This week has been extremely busy for me for all sorts of
different reasons and I haven’t had anywhere near as much time as I usually
have to play games. But I found time to have a quick go on one or two games; a
new game for me that’s actually an old classic, and a relatively new game that
looks like an old classic…
My new game for this week is Dungeon Master. This is an
early roleplaying game in which you play a Wizard’s apprentice trying to guide
four heroes around a dungeon in order to win the Firestaff (I think) and save
your master. This style of game is quite common for such franchises as Might
and Magic, and the nearest I’ve ever played to this before is Legend of
Grimrock. I quite like the style of it, but my word, it is hard…
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| Strewth, I'm going to have to fight this at some point... |
This game was originally released in 1987 (presumably I’m
playing the 1989 DOS release but from what I understand, they’re virtually
identical) and harks back to a time where you were expected to make your own
maps, write down the combinations of buttons that successfully cast spells, and
know the strengths and weaknesses of all of the 24 available heroes. I’m not
saying it can’t and shouldn’t be done, but don’t forget that back in the day,
games could have their difficulty increased by arbitrarily forcing you to take
responsibility for your progress outside of the main mechanics. Most games
managed with a password, but if you come back to a save file after three or
four months and you can’t remember how to do the spells, you’re pretty stuffed.
Thankfully I can run the game in a window and have an online-available map in
front of me, as well as the part of the instruction book that at least purports
to tell me what all the spell syllables supposedly mean. As games went on, we
developed ways of storing that information in the structure of the game itself,
and it makes for a far more streamlined experience – but it’s interesting to
see where the structure for these ideas came from.
Dungeon Master is a difficult game to get my head around but
I’d be willing to give it a few more goes. The combat is fiddly and
unintuitive, but it’s meant to be and I think it creates one of the core facets
of the experience. I need to remember to save it every now and then, as this
game was released well before autosave was a thing, and I’ve lost nearly an
hour of play by blundering into a room full of Mummies and not having the wit
or resources to deal with them. We’ll see what happens with it.
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| Just in case we need reminding: It's a chicken with a sword. A sword. |
My other game for this week is Cluckles’ Adventure. This was
a gem I discovered last year where you play as a chicken with a sword. There’s
not much I can say about this game that I haven’t already, but I will
re-iterate a point I think this game makes very well: You can have all the
graphics, presentation, celebrity endorsements, well-written plots and budget
you want, but nothing’s going to quite replace a consistent art style, good
level design and a solid core gameplay loop. If you want a platforming game
that will remind you why you got in to video games in the first place, please
give this one a go.
After I’d finished whatever nonsense I was up to on any
given day last week, I found myself with very little motivation to get my
paints out. I built the remaining Chaos Space Marines in the box I started a
few weeks ago and sprayed them black, but that’s as far as I got with any hobby
games this week.
As it happens, I’m not expecting to have much more time this
week, as I’m expecting to be out all day for the next several days. I’ll carry
on with some of the long-form campaigns if I possibly can, but more likely I’ll
be filling a few spare minutes with games that can be beaten quite quickly.
Nothing wrong with that – it’s just a case of time management.
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