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1997-04-16
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8KB
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172 lines
DDST
====
Specification: All ST's and STE's - High or Medium resolution
Author: Bill Miller
Software type: Shareware $10
This little gem is a role playing adventure game for one player. You
have been sumoned to the land of Eriador to gain experience and the
necessary artifacts needed to defeat the Evil Black Lord Asmodeus.
When the game is loaded, the first thing that you must do is to choose
your character. If you opt to make a new one then you will be issued
with a list of attributes which you can either accept or reject.
Once you have decided on a satisfactory character you are presented
with the Character Menu where the following options are available to
you:
1. MAIN MENU - go to the main game menu.
2. YOUR PROFILE - This will tell you your name, title, level,
armour class, gold peices, experience points, your attributes
and a list of your skills. You will also be shown what armour
and weapons you have plus any items and potions that you are
carrying.
3. GAME INSTRUCTIONS - Gives you loads of information on how
to play the game.
4. WHAT'S GOING ON - This gives you the background information
to your quest.
5. DELETE CHARACTER - Delete a character from disk.
Once you have read all the information that there is then you are
ready to progress to the Main Menu which gives you the following
options:
1. CHARACTER MENU
2. HALL OF CHAMPIONS - A list of the top few players.
3. LORDS KEEP - The great players who have suceeded in the
quest.
4. SAVE GAME
5. RESTORE GAME
6. QUIT
[RETURN] To Adventure
Pressing Return for the first time will send you to the great Land of
Eriador. All the graphics in the game are made up of keyboard symbols
but it is actually quite easy to see. This is especially so in colour
because you have blue sea, green forest, white mountains and so on and
although the graphics are nothing to be gaped at, they are functional
which is more than can be said for other role playing games such as
Hack! The movement through the land is nice and easy - just use the
cursor keys. In the map the most important thing first of all is the
towns of which there are seven. At each towm you have the following
options:
1. VISIT INN - Here you have a further three options:
1. EAT AND BED FOR THE NIGHT - restores you to full
strength. Say no until he offers you a low price of
just a few gold peices.
2. TAKE A JOB - this is a good way of making money to
start with. The trick is to keep saying no until the
bloke offers you 14-16 gold peices for a days work.
Then you are offered to stay on - just hold down the
'y' key for a while as the money very quickly clock
up!
3. CASINO - This is where the real money can be made -
or lost! You have to gamble any amount and then a dice
is rolled by your and the bloke in the casino - if you
win then you get twice what you gambled and if you
lose then you lose whatever you gambled. This is pure
luck and there is no sure fire way to beat it.
2. BLACK SMITH - Here you may choose to buy weapons and
armour. The more money that you have the better quality stuff
that you can get. It is worth getting the best.
3. MARKET PLACE - It is here where you can buy and sell loads
of objects. When you get into the game you will find various
swords which you have sell for very high prices here.
4. BANK - Here you can deposit or withdraw money.
5. ORACLE - At each town the oracle will give you a scroll
which is n a foreign language. Once you have received it then
the option changes to SCROLL TRANSLATION and you must find a
town which understands the language and will translate it for
you - though this will cost money. There are seven scrolls to
get and read them carefully because they will help you.
6. READ SCROLLS - Its advisable to read the translated ones
and the others won't help you much.
7. MAIN MENU
[RETURN] To Leave Town
Okay, back to the game then - what else is out there? Well there are
four ruins which you can explore and indeed must explore if you wish
to suceed in the game. When you go to one you are asked if you wish to
enter and if you do then you will be presented with a black screen
with a tiny proportion of the dungeon visible where you are. As you
move around the visible parts more of the dungeon will be uncovered.
However, there are hidden traps which can harm you and there are also
secret passageways which can only be found if you try to move onto
them.
Another nasty element of the dungeon is the hundreds of monsters
lurking within - these are all over the land of Eriador but at least
when outside of a dungeon you can go to a town and restore your
strength after a fight which is something that you can't do in here.
It's not all bad though. There is a lot of treasure to be found in the
dungeons which conists of money, healing potions which will restore
you to full strength and sometimes other objects including artifacts.
There are two ways of getting involved in a fight with the monsters -
the first and most common is when they spring on you by surprise. The
second is if you hear them in the distance then you can choose to
fight and you then have the advantage because you have the first
hit.There can be several at a time but luckily you only have to fight
one at a time. You have two options at each turn - to use your weapon
and to run like hell. You can see both your hit points and your
opponents. If you have ten and he has 50 then the latter option would
be wiser, however, you don't always make it. It's for this reason that
I would advise you to save the game regularly, particularly when in
the dungeons.
Assuming you manage to defeat the monsters, you will get gold peices,
experience points and sometime other items. As your experience grows
you will occasionally be promoted to a higher rank - you start of as a
twit! When this happens your maximum strength goes up. You start off
with a maximum strength of 19 and it can go way over 200 which can
help you fight the more dangerous monsters because you can sustain
more hits and so can fight for longer. The worse the monster the
better the reward.
If your hit points get low then hit 'P' for potion and your strength
will be restored. If you find a better weapon than you already have
then pressing 'I' will send you to the items menu where you can drop
any item or change weapons or armour.
Also, pressing 'M' will send you back to the main menu so you can save
the game.
Conclusion:
This gave is quite involved as you can see by the length of this
review but as you play it you will learn a lot more, for instance, the
characteristics of various monsters - the ones that hit hard, the ones
are little weeds and easy to beat, the ones that give you high rewards
etc.
DDST was supplied for review by New Age PDL, disc GAME 39. It comes
with the Eamon Fantasy Role Playing kit and four other role playing
adventures to enable you to write your own games with GFA Basic.
KORNFLAKE