Game 307: The Lords of Midnight

I came into The Lords of Midnight not being really sure what to expect. One of the more famous games of the ZX Spectrum's early years, and one of the few that I find visually tolerable, I had a vague Wikipedia-level understanding that it blends grand strategy with adventure-style gameplay, much like Singleton's War in Middle Earth a few years later, but little idea how it manages this. Brief glimpses of gameplay footage on Youtube hadn't cleared up much either.

A video titled "campaign victory" is six and a half hours of stills like this.

The Lords of Midnight's manual comes prefaced with a novella explaining the events leading to the start of the game. I had to share this with "D," who, being an avowed Tolkien fangirl, howled with laughter at almost every paragraph and concluded it wouldn't be out of place among the rash of Lord of the Rings knock-offs that flooded the market in the 70's, except that it's even more badly written than most of them.

Here's a curated, mostly out of context selection of MST3K-style riffs I heard as she read chapter 2, in which the witch king Doomdark sends his flunky Fawkrin (a nondescript "Skulkrin,") to spy on the lord Luxor and his son Morkin.

• "Generations of winter. Okay, we're cribbing C.S. Lewis now. Never Christmas either, right?"
• "I'm picturing this skulkrin as a baby bird who talks like Grima Wormtongue. Oh wait, now he's talking like Dobby. And now he's Gollum."
• "I picture Doomdark as Emperor Zurg from Toy Story 2. But with Red Forman's voice, and always threatening to put his foot up someone's ass."
• "The trees are breathing now?"
• "Man-warmth. I smell man flesh!"
• "Bbffhfhaahahahahaha!" (Fawkrin senses "boy-warmth") "Is that like man-warmth toned down or can he smell puberty?"
• "I keep wanting to say his name is Falkor."
• "Doomdark's a stupid name."
• "I think Luxor looks like Boromir from the cartoon."
• "Moon Power!"
  
• "These wise men are Wise and I'll bet you they're elves."
• "Third degree burn from Gollum. He just called you a great warlump. And a mound of flatulence."
• "I still can't get over that the trees breathe. Are the trees made of meat?"
• "Ewww! If you're gonna eat him don't be creepy about it."
• "Morkin is not a name a boy should have. Morkin is a wizard from a Disney cartoon."
• "Mmmphftt" (Fawkrin sprinkled some salt on Morkin's arm)
• "These people talk like they work at Medieval Times."
• "Why would he try to bite him now? When they're both awake?"
• (Morkin asks Luxor if the skulkrin venom needs to be sucked out of his wound) - "I've read fan-fiction where this goes awry."
• "That was shit. What's a skulkrin?"

 

In the remainder of the novella, "Corleth the Fey," who comes off as an amalgamation of Gandalf, Elrond, and Radagast, turns Fawkrin good by being nice, and then meets up with Luxor and Morkin, joining their ranks against Doomdark. By dawn, they arrive at The Tower of the Moon, where Rorthron, last of The Wise, warns that Doomdark mobilizes his foul armies for war against the unready lands of the Free, and the four of them plan their campaign.

The goal of The Lords of Midnight is to defeat Doomdark, either through military conquest of his seat of power in the Citadel of Ushgarak, or by destroying the object of his power, the Ice Crown, which only Morkin is capable of approaching and must journey without an army to do so (Just. Write. A LOTR game! - "D"). We're told it is possible to focus on one goal or the other, but to experience the "complete epic" requires equal attention to both. The campaign is lost should Luxor fall, or if Doomdark's armies overrun the last free citadel, but a chance of victory through subterfuge will remain as long as Morkin lives.

The four characters, Luxor, Morkin, Corleth, and Rorthron, will independently explore the land of Midnight in search of clues, artifacts, and allies, while Doomdark's armies march on the citadels, his powers growing with each conquest, and on Luxor, whose "moon ring" gives him clairvoyance but also reveals his location. The interface to command them all involves a keyboard overlay and is unconventional by modern standards, but then again what aspect of the ZX Spectrum isn't?

The basic commands here are MOVE, LOOK, THINK, and CHOOSE. LOOK will show a panoramic view of the landscape from the selected character's perspective akin to Might & Magic's outdoor areas, and from there you may choose a cardinal direction to re-orient him. MOVE steps forward one grid-unit space in the direction currently facing. THINK shows a detailed status screen for the selected character, and CHOOSE brings up a menu of context-sensitive actions (e.g. Corleth alone may seek to recruit Fey from their forest homes). Actions, especially moving, cost stamina and pass time, and each character may only perform so many of them before night falls. NIGHT effectively ends your heroes' turn and allows Doomdark to move.

I started up a new game, still not very sure of what to expect.

A cassette inlay shows the basic topography of Midnight.

The four lords start at the Tower of the Moon, surrounded by forest. Doomdark's domain is far up north, and as the mountains and forests are impassable to his armies, they must pass through the Plains of Blood to reach the southern half of Midnight. I started by having the four coordinate to map it out.

Rorthron, heading west, soon came across something interesting.

But night fell and he could not approach.

Luxor turned south and immediately faced dragons.

"How did I miss those?"

The view here is misleading. The dragons are in the square ahead of you, not the current one. I had Luxor step forward, and nothing happened... until I tried to leave the square.

"Seek" did nothing but waste time. I tried "fight" - Luxor was victorious and no worse for the wear.

Luxor would continue west on his parallel, fighting two packs of wolves and downgrading his status to "very invigorated" by nightfall.

Morkin and Corleth headed south, and Corleth fought some skulkrins south of the tower (why can't I just charm them?), but his luck ran out in the Forest of Shadows.

I am so confused.

Unfortunately, I haven't got the slightest idea how combat works, and the game gives precious little feedback. Every previous encounter thus far simply ended in victory for the lord, and an abstract measure of their remaining stamina, morale, and ability to withstand Doomdark's magic. I don't know why Corleth beat the skulkrins but not the wolves, especially when Luxor before him killed two packs after slaying dragons. The RPG conventions of stat sheets, hit dice, and damage outputs just have no place here.

On day 2, Luxor got eaten by wolves almost immediately. The manual warns us that should this happen, all control over everyone but Morkin is lost, but it was not. Rorthron remained under my control, approached the ruins, searched, and found a "dragonslayer" sword, and found little else past but the Plains of Ashimar and frozen wastes beyond. Morkin followed Corleth's steps, killed the wolves that got him, and then killed the wolves that got Luxor.

On day 3, Rorthron continued exploring the frozen wastelands southward, while Morkin continued southwest past the ruins, killing multiple dragons, and eventually reaching the Plains of Ashimar.

At the end of day 4, the game presented a grim but awkwardly polysyndetic reminder of the urgency of our quest.

 

Rorthron and Morkin kept exploring and charting the plains for days. Rothron emerged from the south first into the downs where he effortlessly killed more dragons. Word of battles raging in the northern citadels continued, but R&M kept exploring the plains southward, then eastward once they could go south no more, killing all manner of wolf, dragon, and ice troll in their path.

A keep in the distance as Rorthron explores the southernmost plains

Some of the landmarks I found during this combing included:

• Shelter in ruins and caverns, restoring the visitor's health.
• The Cup of Dreams, which brings the day back to dawn (but only for that character), effectively allowing up to double the number of actions he can take that day.
• The Waters of Life, which "invigorate" you. I have no idea how or if this differs from shelter.
• The Wolfslayer Sword, found by Rorthron.
• The Hand of Dark which brings nightfall, ending your characters movement that day.
• Wild horses just about everywhere. I'm not quite sure what they do.
  

 

Apart from horses, these landmarks may only grant their benefit once, and only to one character. If Rorhtron investigates some ruins and discovers shelter, he exhausts this benefit, and Morkin will find nothing there.

On day 9, after an untold number of combat victories, Morkin finally became a Skulkrin's snack.

Rorthran continued east, and ran into Lord Rorath, who was quickly recruited. Unfortunately, the game ended at nightfall.

 

Such an ignoble end to a promising fellowship!

Exploring Midnight row-by-row had been kind of fun. The landscape view is immersive after you get over some perspective weirdness, and you always want to know just what lies beyond that mountain range or in the ruins or tower that's just tantalizingly out of reach, but I suspect you aren't supposed to play like it's a Might and Magic game by exhaustively searching every acre while a war rages north, growing Doomdark's fearsome powers as his victories tally up and potential allies join his dark ranks instead of yours. Yet, I didn't lose the war. I didn't live long enough for that. I lost because I pushed my luck against the wildlife, mainly wolves, just often enough to lose.

I'll have to keep trying, and maybe be smarter next time. Study the map, form a plan, and most of all, avoid fighting unless the character has a special weapon or is Rorthran, who went undefeated. Still, I can't help but wish the fight mechanics were less obscured. It's annoying right now when a perfectly healthy Luxor gets beaten by a pack of wolves identical to so many packs he slew without incident before, and doesn't bode well at all for the inevitable late-game army clashes.

My map so far:

Games 304-306: Early Mike Singleton

Mike Singleton, author of large scale, open-world classics including Midwinter, War in Middle Earth, and our next whale, The Lords of Midnight, is another designer whose name I know through reading articles and histories but whose games I haven't ever played.

This post is about a selection of his early, humbler works, some of which are lost to time. Computer Race, for instance, the first game he programmed after graduating from tinkering on a programmable calculator to a Commodore PET, simulated horse races and featured PETSCII-animations based on Muybridge's famous serial photographs, and sold but a single copy in Ireland, far enough away from the arm of Britain's strict betting laws.

Space Ace

No relation to Don Bluth's laserdisc followup to Dragon's Lair, Singleton's Space Ace, c1982, is his earliest game that I can actually play.

It's Star Fire yet again, and not even the only time a British developer did this that year. There's one novelty here to make it stand out - try not to get too excited. You have a "lock on" mechanism that lets you match speed and vector with a target, and once locked on, the numpad controls let you hone in on the target. It's not much, but it does slightly improve the immersion factor, and make the gameplay just a bit more interesting. But let's not go overboard with the praise - we had Star Raiders years before.

Presumably you can "beat" the game once you've destroyed eight ships, but I couldn't. The more ships you kill, the more frequently they fire at you. I'm still not clear on exactly how the game determines you get hit, but all too often they'd fire right while I'm aiming right at their centers of mass, which would stunlock me and get me hit by the same bullet repeatedly, often depleting my shields and ending my game.

There's just not enough here for me to analyze, so I have not numbered or rated this game.

Following Space Ace, Singleton snagged a ZX81 computer - a machine which, to be frank, bears more resemblance to a programmable calculator than to the PET that Singleton replaced his with, and quickly tapped out a relative best-seller in time for Christmas.

Game 304: ZX81 Games Pack 1

In two weeks, Singleton programmed six bite-sized, or should I say, kilobyte-sized games, which Sinclair Research distributed on tape.

Our first game is a solo pong variant where you have to bank the ball at an angle to score a point. Without any paddle physics, there's not much you can do to influence the ball's trajectory - just don't miss and you will eventually score a point. But that's okay because you can just position the paddle in the center and win without having to do anything.

Next is a simple racing game where you avoid the edges and dodge obstacles. I don't know if it ends, but I couldn't pass the 999 meter mark.

Third is a Space Invaders clone where I couldn't figure out how to shoot back and didn't care enough to try all that hard.

Fourth isn't even a game, just a silly demo program that displays a message of your choice in the style of an electronic matrix sign.

Fifth is a Breakout clone. This is easily the best game in the pack, but I wouldn't play it twice. Unlike the Pong clone you can affect the ball's path based on whether you hit it with the center of the paddle or not.

Finally, there's a helicopter game where you pick up people and bring them back to the helipad while dodging bullets. It's so easy that a monkey could do it.

GAB rating: Bad. This tape might have sold incredibly well considering the ZX81's market size, but today it does nothing but reinforce my belief that the ZX80/81 were cheap and horrible machines ill-suited for any sort of amusement or educational purpose, and the less often I revisit this system, the happier I'll be.

Mobygames lists Singleton's next time as "Star Lord," but I believe they are erroneous in cataloging it as a Commodore PET title, or indeed even as a video game. It isn't a game you can simply purchase in cassette format and run on your own PET, nor did it even require owning a computer at all, but is more akin to a board game played by mail, which Singleton administrated himself using his PET to compute and print out the results of each round.

His next few games were Commodore-focused, with compatibility on the newly released ZX81 successor ZX Spectrum being an afterthought.

Game 305: Shadowfax

The first of four games developed in partnership with Postern Ltd., and the first glimpse of Singleton's enthusiasm for Tolkien, Shadowfax reused the horse graphics originally created for Computer Race and saw initial release for Commodore's PET, VIC-20, and the Commodore 64 in 1982, followed by ports to the BBC Micro and later the ZX Spectrum in 1983. The PET version appears to be undumped, giving us no way of seeing singleton's original PETSCII animations.

VIC-20 version

C64 version

 

Ride your white steed like the wind and zap way more than nine black Nazgûl! It's... not all that exciting, and the gameplay doesn't evolve past the first few seconds, not even escalating in difficulty, which is low enough that I'm confident I could last indefinitely if I didn't get bored and lose focus. You can only move up and down and shoot, and must release the fire button to detonate your shot when it touches a ringwraith.

The C64 version animates more smoothly and has trees flanking the playfield, but I prefer the VIC-20 version slightly. Its stark, minimalist look just suits it more, especially the animation that plays when you die. That said, "minimalist" is a terrific descriptor of the gameplay, and I don't mean that in any positive way. Shadowfax wouldn't pass muster as a discount Atari 2600 game.

GAB rating: Bad. It's playable, but I can't see why you'd want to for more than fifteen seconds.

Game 306: Siege

Siege was released on the same platforms as Shadowfax, but more or less simultaneously. The BBC Micro version, as with Shadowfax, is co-credited to Warren Foulkes, and the rest solely to Singleton. All versions are extant.

PET version

These are undoubtedly the best graphics I've ever seen in a PET game, which lacked any kind of graphical ability except for arranging its built-in glyphs and semaphores to approximate visuals, which is what's going on here. No, it won't dethrone Atari, but it does make me wish the PET version of Shadowfax survived.

Inverted Space Invaders of a sort, but much, much easier thanks to the invaders' slow climbing speed and lack of any sort of attack except climbing. You have to be exactly precise with your rocks - only a direct hit to the head counts - and the movement controls are somehow both underresponsive and overresponsive, but the fact that you can bowl over multiple attackers in a single throw like tenpins makes it easy to keep the crowds under control, and it's funny too.

There's once again no difficulty escalation, and it didn't keep me amused for more than a minute or two, but that's already more than I can say about Shadowfax.

I checked out the other Commodore versions as well.

VIC-20 version

I guess these graphics are better, but to me they don't have the charm of the PET version's crisp monochrome. Maybe it's because I know the VIC-20 is capable of more than this. It plays pretty much the same, slightly more difficultly as the soldiers can move side-to-side and the playfield is wider relative to the sprite sizes, which now only occupy a single column's width (though they will still knock down adjacent soldiers as they fall), also giving the impression that the rocks you drop are man-sized boulders. The PET version also has fanfare at the start of each round and sound effects for your stone throwing.

C64 version

On Commodore 64, the most advanced home gaming platform of the day, Siege is even more underwhelming, and barely distinguishable from the 5KB VIC-20. Same sprites, different colors, bigger playing field. Even the VIC-20 fanfare is missing.

GAB rating: Below average. On any platform it's more fun than Shadowfax, but the meager gameplay and challenge leaves me wanting more. Siege could be a somewhat decent arcade-style game if it were faster paced and had a lot more to do in it - how about some archers that fire back, siege towers and catapults, or maybe a dragon or two? And maybe give me more weapons to juggle threats with, like a crossbow, grapeshot catapults, boiling oil, placeable sentries, etc.

 

Singleton would design two more games for Postern; Snake Pit, and the stereographic 3 Deep Space, but I'm done exploring this era. Next post, I take on The Lords of Midnight.