Catacombs was developed and published by J.K. Greye Software and published by Melbourne House in the United States. It was released in 1981 for the ZX81 and Timex TS1000.
Catacombs involves the exploration of randomly generated dungeon levels. You are represented by an asterisk as shown above and as you move about; the current dungeon level layout is slowly revealed to you. I have always been a sucker for this overhead Fog of War view in dungeon crawl games. Though Fog of War is used in the context of the military it is also a gaming term. It simply refers to areas of the map that you have not yet discovered or explored. Areas of the map marked in black or gray are areas that the player has not yet explored. Once you explore these areas, the black parts of the map will become revealed. In recent gaming years this term is not used as much as it used to be. It became a staple for many of the early computer role-playing games.
There is not a specific quest that needs to be completed in Catacombs. The only goal is to simply stay alive. Much like Rogue which was released in 1980, Catacombs uses letters and ascii to represent creatures and treasure. Your mission on each randomly generated level is to find food represented with a capital F and food acts as literal hit points as they increase your strength as you gobble them up. A problem with this game is that your strength decreases constantly throughout the game at a speed of 1 point per second whereas in Rogue you lost strength or hit points when you moved. So you’ll find you can’t find food fast enough in these randomly generated dungeons. You are always on the clock and on the run.
When you slay a monster your strength can increase as well so this is yet another way to improve your hit points. So you increase your strength rating by finding food and by slaying adversaries. The monsters are represented by letters and they are assigned starting positions in the dungeon when the level is randomly generated. When you get close to a creature and it steps on your square combat is then initiated. Catacombs is an auto-battler, meaning the combat is automatically calculated as the character and monster trade blows each round. Damage done to each other is determined by strength values and the difference between strength values. In my play throughs I ran across Orcs, Dragons, Trolls, Minotaurs, and a Phoenix.
You also want to accumulate the treasures that you find along the way and you can see my character next to a treasure icon up above.
In each dungeon level there is an EXIT which takes you to the next dungeon level. The screen will fade to black and there will be a pause as the next dungeon level is generated.
I did encounter a trap on one of the randomly generated levels and the game had me guess a number between 1 and 5 to escape the trap. I guessed incorrectly on the first attempt, was still caught in the trap, and had to guess a second time. I died in that trap after three consecutive incorrect guesses (that is some bad luck). I did not encounter another trap in any of my other play sessions so random traps must be quite rare.
There was no way to “win” in Catacombs as there was no specific quest to complete. The “win” was getting the opportunity to play and experience this early game.
For my next gaming experience I am going back to 1980 and to the interactive text adventure format to play Deathship. “It’s a cruise ship – but not the Love Boat and survival is far from certain” said COMPUTE! magazine in the November/December 1980 issue.