Super Dungeon

Super Dungeon is an early computer roleplaying game for the Apple II written by Rodney Nelsen. There’s little to no information about the game’s development but it is still possible to play. A copyright notice in the source code gives the release date as April 1979, so I’ve taken that to be accurate which would mean this game predates Akalabeth.

The game is a top down, turned based dungeon crawler with similarities to Apple Manor, Dungeon Campaign and Gary Shannon’s Dragon Maze example program bundled with the Apple II. There are no sources regarding the game’s development so it’s hard to say anything definitively.

Setting

The game starts with a character generation step before moving on to the core game loop of dungeon delving. The player starts on the first level of the dungeon, which is presented as a top-down maze. None of the maze is hidden, the entire dungeon level is immediately visible to the player. The player character can move around the dungeon, a tile at a time and the gameplay involves exploring, fighting monsters and finding the way down to the next level.

The game is briefly introduced during the first few screens after launching the game.

THERE HAVE BEEN NUMEROUS RUMORS OF HUGE DEPOSITS OF GOLD, HIDDEN IN A MAZE OF CAVES, DEEP BENEATH THE EARTH. IT IS SAID THAT THIS GOLD IS GUARDED BY THOUSANDS OF DEMONS, MONSTERS AND OTHER SORTS OF EVIL BEINGS. WELL, THESE RUMORS ARE TRUE, AND YOU ARE ABOUT TO DECEND INTO THE DEPTHS OF THESE CAVES THAT WE CALL THE D U N G E O N S ! ! !

NOT ONLY GOLD, BUT NUMEROUS MAGICAL ITEMS, SUCH AS WEAPONS, POTIONS AND RINGS

GOOD LUCK ON YOUR D U N G E O N A D V E N T U R E ! !

The flow to start the game is shown below:

Goal

There’s no ending to this game and while no goal is given directly, if you get to level 20 the game acknowledges this as the last level and teleports you back to the start.

Here’s the message taken from the source code:

YOU MADE IT TO THE VERY BOTTOM OF THE DUNGEON AND ARE NOW GOING TO BE TRANS-
PORTED TO THE SURFACE WITH ALL OF YOUR GOLD.

I can confirm that it has an ending of sorts: if you make it to level 20, there’s a black portal square in the bottom left corner, and when you step on it it tells you that you made it to the bottom of the dungeon. Then it returns you to the surface, like a regular portal. So it’s 20 levels of dungeon, and that’s it.

As an ending it’s anti-climatic, given the time investment required to see it. When Nelsen reworks the game under the name Dragon Fire he adds a better ending.

Character Creation

The stats in Super Dungeon are partially drawn from D&D and partially invented. Here they are, with the variable names used in the source code:

• Constitution - This is the equivalent of HP in most RPGs. In the game code it’s tracked in the RC variable.
• Speed - determines if you get to hit first. Strangely you can only increase this stat by buying a horse, which you can only do at the very start of the game. RD in the code.
• Life Points - Surprisingly this is not HP, it’s something more like Stamina. “The amount of energy a character has. It is expended whenever you make a move of any type, such as fighting or just moving. If Life Points drop below zero, you are dead”. RLP in the code.
• Strength - “the power you have when in combat”. RS in code.
• Armor Class - rating from 1 to 10 of you ability to deflect an attack. 10 being the best. RA in code.
• Experience - A counter that’s used for character progression. See the progression section for the details. RE in code.
• Gold - The amount of gold you’re carrying. RG1 in code.
• Magic Attacks - Are your attacks “magic”, this is always true for the wizard. The other classes must find a magic weapon. RMW in code.

Super Dungeon freely mixes races and classes, you have the choice between warrior or dwarf, elf or wizard, they’re all treated the same. These are the choices:

• Warrior - “a warrior is a fighting man”
• Wizard - “a wizard is a magic user”
• Elf - “is both a warrior and magic user”
• Dwarf - “a dwarf can use any type of weapon or armor”
• Hobbit - “a hobbit can use any armor and all weapons”

These descriptions are more for color than actually reflecting functional differences. All character types can use any type of armor and only the wizard has weapon restrictions. Therefore it seems odd to talk about the weapons and armor that the dwarf and hobbit can use.

The hobbit class wouldn’t fly today as it infringes on The Lord of the Rings intellectual property. When Nelsen remakes the game as Dragon Fire this class is removed.

What most differentiates the character types is the doors they can open in the game! Hobbits and dwarves can open “bolt doors” these doors are white blocks in the game. Elves always succeed at entering “secret doors” represented by blue blocks. Normal doors are red and anyone can go through them.

After character creation, you’re taken through a shop flow where you can purchase equipment for your adventurer. Temple of Apshai has similar shop sequence in it’s character creation.

Control Scheme

This is an Apple II game, played using the Apple II keyboard. Here are the controls as explained by the in-game help.

The original Apple II keyboard has left and right arrow keys but no up or down, so these controls are more reasonable than they might seem from a modern perspective.

The rest of the interactions in the game require the player to respond to input prompts that appear during combat or menus.

The menu controls are notable only for being a little hazardous. When you’re buying items in the shop you’re presented with a big list of items but need to press 1, 2 or 3 to indicate the category of item you want to buy, any other input causes the game to crash out.

Exploration

The dungeons are viewed from above with different colored blocks representing the dungeon features and content. Levels are randomly generated.

The game environment is strongly influenced by the the platform, the width and height of the map matches the drawing area provided by the Apple II.

The character is represented by a brown block that can be moved around the maze a tile at a time. The map is covered in a different door tiles, these limit the paths in through the dungeon level. Doors play a central role in the game. Combat only occurs when you try and pass through a door. Doors are given certain colors and have certain restrictions such a having the white key or being certain character type.

Inventory

The inventory is almost nonexistent and only special items such as the “white key” are individually tracked in the game code. At the start of the game when you’re prompted to buy equipment, each piece of equipment is instantly converted into stats increases.

There are some class restrictions for instance the wizard can only purchase daggers. If, as a wizard, you find a magic sword in the dungeon you get the message: YOU NOW OWN A MAGIC SWORD--WORTHLESS TO A WIZARD and your gold increases by ten times your depth.

Items

As you wander around and open chests you can also find:

• Ring of Invisibility - increases your speed by ten
• Ring of Power - “Your chance of hitting a monster will now be higher !”
• Potion - a random effect on drinking; increases strength, constitution, armor class or a choice of increasing Life Points or Constitution.
• A wand - this can be used to ward off a monster
• Key - a key that opens all white doors
• Magic Armor - raises your armor class by two

In the dungeon you find chests which may contain items or gold, you can also find coffins which may contain a skeleton enemy and bags that act like chests.

Coffins have one more feature, where upon opening they can release a gas that may reduce your constitution, raise your constitution or raise your life points.

Systems

In the dungeon you can find treasure, monsters to fight and ways to go to the next level. One point of interest is that many of the calculations in the game make use of the dungeon level, the deeper you are the higher the risk and reward.

There’s a shop after character creation but there’s no way to revisit it after. The majority of the shop items cannot be found in the dungeon.

Combat

Super Dungeon’s help pages go into the combat system in some detail as you can see below:

The game has 50 monsters in total but there’s little meaningful variation between them. The monsters are mostly drawn straight from D&D, with a few with non-standard spellings such as the Shamen, Minitaur or Strige. All monsters have strength MS, speed MD and attack MA stats. A few of the monsters have a flag to determine if they’re immune to non-magic weapons MW.

The number of hitpoints a monster has is partially randomised and may fall anywhere within a given range. Below are the definitions for two of the enemies.

23922 MR$="GHOUL":MS= RND (14)+1:MW=1:MA=6:MD=3: GOTO 23990
23907 MR$="GIANT RAT":MS= RND (4)+1:MA=7:MD=0: GOTO 23990

Combat occurs when you pass through a doorway in the game. The monster you’ll be fighting is identified and you’re asked if you want to fight. If you choose not to fight, you retreat from the door and the enemy gets one last chance to attack: either causing damage or missing and allowing you to escape unharmed.

If you choose to fight, then you enter a combat state. Combat is handled through text prompts at the bottom of the screen and it’s a simple loop. The speed stat is used to determine who attacks first, then the opponent gets to attack. The system then resets and asks the player if they’d like to attack and blows are traded this way until the enemy is defeated, the player retreats or the player dies. Attacks may miss and if you choose not to attack that’s taken as an instruction to retreat from combat.

Here are some screenshots of combat:

When you defeat the enemy your player character stats are displayed on screen, under the heading “This is how you stand”. These combat summary screens become popular later with JRPGs and this appears to be the earliest example of a game making use of one.

Magic

Super Dungeon doesn’t have a real magic system. If you choose the wizard character type you get an extra 3 strength points but the combat flow is the same as the warrior. There is a flag that checks if your attacks are “magic” and this is used to determine if you can damage certain enemies but that’s all there is.

Advancement

Experience does not work how you might think if you’ve played other RPGs. In this game, everytime you kill a monster you gain half that monster’s strength stat as experience points. The in-game help explains this system in the screenshot below:

When you go down a level you can trade experience points for either Constitution or Life Points.

There are no levels in the game only stat increases. You can find magic weapons in the dungeon but you cannot find new weapons or armor. Some potions will increase the Strength or Armor stat, and for this game that’s functionally the same as finding new armor or weapons.

Legacy

Super Dungeon goes on to be reworked by Nelsen as the 1981 Apple II Game, Dragon Fire. As for legacy, it’s not mentioned as an inspiration for later games. There are some novel features - such as the progression system, door system but these aren’t built upon by later games.

It’s the earliest game to have a combat summary screen; a screen that shows the character stats immediately after combat. This type of screen is more useful in games with experience and level systems but it’s serving a similar purpose by telling the player the characters current status.

This appears to be the first RPG to introduce the concept of a mount. The mechanic presented is simple - there a number of different horse types in the game, if you buy one, your speed stat increases. The image of a character exploring an underground dungeon on horseback gives the game some flavour, suggesting this is a dungeon with big open tunnels.