Labyrinth was written by Frank Corr, Jr. and William F. Denman. Denman wrote Reality Ends and Frank Corr, Jr. wrote Deathmaze 5000, both of which were also published in 1980 for the Apple II and TRS-80 systems. Both of these games are what I consider hidden gems. Reality Ends was very unique and Deathmaze 5000 is probably the earliest dungeon crawler for the home computer. I had no idea it had even existed prior to Wizardry I: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. These two artists have now paired up to bring us another high quality offering from Med Systems. Med Systems would later be bought out by Screenplay in 1983 and would have to close their doors in 1984. We will be covering more of their offerings at a later date and I’m particularly looking forward to playing Asylum from this same duo.
The opening screenshot of Labyrinth
Labyrinth is another dungeon crawler which was released in the same year as DeathMaze 5000. It uses the same engine and so veterans of Deathmaze 5000 will feel right at home. It uses wireframe graphics to display a 3d maze that you can move around in using the four arrow keys on your keyboard. There are no graphics or sound but there is quite a bit of text; probably more so than you’ll experience in Wizardry I. There are five total levels and more than 550 locations. There is no character generation or ability scores to deal with but inventory management can prove to be tricky. Like Deathmaze 5000, you have a limited number of moves before hunger kicks in and you’ll need to eat. Your illumination in the labyrinth is provided by torches and so your light source also limits the number of the total moves you can make. You’ll find three stores of food as you explore the five levels and you’ll also find three replacement torches as well. So there is a strategy involved in trying to economize your moves once you learn more and more about the maze and how it is constructed.
I found Labyrinth to be extremely difficult. It looks like my experience with it and opinion are outliers. One of the things I enjoy doing after finishing a game is to read about the experience other archivists had with it and to read reviews others wrote about the game. Most seem to have found Labyrinth easier than Deathmaze 5000 but I’m going to have to respectfully disagree. Deathmaze 5000 was indeed very difficult but the story and objective seemed more linear to me (advance and progress from level one to level two to level three etc.). MOST of the puzzles, while difficult, seemed to have a more logical solution that you could work through too. Labyrinth, on the other hand, also has five total levels but you access those levels via teleporters and pits. The teleporters are insidious. They are so seamless that it is very difficult to tell that you’ve even been transported. I probably spent almost two hours diligently mapping before I realized that areas of the map seemed to be overlapping one another or repeating. I had to start over with the assumption that teleporters were in play and to actively watch for them. I also avoided the pits at first but later learned that the pits, much like the teleporters, could be used to quickly access different levels. The entire five levels were connected like a giant puzzle via teleporters and pits. I was having a conversation with another gamer on Discord where I claimed that one of the puzzles for many of the early adventure and role-playing games was the map itself. This is certainly the case for Labyrinth. The game was a nightmare to map and I found it to be fiendishly clever.
To make matters worse, the solutions to the puzzles were very silly and rarely made any sense at all. An example is dealing with a Wraith in the final third of the game. You do this by throwing a cream pie.
The program then responds with; Pie in the Face! Pie in the Face! and then the Wraith vanishes. Really? The entire program however is very clever. Once the Wraith is defeated you have to don it’s clothes. These clothes allow you to “float” over a deadly pit on this level that would otherwise kill you (trust me, I died THAT WAY too). While you’re wandering back however; you encounter another adventurer, who thinks you’re the Wraith since you’re dressed like it, and the adventurer throws a pie in your face! I had to laugh out loud. Pure insanity. So the only way to solve these puzzles is to resort to a text adventure solution in which you have to experiment with all of your inventory items and how they interact with the obstacle. This was a true test of my patience and perseverance as there was no way for me to save the game. The emulator nor the game offered any kind of save state. So each time I made a mistake in the game or died as a result of being wrong I had to start completely over. I found that after an hour or 90 minutes with the game I’d shut off the computer and vow to try again tomorrow. This game took me almost three weeks to solve and I probably spent more than 25 hours on it. I even had to resort to a hint to help me through one of the puzzles much to my chagrin. So because I found the mapping to be so much more difficult and because the puzzles did not make a lot of sense I found Labyrinth to be much more difficult than Deathmaze 5000.
I color coded my map to show how the pits and shafts are connected and I highlighted where the teleporters are and how they work. In all honesty this made my head hurt. Each level operates from a 10 x 10 grid.
You actually begin play on Level Two. There is a lot going on with this level. You can’t access part of the level because of a fog. If you attempt to explore those areas it attracts the minotaur. You are not yet prepared to face this beast and it will rip you asunder so the area marked with fog is an avoid for now. There are four teleporting squares on this level. Three of them are found at the corners of the grid; the last teleporter will take you to a mysterious final level which you will not encounter until near the end of the game. The useful item to find on this level is salt. You also find a magical book that contains a word of power: PTOOI When you say this word it teleports you to an enclosed section of level one where you find a 2-handed sword. The problem then is you cannot escape from this enclosed area and the game becomes soft locked. You will have to start over. I mistakenly thought then that the sword was a red herring as Deathmaze 5000 had a few of them. You will, however, require the sword later and there is indeed a way to escape this enclosed section. The solution does not come easy.
The other items that you find include a pair of roller skates, a cream pie, a lantern which doesn’t work, and a haunted jar that you can’t open. It was at this point that my frustration factor was high. It was then that I found the iron bar. On level two there is an area where the walls move in on you and crush you; causing me once again to start the game over. I wish I would have kept track of the number of times I died; perhaps it was over 65 times? There had been an elevator trap like this in Deathmaze 5000 so my first thought was to dismiss and avoid it. Until I found that iron bar. My mind flashed to the Star Wars trash compactor scene so I traveled back to the crushing walls and they were immediately stopped since I had the bar in my possession. I dropped the jar here and stepped out and sure enough the jar was smashed and a ghost was released.
The ghost, upon release, reveals a word. Armed with that knowledge, I once again said; “PTOOI” and transported myself to the enclosed area with the 2-handed sword. Once I had the sword in my possession; I said “Mevar” and I found myself teleported out of the enclosure to Level Three.
I wish I could tell you the game got easier from there; but quite the opposite actually. You have to deal with the following:
- a cave gnome which attacks
- an ugly man who attacks
- a hungry cave bear
- a maiden who turns into a witch and then casts a spell upon you
- a lantern which doesn’t seem to work
- a wraith
- a vending machine
- a minotaur which seems unbeatable thus far
The solutions to these obstacles or puzzles do not make much sense. The only way to solve them is through trial and error using the items that are in your inventory. I was like what in the world do I do with a pair of roller skates and some salt? In addition to these things you still need to find a way to circumvent the fog and there is also a final area of impenetrable darkness in which you have to stumble your way around.
I wanted to reiterate that the reason the game took me so long was that I had no way to save the game. Many of the puzzles in this dungeon crawl could only be solved by using text adventure tactics. Which meant experimenting with verbs and inventory items on the spot. Each time I was wrong resulted in my untimely demise and I was forced to start all over again. Every single obstacle or dilemma above resulted in multiple restarts as I worked through the problem.
There is a lot of text in this game and because the difficulty level was so high; each time I found myself solving a puzzle it was very rewarding to get to read new text or find a new area opening up.
As you near the end of the game you’ll find that you’ll have to lure the minotaur to you and this alone resulted in me dying a few times in order to get it right. You’re also going to have to find a weapon worthy of killing the minotaur and the 2-handed sword is not it.
I am definitely impressed with the team from Med Systems. Reality Ends, Deathmaze 5000, and Labyrinth were three of the more memorable games that I played in 1980. Perhaps it is I who was merely living in a cave but I’m surprised these three games didn’t garner more notoriety in the 80s. I’ve mentioned this before but I was stunned that there were dungeon crawlers sporting wire frame dungeons published before Wizardry I (not counting mainframe games). Written in machine language too so movement and speed through these dungeons are seamless. You absolutely could not beat this game without taking the time to carefully map it out. The map itself is probably it’s biggest puzzle and I spent much time with it. Make no mistake; this is a dungeon crawler with text adventure characteristics.
There definitely seemed to be a fascination with the minotaur and maze theme in 1979 and 1980. Our first encounter with the theme was in Eamon: Lair of the Minotaur released in 1979. In 1980 Hellfire Warrior had a dungeon level known as the Labyrinth in which you wandered a maze fighting hordes of different minotaurs. TSR published Theseus & the Minotaur in 1980 which I just recently played and reviewed and now, finally, we see the theme used yet again here in The Labyrinth.
Next up on the docket is The Dark Kingdom; an RPG adventure game for the TRS-80 published in 1980.