You have just started playing Labyrinth II, designed and programmed for the Amiga by Russell Wallace. Labyrinth II has the same theme as Labyrinth I but with many improvements. For those of you not familiar with the original, the idea is as follows: you play the part of a character in the game. Many other characters are also in it. All characters, weapons and valuable objects start the game in random positions. The idea is to try and kill the computer-controlled characters, using the weapons. They will also be collecting weapons and using them against each other and you. You can also collect valuable objects and drop them in a certain place to score points. If you outlive all the computer-controlled characters a new game will start and your score from the old one will be carried over into the new one. The rules of combat are exactly the same for you as anyone else: your strength is depleted by blows and if it falls to zero you die. It will be replenished between fights but can never rise above your power. If you kill someone a quarter of their power is added to yours.
Labyrinth II has many extra features over the original game. As with the original, most of the mobiles are named after people from my class in St. Andrews College, Blackrock, Co. Dublin. However, here part of the map is also taken from that place and other parts from various old adventure games. Some teachers from St. Andrews will appear in various locked rooms and can only be reached by finding the set of keys and unlocking the doors. You can only carry ten objects at most, so only carry the most powerful offensive weapon you can find. There are also several defensive weapons lying around the place, so collect as many of these as you can - if you have several their effects will be added together. They will operate automatically to reduce the strength of blows aimed at you. Treasures should be deposited as soon as possible and will disappear from the game, incrementing your score. Try and find them quickly because the mobiles will also be collecting and depositing them.
Labyrinth II understands many of the standard adventure game verbs, n, s, nw, get, take, drop, look etc. HELP will produce a complete list. Some of the special ones are:
ATTACK (PERSON) attacks the indicated person, automatically using your most powerful weapon.
WAIT [NUMBER] waits for the specified number of turns. Pressing any key will stop the wait; this will also happen if someone else wanders in. If no number is specified, one turn is assumed. Maximum number you can specify is 32767.
SPECTATOR is the equivalent of WAIT 2000000000 except that the pauses in text scrolling are also disabled.
WHO provides a list of which characters besides yourself are still alive.
INFORMATION is similar to WHO but also provides the current location and strength of each character.
BECOME (PERSON) enables you to become any character. If you are one of the people whose name has been given to one of the mobiles, you can become the character named after you. Or you can use it to BECOME a more powerful character if things are going badly for you.
LOCAL restricts narration to things going on in your current location.
GLOBAL narrates combat occurring elsewhere using a different text color.
BRIEF causes only short location descriptions to be printed.
NORMAL causes long descriptions to be printed only in previously unvisited rooms.
VERBOSE selects long descriptions all the time.
TAME restricts death notices to a simple "(person) dies."
GRUESOME gives full X-rated descriptions of combat deaths.
EXITS lists exits from your current location.
TALK causes everything which appears on the screen to be spoken aloud as well. The file TRANSLATOR.LIBRARY must be present in the DEVS directory of your system disk to use this option.
QUIET switches this off.
Default settings are NORMAL, TAME, LOCAL and QUIET.
Both verbs and nouns can be abbreviated as much as you like, though confusion may result if the abbreviation is overdone. This means that input must be restricted to verb and object, as extra words like THE might be mistaken for abbreviations of verbs or nouns. People or things can be referred to by one or more of the words making up their names. To repeat a previous action, simply press RETURN.
Labyrinth II is a shareware program. You may play it, copy it, put it on bulletin boards or use the source code for programming information. If you decide to keep it, please send a small contribution to: Russell Wallace, 24 Lower Georges St, Dunlaoghaire, Co. Dublin, Ireland. Write to the same address if you are interested in swapping Amiga software.
