Telengard Remake Review

Remember Telengard? You know, that CGA-sporting, top-down multiplatform RPG from the early 80’s? Well, apparently Travis Baldree of Mythos and Fate fame has taken it upon himself to remake it, and Tales of the Rampant Coyote has given the latest version a run-through:

When I was a kid playing this game on my C-64, I never made it too far. One bad encounter with a teleporter room to whisk me down to level 30 or something, and I was toast. But I was always curious if there was anything different about level 50 than level 2. Besides no more stairs or pits leading down. I spent some time looking over the game’s code (it was written in BASIC with some machine language subroutines), but never found anything. No big goal or anything.

Replaying it on the PC with the advantage of mid-game saving and easy, fast reloading, what took me weeks on my C-64 at age thirteen or fourteen could now be accomplished in just a few hours. Sitting on a throne has a chance of increasing or decreasing your level (about an equal chance of either, plus a chance of doing nothing, or teleporting you to a random location). So I’d save the game after a level-up, and restore after a level-down. A half hour of this saw my dude up to 22nd level. Another level-raise saw my experience points wrap around into negative number space, so I guess I’m about as high level as I’m gonna get.

So I proceeded to find a way down to the lower levels of the dungeon – and got my clock cleaned. Repeatedly. The key is to acquire the most powerful magic items. Otherwise, the critters down on the lower levels will do more damage than you have hit points in a single hit. I’ve had traps go off on treasure that killed me instantly!

I remember playing Telengard, but I spent far more time with a similar title called DnD. I even remember trying desperately to force it to function as a door on my WWIV BBS back in the day, but nothing I tried would work. Good times, nonetheless.

Thanks, RPGCodex.