The Avalon Hill Game Company, 1982
C64, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, TRS-80, 等
The Avalon Hill Game Company, 1982
C64, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, TRS-80, etc
当我十一岁时,我发现了《寒境迷城》这款游戏,虽然他不是当时最好的角色扮演游戏,但他的可玩性却令人上瘾。
这款游戏类似街机游戏,在每次游玩中,看看你在失败之前,能在地牢里走多远。
每隔几年,我仍然会回到这个游戏里尝试运气,来探索地牢的深处。运气是《寒境迷城》最大的优势,然而,也是其最大的弱点。
When I was eleven, I discovered Telengard. While not the most advanced CRPG at the time, it was incredibly addictive and replayable. The game is built around almost arcade-like runs into the dungeon to see just how far you can get in a single session before inevitably conceding defeat.
Every few years, I still wander back to try my luck delving the depths of the dungeon. Telengard's biggest strength, however, is also its greatest weakness.
除了地牢的布局,一切都是随机的——你的初始数值,你将面对的怪物类型和等级,以及你将设法的去寻找的宝藏。随机的生成确保了每次游玩都有很大的不同,但也可能导致玩家有较强的挫败感。
这是一场需要耐心才能有一个良好开始的游戏。当你在一个不可控制的时刻失去一切的时候,需要坚韧而不绝望——因为您在每个回合中都有很短的时间限制。
这就是我为什么反复游玩《寒境迷城》的原因,大部分 CRPG 都是围绕着难度曲线、平衡性精心设计的,确保玩家处于控制之中。但《寒境迷城》则是直接将玩家扔进副本里,然后让玩家自己寻找乐趣。在游戏早期,从一只中级龙的战斗中幸存下来的感觉,是那些考虑平衡性游戏所不能比拟的!
我一直还是希望能对游戏有更多的掌控,所以我每次都会放弃玩《寒境迷城》一段时间,但你真的很难克服还是想回去继续玩《寒境迷城》的冲动。
尽管《寒境迷城》通常被错误地标记为“roguelike”,但其实它的地牢不是随机的,而是程序事先生成的,一共拥有 50 层的地牢副本。另一方面,游戏没有终极目标——您只能设法生存尽可能长的时间。
游戏开发者丹尼尔・劳伦斯(Daniel Lawrence)声称,他创建了《寒境迷城》,是他在普渡大学期间编写的一款名为 DND 的游戏的家用计算机移植版。争议在于劳伦斯的 DND 和《寒境迷城》具有许多与 PLATO 的 dnd 类似的元素。所以,自从《寒境迷城》作为商业游戏发布以来,不断的引起批评和剽窃的指控。
不管怎样,我们当时都不知道这些。《寒境迷城》在早期的 CRPG 粉丝中成为了一个流行的元素,许多像我一样的人仍然喜欢不时挑战它那具有难度的随机生成系统!
Apart from the dungeon layout, everything is randomised – your initial stats, which monster you are going to face, what their levels are, and what treasures you will manage to scrounge up. The wild nature of the RNG ensures that every session is wildly different, but can also lead to frustration. It's a game that requires patience to get a good start, and tenacity to not despair when you lose everything from one uncontrollable moment – especially since you have a short time limit to input your actions every turn.
This is why I keep coming back to Telengard; most CRPGs are carefully designed around difficulty curves, balance, and making sure the player is always in control. Telengard just ruthlessly throws the player in and starts delivering the fun. The feeling of having survived a mid-level dragon early in the game is unsurpassed by what other games give you when they have a encounters perfectly balanced for where you are in the game.
In the end I still do crave control, and will drift away from Telengard for a while every time, but that feeling when you get back to it is hard to beat.
While Telengard is often mislabelled as a roguelike, its dungeons aren't random but procedurally generated, spanning 50 massive floors. On the other hand, there's no end goal – you just survive as long as possible.
The game's developer, Daniel Lawrence, claims he created Telengard as a home computer port of a game called DND that he wrote while at Purdue University. The controversy is that Lawrence's DND and Telengard have many elements that are similar to PLATO's dnd. This led to criticism and many plagiarism accusations, since Telengard was released as a commercial title.
Regardless, we didn't knew about any of this at the time. Telengard became a popular title among early CRPG fans, and many like myself still enjoy challenging its unforgiving RNG from time to time.