WARRIOR'S REVENGE
Video Force, 1984
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Solution by Exemptus - December 2022
Overview and general hints:
---------------------------
This is one of those games sitting on the fence between RPG and classic text
adventures: on the RPG side, it has turn-based creature fights whose outcome
depends part on chance and part on player/monster attributes (stamina), command
entry is mostly single-key (no parser), and there is no inventory so objects are
handled automatically. On the adventure side, both map and enemies are fixed,
there is a goal, there are fixed obstacles (even if based on chance or extremely
simple) tied to location connections, and player choices are deterministic.
It is not a good game by any metric, but it can be played to the end, so I'll
show how. The plot is that we are famous warrior in the Land of No Return. Yeta,
Wizard of Sabra, has hired us to help him retrieve three Golden Keys he lost, so
we must find the keys and get back to the starting location with them.
The keys can be found in certain places and, as expected, are guarded by enemies
or (kind of) puzzles. At the start of the game we randomly set two attributes,
skill and stamina, by hitting a key at the right moment. The sum of these will
decide the outcome of any fight turn: we throw a couple of figurative dice, sum
the scores to our attributes and compare them with the monster's own. Whoever
has the largest sum hits the other opponent. Since fights have a random element,
I will assume you always win. If you dislike this element of the game, you can
always cheat - the game is unprotected, so it's easy to: just break, insert the
line 9660 RETURN, and restart with GO TO 11. You will automatically win all
fights.
There are a few places where we need a time-limited interaction, typically to
avoid an obstacle.
The main difficulty with the game is actually the geography, as connections are
convoluted and very frequently one-way only. Going back can be a bit of a chore,
and the obstacles in the way don't help, but the non-fight related ones have the
same answers always, so it takes a few playthroughs until you learn how to
negotiate all obstacles.
Walkthrough:
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[Begin at Yeta's castle. There are three directions where to go. Actually, both
N and S eventually send us to the same set of locations, so we'll go E since
that leads to somewhere a bit more difficult to get to.]
E [Opening of Hell's Cavern]
E [Centre point]
[A fireball comes for us; options are (D)uck or (R)un. We have a few seconds to
decide, as otherwise we'll be toast. Running is never a good tactic in this game
so it's best to duck.]
D(uck) [The fireball misses]
N [There's a torch here, which we automatically take]
E
E [Hiding place, there is gold and a silver flask]
T(ake) [We take the flask, there's liquid inside. Shall we drink?]
D[rink) [Our Stamina was doubled]
E [Troll fight]
E
E [We see a giant cobra up ahead guarding a white door to the east]
[To the S there is a red door, but we'll die of we open it.]
F(ight) [We deal with the cobra and open the door]
[In the room there is a white dragon, whom we have awakened. The fight cannot be
avoided.]
F(ight) [We kill the dragon and find three doors: Gray, Red and Blue]
G(ray) [Any other leads to death]
E(at food) [We double our stamina]
G(reen door) [We have entered the home of a trogolyte (sic), so time to fight]
F(ight) [We win; there is a black door here]
B(lack door) [The Black Shadow guards the key here]
[The Black Shadow thinks of a number 1 to 10 and we must guess it right on one
go if we want the key (and to continue living). Luckily, the Black Shadow is not
the sharpest tack in the box and always thinks of the same number.]
7 [We have the first key; we note it has the number 10 and a man on the side]
S
E [We find Eosurb who tells us that our quest is E, but it is a trap]
S [We need to fight the Treeants twice instead]
E [Ignore the pool of liquid]
E [There is a griffin here which we need to defeat]
F(ight) [We get another gold key, with number 06 and a woman on the side]
N [Bridge; we need to guess the "POSTION" in his hand]
STAMINA [He meant POTION, if that wasn't clear]
S [Treeants again]
S [We must wrestle with Capp the Strong by picking a number]
4 [Don't ask what kind of wrestling is this, but we have passed]
E [We come to a grave yard guarded by two zombies]
F(ight) [On one zombie there is a key]
T(ake) [We notice the word DUMTON on the key]
E
U(nlock door) [We must say the word]
DUMTON [We get to the Carrion Casket]
[The Carrion Casket is where the last key is. We are offered a choice: taking
the key directly or invoking the name Taltan to wake the casket's occupant from
his slumber. This is the right move, as otherwise he'll wake up all the same but
not take it well that we have purloined his key.]
W(ake) [Taltan thanks us for awakening him and asks what we want in return]
G(old key) [This one has a number 90 and a devil on it]
[Now we have the three keys, and the only thing left is to go back to Yeta's
Castle. It's not evident how, because paths are a bit tangly. There is a very
short path, but it can take a while to find it unless we notice that we can,
unusually, go W from here.]
W
S [Path leading E and S]
S
N [Yeta's castle! Do you have the keys?]
Y(es) [Then input number code]
[What's this about a number code? It doesn't take long to notice it had to do
with the numbers engraved on the keys. There are three of them (10, 06 and 90)
and we need to combine them in some order. There are only six possible
permutations after all.]
061090
[End of game.]
