I temporarily placed my 1983 list on hold and went back in time to take care of another item I discovered from 1980.
The Wizard’s City was published by Aurora Software in 1980 for the Ohio Scientific and for the TRS-80 in 1981 by BAP$ Software.
The Wizard’s City is a turn-based role-playing game predominantly using a text-based format. There are some graphics that present a side view of your surroundings as you move about. I believe the original name of the game may have been Dungeons & Dragons and that the name change may have been done to avoid legal issues. TSR was known to be quite litigious over copyright back in the day.
The game begins by asking if you want to create a new character. If you answer YES then the computer will randomly generate your attributes for you between the values of 1 and 18. The four attributes are Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, and Constitution ripped right from Dungeons & Dragons. You’re then asked to choose a character class as shown above and your choice will modify your previous attribute and hit point scores.
If you answer NO to the game’s beginning question then you are allowed to type in the attribute scores manually. Most of the early Dunjonquest games allowed you to do the same thing. Once I had played the game a few times I went back and manually typed in 18s and game myself a “super” character. A strength of 18 was preferable to me over a strength score of 5.
The Warrior and Dwarf character class choices seem synonymous with each other. You receive higher hit points and strength and you lose intelligence.
Elf and Medium seem equal to one another as well as far as choices go. Your hit point total is in the median range and these characters can use spells.
The mage has low hit points and low strength but gains extra intelligence and full use of spells.
Each character begins at 1st level. The Warrior, Dwarf, Elf, and Medium need 2000 experience points to attain a level and the Mage needs 2,500 experience points. You gain experience points by slaying monsters. You acquire gold pieces through defeat of your opponents which you can use to later boost your armor class while in the city.
You begin the game in the city which is depicted above. The first thing you’re asked is if you want more armor. If you answer yes you can pay gold to increase your armor class by 1. The cost is steep so you’ll find that you’ll need to go down into the dungeon, slay creatures, then make your way back.
Pressing the 1 key from anywhere in the city takes you down a passage to the first level of the dungeon. No matter what dungeon level you are on, each time you press the 1 key it will take you down another level. The lower you go the opponents become progressively tougher and your rewards (gold and experience) greater.
Pressing 2 on the keyboard moves your character to the left and pressing 3 moves your character to the right. Your character’s movement is depicted graphically in a side-scrolling fashion which is a bit different for 1980. You’ll see buildings moving by you when in the city and when in the dungeon you’ll see stalagtites hanging from the dungeon ceiling above you.
Pressing the 4 key anywhere in the dungeon will take you UP a dungeon level. So there is no need for any kind of mapping with this game. Pressing 1 always takes you down another level from wherever you are in the dungeon and pressing 4 from anywhere will always take you up a level. In this fashion it is relatively easy to grind your character to higher levels by surviving an encounter or two and then returning to the city to rest. There is no economy of food or anything else to keep track of.
If you press the 5 key you pause a turn without moving. If you press this key when in the city then it is the equivalent of resting overnight and you get all of your hit points back and any level progression you may have made while in the dungeon.
When exploring a dungeon level sometimes you can trigger a trapdoor which will drop you down a random number of levels.
When you encounter a wandering monster you have the choice to fight, cast a spell, or run. When you choose to fight combat is automatically generated for you and you then find out whether or not you emerged victorious. The different creatures you encounter are very diverse and pulled straight from the Dungeons & Dragons game.
There is no quest to perform in this game nor any kind of plot. It is a simple matter of going down into the dungeon beneath the city and battling wandering monsters for experience and gold.
I kept playing for quite some time until I attained 9th level with the super character that I created. You could keep playing this way indefinitely. The lower you go in the dungeon the more powerful the enemies. I guess if I’m a young kid and President of the Dungeons & Dragons club at school, I would have really liked this for my home computer in 1980.
Next up on the docket we return to my 1983 list for Cells & Serpents.
Until next time..