“Beware, foolish mortal, you trespass in Akalabeth, world of doom!” This was the warning found on a card insert inside the Akalabeth packaging. The packaging consisted of a Ziploc bag which also contained a 5 1/4 Apple II disk and photocopied instructions. Richard Garriott, still in high school, had spent $200 to package and sell Akalabeth and this was the result. The cover was drawn by Richard Garriot’s mother. Garriott did not realize it at the time but this decision would launch a flagship series for the CRPG genre and transform him into an industry icon. Akalabeth is now seen as part of the Ultima series. It was included in the 1998 Ultima Collection where it officially picked up the name Ultima 0.
Richard’s father, Owen, was an astronaut and had temporarily shared the title for the longest space flight any human has ever taken. Owen would routinely bring home expensive government toys from NASA headquarters which Richard and his two older brothers would experiment with. Richard’s mother, Helen, was a free spirited artist who had a large studio in the garage. She was always working on a project and her children always had an open invitation to join in. The Garriott home was a cross between a mad scientist’s laboratory and an art studio. Richard was blessed as a young man to have been brought up in a home that pushed computers and technology, instilled a sense of adventure, and fostered experimentation and creativity. Garriott was loved by his parents and his creativity and decisions seemed to be fully endorsed and supported.
Richard’s parents had sent him to a seven week summer computer camp at Oklahoma University. It was there that Richard discovered the game Dungeons & Dragons as well as a newfound sense of community. It was at computer camp where he was also given the nickname of British which would later become Lord British. When Garriott returned to high school in the fall he wanted to continue to foster that feeling of community so he began to recruit friends to play Dungeons & Dragons. They played the game in Richard’s home and soon word began to spread throughout the school like wildfire. Everyone wanted to play. On the weekends there would be a group playing in the kitchen of the Garriott home, the dining room, the living room, and Helen even gave up her art studio in the garage and put together two ping pong tables without nets for a gaming table. The teens would play all weekend and even several groups of parents would socialize on the Garriott’s front porch. Richard Garriott had created that community through his passion for gaming.
In his Houston high school, Richard had a basic computer class which was already taught well below his ability level. Teachers and administrators recognized his ability and modified the course so that he could work on independent projects. Richard wanted to extend his gaming community beyond the boundaries of his home and wanted to give that same sense of adventure and excitement to the entire world. So he began to work on a game in Applesoft BASIC for the Apple II during his junior year. His father bought him an Apple II for home as well. When the game reached the 28th version he demoed the game – now renamed Akalabeth – for his boss at a Texas area Computerland where he worked the summer of his senior year. His boss was so impressed he suggested that Richard sell the game in the store. This suggestion led to the package pictured above and claimed to offer “10 different Hi-Res Monsters combined with perfect perspective and infinite dungeon levels”. California Pacific Computer Company received a copy, and contacted Garriott to publish the game. Garriott flew to California with his parents and agreed to receive $5 for each copy sold. The retail price of the California Pacific version, with cover artwork by Denis Loubet, was $35. The company suggested that for marketing purposes “Lord British” be credited as the author, and organized a contest for Softalk readers to figure out his true identity.
The name Akalabeth comes from Akallabeth, one of the chapters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. Akalabeth is not based on Lord of the Rings however this appears to be a nod or tribute to Tolkien. Another Tolkien reference in Garriott’s game is that the final enemy you must hunt is a Balrog. “Akalabeth was not made to be published. I made it merely for myself and my friends. It was John Mayer, the manager of the Computerland store where I had a summer job, who encouraged me to spend the large sum (in those days for a high school senior) of $200 to “publish” it on the store wall.” – Richard Garriott
You can read about Garriott’s story as well as the story of other creators, crusaders, and celebrity players in Dungeons and Dreamers by Brad King & John Borland.
Akalabeth checks off a lot of boxes for the computer role-playing game (CRPG) purists. You get your choice of character class. You can choose to play a Fighter or a Mage. If you choose the Fighter option you can wield a greater variety of weapons and armor. If you choose the Mage option you’ll find you have greater control over the Magic Amulet. The Magic Amulet can cast four different spells for you:
- Ladder Up – this creates a ladder leading up to the level above your present position
- Ladder Down – the creates a ladder that leads down a level from your current position
- Kill – this casts an offensive spell against your opponent
- Bad?? – when you choose to cast this spell three different things can happen: 1) half of your hit points are drained 2) you are turned into a Toad and all of your attributes become 3 or lastly 3) it turns you into a Lizard Man multiplying all of your stats by 2.5. These three different effects are supposed to be completely random but are they really random? More on this later
There is a very limited store in which you are able to buy weapons and armor.
It should be noted that once you buy your initial weapons and armor there is no need for further equipment. You are done. Your choices do not vary with different towns and there is no opportunity to find better equipment or magical items in the dungeons. What you will need from the store is food! Lots of it. You want to buy as much as you can afford. It is very easy to starve to death in Akalabeth. The management of your food can even be a distraction from game play. This part of the game seems to be a direct influence from the Moria game which I reviewed earlier. Akalabeth is the first commercial game where managing your food becomes a part of your survival. This is not a first for the genre but a first for home computer games.
I chose the Mage class and purchased a Magic Amulet and then all of the food that I could afford. Your attributes are randomly generated and you can choose to reroll your stats as many times as you would like. It is important that your character begin with at LEAST 22 gold so that you can purchase the Magic Amulet AND enough food to survive. I chose the Mage class over the Fighter because the Magic Amulet is a deal breaker. The ability to create ladders and move between levels becomes crucial late in the game. I also very much wanted to transform into a Lizard Man! More on that later.
When the game begins it asks you to pick a lucky number from 1 to 100. This becomes an extremely important aspect of the game. The number you choose will procedurally generate the outdoor map in Akalabeth, the placement of Lord British’s castle, surrounding towns and scattered dungeons. The layout of each floor of the dungeon are also procedurally generated according to the number that you choose and EVERY single dungeon will have the SAME layout. This is important because death is permanent in Akalabeth and there is no save game feature! When you perish, and have to restart the game, if you choose the same lucky number, the outdoor map, towns, and dungeons will all be placed in the same spot again and the dungeon level layouts will remain the same. Each different “lucky number” will procedurally generate an entire new configuration for everything.
When I first began I chose number 27 as my “lucky number”. Akalabeth has a first person perspective and wire frame dungeons except when you’re using the outdoor map. The perspective is then top down. There are mountains,
towns,
trees (yes, that’s a tree, use your imagination!)
Lord British’s Castle,
and finally dungeons which are represented by an X on the outdoor map. This is from the documentation that came with the game and it provides us with some background story and a plot hook.
So we’re not out to save the world from the evil Mondain it would appear that Lord British was already victorious in that regard. There is no evil orb to acquire nor is there a necromancer to find and destroy; it would appear we are Lord British’s cleanup crew. The duty before us is to rid the dungeons of the foul creatures found within. Only by doing this are we able to obtain knighthood. Okay I can live with that. I thought it best then to first seek out the Castle of Lord British and obtain my first quest from him. I started to traverse the land of Akalabeth looking for the Castle – and I starved to death and died. I starved four different characters until I finally found his Castle and I received my first quest!
Greeted by his most magnificent excellency Lord British himself! I chose the name of Fost! I was then given my first quest assignment.
Mission now in hand I retreated from the castle to find the nearest dungeon. And I starved to death. I chose “lucky number” 27 again, made my way directly to the castle (since I now knew where it was located), received a new mission, and again starved. It seemed that the Castle of Lord British was inconveniently placed. No matter what I did I could not find a dungeon close enough to fulfill the quest. Couldn’t Lord British see that I was starving? He couldn’t even toss a stale loaf of bread down the steps to feed a devoted servant? I was after all volunteering to clean up his dungeons. Alas I was given no food.
It was at this point that I put on the brakes and begin to explore the use of different “lucky numbers”. I tried the age of each of my kids, I tried the number of years my wife and I have been married; all kinds of different permutations with just about the same amount of luck. I did have some success where “lucky number” 11 was concerned. I could make it to a castle and a dungeon without starving however I was intrigued by the Magic Amulet. If the procedural generation of the outdoor map and dungeons is always the same based on the “lucky number” that you choose than might not the Magic Amulet work the same way? I found this also to be the case. The random affects produced by the Bad?? spell always occurred in the same order for each procedural number. If you enter a dungeon and perform the exact same actions in the exact same order you can expect the exact same results. I knew then that not only did I want to find a “lucky number” that allowed for easy access to Lord British’s Castle but that I also wanted that same “lucky number” to allow me to become a Lizard Man on my first attempt. I spent five hours going down this particular rabbit hole and finally found a number that met both of my criteria in spectacular fashion. The “lucky number” ? 2
Two was the number no more no less. Three was too much; and one was not enough. The “lucky number” was 2 .
When you choose “lucky number” 2 you get this outdoor configuration:
I almost fell out of my chair. The starting town is almost adjacent to the Castle of Lord British. It was literally two steps away – this is extremely important when food becomes a managerial issue. Not only that; but the dungeon itself was just to the north only four steps away!
I made my way into the Castle of Lord British and once again I was given a quest. This time I once again ventured forth as Fost ( I was still playing the Mage Class).
Now that I was armed with my first task I entered the dungeon which was literally only four steps away. Once inside the dungeon I immediately used my Magic Amulet and cast the Bad?? spell. I was transformed into a Lizard Man and all of my attributes were multiplied by 2.5. I left the dungeon, entered again, and did the same exact thing: using the Magic Amulet to cast Bad?? I was again transformed into a Lizard Man and my CURRENT attributes were again multiplied by 2.5. I was amazed. The spell results stack! I did this a few more times and stopped out of fear of breaking the game. I mean we don’t want to get too greedy.
Akalabeth has a pretty unique leveling system. It is based on your experience which checks another CRPG box but it hides the math. Each time you enter a dungeon, encounter and defeat dungeon denizens and leave, you receive a hit point increase based on the number of creatures you killed. Now I don’t consider moving about as a super charged Lizard Man to be cheating as it is in the game and I took advantage of it. It is not on the same level as save scumming or using a walk through. I have honored permadeath in all of the games I’ve played thus far. If this violates a particular code my suggestion would be to enter the dungeon, experience a few encounters, leave the dungeon, enter again, wash, rinse, repeat. In this fashion you can raise your hit points enough not to have to worry about being killed in that fashion. You still have to worry about the management of your food however which remains the largest problem in the game.
Just as the game advertises there are 10 different hi-res monsters that you encounter in the game. The combat increases in difficulty and your foes become more powerful the deeper you delve into the dungeon.
The 10 different monsters are as follows:
- Level One: Skeleton & Thief (the thief steals both money & food)
- Level Two: Giant Rat
- Level Three: Orc
- Level Four: Viper
- Level Five: Carrion Crawler
- Level Six: Mimic
- Level Seven: Gremlin (Steals 1/2 of whatever your food allotment is)
- Level Eight: Daemon
- Level Nine: Balrog (your Final Enemy and always the last monster on the list to be killed)
Once I had defeated a Carrion Crawler on Level 5 I returned to the Lord British’s Castle to receive my next task. Lord British raised each of my attributes by one for succeeding in slaying the Carrion Crawler. He raises your attributes by one with each successful quest completion. My new quest was to find and slay a Gremlin. The Gremlin is probably the most dreaded monster in the entire game. I know it doesn’t look the part but the Gremlin steals half of whatever food allotment you have. So your elevated stats do not matter nor does it matter if you have amassed 2000 food portions. When the Gremlin strikes he steals 1000 of that 2000 number and if he hits again he’ll steal half that number again leaving you at 500. If you do not slay the Gremlin as fast as you can it will steal all of your food and you instantly starve to death. So beware the dreaded Gremlin!
Once that was completed my 3rd task was to find a Mimic and my 4th task was to find a slay a Daemon. My last task and the way that you win the game is to make your way all the way down to level 9 and slay the mighty Balrog! I must say the picture of the Balrog is pretty menacing for wire frame graphics. Once you complete this task the Magic Amulet becomes valuable in the lower levels because you can use charges to simply cast Ladder Up spells to quickly move back up through the dungeon.
The dungeon levels are each 9 x 9 and pretty simple to map out. There are pits that drop you down to lower levels so at the beginning of the game you’ll want to be very wary of these and map where they are to avoid them. Ladders that go up and down are usually in opposite corners of each level as well. Each door or doorway takes up an entire 10′ of space so this does take a little getting used to. I have hand drawn maps of the nine dungeon levels using “lucky number 2” and I can provide them upon request. If you decide to play Akalabeth and choose the “lucky number” 2 you should have the exact same configuration as what I have.
Once you have slain the Balrog and return to Lord British’s Castle this is the message that you receive:
I played Akalabeth on the Apple II platform using an emulator. I need to point out that GOG does offer a free version of Akalabeth but here is an interesting fact. If you download and play that version, no matter what “lucky number” you use, every single time you enter a dungeon it procedurally generates a new layout. Even the same dungeon never has the same layout when you come and go. I found this to be extremely annoying and I moved from that DOS version to the Apple II version. There is also a fan made version of Akalabeth with updated graphics and sound and a graphical intro story however I wanted a true experience so stuck with the original Apple II version.
I really enjoyed finally sitting down and playing this piece of CRPG history. This game was certainly an ambassador for other computer role-playing games that would follow. It was the first commercial release to offer a first person view and wire frame dungeons and it was also the first commercial release that introduced food as survival management. I have read other reviews that felt like the game has not held up well but I must confess to being impressed with the procedural generation of the dungeons and random quest routines associated with each lucky number. In 1979 and 1980 this must have been Dungeons & Dragons nerd nirvana to enthusiasts across the globe. The game does exactly as advertised. It would also initiate what would be one of THE most famous CRPG franchises through time and that would the Ultima Series. Richard Garriott in his guise as Lord British would also go on to be one of the most influential influential characters in the industry in both business and game design.
I spent probably 4.5 hours playing around with the “lucky number” world generation until I found a configuration that didn’t have me starving looking for the Castle. I went a step further and tried to find a number that worked just as well with the use of the Magic Amulet until I found one. Once I started play I probably spent another good 3 hours mapping out the different levels and completing my tasks for Lord British for a total of 9 hours spent with the game. I simply could not wait to sit down and play Akalabeth all the way through. It is the equivalent of strolling about a museum and marveling at the artifacts.