I finally found the dreaded Dragon on the 18th level of the Dungeon. I chose NOT to use the Dragon Spell which would have used all of my spell points and instead tried to take the beast out with a lightning bolt. Yeah that did not work. Luckily I was able to kill the dragon with my sword. I grabbed the Orb and then began to make my way back up and out of the dungeon. All the way to the top I was encountering 9000 level creatures but I was strong enough that my spells were taking them out. I did finally reach the entrance to the dungeon and I made my way outside.
Here you can see, pictured below, Ryshad’s place at the top of the Finders of the Orb list.
My strategy was to teleport to the lowest level I felt I could endure. I would then spend time mapping the level out and returning to that level repeatedly until it seemed easy. I would make my way back up to the surface, wash, rinse, and repeat. I did this because I wanted to be intimately familiar with each of the levels and train my eyes. I wanted to be sure that, in the end, as I made my way to the top with the Orb I had my eyes trained to recognize which was the quickest route to the exit on each of the levels. This did end up being a great advantage in the end as I found making my way back up through the levels was much like a reflex action.
And thus my Game of Dungeons experience comes to an end so here are my final thoughts on the game.
There are a number of things that I find positively significant about this game.
This is the very first game in which the idea of a “big boss” that you have to defeat is introduced. In our previous game, Dungeon, the goal was to reach a certain number of experience points which you earned by defeating randomly generated monsters. Game of Dungeons had an actual goal: slay the dragon and retrieve the Orb.
This is also the first game in which you could keep acquiring a variety of magic items to improve the strength and stats of your character. Several of these items became more powerful as you found them in the deeper levels and instead of a +1 bonus they could give you +2 or +3. The deeper your foray into the dungeon your hit points were increasing (from finding gold AND defeating monsters) and you were acquiring stronger magical items so you had a true sense of character progression. I understand that this is greatly improved upon and a much more dynamic experience with current rogue-like games but the fact still remains that this was introduced here for the first time.
There can be no doubt that in 1975 this game must have seemed like a technological marvel. The Plato System was considered a super computer at the time and the number of hours students must have spent in the computer lab, playing this game, must be mind boggling. I wonder how many saw their grades suffer as a result.
The time investment with this game was significant. I went through 21 characters like wood going through a wood chipper before I became wise to the game mechanics. I would say plan on a good 10-12 hours before you establish a good learning curve and can then methodically map out and explore the 20 levels. Then plan on another 10-12 hours building your character’s levels so that you CAN take on the dragon in the deepest parts of the dungeon. If there was a weakness here; it was in the final stretch of the game as you had to make multiple trips into the dungeon and build up experience. This became a tedious process and thus it is where the descriptive word “grind” comes into play that you always read about.
The permadeath feature created a high level of anxiety for me as I found myself near the end of the game. There is such a time investment in building up your character that the thought of defeat at the hands of the dragon was enough to make you almost nauseous. My final trip to the surface carrying the orb was filled with both anxiety and exhilaration delivering what seemed like a true payoff because of the time that you had to put in and this permadeath feature.
The game was moderately difficult. You MUST have a pencil and graph paper handy because you have to map these levels out in order to win the game. The permadeath feature and the amount of time needed to win the game (roughly 24 game hours) is not insignificant. There were no riddles or text in the game; all of your time was spent mapping and buffing your character.
I am thankful to the folks at cyber1 who have maintained this system and allowed me to take part in a piece of history that is the computer role-playing game realm. I would highly recommend the experience for anyone who has the time and inclination.
Next up: Game #3 We are still in 1975 and I continue my experience with the Plato system and will look at Orthanc next