The valley was originally published as a “type in” adventure in the April 1982 Computing Today. The game was later commercialized for a number of platforms by Argus Press Software. I played the Commodore 64 version using the VICE emulator. The April 1982 article contains a terrific and well written backstory for the game which you will not find in the commercial documentation. The short story also provides you with several “clues” about completing your quest in the game.
When the game begins you get to choose whether to play as a wizard, thinker, barbarian, warrior, or cleric class.
I cycled through the different choices to see what the impact would be upon my character. Your choice impacts the strength and psi-power attributes. You will encounter Wraiths, Burrow Wraiths, and Ring Wraiths which are not affected by physical weapons. Only psi-power (spells) can hurt these Wraith types. They will fling Lightening Bolt after Lightening Bolt at you until their own psi-power reaches zero and then they will fade away.
Combat is a frequent affair so I chose the barbarian class and named my character Niall of the Far Travels after Gardner Francis Fox’s excellent sword & sorcery short stories. These short stories are classics detailing the adventures of a what is essentially a Conan clone. All 10 of the short stories were originally published in Dragon magazine however you can read them now in a collected volume which you can purchase from Amazon.
You start play by leaving the castle at the far left of the world map. The route from castle to castle is considered to be safe and thus you will experience no encounters. Once you step foot off of the path however you are subject to random encounters which are quite frequent. Combat is very deadly and I would suggest saving often.
The various creatures that you encounter include: Orc, Hobgoblin, Harpy, Fire-Imp, Fire Giant, Minotaur, Wolfen, Wight, Ring Wight, Burrow Wight, Centaur, Kraken, and Dragon. Each time you slay a foe or find treasure it increases your overall rating or experience level. One of the highlights of this game is it’s prose and naming of places. One of the first things you have to do in the game is locate the Temple of Y’Nagioth, found in the swamp, and search the temple until you find the Amulet of Alarin. You then have to make your way to the Black Tower of Zaexon and search it’s multiple levels for the six stones which power the amulet (Infinity Stones anyone?). Once you have the amulet and the stones you then travel to Vounim’s Lair, found in the forest, to find the Helm of Evanna. This is great stuff! The author gets an A+ from me for the classic sword & sorcery labels and excellent backstory.
What I also found to be highly entertaining was that each time you gain an experience level you acquire a new label or description for that level. You can view your experience level progression by hitting the letter E on your keyboard. Doing so will tell you how many stones you have acquired so far and your current level. Here is a partial listing of the level descriptions:
- Level 11 – Assassin
- Level 12 – Giant Killer
- Level 13 – Hero
- Level 14 – Champion
- Level 15 – Necromancer
- Level 16 – Loremaster
- Level 17 – Paladin
- Level 18 – Superhero
- Level 19 – Dragon Slayer
- Level 20 – Knight of the Valley
- Level 21 – Master of Combat
- Level 22 – Dominator
- Level 23 – Prince of the Valley
- Level 24 – Guardian
- Level 25 – Warlord
- Level 26 – Demon Killer
I found it enjoyable to discover what my new moniker would be when I attained a new level. The labels evoked memories from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition.
Combat seems an entirely random affair. You can choose to strike at head, body, or legs. When you choose to strike the head you can deal more damage in a single blow but you also supposedly leave yourself more vulnerable to attack. When I first began play I experimented with choosing different body parts to attack and the results all seemed quite random to me so I merely elected to strike at the head each time going forward. I never really had to resort to spells either because the Wights consume their own psi-points when they fling Lightning Bolts at you so as long as you can “outlast” them, they will fade away.
The first time I entered the Temple of Y’Nagioth I did not find the Amulet of Alarin. The treasures are randomly generated when you first enter a level or lair so it is possible that you may not find what you’re looking for and have to leave and then enter the level multiple times until you do find what you’re looking for. This is exacerbated when you are looking for the six stones within the Black Tower of Zaexon. It is possible that through random generation that you find a stone that you already possess. So you may have to explore the levels of the tower multiple times until acquire all six stones.
Up to this point; I found the game to be extremely enjoyable. It does not have incredible graphics or gameplay in 1982 compared to other games published in that year; but it has the classic sword & sorcery schtick nailed down. From the backstory to the location descriptions, the mission requirements, and even the rating labels check a lot of boxes for the classic sword & sorcery fanboys. I had uncovered the Amulet of Alarin, found all six stones, had maxed out most of my attributes and was genuinely having a good time up through level 10.
Here is where the game runs into a problem. You will discover that when you travel to Vounim’s Lair that the game will not randomly generate the Helm of Evanna for you to find until you achieve the experience level of Demon Killer. This equates to a rating of 26. You will discover that you have everything you need to win the game and proceed further by levels 10-12. So I had to travel back to the Black Tower of Zaexon and grind and grind and grind until I achieved the rating of Demon Killer. This involved a lot of repetitive combat. It took approximately 45 minutes of straight play to achieve each new level. So in summary I spent probably 3 hours acquiring all I needed; and then another 12 hours of grinding to get to level 26.
Once you’ve reached a rating of Demon Killer then the game will randomly generate the Helm of Evanna for you to find within Vounim’s Lair. Once I had the Helm in hand then it was a simple matter to travel to the Castle. There is no win screen or any kind of fanfare when you return which was a little disappointing. You have the option to continue to play as well. The highest level you can achieve is supposedly level 28: Master of Destiny but I chose to take a hard pass.
It took roughly 15-18 hours to finish The Valley and much of that was spent grinding from a rating of 10 to the necessary rating of 26. I believe the grinding requirement will chase away everyone but the most diehard player. I don’t regret my time spent with the game but the most excellent backstory and original item and location descriptions were not enough to balance out the grinding mechanic
I have less than pleasant memories of this game! It was published for the ZX81 as a type-in piece of software, probably the largest that was ever created for the machine. It was part machine code, part-BASIC and all the space-saving techniques used to cram it into 16K meant that the code was well obfuscated. I recall long hours spent typing in the code and then even more hours trying to debug it, particularly the machine code bits. I don’t recall if I ever managed to get it working properly – I suspect that I didn’t!
You can see the listing of the game for the ZX81 on the web here: https://mocagh.org/softguide/valleyadv.pdf
Yes I included the original article from the April 1982 Computing Today that included the code to type in. I chose to play the commercialized version for the Commodore 64 rather than the ZX Spectrum port. Thank you William I am sorry to hear that you had such a bad experience with it