Oubliette was originally conceived and created by Jim Schwaiger in the spring of 1977, and was released to the users of the University of Illinois’ Plato system on November 18, 1977.
Oubliette was a multi-user dungeon when it premiered on the Plato System. It was never meant to be played alone but with a group of friends who have also logged into the system. When I first began this journey, I started by playing Dungeon on the Plato System and all of the other CRPGs that followed there. I never did play Oubliette very much because it was extremely difficult to play on your own as a solo adventurer. The dungeon was meant for a party of 6 and so I did not cover the game here in my blog but I did recognize it’s existence.
The graphics and the gameplay were just absolutely amazing in 1977 and it would be years before home computers could come close to duplicating this kind of sophistication.
We now fast forward to 1983 and find that there is now a commercial version of Oubliette published for the Commodore 64. Jim Schwaiger is back to author this version along with Victor Helsing.
The word Oubliette is derived from the French, and means a dungeon with but one escape. There is a bit of world building and background in the documentation that comes with the game. The world in which Oubliette takes place in is referred to as Tokal. We’ll skip the formation of the different races and move right to the later years of the world’s renaissance.
As the city and the surrounding area was tamed, the hostile creatures, both animal and humanoid, were placed in a general holding area beneath the castle which later became known as the dungeon. Castle low life and criminals were also placed in the Oubliette, which was soon teeming with life.
As the dungeon and the city above matured, it became popular among the young citizens of the city to venture into the dungeon, seeking gold and glory, almost as a rite of passage. To others, it became a lifetime quest.
Oubliette is a first person dungeon crawler that uses wireframe graphics. It would be disrespectful to use words in the description such as “like Wizardry” because Oubliette is the clear parent of Wizardry. The Wizardry franchise and many other games borrowed quite heavily from the original Oubliette game that was available in 1978.
Where Oubliette really shines is in the character creation process. The amount of choices that you have as a player are quite staggering and you’ll find yourself spending quite a bit of time devising your party. Your goal here is to create a party of six characters. You’ll want a balanced party that features brawn, a thief to find and remove traps and open chests, and a combination of priest and magic-user. Oubliette sports a rather large collection of both priest and wizard spells which are a lot of fun to experiment with.
Let’s spend a little time highlighting the character creation process:
There are eight player races you can choose from:
The player characteristics are expressed in terms of six basic values: STR (strength), INT (intelligence), PIE (piety), LDR (leadership), CON (constitution) and DEX (dexterity).
Once you’ve selected your race you now have a choice of 10 different character classes !
Once you have your character class selected you then have to choose a guild for your apprenticeship. Each character class has roughly five different guilds they can choose to petition. The amount of choice here is simply staggering.
I chose to go more of an old school route. My party selection is made up of the following:
GRUMSH – an Ogre Hirebrand belonging to the guild Ogre Raiders
DRUGAR – a dwarven Hirebrand who is a member of the Praetorian Guard
JIMMY – (based on Jimmy the Hand from Raymond E. Feist’s excellent Riftwar series) a hobbit Thief belonging to the local Thieves Guild
WINTROW – (based on the character from Robin Hobb’s most excellent Liveship Traders trilogy) a human Priest belonging to the Order of the Robe
MORDRED – an elven Mage who is a member of the Eldar Academy
RAISTLIN – an elven Mage who is a survivor of the Tower. A nod to Dragonlance fans here – one of the wizard guilds that you can join is mysteriously known as The Tower. When I saw the choice I thought to myself; ‘this seems like a nod to the Dragonlance series’ and sure enough, if you fail your apprenticeship at the Tower; you die.
There are 27 different magic-user spells distributed among 6 different Spell Levels and there are 18 different Priest spells distributed among 6 different Spell Levels.
If you’re a computer role-playing fan who loves a lot of choice and likes to play with different character builds then Oubliette is a virtual cornucopia.
The gameplay is fluid and smooth and if you’re a big fan of mapping the dungeons with paper and pencil then you’re going to love mapping these dungeon levels. The grid-based dungeon exploration here is as flawless as that found in Wizardry I, II, and III.
The above screen depicts the party resting within the walls of LIGNE Castle. I have about six hours of game time in thus far and I have my Hirebrands at 9th and 7th level while the other classes are playing catch up. A reason for this is due to combat. Only the first two characters in the marching order can participate in physical combat. The other 4 party members have to support with ranged magical spells if they are available. You DO have the luxury of changing the marching order anytime that you’d like.
There are 10 different dungeon levels located beneath LIGNE Castle and each dungeon level becomes progressively more difficult as you move deeper into the dungeon. IF there is a weakness with the game, and it’s a big one, it’s that there is no overarching plot nor is there a quest of any kind that you’re supposed to perform. So the only reason for playing is dungeon exploration to increase your party’s level and power. There are no room descriptions of any kind or special encounters found within the dungeon complex.
The first dungeon level was a very straight forward mapping experience. This is a hard game in that it is very difficult in the beginning to survive the encounters in the dungeon. Combat is a difficult affair and permadeath in this game is very real.
Combat has different tactical choices. You can choose between F (fight), D (double blow), K (swing to kill) all of which affect your die rolls to some degree. You can also choose to E (evade), Q (Seduce) – a unique feature available only to Thieves in the party – think of it as a “charm spell” – if the thief successfully seduces his opponent they join your party and fight alongside you – if unsuccessful however it results in instant death – it is so difficult to survive and build your party up that I haven’t had the guts to try this option yet – C (Dispel) – available only to Priests in the party to use against undead, and lastly S (Spell) which allows your Priest or Wizard to cast a spell.
Here are all of the different monsters you’ll find on Level 1 of the dungeon:
You can see that we’re getting a tremendous amount of opponent variety here compared to Super Quest which was recently covered.
I am currently almost done mapping the 2nd dungeon level and I’ve spent about six hours with the game. There are 4 teleporters on this level that I need to nail down and I have yet to find the stairs to Dungeon Level 3.
The creatures which you might encounter on this 2nd level are as follows:
Again I am just struck by the amount of variety and density of what is present. The key issue here though is that there is no quest or endgame. I am not sure that I should spend more time with this one though I am definitely enjoying myself. If you are a fan of dungeon crawlers and like grinding your characters and mapping by hand, and you’ve not played this one yet, what are you waiting for? I am sure it will bother many though that there is not an item to obtain or a big bad to dispatch – the lack of a quest to fulfill makes it feel almost incomplete – albeit there is a lot of depth to what is here. While I have not seen a better contender to compare to the Wizardry series – the lack of descriptions and text in the dungeon, special rooms, special encounters, and lack of a quest is like a hole or a scratch upon a masterpiece painting.
There is an Oubliette version which was released for Apple and Android phones and my understanding is that an extra 11th level was added along with a “big bad” for you to defeat – creating a purpose for traversing the dungeon levels – but since I’m all about playing these CRPGs in the order in which they were published, I’m not about to jump to the present and play the game on my phone. However it IS out there:
I believe I have spent enough time with the game in order to give you a proper review or glimpse and I’ve many future places to go so I’m going to put this one on the backburner. I’d normally just move on however I really enjoy mapping by hand and the completist in me is bothered that I haven’t gotten the other 8 dungeon levels mapped out. The game is deadly and time consuming and with so many games to play, and with no quest here attached, it doesn’t seem the best use of my time. I have my game saved and my plan is to come back to it every once in awhile and keep you updated on my progress. If there was purpose attached here ( a main quest ) I would label this one a dungeon crawling gem that you absolutely must play – as it is it gets high marks from me.
Next up on the docket – Might & Magic: The Lava Pits of Aznar
Until next time…