Halls of Death was released in 1981 for the Commodore PET and then in 1983 for the Commodore 64. It was developed by Stewart Sargaison. It is a randomly generated dungeon crawler that is comprised of six levels.
There is no overall plot or main quest other than to improve your stats, kill as many creatures as you can, and amass as much treasure as you can. In doing so, each time that you return to the surface your achievements are tallied up and you are assigned a ranking. The ranking system is as follows:
- Apprentice Bumpkin
- Bumpkin
- Yokel
- Peasant
- Novice
- Trainee Warrior
- Warrior
- Swashbuckler
- Apprentice Hero
- Hero
- Seasoned Adventurer
- Dragon Slayer
- Champion
- Necromancer
- Sorcerer
- Mage
- Superhero
- Guardian
- Lord
- Paladin
- Master of Power
- Master of Wisdom
- Ruler of Light
Each time you begin play you create a name for your character and each character starts with 9 strength, 15 psi points, and 9 constitution. The psi points represent magic points. When you enter combat you can choose to cast one of four spells: sleep, teleportation, lightning, and fireball. Casting a spell is a huge drain on your psi points and I found that I rarely ever resorted to casting spells. There is no equipment to purchase and no inventory to manage. Whenever one of your attributes falls below 0 you die.
The above picture represents a typical screen. Movement is executed by pressing [ ; ‘ and / on your keyboard for north, west, east, and then south respectively. The white circles up above represent the dungeon tiles that have been explored. Each time you step on a tile you may encounter a dungeon denizen, find a treasure, detect or succumb to a trap, find a staircase to a lower level, or find nothing at all. The result of each dungeon tile appears to be a random roll. The checkerboard pattern that you see is your starting point and staircase to take you back to the surface.
The dungeon denizens range from bandits, dwarves, kobolds, trolls, gargoyles and ogres to hill giants, mummies, wraiths and dragons! The touch of the mummy is fatal and can kill you with rot instantly so I always held my breath when encountering a mummy. You can choose to retreat (running away) but this doesn’t always work and each time you try and fail your opponent gets an attack in. The wraiths can only be hit with magic and the dragons are extremely tough opponents. They have a lot of hit points and their breath weapon can be devastating. The dragons are only found on the 5th and 6th levels of the dungeon and they are usually guarding quite a bit of treasure. Once you get your strength and/or constitution into the 40s you should be able to face a dragon.
The dungeon levels are randomly generated and what you may or may not encounter on each dungeon tile involves a lot of luck. You can find magic swords which instantly translate into more strength points for you. When you are struck by an opponent it is the strength points you lose not your constitution points so finding magical swords early on is a huge boon. You are limited to the number of battles you can fight with each foray into the dungeon because you lose a point of constitution for each combat whether you win or lose. You can also find Rings of Stamina and these instantly translate into constitution points. You can also find a Helm of Psionics and these translate instantly into psi or magic points. I had mentioned earlier that casting spells are a huge drain on your psi points. There are two strategies that you can employ where these psi points are concerned. The first strategy is that you can ignore the casting of spells all together. If you find that you are finding several Helm of Psionics and your psi points are plentiful the game allows you (by pressing the letter C on the keyboard) to exchange psi points for strength points or vice versa. The cost of this is 3 attribute points for every 1 attribute gain. So you can channel your psi points into your strength at a 3 to 1 cost to increase your strength rather quickly. The second strategy you can choose to employ is to hoard your psi points and do not cast any spells until you stumble upon a dragon’s lair. If you you save your psi points and then cast a fireball upon a dragon the affects can be devastating.
When the game randomly rolls for a trap; you rarely set the trap off. It has been detected and the dungeon tile is marked with a purple circle. Every once in awhile however you will set off the trap and the outcome can be disastrous. In one instance I had a granite block fall from the ceiling onto me doing 20 points of damage. I was instantly killed.
It is common to find numerous different stairways all leading to the next lowest level. In many cases there will be a staircase going lower right next to the staircase you just descended. This makes moving up and down through the levels extremely easy and very fortuitous. Why? Because you can also encounter what are called teleportation squares which will randomly teleport you into the lower levels. In most cases it is level 5 or 6 and your constitution is already low. So it then becomes a race to move back up through the levels with as little combat as possible.
You can also find yourself on a level where the staircase you need to get to seems to be surrounded by dungeon walls with no way to it. There are no secret doors to trigger in this game but there are several solutions to this problem. You can a) simply choose to ignore the problem and it is likely that the game will randomly create another staircase for you as you explore the dungeon level or b) you can simply go back up the staircase you came down, then move down a level again, allowing the game to randomly redraw the dungeon level to remove the problem or lastly c) you can use your magic to destroy the dungeon walls.
Combat is extremely interesting. Each round you have the option of (S)winging, (R)etreating, or casting a s(P)ell. Combat is in real-time not turn based so if you wait too long (more than a few seconds) to choose your option the computer will inform you that you were too slow in making your choice and then it becomes your opponents turn to attack. The combat results are reported through flavorful text. The amount of damage you inflict depends on the type of wound you deliver. A blow to the head usually results in half of your opponents hit points getting wiped out. A blow to the chest or sword arm can be quite painful as well while a blow to the leg is usually equivalent to a scratch. Once one of your attributes falls below 0 you then die. In the above picture I was touched by a mummy and killed by mummy rot.
I found the game to be rather addicting and enjoyable however it pales in comparison to Ultima I and Wizardry I both released in this same year. I can see where a game like this would have been a great transition piece for an arcade gamer who has not yet played any kind of role-playing game. If I had encountered this in 1981 I probably would have had hours of fun with it. I did spend more than a couple of hours with the game and managed to achieve the rank of Hero. I could have kept going and may even try to grind to the rank of Rule of Light one day but with so many games beckoning me and with no real main quest here it is doubtful.