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From the man who brought you Leisure Suit Larry
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1984 brought us an unprecedented number of notable children's computer games compared to previous years, most of which motivated me to explore the developers' back catalogues for the first time. Robot Odyssey had me retrospect The Learning Company, Below the Root had me check out the early games of publisher Spinnaker and developer Dale DeSharone, and even Boulder Dash's producer Fernando Herrera had his start with My First Alphabet, whose status as APX's first "star" awardee lent his company its namesake.
Sierra, publisher of Donald Duck's Playground, is no newbie to this blog, but it is the first time we're representing Al Lowe, who would go on to be one of the company's most famous designers. So I played his early works Dragon's Keep and Troll's Tale before starting this 1984 whale.
Dragon's Keep is essentially Colossal Cave Adventure retooled for young children. Instead of looking for treasures, 16 animals are trapped somewhere in the game world and must be rescued. The parser interface is replaced with a simple menu system, presenting no more than three possible actions at any given time.
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Sometimes logical actions are missing. I entered the foyer through the front door, but can't exit that way!
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All "puzzles" are solvable with whatever the room provides.
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The options may change after rescuing an animal.
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The titular dragon shows up from time to time. Not a threat, just a minor, goofy-looking nuisance who obstructs your vision and prevents you from rescuing any animals. But all you have to do is leave the room and come back, and most of the time the dragon will no longer be there.
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I like to think the dragon is Al's sock puppet, who stands just off-screen to the right.
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The game world is pretty small; the house has 16 rooms over two floors, and 11 outdoor "rooms" can be explored by way of the back yard including a barn, a zoo, a river, and a bus stop which takes you to school, which is where I found the final animal.
GAB rating: Below average. This setting is awfully mundane for a game called Dragon's Keep! I get the impression that the dragon might have been a late addition when Lowe realized his game was too boring and needed a hook, but all the dragon really amounts to is an unwelcome and out of place interruption.
Setting aside, this is a pretty unsubstantial and uninteresting adventure. Furthermore, its map is illogical enough to be annoying to navigate - e.g., you can go upstairs from the downstairs hall, but not downstairs from the upstairs hall, and an action "go down into the elevator" available there does not take you to the elevator - but the map is not illogical enough to be fantastic. As an adult, this is annoying, and for a kid, it's detrimental to teaching map-making skills, which is the only educational value provided here.
Troll's Tale, released the next year in 1983, follows the same format, but adheres to the Adventure formula even more closely, and is a better game for it.
In Troll's Tale, you play an adventurer set to recover the lost treasures of King Mark of the dwarves.
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Note the use of cardinal directions in the menu this time
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Already more resembling Colossal Cave, Troll's Tale takes one further page from it - the cave is dark and you must explore a small above-ground area to find a flashlight before you can explore the cave. This is the only point in the game where you need an object in one room to complete a task in another.
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The first room inside the cave
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Some of the treasures are of questionable value!
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The environments can be somewhat imaginative
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| A few scenes have animation |
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The troll shows up randomly and blocks you from taking treasures. In this room he does nothing.
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Two pots are trapped. One holds treasure. There's no real danger though.
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Deep in the underworld, a rare shell lies by the seashore
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Once last treasure found in the troll's hut
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Endgame sequence!
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...I'm not sure I know the secret of Troll's Tale.
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GAB rating: Average. Troll's Tale is still a trivial, insignificant adventure, but it's an improvement from Dragon's Keep with a more imaginative, better-realized setting, and a more coherent map where cardinal directions are used, room connections are consistent, and any actions that aren't internally consistent tend to be of an explicitly magical nature.
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You get two more spins on this basic formula the following year with Mickey's Space Adventure and Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood, which I believe remove the antagonists. They're all rather low on educational value, but I believe some of these games do have replay value by randomizing the location of the treasures.
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