Beaten, poisoned, and badly scorched, you enter the final room where six of your so called "friends" await to pummel what's left of you. Within the room you see several large creatures prowling along with the other warriors. All of them are out to bash you into tiny particles. You wield your magical blade and prepare the last batch of spells for the final confrontation. Approaching an unsuspecting mage with your trusty sword Durandal, you are ready to perform your best impression of a food processor on the foe when suddenly. . . POOF!!! You lie dead in a pile of armor, weapons, and magical objects. Across the room a stupid kid with a huge grin on his face sarcastically says he's sorry.
Minotaur throws you into a labyrinth with two or more players struggling for dominance. You cut, slash, bash, and blast your opponents with over 80 different weapons, spells, magical items and armor. Half the fun is experimenting with spell combinations and discovering what powers magical objects possess.
Starting a game begins with creating a new character. Points are distributed to three attributes: brawn, agility, and lore. Brawn determines the amount of physical damage from an attack. Agility is proportional to the ability to hit another character and also to avoid another character's attacks. Lore determines the amount of damage caused by offensive spells and the duration of passive spells. Sixty points are divided among the three characteristics. There are also items found randomly throughout the maze, which raise these three characteristics.
One of nine animated character icons. Oddly the box cover depicts three icons that are not in the actual game. I prefer the missing icons shown on the box. An icon does not necessarily reflect the player’s character class.
Once the character is created, it shows a character window. The window shows your character, with its attributes, class, the date of battles and your wins and losses. It records whom you bested and who bested yourself. After ten wins, your attributes will be raised by one. Conversely, after ten losses, your attributes are lowered by one.
Once the players are gathered, the game begins. Movement is via the keyboard. The take, inspect, open, and read commands are on the corner numbers of the keypad (as well as on the qwerty keyboard). This leaves the left hand free to manipulate the inventory.
The inventory is divided into four columns: magical objects, spells, armor, and weapons. The left side of the screen displays these four columns simultaneously. Highlighted items are currently in use, only one item in each column may be activated. Highlighting new items is by scrolling up and down with the keyboard. How the inventory is used and wielded takes time for mastery but quickly it becomes second nature. Changing the order of weapons, armor, and object in different combinations, allows for various forms of strategic attack. It took some time to figure this method of inventory. But after I did, I was able to manipulate the inventory quickly and easily.
The beginning of each game is like a treasure hunt. Gather as many items as you possibly can before the others get it. Some items allow you to disguise yourself as a skeleton, stalker, or as invisible. This combined with the ability to teleport yourself or another player gives rise to some interesting confrontations. Crossbow traps may be set and items may be magically booby trapped. Legendary magical armor and weapons ranging from the Aegis of Zeus to Arthur's Excalibur may be found. Each item is useful in certain situations. It takes some experimentation around to exploit each one. One undocumented but especially cruel and unusual form of punishment is to trap an opponent in a corner with a Stalker by using a Forcewall spell and then a Shadowgate spell or a Rod of Transposition (from Minotaur Hint Book). Stalkers are huge spider-like creatures that roam about the corridors aimlessly but inflict much damage. Because they are invincible, if you are trapped in a corner with one of these beasties, you had better have a teleport spell or a medic around.
I have played this with the maximum number of players. The seven of us found that seven players slows the network (especially during physical attacks) and two people playing is boring. A number somewhere in-between is ideal. Playing in teams is fun but it requires cooperation and trust. You are able to toggle other characters as friend or foe to avoiding blasting your friend with a fireball. It usually turns into one big Battle Royal anyway; every person for themselves. As the cover states, "Alliances are made and broken easily." This is definitely one of the better network games available as well it should be since it was designed to be played with another person. If you don't know another person with a Macintosh, you had better skip this one or push your friends to buy a Mac so you can get the game. On the other hand if you have access to a network, you had better set aside some time. A friend and I tested this with five other eighth grade summer campers. Spectre™ and Minotaur was installed on the network. All had previously heard of or played Spectre™, and immediately played the popular cybertank simulation by Peninsula Gameworks. By the end of the week Spectre was old news and Minotaur was the newly discovered choice of the junior high students. Initially, Minotaur seems intimidating because of the many items. It only took a few games before everyone was able to play well.
There are no glaring problems in this entertainment package. Maybe the ability to edit your own characters, some offensive spells that affect everyone in an area, or some metamorphic spells would be nice. Another suggestion would be the ability to set game time parameters before a session began. I found it quite annoying when you were in the midst of sneaking up on some unwary warrior when all of a sudden I was getting beaten up in the final room because there was not enough time to gather many items. The time limit should be preference, allowing you and the other players as much or as little time to conceive strategies. It would also be nice to have different kinds of creatures thrown in with you that can actually be killed. Stalkers get quite tedious after awhile, so creatures that may be killed would be nice. Also using the shift - Tab to target offscreen characters are awkward. Maybe a caps-lock in conjunction with the Tab key or just the plain Tab key would be fine. The most characters to cycle through is six and it doesn’t take that much time to press the Tab key six time. Also if a foe appears on your screen, it is conveniently targeted automatically.
Overall, Bungie has done an excellent job. The graphics and sound effects are excellent, and there were no serious network problems. What the folks at Bungie have created is a fresh and original entertainment package for the Macintosh that has tremendous possibilities. I recommend this game to anyone with access to two Macintosh computers.
“Minotaur, The Labyrinths of Crete” ™
System Requirements
MacPlus or higher
System 6.0.5 or better
1 MB RAM; 2MB RAM needed for 8-bit color
System 7 Compatible.
Combat requires a connection to at least one other Macintosh via modem, cable, or AppleTalk.
Bungie Software Products Corporation
5455 S. Hyde Park Blvd., Suite G
Chicago Illinois 60615-5805
Special Thanks to Alexander Seropian and Bungie Software for the Review copies!
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