Akalabeth: Closing Remarks

And so my adventures in Akalabeth draw to a close. Despite the fact it's over thirty years old at this point, I find it's still an enjoyable little diversion. I had a better time this time around than I did when I first played it, too, now that I actually have some idea of what I'm doing - and the fact that pretty much everything I tried worked the first time helped, too, apparently sixteen really is my lucky number! I didn't even die once during my adventures this time. It's not particularly complicated once you understand how to work the system, but when it boils down to it, that's just it - that's pretty much all there is to it, figuring out how to work the system to your advantage. I suppose that's typical of games from that era, but it makes things either extremely difficult or extremely simple, depending on which side of the figuring you are.

As far as Akalabeth's story goes, I find it unique, in a manner of speaking. Rather than going off to slay the Big Evil, he's already been defeated - you're just there to help with the clean-up. Simplistic story, but fairly unorthodox for a game, and I appreciate it for that. Not terribly built up in the game itself, but then again, I rather like games that actually make use of the manual for things other than "here are the controls, here are some definitions." That's part of what I love about the Ultima series - the manuals don't just set the stage for the game itself, they help get a player into the proper immersive mindset. I rather miss that.

It's also easy to see how Akalabeth fits into the development of the Ultima series as a whole. There's a lot of Akalabeth that echo down far into the series - gremlins stealing food, the design of the 3D dungeons, the ladder-up ladder-down spells, the monsters, Lord British, Mondain... the list goes on. Some of the mechanics are perhaps a little unrefined (the fact the whole game can be broken by repeatedly turning into a lizardman comes to mind) but the seeds of Ultima are definitely here, and it's not hard to see them.

Fitting Akalabeth into the grand Ultima narrative, however, is a little difficult. There's not a whole lot to go off of, as far as the story goes, and I suppose it wasn't entirely meant to be a part of the Ultima series proper either, but still - it uses some of the same characters, and trying to match what we're told in Akalabeth's documentation to what the Ultima series present us can be a bit sketchy. Personally I tend to view it as a series of recurring dreams the Avatar-to-be has before his first adventure in Sosaria proper - after all, one does tend to die a lot and reply the same bits over and over and over in Akalabeth before finally getting the hang of it (I certainly did my first time playing!) Everything's nebulous and hazy and not necessarily matching up with reality, so this is how I reconcile it in my head.

Well, that closes out Akalabeth, I suppose. A fun jaunt, but I'm ready to dive into Ultima I. Into the First Age of Darkness!

Akalabeth: Be-Balroged, Bothered, and Beknighted

Tonight I finished up Akalabeth, and Avatar-to-be Aric is now Lord Aric, as can be seen in the handy-dandy screenshot up there. (Insert the usual joke about being told to report my feat to Lord British here.) Of course, it wasn't just a snap of the fingers that got Aric from his first visit to Lord British's castle to knighthood, so I suppose I have to back up a little

I'm a lot stronger now!

The first thing I did after getting my first quest was to pick up a magic amulet and start fiddling around with it to make myself into a lizard man and multiply my stats. Once again, sixteen proves to truly be my lucky number (at least as far as Akalabeth is concerned) as my first attempt to use a magic amulet succeeds properly. (It does help that I'm a mage and can therefore choose which spell to use rather than hope it's the one I want.) So I enter and exit the dungeon, making use of the amulet in between, until my stats are starting to push five digits.

Thus readied for battle, I delve into the dungeon to seek out a gremlin, and hope that I don't catch it on the wrong angle and deplete all my food resources after a few attacks. Luckily, I happen to catch one straight-on on the sixth floor of the dungeon, and it goes down in one hit. Y'know, it surprises me how a creature so small can manage to make off with half my food when I'm carrying several thousand units' worth of it. Exactly how big are one of these rations that I've got? And if they're small enough for a puny gremlin to make off with scads of them, how the heck do they keep me well fed?? I suppose that's why I go through them so quickly.

Pesky little thing...

I hop over two paces to tell Lord British I slew a gremlin, and he sends me back in to slay a mimic, a daemon, and a balrog, in order. After reloading on amulets (to make use of the ladder spells properly) and food (just in case I bump into more gremlins), I pop back into the dungeon to kill things, finding a mimic on the ninth floor (and several more on my way back up, hence the 'bothered' part of the title), getting some food swiped by a gremlin, and also bumping into a daemon that I zip back down to kill once I've told Lord British I did away with a mimic.

From there it was a simple matter of dealing with the daemon, telling LB I did so, then running back to about floor twelve (well, floor ten and then falling down to floor twelve) to kill a mighty balrog for my final quest... which dies in one hit. I am lizardman, hear me... screech?

So I let the king know of my accomplishment (how does he know I'm telling the truth, by the way? Did I bring some trophy back of my kills?) and as a reward he knighted me!

Akalabeth's a short little game, but it's a fun diversion while it lasts. I'll toss up another post with some final thoughts, and then it's off to Ultima I!

Akalabeth: Foolish Mortal...

I can't quite get over just how many opportunities Akalabeth takes to call me a foolish mortal... the title screen, the intro, the manual... I mean really, I'm trying to become a knight and help defend the realm here, no need to belittle me while I do so. What, you want me to become disheartened and stop killing monsters?

And so my adventure begins.

Anyway, I choose my lucky number of 16 (because it's one of my favorite numbers), and apparently it is indeed my lucky number as my first stat roll seems pretty decent, and I decide to accept it. When given the choice between fighter or mage, I go with mage (so as to make better use of the magic amulets, and besides I have a certain fondness for Ultima mages, so might as well go all out, eh?) and I'm unceremoniously dropped into Akalabeth.

My first order of business is to figure out where the heck everything is in this iteration of the World of Doom, so I cringe slightly over the use of "stat's" before I pick myself up an axe for a weapon, forgo an amulet from the get-go and blow the rest of my budget on food for my explorations. This latter proves to potentially be slightly overkill. I head west to see what I can see, and lo and behold, I'm apparently right up against the western edge of the map. All right, says I, let's see what we can see in the other directions. I head north, and after a few paces, once again I hit a wall of mountains. So it appears I'm wedged in the northwest corner of the map.

Look, I know I'm no noble, but no need to be condescending about it.

After I flesh out this portion of my map, I start heading east, and come across nothing for a little while until I stumble into a couple towns - and Lord British's castle immediately afterward! There's a dungeon literally two steps away from the castle, and a town right next to that. And all of this is about a dozen paces away from my starting position, and I didn't even waste all that much food to get there! Sixteen apparently really is my lucky number, last time I played through Akalabeth Lord British's castle was way on the other end of the map from me, and the closest dungeon another dozen steps away or so. This will really help me conserve food!

I decide to poke about the top level of the nearby dungeon to see if there's any convenient treasure, and end up falling into a pit - which has two convenient treasure chests right there. One of which is right by a ladder back up to the first floor. I fight off a couple thieves, who swipe the weapons I got from the chests and the axe I'm using right out of my hands, but I've got enough pluck to punch them to death and pick up a few coins for my trouble. Back out of the dungeon, I introduce myself to Lord British and he gives me a quest to kill a gremlin and raises my stats by one each.

I hardly ever name characters after myself when I play RPGs, and for this blog, I chose to name my peasant-slash-Stranger-slash-Avatar Aric. (I have a certain fondness for A-names, apparently, and according to my name book, "Aric" has a meaning along the lines of noble leader/commander, which seems appropriate for the Avatar).

See? Convenient! (There's a town on the other side of the dungeon, too.)

This is where I stopped for the day, dipping my toe into the water, so to speak. Most of my time was spent messing with the emulator and trying to figure out what buttons did what, how I took screenshots, whether and how I could make use of savestates and all that good stuff. So too did I break in my Official Ultima Journal, for all my maps and notes, and I had a grand time color-coding my world map of Akalabeth, which mostly turned out to be unnecessary but enjoyable all the same (and also confusing at some points - mapping out a lot of blank space when all you can see is a 3x3 square at a time gets disorienting real fast). Now that I actually know what I'm doing in the emulator, time to go slay me some monsters and name myself Sir Aric of Akalabeth.

Incidentally, I find it extremely fortuitous that I didn't spend a good fifteen/twenty minutes dying repeatedly on account of bad rolls and/or failing to find Lord British's castle, like I did last time I played (and nearly every other time I've played, for that matter). I'm hoping that's a good sign for how things are going to go for me. It's an auspicious start!

Akalabeth: Opening Thoughts

A prologue to a story is meant to set the stage for what is to come. It's not necessarily connected to the main story as a whole, but is a good way to catch a reader's interest and give them a sense of what to expect from the rest of the tale.

I feel that Akalabeth is, in essence, the gaming equivalent of a prologue for the Ultima series - not necessarily connected to the Grand Overarching Story, but setting the stage for it rather well.

Akalabeth was released in 1980, and is affectionately referred to by the Ultima community as 'Ultima 0,' so I would be rather amiss to leave it out of my little adventure here. While it's only tenuously connected to the Ultima series proper - Lord British makes an appearance, of course, and Mondain is mentioned in the manual - it's clear there's a lot of ideas here that would be expanded on and developed further in what would become Ultima I. It's clear that the roots of the series are here, and so when one begins a journey through the Ultima series, one needs to start with Akalabeth.

I've played through Akalabeth once before about a year ago, and I remember it the same way as Ultima I: slow and somewhat frustrating to get started, but once a certain point is hit, a fun little dungeon jaunt that makes for a pleasant afternoon. As I recall, the trick to Akalabeth is recognizing the patterns - when amulets pull off the good results, where everything is, finding the quickest way to get there, and so on and so forth. I also remember getting through it in a single afternoon, so chances are this will be rather short!

The best way to start any Ultima game is with the manual, and Akalabeth is no exception. It's a rather short one, but provide a simple little framing story and a brief explanation of game mechanics. As mentioned earlier, this is the first mention of Mondain, though he's not the Grand Evil Immortal Wizard here as he is in Ultima I. Instead, he's the second son of a great king, and jealous of his brother's inheritance, does Generic Evil upon the land of Akalabeth - digging dungeons, releasing monsters in said dungeons and unleashing pestilence upon the landscape. Lord British, in his first appearance as well, drives Mondain from Akalabeth, but his monsters still roam the land, which is where the player comes in.

So, onward into the World of Doom! Time for me to see if I can become a knight in the realm of Akalabeth.