Monday, January 10, 2011

Roguelike game where you need to retrieve an orb back from the dungeon

I'm looking for a roguelike game I remember from my childhood, running on Apple's Macintosh Plus machine.

Details I remember:

  • It was a top-down view game with a deep dungeon you would explore, and you were able to develop your characters with spells / abilities - in short, a roguelike.
  • Its graphics used actual images, it was not ASCII-based GUI.
  • I don't recall if it had any 'save' feature or if death was permanent, and I don't remember if the levels were randomized.
  • The ultimate goal was to find some "orb" and bring it back to the surface.
  • Upon victory (and it wasn't easy), there was a picture of happy townspeople cheering, or something similar.
  • The only monsters that I remember were dragons and "ice balls", which looked really similar to the orb you were supposed to retrieve.
  • Some levels had boulders you could push around, and one of the later levels had some weird floorplan with lots of these boulders.

I guess the game is from circa 1987, and it was possibly monochrome (or was just displayed as monochrome on the macintosh's display).

From gaming Oak
  • it sounds like a nethack knock-off :)

    replace the orb with Amulet of Yendor, it has boulders, Sokoban level, etc.

    Oak : Did Nethack have a non-ASCII GUI back then? Because I remember the game had real sprite graphics, not ASCII.
    Mana : Doesn't really answer the question, though.
    From Axarydax
  • Check out Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, it is a roguelike in which you need to get an orb back from the dungeon, and it does have a tileset (i.e. graphics) version which looks rather nice and is very mouse-friendly.

    Even if it is not the game you remember - still it is worth checking, as it is a game where they've put maximum fun - minimum chore in their design philosophy.

    Oak : According to their history page they're based on a game from 1995, so they weren't around in 1987...
    NPC : Oh well, then it's not that. Still, an excellent game - I spent several hours with it last night, again :)
    From NPC
  • I've been searching around some more and a possible candidate is Beneath Apple Manor.

    However, I couldn't find enough details about it to verify that it is indeed the game, and couldn't get the available version to work... I'll keep trying.

    From Oak
  • I think it's this one :-)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Revealed

    http://www.gamefaqs.com/mac/938009-the-dungeon-revealed/faqs/46761

    shul : yay :) my first answer :)
    r00fus : Wow brings back memories... Dual-wielded DeathBlades; miscalculating and zapping self with a wand of death :-)
    From shul

0 comments:

Post a Comment