Adventure

This game sparked a true revolution, alongside Galaxian and Star Raiders which were all out the same year. It's a truly immersive quest which demands you pay attention to the world around you, and make the best of what you've got to find your way. The layout and the items used here are simple enough, but it's a miracle that you can still play this and not one of the adventure RPG elements here would seem awkward.

The only ill omen is that damn bat, which will always take your items and generally be a nightmare throughout the whole game. You'll likely spend 80% of the time just trying to get rid of him, but I'd say there's charm in doing that too.

Adventure is surprisingly engaging and has a lot going for it in such a small game world with such a short overall quest. It’s divided into three difficulty levels, with the first functioning largely as a tutorial and the second being the core of the adventure. It’s pretty simple - you have to get three keys to unlock three castles to eventually reach the chalice and bring it back inside the yellow castle (the starting point). Throughout the map are three dragons however who you have to avoid or attack head-on with a sword, if you find it. The yellow dragon just wanders around, the green one guards the black key and other important items but will chase you just about everywhere, and the red one guards the chalice itself.

It’s a pretty simple setup, but the one factor that makes each session truly crazy is the bat who will trade any item it comes across, haphazardly dropping all of the key items (as well as the dragons themselves!) around the map after you’ve found them. It may sound annoying, and frankly it is, but it also adds a good deal of fun chaos into the otherwise simple adventure and forces to you think and rethink plans as you have to chase after the bat and find items constantly getting scattered across the map, especially since they stay in place after each reset. One time, the bat even picked up the dragon after it ate me (but before I reset) and flew all across the map, showing me where some key items were dropped before I hit the reset button to go get them. It makes the adventure much wilder than it appears at first and keeps you on alert at all times, even after you’ve gotten the chalice. The third difficulty level increases the chaotic elements further by randomizing the starting locations of all the dragons and the items, which can get pretty interesting, if a little unbalanced, once you’ve finished the main quest.

The game's a fun, fast-paced unmistakably Atari-like take on the adventure genre, keeping it distinct from the slower turn-based adventure titles on early PCs of the time like Temple of Apshai and Eamon, while also making it simple to play and really fun in short bursts. The action-adventure style of game this helped to pioneer has advanced significantly over time, but I still think this is fun to play in short one-off sessions if only to see just how ridiculous things get.