The Dark Heart of the Uukrul - Games which will no longer be
Recently, there have been too many events that remind me of the game that captured me more than all the other games (I honestly confess, but I have never been a gamer) - the Prince of Persia film comes out, 8bit mods and Spectrum graphics, Google has thrown Nostalgia for pakmanu, and here the other day I was also asked where I thought of this nickname. It all came together, and therefore I want to tell you about the wonderful game The Dark Heart of the Uukrul from the equally wonderful company Brøderbund.
It was in 1992-93, after a couple of years after the official release in 1989 on the PC and Apple II platforms. We, being still schoolchildren, were playing “Uukrul” hard-hitting instead of studying BASIC at the regional station of young technicians. Our hardware was - one on all Search PCs (not to be confused with Poisk-2) manufactured by Electronmash (Kiev) with CPU KP1810BM88 - a local analog of the Intel 8088 processor. Everything worked under DOS 3.30. Monitors were Nashenskie, CGA, 320x200x4 colors in two palettes.
')
Since the “student” PCs were not equipped with an additional extension of 512 (or 384?) KB of RAM, they had to play on the “teacher” PC. It was also equipped with a two disk drive 5.25 "and a local network controller. I can’t remember what kind of network it was, this is a topic for another story.
So about the game itself. The Dark Heart of the Uukrul is a classic RPG based on the D & D rules (which we didn’t guess for a very long time), with first-person navigation through the maze and step-by-step battles with opponents on an enlarged section of the map from the top. But let's order.
I didn’t play many RPGs, but nowhere else can I recall that the generation took place not by the manual distribution of the selected points according to the characteristics, but by answering questions from the category - “This and that happened. Your actions? ”And 5 response options. At random, using Muller’s vocabulary, logic, whining and skating, we figured out how to answer the questions so that there was happiness.
There were 4 characters - Warrior, Paladin, Priest and Mage. It was possible to give everyone a name and choose the gender, the class was set hard and the composition, although it could be less than 4, but two characters of the same class cannot be taken.
Actions of all ugliness take place in a certain country with the difficultly named Eriosthe, formerly the patrimony of the mighty Suraqis, but now in ruin and ruled by the hordes of Uukrul. The view on this whole mess was always the same - as if from the first person in a small window in the middle of the screen (about 1/9 of the whole screen).
Above, a third of the screen is occupied by information about the characters - a helsbar with status icons. On the left in the center is information about active spells and prayers, as well as the status of the “train” - food stock. Uukrul teaches us to always think that there should be enough food to go there and back. On the right - a hint about the available actions. This zone always has to be controlled, since the most often hidden doors (those that are not visible) are revealed at the prompt of a possible action — open.
Bottom screen rub - text messages about everything that happens in your party, in front of and around it. It is thanks to these text messages that the game forces the players to turn on the imagination and to see the palaces, the caves, the forest or the catacombs in the drab gray walls. And on the very snack, for those who have reached the last location, there will be “impossible territories” - topologically impossible mazes that are easily displayed in 3D psevdo.
For the convenience of the players there is a very useful card. It shows the studied part of the labyrinth and the fields on which a person’s foot “walked”. You can put tags on the map and move from one label to another when viewing. In some places, the map is not available and you need to go on the "chuyke" and the compass, but the compass sometimes fails and turns like a whirlpool.
And if the electronic map is not convenient to look at, then in this case there is always a pencil and notebook. Big picture
In the labyrinth there are massively controlled doors / grills, ladders, teleports and other things. Some are built-in mini-games - puzzles, crosswords, just picking up the code. In the labyrinth there are inscriptions of different content, from reminders about the purchase of supplies, to threats or warnings. The inscriptions are often encrypted in runes, deciphered by magic or prayers, or not decrypted at all.
Features of the "graphic engine" of the game - the monotony of graphic elements - is repeatedly played up in the game itself. So you can not always tell if you are moving along a narrow long corridor, or you are constantly being thrown back or turned by 180 degrees (yes there is not a rarity there). Coming out of the door, you can often turn around and not find them behind you, because the doors were "one-sided".
It is impossible to preserve the usual way for us in the game, it can be done only in specially designated game rooms - Sanctuary ("rest"). A level-up occurs in them, you can safely fold an extra “gear”, there is always a teleport to any other already known “rest room” or an area with a market and mausoleum.
We already got a hacked version. In the original, when each new “rest” was reached, it was necessary to enter a translation of the name from the rune language into English, for which four “amulets of the soul” with a rune decoding were included with the manual.
Big picture
In our youth we were timid and naive and allowed ourselves to play with ip73 - there was such a multi-game reader. She gave endless mana, food, and something else. About 5 years ago, replaying the new one, I played in the “iron will” mode (save-only at exit) and found the game a bit higher than average in complexity. If you don’t go where you don’t climb, then the chances of being suddenly killed are minimal.
The fighting system in the game is quite simple, but at the same time it gives room for the construction of tactics and strategy. When meeting with monsters, their picture is displayed in the “out of sight” view, and then the battle map is loaded. Battles are more like chess games - characters can move only one cell per turn, and can only strike at neighboring 4 cells. The order of the stroke is also important. Initially, there is a round of movement, then a round of strokes, and so on. During the battle, you can escape if you approach the door or the open edge of the battle map, but they can also kill a character in the final turn - this is always unpleasant.
At the beginning of the game, the Warrior and Paladin are the strongest and most useful. Both can attack with weapons and generally inflict significant damage to the enemy. The weapon had the ability to break, and repairing it was available only in one place by the NPC, so walking on a long march at high levels with one sword per person is very risky.
Paladin has a special skill - “lay on hands”. It has the same damage on the enemy as on the Paladin, and on its counterpart it has a healing effect. It is not recommended to use on the undead - Paladin loses experience, and the undead "zero to mass."
Priest and Mage are not normally involved in melee. Their main weapons are prayers and spells. What pleases the game, so that the prayers and spells you do not choose from the menu. You must enter them by letter, so you have to write them down and remember. In Uukrul, playing without a notebook was practically useless, which added immersion to the game's universe.
Prayers The priest pronounces to the 4th gods of different "properties." They can both hear the Priest and come to the rescue - attack the enemy, heal, open secret passages, give protection, etc., never hear, and you will get a missed move. But also these gods can punish the Priest for “his sins” and reduce his health. I must say the gods in the "Uukrul" are generally gracious, but sometimes they can be completely disreputable.
Magic is also divided into 4 elements. The magician and the Priest in the course of progress receive rings in their temples giving access to a higher level, but if the name of the prayer does not change for the Priest, then suffixes or prefixes are added to the magician's spells to enhance the effect (yes, we write CYQIEKUN or KUURAOTH with pens) . And for every spell, not all levels of “power” were available. Spells are always in effect, but there are interesting monsters that ignore or reflect magic (it’s always nice to know “in fact”).
The magician at the beginning is the weakest of all, but he treats best of all and by the end of the game becomes the most useful character of the highest level (if he is not regularly killed). If suddenly one of the characters is killed, then in the mausoleum it can be resurrected for “warm traces" for money, and if the "traces have cooled down", then you can hire a new character with a basic level and experience.
“Shemot” has weight, characters have power and will not take everything away. But if you put something on the ground, then there is a high probability that in many hours of the game you will accidentally stumble upon the things you left behind.
The game captured from the very beginning, when you learn the history of the earth and at every turn, when you read descriptions of the terrain that takes place around events. The game looked more like a book reading than the game itself, in this very much related to the MUD, which we then knew nothing about. One of the pieces of the manual (and maybe just a fan of fun) was the diary of Mary - the leader of the missing expedition, whose spirit sometimes appeared in the way of the party.
The smoothly unfolding plot, immersion in the world of idols, constant repetition of spells, guessing charades and “chess” battles did not let any part of the cerebral cortex get bored. The only organ rested in this game is the eyes.
The graphics of 1989, practically absent by today's standards (then it was simply amazing), did not deprive the player of the imagination. That is why, I believe, this game was so exciting. Now in the era of 3D, GPU armaments and other bells and whistles, the player was left with the opportunity to simply observe pictures drawn in advance, rather than relive them in his imagination as an interesting book.
Another very useful effect of this game for me, then a schoolboy, was a significant increase in the level of knowledge of the English language - the game was very rich, not even in dialogues, but in descriptions of the world, in which often the details were crucial. So, with wild enthusiasm, we mastered world computer masterpieces - with a notebook, Muller and a pack of 5.25 floppy disks. "
Such was the “most interesting computer game” for me. Such games will no longer be. There will be others, and no one will tell if we have lost or gained.
PS All pictures and videos are not mine, found in Google.
PPS I was surprised to learn that in 1999 the game inspired the Russian group Rakoth to write the song of the same name, which was included in the Planeshift album.
UPD. Download and go through again here: www.abandonia.com/en/downloadgame/475
It was in 1992-93, after a couple of years after the official release in 1989 on the PC and Apple II platforms. We, being still schoolchildren, were playing “Uukrul” hard-hitting instead of studying BASIC at the regional station of young technicians. Our hardware was - one on all Search PCs (not to be confused with Poisk-2) manufactured by Electronmash (Kiev) with CPU KP1810BM88 - a local analog of the Intel 8088 processor. Everything worked under DOS 3.30. Monitors were Nashenskie, CGA, 320x200x4 colors in two palettes.
')
Since the “student” PCs were not equipped with an additional extension of 512 (or 384?) KB of RAM, they had to play on the “teacher” PC. It was also equipped with a two disk drive 5.25 "and a local network controller. I can’t remember what kind of network it was, this is a topic for another story.
So about the game itself. The Dark Heart of the Uukrul is a classic RPG based on the D & D rules (which we didn’t guess for a very long time), with first-person navigation through the maze and step-by-step battles with opponents on an enlarged section of the map from the top. But let's order.
Character generation
I didn’t play many RPGs, but nowhere else can I recall that the generation took place not by the manual distribution of the selected points according to the characteristics, but by answering questions from the category - “This and that happened. Your actions? ”And 5 response options. At random, using Muller’s vocabulary, logic, whining and skating, we figured out how to answer the questions so that there was happiness.
There were 4 characters - Warrior, Paladin, Priest and Mage. It was possible to give everyone a name and choose the gender, the class was set hard and the composition, although it could be less than 4, but two characters of the same class cannot be taken.
Game world
Actions of all ugliness take place in a certain country with the difficultly named Eriosthe, formerly the patrimony of the mighty Suraqis, but now in ruin and ruled by the hordes of Uukrul. The view on this whole mess was always the same - as if from the first person in a small window in the middle of the screen (about 1/9 of the whole screen).
Above, a third of the screen is occupied by information about the characters - a helsbar with status icons. On the left in the center is information about active spells and prayers, as well as the status of the “train” - food stock. Uukrul teaches us to always think that there should be enough food to go there and back. On the right - a hint about the available actions. This zone always has to be controlled, since the most often hidden doors (those that are not visible) are revealed at the prompt of a possible action — open.
Bottom screen rub - text messages about everything that happens in your party, in front of and around it. It is thanks to these text messages that the game forces the players to turn on the imagination and to see the palaces, the caves, the forest or the catacombs in the drab gray walls. And on the very snack, for those who have reached the last location, there will be “impossible territories” - topologically impossible mazes that are easily displayed in 3D psevdo.
For the convenience of the players there is a very useful card. It shows the studied part of the labyrinth and the fields on which a person’s foot “walked”. You can put tags on the map and move from one label to another when viewing. In some places, the map is not available and you need to go on the "chuyke" and the compass, but the compass sometimes fails and turns like a whirlpool.
And if the electronic map is not convenient to look at, then in this case there is always a pencil and notebook. Big picture
In the labyrinth there are massively controlled doors / grills, ladders, teleports and other things. Some are built-in mini-games - puzzles, crosswords, just picking up the code. In the labyrinth there are inscriptions of different content, from reminders about the purchase of supplies, to threats or warnings. The inscriptions are often encrypted in runes, deciphered by magic or prayers, or not decrypted at all.
Features of the "graphic engine" of the game - the monotony of graphic elements - is repeatedly played up in the game itself. So you can not always tell if you are moving along a narrow long corridor, or you are constantly being thrown back or turned by 180 degrees (yes there is not a rarity there). Coming out of the door, you can often turn around and not find them behind you, because the doors were "one-sided".
It is impossible to preserve the usual way for us in the game, it can be done only in specially designated game rooms - Sanctuary ("rest"). A level-up occurs in them, you can safely fold an extra “gear”, there is always a teleport to any other already known “rest room” or an area with a market and mausoleum.
We already got a hacked version. In the original, when each new “rest” was reached, it was necessary to enter a translation of the name from the rune language into English, for which four “amulets of the soul” with a rune decoding were included with the manual.
Big picture
In our youth we were timid and naive and allowed ourselves to play with ip73 - there was such a multi-game reader. She gave endless mana, food, and something else. About 5 years ago, replaying the new one, I played in the “iron will” mode (save-only at exit) and found the game a bit higher than average in complexity. If you don’t go where you don’t climb, then the chances of being suddenly killed are minimal.
Weapons, spells, prayers, battles
The fighting system in the game is quite simple, but at the same time it gives room for the construction of tactics and strategy. When meeting with monsters, their picture is displayed in the “out of sight” view, and then the battle map is loaded. Battles are more like chess games - characters can move only one cell per turn, and can only strike at neighboring 4 cells. The order of the stroke is also important. Initially, there is a round of movement, then a round of strokes, and so on. During the battle, you can escape if you approach the door or the open edge of the battle map, but they can also kill a character in the final turn - this is always unpleasant.
At the beginning of the game, the Warrior and Paladin are the strongest and most useful. Both can attack with weapons and generally inflict significant damage to the enemy. The weapon had the ability to break, and repairing it was available only in one place by the NPC, so walking on a long march at high levels with one sword per person is very risky.
Paladin has a special skill - “lay on hands”. It has the same damage on the enemy as on the Paladin, and on its counterpart it has a healing effect. It is not recommended to use on the undead - Paladin loses experience, and the undead "zero to mass."
Priest and Mage are not normally involved in melee. Their main weapons are prayers and spells. What pleases the game, so that the prayers and spells you do not choose from the menu. You must enter them by letter, so you have to write them down and remember. In Uukrul, playing without a notebook was practically useless, which added immersion to the game's universe.
Prayers The priest pronounces to the 4th gods of different "properties." They can both hear the Priest and come to the rescue - attack the enemy, heal, open secret passages, give protection, etc., never hear, and you will get a missed move. But also these gods can punish the Priest for “his sins” and reduce his health. I must say the gods in the "Uukrul" are generally gracious, but sometimes they can be completely disreputable.
Magic is also divided into 4 elements. The magician and the Priest in the course of progress receive rings in their temples giving access to a higher level, but if the name of the prayer does not change for the Priest, then suffixes or prefixes are added to the magician's spells to enhance the effect (yes, we write CYQIEKUN or KUURAOTH with pens) . And for every spell, not all levels of “power” were available. Spells are always in effect, but there are interesting monsters that ignore or reflect magic (it’s always nice to know “in fact”).
The magician at the beginning is the weakest of all, but he treats best of all and by the end of the game becomes the most useful character of the highest level (if he is not regularly killed). If suddenly one of the characters is killed, then in the mausoleum it can be resurrected for “warm traces" for money, and if the "traces have cooled down", then you can hire a new character with a basic level and experience.
“Shemot” has weight, characters have power and will not take everything away. But if you put something on the ground, then there is a high probability that in many hours of the game you will accidentally stumble upon the things you left behind.
A game
The game captured from the very beginning, when you learn the history of the earth and at every turn, when you read descriptions of the terrain that takes place around events. The game looked more like a book reading than the game itself, in this very much related to the MUD, which we then knew nothing about. One of the pieces of the manual (and maybe just a fan of fun) was the diary of Mary - the leader of the missing expedition, whose spirit sometimes appeared in the way of the party.
The smoothly unfolding plot, immersion in the world of idols, constant repetition of spells, guessing charades and “chess” battles did not let any part of the cerebral cortex get bored. The only organ rested in this game is the eyes.
The graphics of 1989, practically absent by today's standards (then it was simply amazing), did not deprive the player of the imagination. That is why, I believe, this game was so exciting. Now in the era of 3D, GPU armaments and other bells and whistles, the player was left with the opportunity to simply observe pictures drawn in advance, rather than relive them in his imagination as an interesting book.
Another very useful effect of this game for me, then a schoolboy, was a significant increase in the level of knowledge of the English language - the game was very rich, not even in dialogues, but in descriptions of the world, in which often the details were crucial. So, with wild enthusiasm, we mastered world computer masterpieces - with a notebook, Muller and a pack of 5.25 floppy disks. "
Such was the “most interesting computer game” for me. Such games will no longer be. There will be others, and no one will tell if we have lost or gained.
PS All pictures and videos are not mine, found in Google.
PPS I was surprised to learn that in 1999 the game inspired the Russian group Rakoth to write the song of the same name, which was included in the Planeshift album.
UPD. Download and go through again here: www.abandonia.com/en/downloadgame/475
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/96032/
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