game 576: Darkhold (1987), and BRIEF: Buio! (1984)

2026-05-03T12:00:00.001-04:00

Why does my sword have a blue tip?

Arena of Death

United Kingdom

Hibbs Creations Limited (developer and publisher)

Released 1991 for Commodore 64

Date Started: 1 May 2026

Date Ended: 1 May 2026

Total Hours: 2

Difficulty: Easy (2.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

Arena of Death is so simple that it's barely a game. You start it.

You allocate 100 points among three attributes: strength (damage done), stamina (health), and skill (accuracy).

You select the best weapon that your strength will support, plus a backup weapon in case you fumble it.

I can take a broadsword or anything below.

You select armor if you want. Different types of armor have different protective values but also subtract form your skill.

Those rings aren't available to the player, but you encounter enemies who have them.

You enter the arena. The game tells you what kind of enemy you're fighting, what kind of weapon he wields, and what kind of armor he has.

Prepare to die, salamander!

Each round, the game rolls for initiative. If you get the initiative, you can charge, swing, thrust, change weapons, surrender, or check your status.

If the enemy gets the initiative, you can parry, dodge, retreat, change weapons, counter-attack, or check your status.

Defense options.

Once one of you has taken sufficient wounds, the battle is over. If you win, you get between 0 and 2 points added to your three ability scores, your character heals, and you return to the main menu, where you can select different weapons and armor or, absurdly, save the game.

Win 5 times, and the game tells you that you win the match "and your freedom." At that point, saving the game (which is absurd) becomes possible.

Win 10 times and you win the game and get listed in the Hall of Fame.

This was unexpected.

For my first character, I chose 40 strength, 40 stamina, and 20 skill. I equipped a broadsword. I won every match and had won the game 20 minutes later. My opponents, in order, were a lizard man, a "Chester," a centaur, a lizard man, a kobold, a goblin, a centaur, a dwarf, a bugbear, and another Chester.

Since what happens during battle is invisible, I have no idea which attacks and defenses work best, or whether the best strategy changes for different opponents or different opponents' weapons and armor. I similarly don't know whether certain weapons work better against certain opponents or certain armor.

The character status screen.

The points you get for each victory aren't really sufficient to have achieved a new weapon level by the end of the game, so the "development" isn't worth much.

Enemies I encountered in subsequent passes through the game include gnolls, warlocks, and warriors.

"Like, I was fighting myself . . . or . . . something?"

In the rare case that you die, there's a chance of a resurrection.

It's a good thing I didn't die or surrender often, because if either thing happens, the game asks for a disk (I don't know whether it wants the main disk or a save disk) and then refuses to accept anything that you insert.

The game is sort of an all-text Darkwood (1992) but without the inventory upgrades that game offered in between matches. It gets a 9 on the GIMLET, nothing rising higher than a 2, 0s in "Game World," "NPCs," and "Economy."

Arena was created by Patrick Hibbs of Hibbs Creations Limited. No other games seem to be associated with him. I don't know if it's the same company, but a company by that name has four free apps on the Amazon app store, all from 2021: Different Types of Tea, History of Lifted Jeep Wrangler, How to Renovate Your Bathroom, and Advantages of Swimming. All appear to be text only; none have any reviews.

*****

Darkhold

United States
Softdisk (developer and publisher); published in Loadstar magazine

Released 1987 for Commodore 64

Date Started: 1 May 2026

Date Ended: 1 May 2026

Total Hours: 2

Difficulty: Easy (2.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

Darkhold is an action game in which one or two players joystick their characters (a warrior and/or a wizard) around a dungeon, kill enemies, and collect treasures. It was created by frequent Loadstar contributor John Mattson, whose work we saw previously in Questwriter (1990), Labyrinth (1991), and Knight's Quest (1991).

The dungeon has four levels. Each level has rooms arranged in an 8 x 8 grid, wrapping, for a total of 64 rooms on each level and 256 levels in the dungeon. The characters navigate the larger dungeon corridors and then poke their heads into the individual rooms. Each room can contain some combination of:

Stairs up or down.
A monster (specters, basilisks, manticores, trolls, harpies, fire newts, dragons).
A treasure chest.
A healing fountain.

A basilisk blocks the way to a treasure chest.

Despite their names, both characters are pretty much the same in combat. They both have missile attacks activated by the joystick button, but enemies close the distance fast. As soon as a character touches an enemy, they're presumed to be in melee combat. It's over fast.

The wizard melees with a troll.

The goal of the game is to find four pieces to a medallion. They are stored on the four levels in random treasure chests. Treasure chests otherwise contain gold, which adds to each character's score. Collecting chests in rooms that have them is the only way to "clear" those rooms. If the room only has an enemy, with no chest, there's no reason to fight him, as you get no special benefits from killing enemies. If you pop into a room, see only an enemy, and immediately leave, the room is considered "cleared."

Hey, I'll take the W.

Various notes:

Some enemies have ranged attacks. Harpies are the worst enemy in the game, as they have some kind of "magic field" that damages you as you spend any time in their presence.

Healing fountains heal 30 hit points with each visit, and they're good for multiple visits. At some point, the healing fountain will disappear and the room will become a standard monster room with no chest.

When two players play at once, one of them controls the "party" as they move around the dungeon. Once inside a room, the players can operate independently. But battle is over quickly, and enemies are optimized for a single character, so I can only imagine it was a boring, frustrating experience. Both characters have to independently leave the room using the same exit to continue.

The two characters together in a room with a healing field.

If you use the "fire" button on the joystick while outside a room, the game thinks you want to drink a potion. I never found a potion anywhere in the dungeon. It's possible I missed some documentation.

Similarly mysterious are the "items" section of the main screen, which never show more than one item (the character's weapon upgrade).

If you just stand around in the corridors, enemies "ambush" you and draw you into a temporary room, though you can just immediately duck out, the same way you can in regular rooms.

Both characters can upgrade their weapons on the first level. They make a minor difference in battle, and the task is accomplished quickly, so it's not a huge part of the game.

Wandering the hallways between rooms. The checkerboard rooms are unexplored; the ones with the blue wavy lines have healing fountains.

It's not really an RPG—no character development—but it was over fast and it was diverting enough for an hour or so. The levels are generous enough with healing fountains that you're never in any serious danger. It only gets a 7 on the GIMLET, lacking any real RPG elements.

*****

Buio!

"Darkness!"

Italy

Editoriale Video (developer and publisher)

Released 1984 for ZX Spectrum

Rejected for: Insufficient character development

Until I found a few entries in a ZX Spectrum database, I thought that Time Horn: Il Corno del Tempo (1991) was the first Italian RPG. It may still be. Buio! is yet another adaptation of The Wizard's Castle (1980) or Monster Combat (1980), and a relatively uninspired one at that. The only relevant statistic is the character's forza ("strength," but more accurately, "hit points"), which goes up and down based on luck more than experience or skill.

There's no backstory. The character is cast into a 16-level tower, randomized for each new game—a process that seems to take forever even accounting for the year and platform. Each level has 10 x 10 squares. Each square offer some combination of monsters, treasures, and special encounters. To get to the next level, you have to accumulate 2500 x L gold pieces, where "L" is the level you're currently on, then find the "key," which automatically teleports you along. Why they didn't just make the key a stairway is one of the many mysteries of Buio!

Starting out on Level 1 with no gold, 8000 hit points.

Combat is with generic mostri; the game doesn't even bother to pull from a database of different monster names. As combat begins, you have to decide whether to go for a leg (G), body (C), or head (T) attack, and hold down the appropriate key. Some monsters are particularly resistant to some attacks and vulnerable to others, but unless I'm missing something, the only way to tell is to try one of the options and see how fast the monster's health depletes. Meanwhile, your own health is depleting quite rapidly, even at era-accurate speeds. I had a tough time making my initial 8,000 hit points last the level. The only other option in combat is to run (R).

The combat screen. Nothing to do here but hold down the key.

Special encounters include piles of treasure, weapons that add to your health (there is typically only one of these per level), merchants who will sell weapons, teleporters that take you to random places, and enchanted rooms that raise and lower your strength.

An "enchanted place" saps my strength.

A map of the level can be accessed every time you defeat five monsters. It shows the locations of rooms with monsters (M), weapons (A), keys (+), and special encounters (#). Monsters can wander into any room, though, so the "M" isn't really helpful. Movement is with the 5678 keys. It's probably an emulator issue, but I found the game to be horribly unresponsive to my keypresses.

The level map. I guess there are 496 monsters remaining.

I made it to Level 2, but no way am I wading through 15 more levels of this just for the inevitably brief congratulazioni! at the end.

As a side note, I've never had any formal lessons in Italian, but my general familiarity with the language from food, music, architecture, wine, and Dean Martin songs, coupled with my knowledge of French and Spanish, means that I can almost always "triangulate" the language. Like if you know "woods" is bosque in Spanish and bois in French, it seems inevitable that it's bosco in Italian. Given that, the translation of Buio! surprised l'inferno out of me. It was on my "upcoming" list for weeks, and I just assumed it meant "wow!" or something. It has no cognates that I know of in the other Romance languages. Google says that it comes from a Latin word for reddish-brown. Imagine if there was an English language game called Reddish-Brown!