The Magic Tower was created by Gary Bedrosian, Richard Christie, and Lee Elmendorf in BASIC language for North Star computers in 1978. Loyal or avid readers of my CPRG journey know how enamored I’ve been with Gary Bedrosian’s past efforts. Game #19: Lords of Karma was reviewed as well as his most excellent Game #30: Empire of the Overmind as well. As a matter of fact, both of Bedrosian’s games in 1978 and 1979 took top award honors from me for the Interactive Fiction Game of the Year. I have been wanting to play this for a long time now, but I was having trouble even getting a title screen. The problem was I was using a NSDOS emulator working within a DOS emulator, and it was not an easy task. However, I was able to use AI to aid me now, and after much trial and error I was finally able to get the game working.
The Magic Tower is an all-text game that has you create a cast of characters to hunt artifacts that have been amassed by the forces of evil and stored in a tower.
When you begin play, the game has you first create the Universe that the game takes place in. You accomplish this by the LOAD UNIVERSE and then RUN UNIVERSE commands. Creating the universe takes a few minutes and what the program does is randomize the different magic items, allies, and enemies that are going to populate the universe. The game chooses a very specific magic item to be the object of your quest. In my case, I was tasked with finding and recovering Amril’s Boots.
Once the Universe has been created and you’ve been assigned a specific magic item to recover, it is time to create your party. Your party can range in size from 2 to 16 characters. This is an interesting variable because the difficulty level of combat is determined by the level of the tower that you are on. It is not based on the size of the party. The larger your party is, the easier it should be to complete your task. A large party size would definitely slow the game down as management of each character during combat would become tedious. I started with a party of four and had a very difficult time surviving in the higher tower levels. I had a few hours of game play under my belt and only had about five different magic items to show for my troubles, so I decided to switch to a party of five.
Your party members have five different attributes which seem affected by race:
- Combat
- Morale
- Sorcery
- Endurance
- Fatigue
Combat deals with your fighting prowess. Your Morale seems very tied to combat. The better your Morale score the better you handle adversity. Sorcery deals with your spell casting power and how much damage your spells can inflict upon casting. Endurance is an attribute that can increase with experience. The more times that you survive the tower and are able to make your way back to home base and rest, the more your Endurance score will increase. The rankings for each attribute can be as low as Incapable to as high as Extremely High.
- Incapable
- Very Low
- Low
- Moderately Low
- Moderate
- High
- Very High
- Extremely High
There are 10 different commands in the game as depicted above.
- List Character Status – you can examine each of your characters and their attributes
- List Magic Item Status – I am not sure how many magic items there are in the game. The highest number associated with a magic item I found was #82 so there are at LEAST 82 different magic items in the game. Choosing this option will let you know which magic items are stored in your home base and which magic item each character might be equipped with. Each character can carry or equip only ONE magic item. The rest of the magic you recover is stored at your home base.
- Change Marching Order – this is an important option as sometimes you are attacked from behind and after the first initial round you’ll want to change your marching order. You might also have a character who gets knocked unconscious during combat and you’ll want to change your marching order to protect him or her. If a character is struck while unconscious they die immediately.
- Pick up a magic item – this is done when you’re at your home base. Picking up an item also identifies that item. You want to be very careful here as there are GOOD magic items and EVIL magic items as well. Most of the EVIL magic items negatively impact your attributes however a few of the EVIL magic items also cause instant death. I always had the weakest character in my party pick up and test the magic items and that way if he or she is instantly killed I simply roll up a new character to replace my loss. If you do pick up what is identified as an EVIL item and it didn’t cause instant death, you can always drop it in favor of something else.
- Pack a magic item – you can elect to pack a magic item to carry with the group to the tower without it being carried by any specific person.
- Head for a TOWER level – you can choose this option from your home base or from any tower level. If you are at your home base and choose this option and then type in 1, you will then journey to the first tower level. If you do not have a random encounter while on your way to the tower, or on the 1st tower level, you can then choose this option and go to a different TOWER level, perhaps 2. I should also note that you can choose this option and then select 10 which will then start you on a journey to the 10th tower level. I chose to just take it a tower level at a time because if you choose let’s say TOWER level 8, and you are on TOWER level 2, it will keep checking for random encounters until you reach your destination. If you are greatly weakened, and want to head for home to rest and heal, the game will instead keep checking for encounters until you’ve reached the end of your destination. So do not bite off more than you can chew.
- Head for home – choosing this option, no matter where you are in the tower, begins to take you to home base. You will have to deal with possible random encounters however all the way back.
- Search current area – this is how you search for magic items. You can find magic items either at the end of a combat encounter, or by searching a TOWER level.
- Rest – you can choose this option from anywhere and it will help to move your fatigue level back in a positive direction. If one of your party members are unconscious too, resting several times can restore consciousness. If a party member is unconscious, you cannot head for home.
- Change a character’s name – exactly as it sounds
Combat in The Magic Tower is pretty unique. Combat begins with a spellcasting round and you are asked to rate your spellcasting aggressiveness on a scale of 0 to 1. I found through trial and error that this assignation is the lynch pin of your success in this game. If you assign a score of 0 to your spellcasting aggressiveness than 100% of your spell power is held in reserve for your defense against spellcasting enemies. If you assign a score of 1, then 100% of your spellcasting power is put into offense. I found that most of the time I was assigning a 1 to my spellcasting aggressiveness unless I was facing other spellcasters. Once the spellcasting round is over, physical combat then begins.
In physical combat, the number of your fighters that get to attack depends upon how many enemies you encounter. In my experience with the game, I found that the number of enemies ranged from 2-12. If there are only four enemies and you have five individuals in your party, your last party member does not get to attack this round. During combat, much like your spellcasters did, your fighters have to choose their physical aggressiveness on a scale of 0 to 1. If you choose 1, 100% of your efforts are in offense and striking your opponent. The damage that you can do is greater, but you leave yourself susceptible to be hit. I found that if you choose 1, your characters quite often die very quickly. If you choose 0, 100% of your effort is in defense, which works great for prevention of being hit, but you will never hit your opponent. The happy solution here, is the medium between the two. I learned the hard way, but if you choose 0.5 for your aggressiveness, it’s the perfect amount of offensive and defensive allocation.
If during combat one of your characters is struck unconscious, or the fatigue rating on a character is particularly high, you can choose to change the marching order after each round. This does become very strategic as you climb the levels of the tower. Combat on the 8th, 9th, and 10th level can be exceedingly difficult.
One of things about this game that I found to be quite fun, was wondering what the magic item was that you found. A number rating is also assigned to each of the magic items, and like I mentioned above, one of the magic items I found was assigned #82. So there are at least 82 different magic items in the game. Here is a list of the different magic items that I recovered before finding the object of my quest:
- The Iron Sword (EVIL) #67
- Oranon’s Demon Helm (EVIL) – causes instant death #70
- Vikarna’s Dagger (EVIL) #26
- The Challenger Sword (GOOD) #58
- The Crimson Cleaver (EVIL) #79
- The Iron Shield (EVIL) #66
- Singling (mace) (EVIL) #82
- The Evil Bow (EVIL) #30
- The Black Helm (EVIL) – causes instant death #38
- The Idiot’s Ring (GOOD) #13
- Elfrit Bottle (EVIL) #56
- Avenger (sword) (GOOD) #57 – very powerful
- Yadava (sword) (GOOD) #22
And then FINALLY, I found Amril’s Boots which was the ultimate quest that I was assigned.
I think I was rather unlucky in that I seemed to find an inordinate number of EVIL items. I guess a player could get lucky and find the object of their quest on the very first try, or it could have taken me much longer to find Amril’s Boot’s. If you count character death’s and losing items on the way to home base, I probably found 20 magic items before finally succeeding.
I rather enjoyed this game, and you have to remember that this was programmed in 1978. The game was somewhat difficult too and took me about 10 hours to complete. I am thankful that I got to play this piece of CRPG history. The emulator within an emulator was certainly a hurdle for me in getting this to properly run. I remain a big Gary Bedrosian fan and wish that he would have gone on to make more games. I was lucky enough to be able to chat with Gary about Empire of the Over-Mind when I reached out to him.
Thanks for taking the time to read me. Until next time……