Trying To Remember a Dungeon Crawl Game From The Early Years

Caliane

Caliane

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so, lets be sure. it wasn't a dungone master type game. so not Eye of hte beholder or dungeon hack.

it was top down with icons, like a spiderweb game? was it a spiderweb game? exile, avernum, blades of exile?

exile 2?
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Exile II: Crystal Souls - Free Games Utopia

Download and play Exile II: Crystal Souls: a liberated RPG game developed by Spiderweb Software. Exile II: Crystal Souls is available for Windows, Mac OSX.
www.freegamesutopia.com www.freegamesutopia.com

wow.. random Emil connection.

Computer Gaming World
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said that Exile III: Ruined World appears at first to be "a shareware game with primitive graphics" but reveals itself to be a "remarkably deep" traditional role-playing game with deceptive complexity. The reviewer praised the "well written and witty" NPC dialogue and elegant interface.[10] Emil Pagliarulo reviewed Exile III positively for the Adrenaline Vault, rating the game four out of five stars and calling it an "engrossing, thoroughly entertaining [...] epic computer role-playing game" with simplistic presentation and "enormous depth".
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velk

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Rajaah said:
I believe everything was on the same general overhead screen. The character models were essentially .ico files that fit inside a square and moved around the map one space at a time. They'd bump into each other and do attacks / cast / whatever all on the same screen.



Naw this game was like rudimentary shareware circa 1995, but really good simple D&D derived gameplay.

The giants were just the bosses. No dialogue that I remember. I think the boss of level 1 was like the Hill Giant chief and there were a few other Hill Giants right before him that were regular mobs, and the other 3 levels each had a similar situation with a commanding giant and some underlings, after fighting through lots of other monsters. Maybe I did beat the first level because I kinda remember it being like "buy full version for the remaining 3 levels". Think it was Rock, Ice, Fire giants.

This was probably a super obscure game and probably one in a sea of D&D knockoffs.
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After a bit of research, I am pretty sure that is Castle of the Winds: A Question of Vengeance.

Does this look familiar ?

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Rajaah

Rajaah

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Caliane said:
so, lets be sure. it wasn't a dungone master type game. so not Eye of hte beholder or dungeon hack.

it was top down with icons, like a spiderweb game? was it a spiderweb game? exile, avernum, blades of exile?

exile 2?
www.freegamesutopia.com

Exile II: Crystal Souls - Free Games Utopia

Download and play Exile II: Crystal Souls: a liberated RPG game developed by Spiderweb Software. Exile II: Crystal Souls is available for Windows, Mac OSX.
www.freegamesutopia.com www.freegamesutopia.com

wow.. random Emil connection.
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It was similar to these Exile games, but even less complex visually.

velk said:
After a bit of research, I am pretty sure that is Castle of the Winds: A Question of Vengeance.

Does this look familiar ?

View attachment 521096
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Yeah, it looked just like this. This might even be it, but I don't see anything about the Giants being the villains over four levels.

The game I played was like super basic and probably a knockoff of one of these. But yeah it looked like this, with extremely basic visuals and icons for sprites.
 
Slaanesh69

Slaanesh69

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Caliane said:
god damn, that sparked some 100% forgotten memories. pretty I had played that or a clone and completely forgot about it. the 3d view is not sparking memories, but the window based object/spells, and party info is. as well as automap.

oh, god yeah. someone has had to remake this for modern pcs...
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Yeah, after watching that video, this is def the game. And I want to play it or its clone again, but I don't want to go through the conniptions of compatibility to make it work.

I put that Wizardry I remake on my wishlist in Steam, but I'll be fucked if I pay $40 for a remaster of a game I played in 1987.
 
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velk

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Rajaah said:
It was similar to these Exile games, but even less complex visually.



Yeah, it looked just like this. This might even be it, but I don't see anything about the Giants being the villains over four levels.

The game I played was like super basic and probably a knockoff of one of these. But yeah it looked like this, with extremely basic visuals and icons for sprites.
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The revenge you are getting in castle of the winds is against Surtur the fire giant and his minions. The final boss of the shareware bit is Hill Giant Utgardhalok .
 
Rajaah

Rajaah

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velk said:
The revenge you are getting in castle of the winds is against Surtur the fire giant and his minions. The final boss of the shareware bit is Hill Giant Utgardhalok .
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That's it, that's the game. Surtur was the bad guy, I remember now. It got me to go and study a bunch of D&D books that I found abandoned in a musty basement (true story) which pretty much catapulted my entire interest in fantasy, RPGs, games in general... Jesus H.

I don't know who left all those D&D books in an empty abandoned room but I'm glad they did. I still have them, all 30 or so of them, and they're probably worth many thousands now. The only thing I've got that I probably wouldn't sell.

Surtur was in one of them. Maybe Deities and Demigods? From that point on Fire Giants were always super-interesting to me. I'd love to play this game again and actually see the rest of it this time, since all I saw was the first 25%. Now begins the quest to get the game and get it working on a modern system.

Edit: Yeah this is 100% the game I was looking for. I remember the paper doll style inventory, which was the first time I saw anything like that. I must have actually played this in 1993 because it pre-dated me playing any other games or having any consoles. What a huge blast from the past.

Looks like Part 1 is the first "quarter" and the part I played, while Part 2 is the non-freeware rest of it. Also I was wrong, it isn't four dungeons with a different elemental giant running each one. Far as I can tell the first big boss is the Hill Giant and the last boss is the Fire Giant, but in-between are a bunch of other dungeons and bosses that aren't giants. Maybe my brain just filled in the blank by thinking there were two other giants and four dungeons.

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