Quest I is a role-playing game that was published by Softside Magazine in August 1981. It was written by a young 13 year-old Brian Reynolds who would go on to design Alpha Centauri, Civilization II, Colonization and several others.
Reynolds originally wrote Quest I for the TRS-80 but the magazine offers versions for the Apple II and Atari 8-bit.
When the game begins character creation is done for you and it is completely random. The game chooses your race which will be either an Elf, a Dwarf, or a human. You are given ratings in strength and dexterity from 3 to 20 and you’re also given a random number of arrows, magic arrows, holy water, and healing potions. You are also given a trusty sword and asked to choose a name.
I chose the character name of Fost based on the character, Fost Longstrider, from Robert E. Vardeman’s excellent War of Powers Series.
If you’ve been paying attention to the screenshots from many of the previous games I’ve covered you’ll find that Fost is a favorite choice of mine for character names.
When you are finished naming your character you are taken to a market place where you have the opportunity to add to your supplies. You type 0 when you are ready to enter the dungeon.
The dungeon itself is comprised of 58 rooms. While the title of the game is Quest I there really is no quest. The goal of the game is to enter the dungeon and acquire as much treasure as you can and get out. Your character is represented by an at sign @ and the assorted creatures are represented by letters of the alphabet. I encountered wraiths, giants, mummies, and orcs.
It is necessary to map the dungeon as you’ll need to remember the way out. Wandering monsters appear throughout the dungeon and can be very deadly. Frequent trips back for supplies are not wise, since more monsters are added each time you re-enter the maze.
One interesting aspect of the game involves your dexterity. The higher your dexterity the more SLOWLY the game moves. This is meant to reflect your higher dexterity which should give you more time to think and react compared to a character with a low dexterity score. Players should be aware however that while this may seem a noteworthy tactic, the more experience you acquire the faster the pace of the game becomes.
When you perish this is what your exit screen looks like:
When you find your way out of the dungeon the computer will give you a list of all of the treasures that you have collected, give you an opportunity to save the game or let you quit if you want to. If you do elect to continue the game will let you go back to the marketplace to replenish supplies but remember if you go back into the dungeon to continue your quest the game repopulates the dungeon with even MORE monsters.
I always struggle a bit with these early CRPGSs that do not have a specific quest or a goal for you to perform. Unless the game is extremely addictive, I find myself struggling to maintain interest. I found that after a couple of hours with the game there really was no reason to continue. I DO want to emphatically point out that the game is extremely well made. The simple and informative graphic representation and the performance of the game are both top notch. The movement and controls, one might argue, perform better than the various Apshai installments. The animation and the speed of the animation is impressive. When you fire an arrow you literally see it streaking towards the enemy. The line of fire is represented by ++++++++++++. The code and the game development are impressive given that Brian Reynolds was only 13 years old when he wrote this.
If there had been some kind of overarching quest to complete, rather than just trying to net a high score, I believe I would have been much more engaged and I certainly would have kept playing until I’d completed the quest.
Still I can’t help but be impressed by the code and the crisp play and speed of this little game. The rooms do not respawn so if you wanted to try and map out all 58 rooms I suppose that you could try but the pace of the game makes that task terribly difficult in a single dungeon foray. Each time you leave and go to the marketplace to replenish supplies and come back the wandering monsters are more numerous. The more experience you accrue the faster the game becomes despite whether or not you have a high dexterity. I spent enough time with the game that I felt that I was able to get a full and satisfying experience from it.
In an interview with his elementary school Reynolds indicates that he wrote Quest 1 during the week of spring break in 1981 and received $100 from SoftSide for his effort. I would have liked to have seen Reynolds work on another role-playing game in his later years but sadly he did not.
The next game on my list, Nuclear Sub, involves me returning to the text adventure format for a harrowing adventure. Until next time….