The story of Theseus & the Minotaur is a classic tale from Greek Mythology. King Minos had a great palace for himself and inside this palace Minos built a giant labyrinth, and at the center of the maze, he kept a terrifying creature – the Minotaur. Theseus would end up overpowering the beast and stabbing him in his throat, fatally wounding him.
TSR of Dungeons & Dragons fame enters the home computer game arena with this offering. Bruce Nesmith was one of the programmers who would then stay on with TSR and write numerous modules and books for them before taking the job of senior game designer for Bethesda Softworks. He would go on to work on Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, Oblivion, Oblivion’s Expansion: Shivering Isles, Fallout 3 and then serve as lead designer for Skyrim.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this offering and was pleasantly surprised to find that it is an early dungeon crawler. The labyrinth has three floors which are 10 x 10 in size. You always begin play on the bottom floor in the corner. The dungeon presents itself as a three dimensional wireframe format much like Wizardry or Ultima. There are holes in the floor and ceiling and you will find yourself moving up and down between the three floors to access certain areas.
There are secret doors located throughout the complex and they look exactly like a normal wall. To find the secret door you have to walk into the wall. If there is a secret door there you will walk through it. Each labyrinth also has what is called a Hall of Mirrors which is a very confusing place.
Movement is through keyboard commands. L for left and R for right. The Enter key will move you forward while A will execute an about face or turn you all the way around. Combat is executed with the F command from the keyboard when encountering the Minotaur or the Minotaur variations. You begin the game without a weapon and have to resort to using your bare hands. When you defeat an enemy you can then press G for get. This command lets you search for a weapon in the space where you are standing. I found a thigh bone and was able to deal much more damage with it than with my bare hands.
In the first 150 turns of the game you can press W for wait and it lets a turn pass while you do nothing. You will heal one point of damage for every turn you wait but after turn 200 this feature turns off. If you press H from the keyboard this allows you to check your current health status. It also will display your current score, the amount of time you have spent in the maze, and the items that you have in your possession
The game ends when you leave the labyrinth through the door that you entered. The goal is to go into the maze and rescue Princess Ariadne and then make your way out. She can be virtually anywhere within the maze so you’ll want to check every square. You receive points for the following:
You can also choose how simple or complex you want the computer to generate the labyrinth. It is essential that you map the labyrinth if you do not want to become lost.
I enjoyed this offering and was surprised to uncover another early dungeon crawler. I would have enjoyed the game much more if the screen did not refresh itself each time I moved and the redraw rate was slow. If you’re playing on an emulator you can greatly increase the emulator speed to overcome this problem. TSR would publish another pseudo-RPG in 1982 of their popular board game; Dungeon! We’ll be taking a look at TSR’s other offering next.