Cells and Serpents was written by G. Lovel for the Nascom computer and published as a type in piece in December 1980’s Computing Today. It was ported in 1982 for the Atari 8-bit, BBC/Electron, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum.
The artwork is amazing and also the only artwork you’re going to see because Cells & Serpents is completely text based.
The game is reminiscent of The Devil’s Dungeon.
The game always begins with your character given a choice of three possible paths.
You make your choice by merely pressing the first letter of each word. For example if you want to take the left door you press (L)eft on the keyboard.
You can see, depicted above, that your character starts with 100 hit points, 10 spells, and that you’re on level 1. The character is always presented with three choices or three path to take much like a pick your path to adventure book.
Anyone remember these?
Many of the rooms contain a monster within. If you press G for (G)o In then combat will ensue. You want to monitor your hit points closely. Once they reach zero then you’re dead and will have to start all over. Combat is resolved automatically behind the scenes.
The goal of the game is to descend down into the depths of the dungeon in search of an exit. The exit allows you to leave the dungeon. Once you accomplish this task it is the equivalent of winning the game. It also allows you the option to start the game again with the same character, keeping all of the statistics and items that you’ve found. Hence the question on the start screen; ‘Do you want to load a saved character?’
When you defeat an enemy in combat your reward is usually gold pieces but sometimes you find more than that as shown below:
Many of the monsters seem pulled from the dungeons & dragons game setting. I played Cells & Serpents on an emulator and it took me roughly two hours to beat.
Your path choices are usually doors, rooms corridors and stairs going up or down. You never really want to reverse your steps and go back up unless you’re having a very difficult time with the encounters on the current level. You want to keep moving forward which means making your way lower and lower into the bowels of the dungeon. The exit you’re looking for can be found on one of the lower levels. One of your path choices can also be a Wall though when I chose that option the wall fell on me and I suffered damage so I learned early on to always avoid that option.
I finally found my exit on the 11th level of the dungeon. I killed 28 monsters and finished with 39 spells. The best item I found was a luckstone which improved my randomization odds by 62.5%. I had to kill a Pit Fiend to get it and that almost did not end well.
Cells & Serpents was a nice diversion but certainly not comparable to some of the giants that were published in 1983 such as Wizardry III: Legacy of Llylgamyn or Exodus: Ultima III.
Next up on the docket is Bokosuka Wars.
Until next time…