Bloodwych Review by Ultimate Amiga member

[Hungry Horace]

Bloodwych Review by LemonAmiga / EAB /  Ultimate Amiga member

Review by usermember "Bloodwych" of Lemon Amiga / English Amiga Board / Ultimate Amiga

Introduction
Bloodwych is a multiplayer split screen first person role-play adventure! If that sounds a mouthful it's because it is! Fortunately, very few games exist that require such a description.

Many aspects of the game are similar to other role-playing games – choose a team, collect items, gain armour/weapons/levels, stay healthy, solve puzzles, cast spells, kill monsters etc - all while continuing on a path to enlightenment.

Bloodwych differs in that a friend can also join you on the quest and it's this unique premise that makes the game stand out. Now, instead of having everything your own way, you'll have to contend with a fellow human in the gaming world. Will the two of you co-operate or compete? Be greedy or share? Fight or team up? Many options exist in this dungeon realm. Back in 1989 when this game first appeared, this kind of playability was unheard of or at the very least rare.

Background Story
Bloodwych – for those who dare!


Many eons ago, in the land of Trazere, The Bloodwych ruled over the ancient and powerful city of Treihadwyl. From here these psychic mages presided over the affairs of Trazere and everyone living under their watchful eye was happy. However, among the Bloodwych was a bad nut called Zendick, second in power to the Grand Dragon alone. Driven by greed and ambition, he turned his back on his fellow Bloodwych and dabbled in the black arts.

After many years plotting, Zendick finally destroyed the Grand Dragon, leader of the Bloowych. He then banished all who could oppose him to the astral plane. His victorious laugh resounded across the whole land causing the good citizens of Trazere much stress and unhappiness.

From the astral plane, the banished Bloodwych had to find a way of fighting the madness of Zendick. Two of them, Saldar and Vestryl, were charged with choosing from the last sixteen champions of Trazere and guiding them in a quest against Zendick. They will have to journey into the heart of Treihadwyl itself, find the crystals and destroy the dark mage.

So pick up a joystick and go now chosen ones, may the spirits of Bloodwych be with you....


Technical Overview

After a brief loading session displaying an ominous title picture of the Lord of Entropy, the copy protection hammers the drive before giving way to a rather basic looking option screen. From here you can start a new one or two player game, or load a past saved position.


At this point, the single main game disk can now be removed from the drive and replaced with a spare floppy, essential for a save position as you venture onwards in your quest for the crystals. Yes that's right – the game runs entirely from a measly 512K of memory as it was released before the popularity of ram expansions or external drives.

Unfortunately, this meant a few compromises were made in terms of animation and sound. The alternative would have been constant disk loading, swapping and severe restrictions in where two different players can be in the dungeon simultaneously. Since some of the puzzles and gameplay require no restrictions being imposed on the separation of your two parties, any disk access would have complicated issues.

The game also keeps track of the positions of all moving characters and associated stats, objects, doors being open/closed/locked/unlocked, cast spells etc .... for the whole dungeon in real time! Considering Bloodwych has never crashed in sessions lasting hours, it's a testament to the programmers that such a large dynamic environment stays stable.

Thankfully, unless you're a graphics whore, clever design means the audio and visual limitations don't deter from the all-important playability.

Talking about limitations, one I can't understand is the strange save game system. It seems they were so hard pushed for available memory that the game can only manage one save position per disk. The simple save or load routine read/writes on a specific area of a floppy disk, so if you want more than one position (highly advised) you'll have to have several clearly labelled floppies. Also the track specific sound made while loading or saving will become engrained in your brain for life – more so than even "the settlers" main tune. Anyone who's played this game will know exactly where I'm coming from!


Playing the game

Design excuses aside, it's onto the game itself. The menu screen really is an important step in rating Bloodwych. In fact, I'd say it's THE step. Choose the path of a one player game and you'll find yourself fighting against the programmers intentions right from the off. You'll gain mouse control, but you'll loose half your screen play area, all the essential human banter and many game elements that can only be found with the addition of a trusty friend. I've never played Bloodwych single player before and I never will. To do so would be like playing a round of golf without the clubs – yes you can get the ball round the course, but throwing and kicking just isn't the same! In fact, I'm not even going to acknowledge the one player mode exists beyond this point!


Comparing the one and two player game modes of Bloodwych

Back on track, F2 will start the all-important two player game - regaining all the play area but forcing players to give up mouse control for a couple of sturdy joysticks. Normally you'd consider penalising a game for not allowing the option of two mice, but the clever intuitive layout of the main screen makes control and navigation a breeze.

Once into the game, you'll initially be faced with all sixteen champions of Trezere and what an odd bunch they are. Split into different card suits and colours, you'll discover mages (clubs), warriors (spades), adventurers (hearts) and archers (diamonds) with rather fun names. Some also have a different subset of skills like observation, negotiation and stealth. The colour of a particular suit signifies their preferred form of magic and decides what spells they are most proficient with.

 
From this screen each player chooses one champion after which you'll be thrust into the streets of Treihadwyl. From here you must wander around and talk to the remaining champions, deciding who is worthy to join your cause. Three more people may join your team and it's during these interviews you'll first encounter the strange communication system. Everything is spoken with a rather old twist, even the insults. It's actually very comical! You'll be beckoning people to "come and join my merry band", or being honest and telling them "thou art most toad like". You may even bump into your friend while recruiting so make sure he doesn't take any of your favourite characters or steel all the plunder. I could talk for ages on all the options and fun to be had, but the only way to discover everything is to play it yourself.

Once a band of sturdy recruits are under your control, the two of you can then go forth and tackle the main quest. Here you'll find more characters to communicate with – such as monsters, shopkeepers, dragons – and you can buy items from them or simply distract while setting up a sneak attack. You'll also get the chance of trying out a few of the spells and discovering their effects. Soon you'll notice the more you cast a spell, the more powerful it becomes so it's best to get practicing from the off. Killing any unsavoury characters also provides you with experience points, but only to those dishing out the pain. That means you have to be sure all your party take part in the bloodlust so they can gain levels in their sleep.

Talking about sleep, finding a good bed helps you heal faster and if you're lucky, the spell fairy will pay you a visit. She will kindly sell you spells for gold from any of the four different classes, so choose wisely as certain spells are more useful than others. Some spells can also dish out a lot of hurt, even one hit kills if practiced enough. Problem is not only monsters may be at risk but you or a team mate as well if cast carelessly! You have been warned!

The world of Bloodwych is a fairly limited affair visually due to the technical reasons outlined at the beginning of this review. Frames of animation for each character are in the single digits; walls and scenery are repetitive, spell effects simple. The world is possible to navigate without any maps due to clever use of tapestries and a well thought layout. Thankfully, soon you'll be enjoying the game too much to care about its lack of visual variety.

In order to keep the challenge interesting to both of you, there are different types of doors, locks, keys, spinners, false walls, switches, traps, stairwells, teleporters, regenerators, messages and magical objects to be found. There are also areas of the game where solutions have to be discovered to avoid food shortages and even different ways of completing a puzzle are possible - some I'm not sure the original designers had in mind, but you'll be surprised how inventive you can be.

 
The interface is neat and tidy and offers easy navigation with a joystick. Among the well laid out icons you'll find a spell book, inventory, health stats, attack and defend icons, navigation buttons, communication tools etc – the usual affair. You'll also discover a hidden depth to the interface and how certain actions affect your characters, or the way you use objects influencing the hit points you can dish out. Many debates will spring up as you journey deeper into the game gaining levels until you feel like you've both totally familiarised yourself with the system.


Conclusion

Bloodwych is a rich multiplayer experience that is masked by its relatively simple appearance. Even in this lengthy review, I still can't cover the many tricks, features, tips and fun interaction to be discovered by two players during the main quest! You'll find yourself having many discussions and arguments during the course of the game that only serve to draw you deeper into its world. Bloodwych is all about human interaction and that's what makes this game rise into the lesser-known greats of gaming history. But remember, it's only for those who dare...


Summary
 
GRAPHICS: 7 / 10

The sprites, icons and general layout have been well thought out allowing for intuitive navigation with joysticks. Animation is practically non-existent, but it somehow works drawing you into the game. Lack of highly polished graphics allows everything to run from memory, so once it's loaded there are no pauses during those long dungeon sessions and players can be in completely separate parts of the map at the same time. Even with basic animation and limited scenery, the game still creates a sense of atmosphere. I guarantee some of the monsters will make you jump!

SOUND: 4 / 10

Very basic, but enough to let you know what's going on. The lack of music is a definite plus as each person needs two channels each for fighting and spell sounds. Again the programmers decided to run everything from the 512K available at the time, which limited how many samples they could include. It somehow makes each sound more significant however, especially the one when you die.

PLAYABILITY: 10 / 10

Attempting to judge Bloodwych's playability in one player mode is a waste in my opinion, as only half the screen is used and everything just feels average in comparison to other dungeon romps. Fire it up in two player and it's a different story – death matches, team work, co-operative puzzle solving, accidental deaths, arguments over items, races to open doors – the list goes on. The varied spells, humorous communication and competition for levels makes for a fun two-player quest and unique game experience; there are still no other split screen rpg's to compare it to even today!


OVERALL: 10 / 10

I'm giving this game a top grade as I've had so much fun over the years, completing it several times with different family and friends. It's one of the few games that make a good companion compulsory in order to appreciate all levels of playability. Thankfully, dungeon sessions can be as short or long as you like due to an instant save facility, so someone should always be made available before continuing the quest. Without doubt this is one of my favourite multiplayer games of all time and, along with the likes of Frontier, it once again proves that good fun can be had from small packages.