Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Great Yarmouth, by the sea.

Bedrooms all over the country were becoming overwhelmed by battered boxes of early computer equipment, bought under the dubious auspices of “helping with our homework” before being turned over full-time to the more pressing task of completing 3D Monster Maze before morning registration.

— Bob Fischer

Upon the release of the ZX80 and ZX81 computers, in addition to software, companies popped up to provide hardware. The two obvious gaps to fill were memory (1K in the original) and the keyboard (called “one of the worst keyboards ever”).

dk’tronics was started out of David Heeley’s bedroom “just prior to the launch of the ZX81” based on his “interest in electronics” with a 16k memory expansion; when the ZX81 came out he went full-time, still using his house as his base of operations through 1981:

The business was all mail-order then but I was getting a very good response. I had to do everything myself — manufacturing, packaging, selling and posting — and I was working in my bedroom, my garage, my shed.

He had four employees (and had moved out of his house) by the end of the year, with their keyboard being one of their best-known products.

Heeley in 1984. Source.

They got into software as well at the same time (before eventually falling back entirely on hardware once the market started to get flooded), with some of their early work by none other than Jeff Minter, who eventually became famous enough to have a modern collection based on his company, Llamasoft. The dk’tronics work came before Llamasoft. As Minter notes in an interview:

The first machine I actually owned was the ZX80, and in fact I did a few pre-Llamasoft games for the ZX80/ZX81 for an outfit called dk’tronics in the U.K. However, they treated me spectacularly badly, and so the founding of Llamasoft coincided with my getting my hands on the VIC. Games were just something I did in my spare time before that.

It’s worth watching a little of his game Space Invaders, as it sets up a point of history I’m about to make.

The invaders look hi-res compared to regular ZX81 games. That’s because the game is using custom hardware: specifically, the dk’tronics graphics rom, which changes the character display to show game sprites as “text”. (In other words, the mechanism that might normally display the letter R is modified to show part of a spaceship.)

From a May 1982 dk’tronics ad in Your Computer.

All that setup helps explain the existence of the company Kayde Electronics, another ZX81 hardware manufacturer. In addition to a keyboard and memory packs, Kayde also sold a graphics rom almost exactly identical to the one from dk’tronics. It only has one bank changed (modified to make Pac-man graphics). Both companies were even situated in the same city. It’s unclear if the graphics rom was under license or if they ripped dk’tronics off. (It’s not even an approximation, they’re exactly the same sprites. Given the documentation that came with the dk’tronics edition it would be easy to make a copy.)

From A Kayde catalog.

Another data point to add is the game The Valley. This was a type-in RPG printed in Computing Today, April 1982; the very same issue had a version you could buy from ASP Ltd. The CRPGAddict played it back in 2014, noting everything was an enterprise of Argus Press.

Kayde started publishing it themselves…

…and it was essentially identical to the type-in (see El Explorador de RPG for more on this). Kayde eventually changed the game’s name to “The Swamp”, likely because of it being blatantly stolen.

All these shenanigans might be part of the reason why the company went into receivership in 1983 (a year after its founding) and disappeared entirely shortly after; during 1983 they put out a series of five text adventures (maybe six or seven) hence the company’s appearance here. Based on the inlay for one of the company’s other games, I think the order goes

1. Leopard Lord
2. Terror from the Deep
3. Ace in the H.O.L.E.
4. Horror Atoll
5. Arcane Quest
6. The Roundsby Incident
7. Picnic Adventure

where 6 may not exist (despite having cover art in ads) and 7 probably doesn’t exist (it was advertised with “temp” art). At the very least, all we have access to are games 1-5.

Leopard Lord is the first in a new range of adventure games from Kayde which all have been written by a science fiction writer.

The statement above is from the tape’s inlay, although no specific credit is given so it is unclear if “science fiction writer” refers to someone who published a short story once, or a teenager with a zine, or something more respectable. Based on the text of the introduction I think something from the first two categories is more likely, although from the company’s other behavior I can’t discount a.) a real author made an off-hand comment which was used as the author “writing the game” b.) the content was stolen from elsewhere and/or c.) the ad copy was simply lying.

The introduction drips “AD&D dungeon master” to me so I decided to drag the microphone out and do something I hadn’t done in a while: a dramatic reading!

You are Prollen the Mercenary.

The people of or Yarm have offered you 1000 gold coins if you will rid them of Fordel, the evil wizard.

Fordel is the leader of a vicious clan. He is known as the elite Leopard Lord. He is totally evil and will let nothing stand in the path of his ultimate ambition, to control the world, by bringing forth a demon from the nether pits.

At first you are reluctant to help.

The reward is raised to 1500 gold coins, a veritable king’s ransom, but still you hesitate.

Then you find that Fordel is holding your friend, Braneth, somewhere in the hall of the elite Leopard Lord.

Fordel will use Braneth’s heart torn from his living body to summon the demon.

The ceremony is to take place tonight.

With all this wind-up pointing to a hack job I had a bit of dread going in, but oddly, I enjoyed myself. This follows my general mantra that a simplistic parser works out as long as the actions demanded of the player also stay simple. It certainly helped I did my “verb list search”, so I didn’t have to struggle later:

CLIMB, READ, BREAK, OPEN, KILL, LIGHT, THROW, SEARCH, GIVE, EXAMINE, INSERT

SEARCH and EXAMINE in particular set off my warning bells. If you go north from the forest in the start you’re in, er, more forest, but there’s also a HEDGEROW. I did SEARCH and found a BLUE KEY…

…but before moving on, I restarted and went and tried EXAMINE instead, informing me that I see nothing special. That means SEARCH and EXAMINE are treated differently, which can be a very nasty trick with this kind of reduced parser (where, intuitively, it doesn’t seem like verbs should have any subtlety).

To the east of the hedgerow is a leopard and the game’s first combat. The game clearly has D&D in mind (later there’s a water weird, which is D&D-only) but there’s no obvious puzzle here, just the command KILL LEOPARD.

What seems to be going on behind the scenes is that the game is checking if you are holding a set of particular objects; if you are, you win the battle, otherwise you die. The game starts you with a SWORD, DAGGER, and TINDERBOX. If you drop the SWORD before the combat, you still win. If you drop the DAGGER, you still win. If you drop the SWORD and the DAGGER, you lose.

IT KILLS YOU
YOU HAVE FAILED. TRY AGAIN YOU ARE OUR ONLY CHANCE

In some cases the game is looking for a specific item, in others it seems to be simply looking for a combination. Because there’s no description when you win — every weapon is used “passively” — I didn’t stop to diagram out the possibilities, although it did give me trouble later.

North of the leopard is the entrance; you use the blue key to open the door, and you can also find a torch hidden in the thicket. (There’s no command for lighting or unlighting; I assume the game has a flag somewhere that checks if you have the torch and tinderbox; I never found where it was and ended up dropping the two items later as the inventory limit is tight.)

Right at the entrance is a book which encourages you to check out the next game, Terror from the Deep (I wonder if this will be like the Scott Morgan games where each game references the next one). Just north is a snake (the default sword & dagger still work) followed by a harpy guarding a box (ditto).

The box has a red key which gets used on a red door. It’s so helpful when the villains color-code everything.

There’s a “small room” with a sarcophagus where the passive check-your-weapons combat system comes into play. If you open the sarcophagus there’s a mummy, and trying to fight it kills you. The room also has writing that says

THIS COULD BE TRAGIC IF YOU DON’T USE MAGIC

which indicates the standard sword and dagger won’t work.

Two rooms away there’s a glowing axe :– holding it is sufficient to defeat the mummy. Defeating the mummy gets the player absolutely nothing. I think again we’ve got D&D influence creeping in, where a “side monster” is a perfectly good encounter to beef up to the next “level”, but because that infrastructure has been ripped out by being a Pure Adventure, the author wasn’t sure what to do so put the side encounter in anyway.

Mummy from the AD&D Monster Manual.

Around the same area there’s a trapdoor that leads down.

In this area, there’s a leopard guarding a pendant. (Again a wimp, funny for a game titled Leopard Lord that the leopards are the easy kills.) Along the same hall there’s a STATUE, where if you EXAMINE it (not SEARCH) you see a HOLE, and then can INSERT PENDANT to open a secret passage.

This would have been so much more irritating without the verb list. I already knew INSERT was going to apply somewhere.

The secret area has a TUNIC and MIRROR, both essential items for later.

Heading back up to the main floor, there’s a long hallway flanked on the south by a troll.

The troll is, like the mummy, completely optional. Even the GLOWING AXE doesn’t help here. I got a shield later and came back and managed to win.

Nearby there’s also a “room painted in red” where you can find a coin and rod in a cupboard (rod useless, coin helpful). Oddly, there’s a wall with a warning about not breaking it, but no puzzle: you’re simply supposed to obey the sign. There’s no way to survive breaking the wall and no secret obtained by doing so.

I guess this is meant as another D&D encounter-for-color, perhaps?

The north end of the hall has a chimney going up to the last part of the game.

North has a single guard, whereas south has two; you need to fight the guard to the north first and obtain the SHIELD there, then you can fight the guards to the south.

The cupboard has the green key needed for the green door that’s just right there. In a D&D campaign I could see it working to find the item to open the next door after a combat, but in adventure format it comes off as silly.

Past the guards to the south is “Fordel’s Private Quarters” where you can find a throwing axe. Heading north instead, there’s a pool with a water weird to one side (I never killed it, there may be no way) and a medusa on the other (strangely, the mirror is not needed at all).

Maybe the shield helped? I didn’t find it worth the time to check every single combat.

Further north is an “OLDMAN” who is peaceful. (KILL doesn’t even work to get yourself stabbed by the secret ancient kung-fu master or whatever.) Pulling out my verb list again…

CLIMB, READ, BREAK, OPEN, KILL, LIGHT, THROW, SEARCH, GIVE, EXAMINE, INSERT

…there’s no TALK command, and the only one that seems relevant then is GIVE. I went through my objects and decided COIN was the most likely gift.

The OLDMAN says: to win we need a MIRROR, AXE, and MIRROR. That is a typo and I eventually realized that ARMOUR (which we’ll pick up in a moment) is the real third item. The AXE here is not the glowing axe but the throwing axe back at Fordel’s bedroom.

Heading west, since we don’t have the armour yet, we just die:

We can instead go north past the OLDMAN, nearly get hit by an arrow…

I’d been assuming the TUNIC was helping in fights and keeping it in inventory. There’s no WEAR command and it may only be useful at this spot.

…and find the ARMOUR the OLDMAN didn’t speak of because the author didn’t bother to check for typos of essential information.

With the three items in hand, entering the ceremonial chamber is now safe, and we can THROW THROWING AXE to end the game in victory.

I realize, laid all out like that, this doesn’t sound like a good game at all. And to be honest, it isn’t! But I did find it weirdly playable and charming mainly because I didn’t get stuck that long; even the ARMOUR typo didn’t stop me for long because I logicked out that there’d be no reason to put the ARMOUR past a trap unless it got used somewhere. It felt like I had fallen into some teenager’s after-school D&D campaign and the minimalist setting didn’t bother me that much, because it was delivered with passion.

Mind you, no idea where the science-fiction writer mentioned in the ad copy comes into this. I half-suspected this may have been adopted off a real printed campaign, but I couldn’t find any good hits. There’s a Leopard Lord in the “Oriental Adventures” campaign Ochimo: The Spirit Warrior but that didn’t come out until 1987.

Part of the map of the 1987 campaign, from the Internet Archive.

However, I do have some D&D experts lurking the wings, so if someone has a suspicion they want to throw into the comments, feel free.