Apventure to Atlantis was written by Robert Clardy and published by Synergistic Software which was founded by Clardy in 1978. It is the fourth game that I’ve played by the author. Dungeon Campaign was his first release in 1978 which was followed by Wilderness Campaign a year later. The 1979 sequel took role-playing games to the great outdoors. Odyssey: The Compleat Apventure‘s release in 1980 was a conglomeration of the previous two game with a lot going on. Now in 1982 Apventure to Atlantis is a direct sequel to the previous installment.
In Odyssey: The Compleat Apventure you reclaimed the High One’s lost orb, and became Lord of Lapour. This sequel begins where the last adventure left off. Now that you have the Orb and you are Lord of Lapour, it is your job to lead a band of magic-users against an Atlantean menace, and end technology’s cruel dominance.
The manual provides some backstory and does a great job of describing the Atlantean’s descent into power and corruption.
This early RPG is a hybrid containing many different systems within one game. All of the game play is through text or keyboard input. The game begins with an overland map of the Island of Lapour where you have to recruit a band of wizards to join you in your assault on Atlantis. This phase of the game is very reminiscent of Clardy’s Wilderness Campaign.
The second part of the game involves you taking control of an Atlantean airship and flying from island to island. On these islands you’ll enter castles and search them for powerful spells to take with you on your journey. This unique phase of the game plays like a graphic adventure with puzzles.
Ultimately you’ll discover and land on the island of Atlantis where you’ll have to search for the Crack of Doom so that you can hurl your Orb into it and destroy the island. The mission is not an easy one because there are several puzzles and obstacles to overcome which can only be solved with the appropriate spells. All of this probably sounds very cool and it certainly is. There is a lot here to like and to unpack. My ONLY complaint; and I want to address it now before we look more closely at each facet of the game; is that the manual does a very poor job of providing you with a keyboard layout or explaining which keys do what. It is possible that I may have been missing a key piece of documentation. I checked two different sources and all I found were a manual and a card of hints. Now I’m not sure if this was purposefully done to increase the amount of time it would take to complete the game; or if the author felt that the joys of discovery would be appreciated more by the RPG enthusiast; but more than once I found myself feeling like I was missing a key piece of documentation and I found myself experimentally pressing all of the keys which was frustrating. With that out of the way let’s unpack this little gem.
This game and the accompanying documentation does not go out of it’s way to hold your hand through this venture. I spent quite a bit of time exploring and experimenting before I discovered what was required of you to progress ahead.
It was from inside the castle on the island of Lapour that I discovered that you could summon five guards that would do your bidding. If any or all of the guards should perish while you’re exploring the island you can return to the castle and summon more guards.
You begin play on the island of Lapour. Your goal is increase your experience through random combat encounters and to recruit a team of wizards to accompany you in the search for Atlantis. This much I knew from reading through the documentation. What took me quite awhile to figure out was the actual recruiting process. When the game starts you find yourself in your study within the castle. The Orb is on a desk with you as well as a book containing five spells. It turns out that you create a team of wizards by offering them one of the spells within the book. If they accept then they become part of your team that you control as well as the spell that you gave them. There is a “wrinkle” here that can soft lock the game for you and cause you to have to begin again. A character’s alignment is represented by a numerical value between -5 and 5. Your alignment represents your morality or views of the world. If you do not assemble a party of like-minded individuals there will be dissention and a wizard or wizards may leave the group. Every spell, and I do mean EVERY SPELL in the game is necessary to reach the end, so if you have wizards leave your group you are in big trouble. If one of the spells is Magic Detect you may as well just start the game completely over. Consider pulling a party together one of the first major puzzles of the game. I warned you the game does no hand holding. Not only did you have to deduce that in order to get a wizard to join your merry band you have to offer them spells; but you need to cast Detect Aura on each prospective wizard to make sure their alignment does not clash with the current party. If the numerical values are not close together than it’s a hard pass. If the alignments are in synch then you do not have to worry about dissention later in the game.
Once your party of five wizards are assembled your next problem is figuring out how to get off of the island. There is a clue within the castle that is meant to nudge you in the right direction. It took me some time to figure this puzzle out. Monsters and enemies are transported to the island of Lapour by means of a flying contraption called an Ornithopter. A picture of the flying contraption is on the cover of the game box. The Ornithopter always drops monsters in the northwest part of the island. I had to make my way to the drop point, and at just the right moment, cast Panic Horn while the monsters are being deposited on the island. This spell, only one of two times you use it in the game, causes the monsters to go into a rage and kill the crew. You and your party can then take control of the Ornithopter which then starts the next phase of the game.
The second phase of the game involves you moving from island to island in an attempt to collect more powerful spells. You can also use the islands or castles as “refueling stations” if you’re running low on fuel. Navigating the Ornithopter was probably the most frustrating part of the game for me. You had to fiddle with the velocity, altitude and direction. You were also constantly besieged by harpies, green skulls, dark phantoms, and warlocks during your flight. It isn’t technically necessary to land on many different islands. Once you exit a castle and are back in the Ornithopter you can land on the same island again and the castle randomly generates.
Aerial combat ensues when you encounter an enemy in the air. You have the choice of using your crossbows, ship’s guns, or spells. Choosing to use the crossbows uses no fuel while choosing to use the ship’s guns depletes your fuel reserves. Aerial combat can be frustrating so save often if you’re using an emulator.
The only reason to explore the castles on the various islands is to collect powerful spells that will aid you when you reach Atlantis. There are 9 utilitarian spells and 6 offense spells.
The 9 utilitarian spells are:
- jump
- rope trick
- levitation
- teleport
- part waters
- penetration
- spider climb
- shrink
- flame sword
The 6 offensive spells are:
- invisibility
- extinguish
- reflection
- sleep
- freeze blast
- ball of fire
If you don’t have all of the spells in your possession then the island of Atlantis is not going to randomly appear. You will need every single spell listed in order to survive your time on the island of Atlantis. Once you have all of the spells then you’ll suddenly find that you see the volcanic island appear while you’re flying. I want to cover a bit more concerning exploration of the castles before we move on to the isle of Atlantis.
There are two kinds of traps that you can encounter while exploring the castle. You can be caught in a cave in or you can fall into a pit trap. If one of your warriors is pinned under rubble due to the cave in then you’re going to need to find the shovel in order to dig him out. If one of your warriors should fall into a pit trap then you’re going to need to find the rope in order to rescue that individual.
Besides a shovel and rope, you will find many different kinds of objects within the castle. They are all hidden from your view. They may be in a corner, under rubbish, near another object in the room, or underneath an object. You can find a vial, a charm, an amulet, a staff, a scroll, etc. When you find an item you need to cast MAGIC DETECT on that item. If it is magical it will transform itself into a spell and it will ask you which of your wizards wants this spell. For example, find a cloak in the castle and casting MAGIC DETECT will always result in the cloak turning into an invisibility spell. You will need to keep landing and exploring castles until you have all 15 spells. A word of caution: be sure that your wizard who has the MAGIC DETECT spell doesn’t run out of uses for that spell. If that happened it would be most unfortunate for you.
The other unique feature of this game is that you may randomly encounter another wizard while exploring the castles. When you do the wizard will not let you go anywhere or do anything so you are forced into a wizard’s duel! When you’re dueling you each choose a spell to fling and the results are as follows:
The castle consists of roughly 18 rooms. This portion of the game looks much like playing a graphic adventure. Each room is labeled and decorated with furniture. Once you have entered the castle you cannot leave until you find the power source necessary to refuel your ship. The power source can always be found by finding three different secret doors. Each of these secret doors will only be revealed after saying a magical word. The magical words are the answers to riddles that you find on hidden notes throughout the castle. You’re going to need some prior knowledge on Greek myths or you’re going to have to resort to looking the answers up. I thought this was another interesting and unique feature of the game. I never thought that any of the riddles were too difficult. My favorite was: Sea God weapon or chewing gum. Other examples were ‘she opened a box of evils’ or ‘abode of the Greek Gods’ or ‘mighty before his haircut’. I had fun finding and solving the various riddles. The riddles are also all in the form of cryptograms that are solved by using letter substitution.
Once you have all 15 spells in your possession it is time to find and land on the volcanic island of Atlantis.
The island of Atlantis was much more difficult than I imagined. It is actually much like traversing a maze. There are no obvious paths to take so you’re going to have to begin to explore the island. You’re looking for the Crack of Doom so that you can hurl the Orb you’re carrying into it. Clardy is obviously paying homage to Tolkien as the Crack of Doom was literally a crevice within Mount Doom. Tolkien pointed out in his translations that he took the phrase from Shakespeare’s Macbeth Act 4, scene 1: ‘What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?’
You will come across many different obstacles as your traversing the island and looking for the Crack of Doom. This is where all of the spells that you collected are going to come in handy.
You come across patrols of the Atlantean guard numerous times and they represent one of the many obstacles I talked about. You can use your Sleep, Freeze Blast, or Ball of Fire spells to deal with them successfully.
In this particular obstacle a Shrink spell will come in handy.
The Rope Trick spell is the ticket to get over this wet stone wall.
There are many other obstacles to deal with on the island and you will find that you will use every spell you have at your disposal. The Crack of Doom was located on the northeastern side of the volcano and it was not easy to reach. I hurled the Orb into the Crack and then was told I had better run for my life. I was able to get to the Ornithopter before the volcano erupted. There is a cool animated sequence in which you then watch a river of molten lava engulf the city of Atlantis.
This was a very unique CRPG offering from Clardy and in my opinion is the crown jewel of the four games we’ve played from him. The different phases of the game made it seem like you were playing three different games. The use of wizards and specific spells to deal with specific puzzles was very unique for it’s time; especially the introduction of a Wizard’s Duel. It took me over 11 hours to complete the game which I played on an Apple II emulator.
We’re not ready to close the book on Robert Clardy and Synergistic Software just yet. If I live long enough and we make it that far down the list; I believe Robert Clardy and his company were responsible for War in Middle Earth from 1988.
Next up will be Caverns of Freitag