Doomdark’s Revenge (ZX Spectrum)
Developed/Published by: Mike Singleton / Beyond Software Released: 12/1984 Completed: 06/05/2022 Completion: I would love to lie about this, but i rescued Morkin, got him almost all the way back to the gate and Luxor randomly died to a dragon, which you cannot undo. I’m counting it. Trophies / Achievements: n/a
I wrote extensively about Doomdark’s Revenge’s predecessor, Lords of Midnight previously, and it remains one of my favourites of the last year; a ZX Spectrum game that’s more ambitious than, honestly, the majority of games that even come out now. So ambitious that it’s only now I could even understand it, really.
Doomdark’s Revenge is the sequel which came out, astonishingly, within eight months of the original, which makes you think maybe it would be just an expansion pack of sorts. And, yeah, it is mostly the same systems, but it’s a game that represents absolutely when ambition gets a bit too much–for the ZX Spectrum, for the player, and likely for the designer, too.
In Doomdark’s Revenge, you’ve got another novella to read which sets up the game: whatever the player managed in their own playthrough, Morkin and Luxor have managed to destroy the ice crown and win a military campaign, and Morkin is now set to be wed to Tarithel. Except awkwardly it turns out that Doomdark had a daughter, Shareth, who lives up north (you wouldn’t know her) and has managed to bewitch Morkin and kidnap him.
So now Tarithel has given chase, and Luxor has also given chase, and they find themselves in Icemark, a brand-new and huge map that also happens to have an entire tunnel system (so basically two maps) and tens of new lords all of whom use their own AI to travel around the map (rather than just sitting in their castles waiting to be recruited like the last one).
If I thought Lords of Midnight was a lot, this is… a lot. The last game was easily comprehensible by comparison. In the last one, you could accurately map where environmental enemies (wolves and dragons, etc.) and allies were, with only the moving enemy armies creating complexity. Here, everything is moving all the time. I’ve got to again give huge props to Chris Wild (who has only recently put out the 2.0 versions of Lords of Midnight and Doomdark’s Revenge) because without his modern adaptation and its auto-map I do believe this would be completely unplayable. I do wish, however, that he’d make it even easier on the player by showing where the other lords and their armies were on the map too.
You see, the game plays out similarly to Lords of Midnight; with Tarithel, you’re questing alone or with a small party to try and grab Morkin, who is about as far away as it’s possible to be. With Luxor, you’re basically trying to mass a huge enough army that you can either find Shareth (I have no idea how you would) or wait for her to show up and kill her.
The thing is that the game ends up playing out a bit less excitingly than the original, even though you can tell it was designed to be more exciting. There, you’d play several games, stumbling about and opening up the map, and strategizing the best way to get your armies together, usually ending up in several skirmishes that were actually sort of predictable.
Here, you never get out of the “stumbling about” phase. Your best hope is to wander around near the beginning area of the game, and hopefully bump into lords who you can recruit. It’s not actually that bad, because most lords (even the evil ones, it seems?) are pretty happy to get recruited if they meet the right guy, so there’s quickly a snowball effect as you end up with what feels like most of the lords on the map because your giant lord is down with all his giant lord homies, your barbarian lord good with barbarians, and so on.
The map, also, is simply massive and not at all as memorable as the first game. Sure, there are forests and mountains and so on, but it seems much more open than the first one, leading to quite a lot of wandering (and giving the AI way too much freedom) and the tunnel system could not be more boring (hope you like looking at black screens.) It just seems to take ages to get anywhere, and in my (admittedly non-winning) final game, I had played for over 20 in-game days before I was on the cusp of getting Morkin back to the Gate of Varenorn.
The thing is, I kind of understand why this all seems like a good idea. Not simply the “more” of it, but the fact that the world is intentionally more alive than the first game. It’s more “realistic” that each Lord would be moving about and have his own intentions; a more open map and tunnels increase the ways to navigate the world, and so on. But unfortunately without giving the player near-perfect information of the game state, it’s simply frustrating and (whisper it) kind of boring with how long it takes to get to Morkin.
Which is why I’m not going to have another go after almost finishing the game. Let me set out the scene: Morkin is a day’s ride from the Gate of Varneorn. A group of friendly giants and dwarfs are in a skirmish north and seem to have killed Shareth. Luxor has just moved north slightly to make sure an army that approaches isn’t antagonistic; he quickly recruits them.
On return to the gate, despite being accompanied by 22 lords and a massive army, he is killed by a dragon. The game is over. No backsies.
Remember last week when I deleted Bloodborne? It was literally nothing compared to how I felt at this moment. Hours of work literally destroyed by a single dice roll and nothing I could do about it. Talk about the Dark Souls of video games. I’d won! I was a turn from winning. But also, I wasn’t. Cruel, cruel fate.
So anyway, that’s the problem with Doomdark’s Revenge, it’s too long, it’s not as memorable, and it’s too random. If you play it though… just never move Luxor, ok?
Will I ever play it again? Or maybe Chris Wild will include a turn undo if Luxor dies. Please Chris!!! Maybe I can still do it!!!
Final Thought: So sadly creator Mike Singleton was never able to finish the “real” third game in the series, The Eye of the Moon, but it was apparently going to be four times larger than the original which, you know, sack that. He did go on to make a sequel, Lords of Midnight: The Citadel in 1995, but I’m not sure I’ll ever get round to that one. However, we do have his 16-bit Lords of Midnight-a-like Midwinter showing up in 1989, which I’m very much looking forward to trying to see how he evolved the systems–and hopefully not just “more”.
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