When I first read this opening boot sequence for Black Sage I thought that maybe I had missed something. I had never heard of the Ogres & Orcs adventure line of games. I did some digging and found a document written by one of the programmers that claimed it was meant to be the first in a line of several games. Each game was supposed to allow more advanced play with more advanced characters, spells, and weapons. The entire effort was done on a non-existent budget and their inventory was a box of 100 Dysan diskettes. There had been two other Ogres & Orcs games that had been in production but they just didn’t have the funds to continue and eventually shut everything down. I am sure there are hundreds of other stories almost exactly like the one described.
The Black Sage seems to really be a text adventure disguised as a role-playing game. The players finds themselves within the Black Sage’s Castle and must successfully escape. The castle consists of 36 individual rooms, each of which contains a multiple choice adventure option. There is a lot of humor sprinkled through out the game.
There is character generation which takes place before the game starts but each time I try the stats for my character are exactly the same. This may be a problem with the emulation or it could merely mean that the stats generated are irrelevant. Here is an example of the humor found throughout the game: once the character has been generated you are asked if you want to keep these rolls. If you choose NO this is the response that you get:
There is a graphical layout of the castle and you are provided with choices on how you would like to proceed throughout the castle.
In one of the above rooms you can encounter the Black Sage himself and the game gives you a hint on just where to find him.
A figure in skating is a figure EIGHT and Bo Derek starred in the movie 10 so 8 + 10 = 18.
I found myself engrossed with this game. I found a way out of the castle quite early and then started over, avoiding the room, so that I could explore each of the 36 rooms. There are sudden grisly deaths that await you ala Monty Python type humor in many of the rooms. There are a couple of locations that require you solve one puzzle before you can solve another. I found that I did not want the game to end and took my time exploring each location. I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would. I can’t say this really qualifies as a true role-playing game but it is certainly an entertaining text adventure and a good way to spend some time.
There is more than one way out of the castle and the riddle above depicts only one of the three ways to leave. The game does make a show of you gaining an experience level and you get to choose how you want to allocate your new ability points but again I felt that your choices in each of the rooms impacted you more than increasing any ability scores or finding items.
I really enjoyed myself with this game. A big part of the fun with these early computer role-playing games is that you just don’t know what you’re getting yourself into when you begin a new one. The games that I have experienced so far in 1980 have been all over the place and I’ve mentioned twice that the genre seemed to be feeling it’s way around in the dark in 1980. One of the pleasures of doing this is finding a hidden gem like this and deriving so much enjoyment out of it. I encourage you to try it and check each of the 36 rooms in the castle out for yourself. It’s a shame that the gang didn’t get another chance to make another Ogres & Orcs adventure.
Perhaps the programmer wanted to create the sense of banter associated with table top RPGs?