Stuart Smith developed Ali Baba & the Forty Thieves in 1981 and The Return of Heracles in 1983. He is best known for his Adventure Construction Set in 1985, published by Electronic Arts, which has quite a fan base to this very day.
His very FIRST game however was Fracas which was written for the Apple II in 1980.
Fracas is a computer role playing game that offered the home computer user a number of firsts in 1980. The game offers a multi-player feature and gives you the choice of competitive and cooperative modes. You can have up to eight different players participate and there are six different alliances. The characters can work together as a group and be part of the same alliance or each player can join a different alliance and explore the environs of Faroph competitively on their own. This is an amazing feature offered in 1980. It allows a group of friends to play together and cooperate with one another or they can play competitively with one another. The game is turn based and so when one character is done moving and taking his or her actions then play rotates to the next person who can then take control of his or her character. I get that it is not quite Call of Duty but remember this is 1980 we’re talking about. You can also choose to play individually against the computer.
The incredible thing about this game is that the monsters and NPC’s that you encounter have the same features and choices as the player character. So an NPC can race across the room and take the pile of Ducats (gold) before you do or the NPCs or creatures can choose to target each other rather than you. When one NPC or creature defeats the other they gain experience, strength, or skill points! So the monsters are capable of advancing in levels just like the player characters. I’ve never encountered anything like this yet in the CRPGs of this era.
The map is enshrouded in a fog of war and as you move about more of it is revealed to you. This is reminiscent of Doom Cavern from this same year and of the Phantasie series which wouldn’t arrive until years later. The exploration and unveiling of the new areas of the map I found to be absolutely addicting. The game uses different color coded squares to represent each player and his or her alliance. The monsters and NPCs are never the same color as any of the players.
When you enter an area it gives you the name of the location, how many Ducats are present, and the NPCs or monsters which are also in the location. There is no overall plot or story and your only goal is to move about the map and find treasure while defeating various monsters. The manual suggests that in a game of multiple players that they should set the rules for the current scenario. Perhaps the player who acquires a fixed amount of wealth wins or perhaps the team with the most wealth wins or the player with a character left alive wins. A character that dies is out of the game. The players can enforce their own rules and decide what each person can and can’t do. The enforcement of rules becomes important during character creation because you can have the computer randomly roll your stats or you can manually type them in much like we were able to in Temple of Apshai. So players may want to govern or police against creating ultra powerful characters.
The locations, NPCs and monsters that you encounter are all written very creatively. There is frequent use of humor in the game which I am normally not a fan of but it works very well here. You may face Jack the Ripper in an alley, or in the granary you’ll encounter a fat rat, the biggest rat or Speedy Gonzalez (which you discover is very fast). I laughed out loud when I had an encounter in the tavern with BLOWHARD.
I laughed out loud yet again when exploring the crypt. I stumbled into the tomb of the NOT QUITE DEAD WARRIOR and then had to do battle with an animated skeleton. Great stuff. I also got quite a kick out of the different verbs that were used in the game to describe the physical attacks. There was wallop, clobber and lambaste. Each verb denotes just how hard you were hit or able to hit. I found myself fist pumping the room when I read that I had CLOBBERED the Vampire.
The humor can even be found in the maps which are slowly created to reveal an overall pattern you’re exploring.
When you slay monsters and find treasure you can gain experience levels. When this occurs you can choose to allocate 1 point to either strength or skill. You do not get to choose which type of weapon you begin play with. As your skill level increases so does your weapon skill. So a character with a 1o skill is using a cutlass while a character with a 17 skill is using a two handed sword. There is no magic system in the game of any kind. There are no spells or any magic items or weapons.
I wasn’t quite sure what kind of goal to set for myself when I first began to play but then once I started getting into the game my personal goal became very clear. I wanted to keep exploring and discovering until there was nothing left to explore or discover and that is exactly what I did.
The manual did a nice job explaining the game mechanics and it was well put together. The beginning of the manual tells the tale of Eldric and Mordella and their exploits in the Forbidden Forest. It serves as an example of the adventures that can be found in Fracas in the Faroph scenario.
I really enjoyed this game quite a bit. I never felt “bored” and I really enjoyed exploring the unknown parts of Faroph. The game speed while the map was being drawn was much faster than that of Temple of Apshai. I can imagine that a family or a group of friend in 1980 would have had a lot of fun in competitive or cooperative play. I am going to call Fracas a very pleasant surprise from 1980 and it stacks up well with the computer role playing competition of that year.