The Dark Heart of Uukrul [RPG | DOS]

I've recently been playing this hugely underrated gem, and thought it worth a mention here.

The Dark Heart of Uukrul is a very old-skool RPG from a bygone era (way back when in the dark magical mists of 1989), that these days runs most effectively via DOSBox. No config is required, other than mounting the folder you unpack the files to as the C drive. It just works. (Pro Tip: the game files can very easily be found with a simple Google search.)

The game has no sound of any kind whatsoever, which on the plus side does at least mean no fiddling with IRQ and DMA settings to persuade it to run. Pick a solid track listing from Spotify and off you go!

After a short and lightly comical character creation sequence, you are dropped straight into the corridors of the ancient city under the mountain, in which your gaming session takes place.

The exploration view is reminiscent of Bards Tale era games, with some Dungeon Master-ness thrown in for good measure. Cursor (or ASDW) keys move you around the landscape, where you will encounter colorful descriptions of the rooms passed through, puzzles to stump even a veteran of RPGs of its - or any other - era; and monsters most foul - all comprising the elements of your quest to defeat the evil Uukrul of the title.

On the subject of monsters, whenever conflict arises, the game switches to an Ultima-style top-down 2D view for the duration of the battle, where turns are taken between your characters and the enemies.

Movement is a simple matter of choosing one of the eight available directions for each character, and weapon-based combat is also straightforward: just select which adjacent enemy to fight, and you're good to go (hit or miss).

Magic requires actual knowledge of the mystical words of power, so having a physical copy of the manual to hand as you play is a definite plus here (I chose to have the PDF version open in another window, and switch to it from DOSBox as required). It also requires your character to possess the appropriate magic rings of the correct element (e.g. Iron, Copper, etc) to trigger the spell or prayer.

Normal sorcery is just a matter of typing the name of your spell, and choosing a target (if applicable), and if you have the spell points, then that's it.

Priest spells on the other hand require the favour of the appropriate god to work, and more often than not, that favour is not forthcoming - meaning a missed turn (or even worse, a punishment from said deity for the irritation you have caused them).

I'm still fathoming all the details of this system, so I guarantee this will have more than enough surprises to entertain you as you journey into ever more perilous encounters.

In fact, I'm not all that far into the game as yet, but the premise and first rate design of the game is compelling me ever further into it. I'd quite like to get back to it right now, in fact...

If you've never heard of this game, and would like to probe the depths of the history of gaming (and RPGs), then you can certainly do a lot worse than this title. Apparently, it sold very poorly on its release, which in my opinion is a criminal injustice for such an extremely interesting and individual title.

Just one more thing...

It also occurred to me that my recent forays into the world of the C64 could perhaps benefit from consideration here. A game of this sort wouldn't be too difficult to craft on that machine (and I'm already thinking of algorithms for the two views, and how to store the data, dialogue and descriptions to fit in 64K).

I am not promising anything just yet, but I may well create a C64 homage to this title with a plot and world of my own devising... (Perhaps) watch this space?

UPDATE:

Had a very quick go on PetDraw (written by the 8-Bit Guy), and produced this:

This is on the C64 (in VICE) using just character mode and with no redefined characters (I would need some for the real thing, but this is just a proof of concept at this stage). With either careful use of a custom character set, and/or some sprites over the top, this could work very well I think!