Help finding games

[albbi]

Great site you have here. A trip down memory lane.

I've been looking for a DOS rpg that I played as a kid, but I forget the name to it. Wondering if anybody could help out.

It was a game where you had 4 characters, and I think they had to be a fighter, paladin, cleric and mage, one of each.

It had a 3D view of where you were walking around, quite a bit like the Might and Magic games, but this one was entirely underground. And there was also a map you could go to.

The battles occured randomly, and it turned into a tactics fight where you could move your characters around a grid that was an enlarged version of the map you were in.

Also when I had it, there were sanctuaries scattered here and there, and to get into them, you had to decrypt a code, and the key was on a piece of paper included with the game. I remember it being red and circular.


I think this was one of the best RPG's at the time. I definately developed my love of paladins from playing that game. Timeframe should be somewhere after 1990, and before 1994.

[DOSGuy]

I was a big console RPG fan at the time (Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy), but I was never very impressed by the few DOS RPGs that I played, so I haven't put much effort into finding RPGs for the site. I have a number of resources for DOS RPGs, so I'll take a closer look at them in the future.

The game you've mentioned doesn't ring a bell. The DOS RPGs I've played had a first-person view and you tended to move around in cities and caves that were mazes, such as The Infernal Tome. I was a huge fan of Moraff's Revenge, which is an extremely simple but addictive RPG with only one character. Moraff's Dungeons of the Unforgiven was technically superior, in terms of graphics and scope, but I never liked it as much. The cities and caves were too unnecessarily large and the graphics seemed ugly. Sometimes simple is good.

I hope you'll enjoy the few RPGs that are on the site at the moment, and I'll keep my eyes open for the game you mentioned.

[SpellSword]

That game sounds vaguely familiar.
Between 1990-1994. Hmmm.
I’ll see if I can dig up a name…


(Edit:)
Any other information you can remember would be helpful.

[SpellSword]

Is it perhaps:
The Dark Heart of Uukrul

I'll keep looking. (I seem to recall another game that may be what you described...)

(Edit:)
Do you remember if it was a ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ title?
(Whether it was or was not could greatly help in pinning it down.)

[albbi]

Hey! Right on! It was The Dark Heart of Uukrul.

*sigh* happy memories.

Thanks a lot. Gonna see if I can get it somehow.

[SpellSword]

Glad I could help.

Seems to be a copy of it available 'here' for trade.
Good hunting.

[DOSGuy]

Wow. Pretty impressive-looking game for 1989.

Way to go SpellSword!

[welmoed]

Way back in the dark ages I was addicted to a particular game. Can't remember the title for the life of me. It might have had the word “Robo” in the title. It was a simple maze game with many levels. The goal was to get the little Robo from the start to the finish of a particular level without either getting blown up by a bomb or zapped with a laser cannon. A lot of it was timing and pushing obstacles around to clear pathways. If the little robot got blown up, a voice said “Poor Robo.” If you finished a level, it would flash a code on the screen so you could skip to the next level when you restarted the game at a later date. It came on 3.5” floppies and was for the PC.

Ring any bells?

--Welmoed

[SpellSword]

That does sound familiar. (The vocal part especially...)

Kind of reminds me of a shareware game called (I think it was called) Trogg...
(I'll look it up in my collection to see if it's the one, just got to dig up the disk.)

Ack, I can't place it but I think I've seen it.

Could you elaborate on the how the bombs and lasers worked?
- Did the lasers point in a single direction and if you stepped into their path they fired, instant kill?
- Did the bombs become active after you pushed them so that once moved you had a limited amount of time to position it where you wanted it?
- Did bombs destroy bricks/walls/blocks of some kind or just damage you?
- If a bomb detonated beside another bomb, did it set it off, start that bomb counting down or destroy it?

Do you remember any other specific information?

- Color scheme of the levels/HUD,
- the layout of the HUD,
- the approximate year you played it/it was released.

Any little detail could help.
("Poor Robo..." Where have a I heard that before...)

- Was the game a top down or side view based game.
- Was the movement grid-based (Example: Ragnarok, Nethack, Angband, Chips Challenge. One touch one step.)
- or free movement (Zelda, God of Thunder like.)
- Did each level have a single fixed room, or could the screen scroll.
- Or for that matter could you move from room to room in each level (Zelda, God of Thunder style.)
- What processor did you run it off? (286, 386, 486, etc)
- When you bought the game did you order it directly from a software company or buy it off the shelf in a box?
- What did the exit square/point/area look like on each maze? (Was it a flashing square? the word 'exit'? a hole in the wall?)
- Did the game have any moving floors that would move you or things you pushed onto them? (Conveyers)
- Where there any moving enemies/obstacles present?
- Missing floor areas/holes that you could fall into or push things into?

[DOSGuy]

The game was the Adventures of Robbo by xLand Games, a Polish company. They produced Electro Body and later released the Epic Puzzle Pack which contained Electroman (Electro Body), Heartlight and Adventures of Robbo.

The first two games had shareware versions, but Adventures of Robbo, despite being called a "Deluxe Version" and having the words "Registered Version" (implying an unregistered version) on the splash screen, was never released as a shareware or demo version. You can purchase the game from Epic Classics for $14.00 on floppy disk, or as part of the Puzzle Pack with Electroman and Heartlight for $29.00.

xLand's co-founder and programmer, Maciej Miasik, currently works at Detalion. I have sent an email to Detalion requesting that my message be passed on to him so that I can ascertain the current legal status of those games, and possibly negotiate a freeware release.

Sorry about taking so long to respond. I was certain that it was Robbo as soon as I read your request, but I was too busy to find out for sure until the weekend.

[SpellSword]

Excellent idea changing this into a thread of it's own.

Thanks for listing the additional information about the Adventures of Robbo DOSGuy. I'm going to grab a copy of that three pack (Electroman and Heartlight, yeah! )

The game I was thinking of was called Trugg by Digital Workshop.
(Not Trogg, my memory errored on the spelling. )
It has lasers/bombs and a robot... but it is not what you where seeking.
I'll put up links to the shareware just incase you may find it interesting.
-Dead link removed by Administrator- V1.02
-Dead link to a website with lots of pop-ups and pop-unders removed by Administrator- V1.0

(May want to post a link on the other thread to this one incase welmoed comes back and thinks you just delete his post. )

[DOSGuy]

Good idea.

The Trugg downloads were external links which appear to be dead (one of the reasons why all games on this site are stored internally), but I may take a look for the game later. At first I thought you were talking about "Trog!" by Bally Midway, which featured cavemen rather than robots!

I've played Robbo and it's quite a fun little game. I hope I can get permission to distribute it. I love contacting individual authors and small shareware companies, because they're usually very good about responding and tend to be enthusiastic about sharing their creations with classic gaming fans.

[SpellSword]

Ack! The links are broken?!

Sorry, I didn't check them. I just 30 seconds ago installed my shareware copy off a disk and it didn't occur to me that it would not be possible to download it.

Hmmm, the link to the company leads to:
http://www.digitalworkshop.co.uk/
I wonder if they're the same people who wrote Trugg?
(The game is not mentioned anywhere I can see on the site.)

[DOSGuy]

Yup, that's them. I just found a copy of Trugg on a shareware compilation CD and the order form is from Digital Workshop, a UK company. I've installed the shareware version to give the game a try. Reminds me of Heartlight. I've sent an email to Digital Workshop to ask them about the status of their classic games.

[SpellSword]

Excellent!
(I hope they release it as freeware.)

Puzzle games can be a lot of fun.
Pushing you to the brink of madness as you work away at it and then the solution jumps out at you. 8)