DBQUEST

                  Review by Graham Raven

I found DBQuest whilst surfing the A1 shareware catalogue, I seem
to think that the game cost 50p if my memory serves me right, and
being an RPG I just had to have it.

This version of DBQuest was made in 1993 so the graphics are a
little dated but they still work well enough. It's not a huge game
by any standards but should keep you amused for about a week or
two. As is typical with all such games, all the old advice about
RPGs is as true as ever. Save the game often.  Get yourself a
weapon as soon as possible and get the best weapon you can as soon
as you can afford it. Talk to everyone!

I followed the usual pattern as you do when exploring RPG worlds;
I died a LOT initially, and then finally got myself a weapon.
Whenever you kill something in DBQuest, troll, spiders whatever,
armed with only your small knife to start with, there is
invariably some reward afterwards such as gold, gems or maybe a
staff. Oh yes, and 'food', which is invariably rotten.  Don't eat
rotten food! You know it makes sense!

It's good news when you find a staff, so equip it immediately and
thereafter you might not find yourself dying every two minutes! As
soon as you can afford it, buy a good sword, preferably an Elven
blade or a magical one. Once you've progressed this far life is
going to get much easier! Other various items you can pick up
after successful encounters include amulets, rings and potions.
The potions can be good, may apparently do nothing or occasionally
can be nasty. You either experiment on yourself or you can have
them identified by any merchant who sells them (for a price of
course). The amulets and rings should definitely be experimented
with. Many of them will do nothing for you, it all depends on what
type of character you are, but you will be informed as to which
ones actually bring you benefit the moment you equip them.

Another thing you have to watch is that you sleep when tired.  Not
only do your hit points suffer when tired but also your dexterity,
intelligence, power etc. You can camp out when in the wilds and
you'll usually get away with it, although you may wake up in the
middle of the night with a monster trying to bite your head off.
If you are near civilisation you can, indeed must, sleep in a bed.
Any bed will do, the occupants of this world seem to have quite
liberal views on this matter, so if you can get to the King's bed
chamber, you can sleep in his bed too.

Do explore everywhere in the villages and castles. I remember
dying of starvation on many occasions as I was unable to raise the
necessary 50 gold pieces for ten rations of food. Little did I
know just then that if I'd searched upstairs at the castle the
cook would have sold me 25 rations for one gold piece! Once you've
found the right kind of place to buy rations, thereafter you can
buy (and carry) hundreds of them very cheaply and are unlikely to
go hungry ever again even if you do have a full party of six
members.

There are many points in the game where you will need a password
in order to progress. This is one good reason for talking to
everyone and also for reading any books that you might come
across. You will NOT guess any password, so don't waste too much
time trying, they are always bizarre.

I really enjoyed the variety of conversations that you could have
with different NPCs. As you might imagine each character tends to
have just the one, limited set of things to say but at least the
conversation is unique to that character. One woman's husband had
supposedly gone off adventuring and has never returned. Doubtless
eaten by a monster or drowned? She certainly thought he was dead
but still yearned for his return.  Hmm, if truth were known the
adventuring her husband was actually into was a pretty young
female, who isn't desperately bright and who he set up home with
many miles away. Love affairs are not uncommon, and you get to see
a fair cross section of a normal society considering the size of
DBQuest.

The mechanics of conversation is pretty simple. If someone doesn't
attack you on sight, then you will always find that you can talk
to them. Simple terms such as NAME, JOB, JOIN, HELLO and BYE will
bring predictable responses, plus anything a character says which
is in capitals is also a keyword that you should try using. Of
course there are always absurdities in the conversations (this is
even true in real life!). When finally I had destroyed the really
bad guy, killed all his the skeletons and broken open all the
prisoners cells in the dungeon, it would have been nice if they
could have escaped, cried "Hoorah!" and stuff like that. Instead
they all said that they were too busy (being burnt, tortured etc)
to be able to join me. "Escape you idiots!" No, they couldn't cope
with that idea.

It also amused me that in the presence of the King and Queen you
could decide to have a fight with one of the guards, hack him and
all his mates to pieces, and another guard plus their majesties
completely ignored you. In fact you can have a friendly chat with
any of them immediately afterwards.

My character progressed nicely throughout the game, from being a
complete wimp to an almost super hero, flying on magic carpets and
having statues built in his honour. The world also lived happily
ever after, so that was good too.  If anything the game is rather
short, I think that it has more than enough scope to be made into
something far more extensive, and for all I know, later versions
of the game may well be so.  I've tried to locate the latest
version on the net but without luck so far.

All in all an enjoyable couple of weeks fantasy.

Rating: Slightly biscuit.










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