Morabis 1: The Dungeons Of Morabis - Michael S. Hoenie
                  (RPG on Disk 978 for PC)

             Reviewed by James Judge on a 486sx

A little word of warning - right from the outset this game was
screaming a line from a not-so-famous Nirvana song. What was that
line?

"Hate me, do it and do it again".

Yes folks, this is yet another prime example of why the majority
of the public domain programs out there have never and will never
receive wide critical acclaim.

DOM is one of those ASCII RPGs that we all know and avoid
(whenever possible). But DOM is something different, according to
the README file. In fact the author goes as far to say "I have
played many dungeon games in the public domain, but never once
have I seen a game like MORABIS".

"Thank God" is what I say to that, while affecting a spiteful
sneer and curling my top lip in disdain.

For those of you new to RPGs (and for those who didn't read my RPG
guide - pish and tush to you all <grin>) ASCII RPGs give you a
normally complex RPG set of rules with oodles of stats with
strange acronyms such as Int. XPs and THAC0. You are then
presented with a dungeon (usually 50+ levels deep) which you must
enter and charge through, killing loads of monsters and, finally,
killing the almighty Balrog who is guarding some form of artefact.
All the action takes place on a map, which starts off black and is
gradually filled in as you progress through the dungeon. The
entire map is represented using ASCII characters (ie the text
characters you can get from your keyboard) and this means that
often you find yourself repeatedly hitting the down arrow, trying
to drive your '*' into a deadly 'd' which is one square below you
on the map (this is you in deadly hand to hand combat with a
ferocious dragon, by the way - you just have to use your
imagination - "The pictures are better on the radio" kind of
thing).  Throughout the game you will usually find loads of
armour, weapons, scrolls, rings and wands all of which do unknown
things until you suck 'em and see.

So, ASCII RPGs look poor, play doggedly, are outdated, outmoded
and went out of fashion in the mid-eighties when people actually
discovered graphics (or Dungeon Master, as it happened to be) and
two little things called a mouse and playability.

One thing these ASCII RPGs did have going for them was the fact
that each level was randomly generated, so no two levels were ever
the same, the levels were huge and the amount of monsters and kit
you found around and about was immense.  Also the complexity of
your character allowed you to build up a player that you really
enjoyed playing, from a very wide selection of races and
professions.

However, DOM tries to be different. The author says that he wanted
to create a game that is very complex, but easily accessible to
the arcade player, so you can just enter the game and start
hacking. This was a huge mistake. Hoenie has taken away all the
complexity and, therefore, the little bit of enjoyment that was
available from this genre. He has also taken away the randomness
of the levels - no matter how many times you start the only things
different about each level is the monsters and the pieces of kit,
which are spread liberally and randomly through the cast-in-stone
dungeon.  Also the level size has been reduced and the majority of
the levels are behind hidden doors.

Yes, every time you enter a room you have to stand still and hit
the search key about fifty times just to make sure that you
haven't missed a door. Great fun - especially level two where this
degree of searching stupidity is taken one step further - not only
do you have to find the hidden doors (of which there may be four
or five in any given room) but you also have to search out the
illusionary walls - eighty percent of the entire level is
illusionary wall, meaning that for every move you go you need to
search for a new illusionary wall. One or two is OK, it adds to
the fun, but to make a whole level like this? It shows a lack of

creativity and imagination, not to mention a complete lack of
knowledge as to what goes to make a good game a good game.

Because Hoenie has seen fit to simplify everything monsters rarely
move out of their little allotted space (usually four or five
squares) and the only keyboard commands you use often are the
movement ones, the search key and the attack key. There are still
quite a few wands and potions out there, but they all have similar
functions - usually a fireball or teleport monster wand - with the
scrolls being similarly boring, they're all made out of a
wonderful range of materials from oaken scrolls through to
tungsten and zinc (I joke not!) but all have the same function -
Identify Item.

Oh, and there are only twenty five levels to traverse to finally
find the missing amulet of Sae'gore which shouldn't take anyone
too long to complete, but whether you'd want to is a completely
different kettle of fish.


I'd be willing to forgive all of the above and more if this game
was the first by an author who was just experimenting. I'd be more
lenient if the game was particularly old - say the mid-eighties.
I'd be willing to forget everything and give the game an average
review if the game was knocked out in a week while the author was
trying out a new language.

However, this is not the case. The game is copyrighted 1991 and
is, in fact, Hoenie's fifteenth game. Oh dear. What is even worse
is that it took him thirty months to program and then a subsequent
eight months to playtest. And you know what _REALLY_ gets on my
nerves? There are still bugs in the game - I can't pick up certain
objects, the game keeps on crashing out, there is no load game
facility, some of the commands in the manual do not work in the
game and, to top it all, the stupid idiot can't even spell
DESCENDING!!!!  Decending, indeed - huh!

In the manual Hoenie mentions the fact that he's had this game out
a while now and, despite repeated requests for correspondence from
players who have enjoyed the game, he still hasn't received any
feedback about this game. I wonder why this is? Maybe I should
send him this review to show him where he is going wrong...

Another line of a Nirvana song springs to mind here...

"Use just once and destroy".

Personally I'd just recommend the destroy part for this piece of
useless, inconsequential, boring, unimaginative, shallow, dull
game which deserves to be wiped off every single disk in the whole
Universe.

What's that? No, I don't like the game all that much...






                              - o -