Amulet of Yendor

Amulet of Yendor description

The ideological successor of the great Rogue - fully turn-based fantasy text RPG at first glance terribly complicated and - for some - at least terribly interesting.

The plot, despite the fact that we have before us an RPG, it fits in one sentence: the player, dashing adventurer, is sent to the abandoned castle of the magician of Yendor, once lived there in order to find his magical amulet, and to hold other treasures, but in the castle, let the wizard there, and no, the population itself is quite left, and the stranger it is not happy. That is, the words of the character of Marvel comics Ben Grimm, "have to fight". However, to this we shall return - friendly (sort of) creatures in your way too meet.

Before the start of the game can, by the way, choose the hero of the race from four: human, elf, dwarf or hobbit; it's one that you can play for people, I want to put a high estimate. In addition to selecting a race, you must distribute the available stock points on three characteristics (strength, intelligence and agility) character, and a small supply of cash to spend on buying weapons and armor.

Locks are automatically generated, but its size is a constant as such: eight levels with sixty-four rooms on each; the size of each room, eight by eight conventional cells; in other words, the similarity matrix. The castle has eight types of treasures - mainly different precious stones, and twelve types of monsters, including dragons, as well as a terrible artifact called the Orb of Power.

The gameplay is manual typing of certain commands - move, battle monsters, taking items and so on. There is a MAP command, which will show you the most conventional level map, but only for a few seconds (so conceived). The room in graphical form do not exist - there is only text description and numbers, meaning the cell sectors in a conventional grid. The hero in the game will be available for three types of offensive spells for the battle with the opponents web (fights at the time), fireball (hurt) and deadly spell that kills the enemy outright.

Types of objects that can be found in the castle, seven is three gems, bonus items, teleports, magic ponds, holes, monsters, and formally friendly merchants. Stones can be easy to collect, but to sense from it a little: much better to sell them to merchants, who in exchange will give you a lot of useful things, from weapons and spells to potions that increase your stats. Bonus items obtained from the chests usually are often protected from some, for example, hostile spells, so sell them hardly makes sense, though, too. The "currency" of the castle are not the only gems found, generally speaking, not so often, but banal and gold, the only way to get that is to raise it from the bodies of defeated monsters. Fighting in the game is turn-based, and although they are managed by you, you can win only if you beat the monster by the total power, including the characteristics, weapons, armor and so on. Please note that spells can only be once your intellect reaches a certain level (so that at the beginning of the game it should just make more); this is the same dexterity is important not less as it enables you with varying probability to evade enemy attacks (there is a special team responsible for this). Finally, the Amulet of Yendor, there is the opportunity to try to bribe (!) monster that he did not touch you, offering him gold...

In several rooms of the castle there are teleporters that send you to another random room of the castle with the teleport; the same teleporter can send on different occasions in different rooms. One of the monsters is a special artifact, a Rune staff (each time you start the game it has different monster), which allows you to teleport to any room with the teleport from any point of the castle. In this case, after you find the purpose of his journey - the actual amulet - this staff always disappears, not to allow you to quickly leave the castle and force to get to the door through the ranks of the utterly embittered creatures. Holes (sinkhall), mentioned above, is the similarity of deadly traps.

Mentioned magic ponds can, as traders, to enhance some of your features, but free. It is important to note that the most useful bonuses is not just on earth, but is in the chests that it will be necessary first to open; in addition, sometimes a useful effect not to take something, namely something to use just, for example, to drink the miraculous water either to read something intelligent in the book. Separate bonuses worth mentioning are flares and a lamp. First you can find and buy: they are often important in order to see where in the dark castle (which, oddly enough, you don't see) the hidden creatures. The lamp can only buy and for good money, but with it you actually get a permanent light source.

This lamp, oddly enough, a key item in the entire game because the monsters are not in all areas, but never leave where you in advance of seeing from a distance where they are, and where not, you can first collect and make use of all the bonuses that are in safe places, slightly Zatar also from traders, and then start to fight with the weaker of the monsters (because I see where someone), obtained from their bodies gold "prokatilas" more and more. For this reason, at the time - Yes, even in those years - the game was subjected to much criticism as "simple" and even "stupid". However, it is appropriate to recall that force to buy and use the lamp you are not forced.

The game is more suited to fans of Rogue, tired of its complexity, or, on the contrary, the connoisseurs of great complexity, which will make it my mission to pass this thing without the use of the lamp. And, of course, anyway, - diamond classic role-playing genre.

Play your favorite childhood game Amulet of Yendor online in your browser for free here.

Source: Archive.org, Mobygames.com