Fatal Quest file 1

Today's game comes from poking around randomly until something caught my eye. I wanted something lighter after getting through ChickenWire, and this RPG of average length seemed like an approachable enough game that wouldn't have any unpleasant surprises within.

My assumption was correct, and Fatal Quest was indeed a game I have zero regrets playing, and one that I can outright recommend, no strings attached. The game itself is quite standard, however the timing of its release, and the circumstances of why we have a copy of this world available in the first place make it a bit more interesting.

As far as ZZT RPGs go, this one is a little bit on the earlier side of things. You would have full length RPG games in ZZT by this point with iconic works like Rhygar already available, but your options at this point were fairly slim. The heyday of the ZZT RPG wouldn't really start kicking off for another year or so, when suddenly it seems like every game you play has at least one mandatory fight with bespoke engine. In 1997, ZZT RPGs were still basically standard adventure games, just with a stronger emphasis on the characters and the storyline. Fatal Quest is an early example of an RPG where the focus is instead placed on the combat, and the story is kept fairly minimal.

These days, that's the kind of RPG that tends to age the poorest. In hindsight, it's clear that most ZZT RPG battles amount to hoping to roll better dice than your opponent. There's usually little reason (or sometimes any option whatsoever) to vary your attacks or change strategies from fight to fight. In Fatal Quest, author eJECTION13 takes a basic engine and finds a number of ways to give players decisions to make, which easily holds up to and more often than not outright surpasses the quality of ZZT RPGs for years to come.

So of course it's another game with no readily available feedback. eJECTION's game looks to have slipped through the cracks early on. The reason for this, is that the game apparently never got published on any of the major ZZT archives of its day. Despite it sharing the fate of hundreds of other formerly-lost games, Fatal Quest isn't a newly rediscovered world brought to the Museum through modern preservation efforts. No, this is a world which was recovered through early preservation efforts. The text file bundled with the game is not by eJECTION13, but by ChickenWire author Zenith Nadir. Nadir points out that the file used to be available on the Starfield Software website which had since gone offline. His own fond memories of the game got him to ask around and eventually acquire a copy from Hercules, making the game available once more in 2003, long after the game's shine would have faded away.

This is one of those cases where it's really a shame to have had the game go missing even for a few short years of ZZT's history. Fatal Quest seems like a direct inspiration for a number of mid to late 1990s Interactive Fantasies games, and its engine goes above and beyond what the all-star group was doing afterwards. It's really made me rethink what ZZTers were capable of at that time, unintentionally throwing shade on a number of later games that couldn't meet the mark of a game from 1997.

The game's author eJECTION13 is also a name that while I don't think was particularly seen as a star, was at least recognizable. eJECTION had three other releases, all of which I have a history with. Fatal Quest actually has the earliest date of all of these while also striking me as his finest work. His final release, 1999's Fury Spell received a Classic Game of the Month award that year, and as such is another RPG with a well-known name. Yet strangely enough, Fatal Quest does it better. The one thing Fury Spell has going for it is that it's actually a finished game.

Fatal Quest suffers from being a demo, providing players in 2003 with little motivation to check out an early RPG that doesn't have a conclusion and certainly never will. But so much of ZZT is just exploring a concept and seeing if it works at all, and in that regard Fatal Quest is a big success in my eyes, one that is well overdue for getting some praise for just how well it takes a bread and butter RPG engine and manages to transform it into a gourmet meal.

Tak And Zek's Excellent Adventure

"Get going!", says eJECTION13. Fatal Quest wastes no time with introductions, opting to let the game get underway and for players to find out what it's all about by experiencing it. You are Tak. You're a knight. The king would like you to bring back this cool rock whose powers aren't important. It ain't your job to know. Just get the rock.

Oh. And be quick about it please. Otherwise you can just die on this island I guess.

The actual start isn't hostile at all even if the conceit of the game is. The game begins just as the ship Tak is sailing on reaches the shore. It's the easiest way to get things underway. You're where you need to be to find the cool rock the king wants. So again, get going.

But the boat still helps establish some things rather than start you on the dock itself. Tak can speak with a crew that does not seem to have any interest in their duties, nor much in the way of competence when it comes to fulfilling them. These guys are struggling without even stepping foot into the dangerous badlands they've ventured to. A key to steerage is missing, somebody is locked inside, one crew member only wants to play games and most remaining crew members want nothing to do with you or your friend Zek who dashes off the boat the moment he can.

The king has not sent his army here. It's just you and Zek, and all these guys can do is sit and wait for you to return with the Chrysium rock, or just leave without you.

A single sailor extends some kindness, providing some torches and a healing potion to you. He's positioned in front of the path out of the ship, so you won't miss the important stuff. Aside from him, Tak can just leave if he wants, though spending some time digging through barrels to search for missing keys, or indulge that one sailor in playing a game together can gives players an extra boost with the rewards gotten there. It's good to be a helper.

On the boat, the game is a blank slate. eJECTION gives no clues as to what style of gameplay Fatal Quest will use, which gets really interesting when you win your choice of item from a sailor and have no idea how useful anything is. There's a lack of explanation given to pretty much everything in the game, which will end up being the main source of my criticisms against it.

A hint of what's to come lies on the very next board. Your buddy Zek has already gone on ahead, and he's seen fit to take care of most of hostile wildlife for Tak. Only a single enemy remains, giving players the most gentle introduction to combat possible. It's a simple melee system of touching enemies before they touch you. This first encounter doesn't give much of a feel for what it's actually like as the rest of the game will crank up the number of enemies Tak needs to fight.

It does at least make it clear that Zek is no slouch in combat. Tak is more interested in catching up with his friend rather than splitting up, and so this mysterious temple with the trail of blood leading inside seems like the place to check out first.

Things begin at a pretty fast pace. Moments after stepping off the boat players will reach the game's first dungeon. It will only become more apparent that eJECTION wants his games to keep moving. There's always something on every board, and truly safe locations are quite rare outside of towns. By the time you're actually able relax for a moment, the game will be practically over.

Upon entering the temple, the blank slate of what the game is going to be like is very rapidly filled in. Despite Zek having seemingly entered the temple alone, fresh corpses of others that proceeded into the temple are found lying dead in the foyer. Taking only a few steps in, the cause of deaths is revealed. A wizard by the name of Achar appears before Tak, and immediately begins casting a number of spells to ensure he meets the fate as his companions. First a spell transforms the exit doorway into a solid wall, trapping him inside. Then a summoning spell brings in skeletons from the side thrusting players into a more prolonged combat scenario.

When the skeletons have been defeated, the incredibly persistent Achar finds a new source of enemies, raising the bodies of the recently deceased and commanding them to attack. This leads to another fight immediately, only now with enemies that are a bit bulkier as well to raise the stakes.

This is an incredibly strong opening, and was the moment in preliminary exploration that I decided, yes, I will be playing this one. Upon first entering the room, you can see similarities to a number of other ZZT worlds. Warlock Domain has the looming visage of its villain appear before players in a similar hub, while Warlord's Temple goes with a simple dead body pointing at a "KEEP OUT" sign. All of these are designed to let players know they are unwelcome here, and will not survive long, but only eJECTION goes so far as to try to kill players immediately and twice.

With no more minions available, Achar challenges Tak directly, introducing the game's second form of fighting, the obligatory ZZT RPG engine. We'll take a look at in in depth later on, but for now know that Achar isn't pulling any punches, nor is eJECTION with his onslaught of fighting beginning the moment players take their first step into the badlands. It's a really intense start that helps set the game apart from other ZZT RPGs that are easy to group together. Warlock Domain is chock-full of puzzles to gain access to new areas. Warlord's Temple has players slowly amass skills and resources to take on their foe. Popular traditional ZZT RPGs like Rhygar start slow, focusing on character relations and conflicts. And of course you can take your pick of Interactive Fantasies titles (that Fatal Quest almost entirely predates) which savor the time spent before introducing players to their own RPG systems.

The opening sequence sets up Fatal Quest as an RPG to be played not for the story, but for the fighting, with a total of nine boards dedicated to battles (though two are mutually exclusive). For a fifty board demo, that's incredibly dense. Dense enough to have me counting fights in a few other ZZT RPGs.

Eventually, I did find one game that could barely beat it with Defender of Castle Sin, once I finally remembered to see what Nivek was up to around this time. Still, Fatal Quest is an extremely close second, and my methodology was to just use the playable board count values for the files and not actually track "gameplay" boards, so a game with dedicated credits and background information boards will fare worse than one that puts all that information on a single menu board. Science this ain't, but playing it, you'll definitely feel like you're getting into fights almost as often as you would random encounters in a non-ZZT RPG of the era.

And as already seen, when players aren't getting into turn-based fights they're still very likely to be fighting. The temple is host to a number of foes that will rush at Tak and attempt to take a bite out of him. In these situations, combat is bump-based where touching an enemy will inflict damage on it, while letting an enemy act while it's next to Tak will result in him being A-Tak-ed. This kind of combat is pretty inherently a lot drier than the RPG side of things which can vary wildly based on the author and their goals. The questions are basically the same from game to game. How do the enemies move? When are you allowed to attack them? And what options for attacking are available?

The enemies here really focus on the player. Pretty much every one is very biased in moving towards the player rather than randomly, with both keeps up the pace of the game, and despite what you might initially suppose, makes enemies easier to fight rather than more difficult. This is because your only method of attack is by bringing your sword down onto them. Ammo is entirely unused in the game, not even as a resource like magic. Since the only way to attack is up close, players benefit from enemies that are easy to chase down rather than scrambling about.

eJECTION does a commendable job with his enemy designs really. My one real complaint is that this is one of many ZZT games that grab an ASCII character of their choosing without telling players what exactly they're fighting. We recently saw in Closer Look: The Guardian some really descriptive text for its enemies which were fought in an RPG manner via text-window. Here, you get no real way to acknowledge most enemies other than by the literal character used. So it's not dire wolves and ogres, but circumflex i's, , and Ghostbusters symbols. Strangely, the one time the game is happy to name an enemy for you, is when it's a that is indeed a snake. Confirmations for the obvious. Nothing for the obtuse.

Enemies' themeing may leave a bit to be desired, but their behaviors mesh well with the quick tempo of the game. Enemies rush at players, and players rush back. Most enemies are defeated in a single blow, and deal minor amounts of damage. Most skirmishes will have players losing maybe a dozen health, with a number of +50 health restoring potions found just around the corner. Yet despite the numbers favoring the player so much, it is possible to become overwhelmed if enemies do manage to group up and attack from multiple angles, keeping you on your toes especially in some board which do require torches for light.

Enemies that take multiple hits still offer some kindness, staggering backwards when they land a blow, giving players time to recalibrate from a mistaken movement. Similarly they back off after being struck themselves, though slower enemies can still be beaten by just holding down the proper direction, with at worst maybe a single attack being taken in return.

It makes for a game where players get to feel powerful, fighting off large number of enemies with little effort. It could be seen as a negative for those looking for more of a challenge. This is especially noticeable on dark boards where things feel less like an RPG and more like a ZZT dungeon crawler, a genre which usually keeps players weak and low on resources. Being able to plow through monsters with little thought makes survival pretty much a guarantee in Fatal Quest, where you'll have to look towards the RPG side of things if you want the game to live up to its title.

With RPG and bump combat, being introduced so quickly, eJECTION would seem to have played his entire hand right at the start, leaving little in the way of additional surprises. Happily, I can say that he does continue to offer new obstacles to overcome. The temple begins as a gauntlet of monsters before eJECTION tries incorporating some puzzle elements and a test of reflexes.

It won't be long before players reach one of those "press buttons to toggle walls" puzzles where players need to clear a path forward. This is a tried-and-true puzzle design still seen today. Rather than repeat what's come before, eJECTION builds on the premise a little, creating additional paths that lead to dead-ends, but lining the walls with additional buttons to press. Having certain buttons unavailable until you can reach them is one thing, but specifically placing them in-between rows adds an extra element of possibilities as they can be reached from two sides.

Getting through it I wound up going down every path, and I suspect a more nuanced approach much be able to speed it up a little, but on the bright side, more potions for impatient players like me that kind of just assume the puzzle will work itself out rather than studying what each button does.

This is then followed immediately with short path to run while a cannon shoots bullets at fixed intervals which bounce along the path via ricochet. There are some little pockets to duck into for safety while the bullets pass. It's a simple and welcome addition as well, adding variety while not demanding much in return.

Well, save for muting the audio. The main ricochet path is a pleasant drum beat, until it reaches the end and begins bouncing up and down constantly. In isolation, this wouldn't be all that annoying. Players can get through the race rather quickly after all, but the cannon starts firing the moment players enter the board, adding an infuriating noise while you're trying to think (guess) your way through the wall puzzle.

A nasty surprise awaits afterwards, a fight with a giant beast known as a Tyro Kugon. Tak perseveres and fights his way through a few more boards with snakes and other monsters before confronting Achar again, this time fighting in a gigantic smiley-face form, which compared to some of the other large boss fights in the game looks a bit silly.

Defeating Achar once and for all reveals no clues as to where the stone might be, and has the unfortunate side effect of the tower exploding as the lava contained within its walls bursts free. Tak is blasted to another region of the badlands where he eyes his surroundings, and then just keeps heading forward.

This brings players to the next chapter of the game, with no real progress having been made up to this point. Negative progress really, as the second confrontation with Achar has Zek's body being discovered in a room filled with lava. (Dead, but holding up remarkably well considering the circumstances.)

The temple and Zek are left behind, with a new road to travel presenting itself. A linear road. One populated by new enemies and the body of a fallen adventurer who passed away with their diary on hand so that their writing could warn players what they're getting themselves into now.

The adventurer was also looking for the Chrysium rock and found themselves being constantly attacked by creatures known as Pikkills. These creatures are a nuisance, but their seemingly infinite numbers were enough to wear the adventurer down until they could do nothing but run before finally being overtaken.

This is pretty cool. It establishes the danger of the badlands before players even come across themselves. Up to this point on the road, Tak has only fought more of the little creatures from outside the temple. Now a sense of tension is there as to what might be just down the road.

It's unclear how far from the temple Tak was launched, though some seemingly scrapped but maybe not plans by eJECTION provide an answer. The last board before the next RPG battle actually connects west to the outside temple board. It requires going off the main path, something that makes the connection come of as unintentional, albeit not conclusively.

The grass on these boards is solid, while the dirt and shadows are not. This allows you to carefully hug a tree and return to earlier in the game. Walking on the shadows of a tree on the temple screen allows the connection to work from both sides. This technically means you can skip over the entire temple segment, but it's very hidden and feels like an oversight.

But something was planned for sure, as a flag is set when you arrive on the post-temple badlands board that gets rid of the passage back to the boat and replaces it with a new one.

The new passage shows the boat you arrived on in flames, a silent cut-scene where you can do nothing but stare at the burning ship until you turn back.

This really should have been integrated into the game proper. The only reason I discovered it was seeing what boards I missed in my initial playthrough and finding the burning ship. All eJECTION really had to do was have Tak see his companion run inside the temple and have him refuse to leave explore the wilderness for now. Extend the path on the badlands side so it communicates to players that they can head back to the ship, and suddenly players no longer have a time limit for finding the rock, in exchange for having no boat to get back home with.

Later in the game, Tak will even make a comment to somebody on how he needs to find another ship, suggesting that eJECTION did want players to be aware of this. I'm unsure what happened that the path wound up as an obtuse secret if the game intended players to find it.

Tak is accosted by Pikkills himself including a giant one as he made his way to the village of Jylorn, passing another dead adventurer along the way. These badlands are not good.

Truthfully I wasn't expecting a town at this point. It seemed like Tak was on a uninhabited island, yet things take a turn for the more traditional RPG here. I really like the efficiency-focused design of Jylorn, just a straight street of buildings to enter, no fluff whatsoever. It might not make for the most visually interesting looking town, but it's great to be able to get to all the points of interest so quickly.

The shop has two vendors. One that handles more basic supplies of rations for health and torches for lighting up the dark spaces that have already all been seen by this point. The other sells equipment that can be used in battle as the RPG engine only gets more features added as the game progresses.

To afford it all, players can play a simple dice game. For three gems, they can roll the die and win a number of gems equal to what they rolled. Notably, this isn't really a game of chance. The corner of the board exposes an arrow that moves back and forth and the amount with the amount to be won listed above it. The die begins rolling after payment, not stopping until the player touches the object a second time. The fixed speed and movement pattern turn it into a test of reflexes, where it's very easy once you get the timing down to roll six after six and fleece Bando out of a lot of coin.

Also what appears to be a six-sided die must be a ten-sided one as there are also several spots where no money will be won.

The last place of note is the inn, where anyone who has played an RPG will know something is about to happen when the innkeeper offers you a free stay for the night.

Sure enough, in the middle of the night two soldiers native to this land barge into your room and arrest Tak for a number of crimes, of which he's only committed some of them.

Tak tries to reason with them, pointing out that he's not even from this country, so there was nothing to desert in the first place. The soldiers will have none of it, and go with plan B: kill him.

And also following tradition, when Tak chases them off, the other occupant in the inn is intrigued as to how someone could be so cool. They introduce themselves, with Tak's admirer being name Darj. When Darj hears that Tak is looking for the nearest port to sail from he decides they should travel together. Tak has some interesting priorities here. It's not often that you get to focus on securing an escape route before finding the magic rock you were sent here for in the first place.

Their destination is Kysen, which is a long journey that Darj was already undertaking for business purposes. They agree to travel together for the extra security, and in the morning players are free to head down an eastern path that Tak had no reason to travel before.

There's a nice transition as the game finally moves away from the badlands and onto the mountain trail. Here beasts and Pikkills are no longer threats, replaced instead by a significant number of bandits as the game returns to bump combat for its final act.

They're unintentionally a very kind enemy as they only inflict a single point of damage, at least as long as they can also steal a few gems in the process. Without any cash on hand they get a little more violent and take five health instead, on par with most enemies.

Where the mountain trial really succeeds is in this board right here. I absolutely love way eJECTION split this board up into so many sections while keeping it looking completely natural. There's a real sense of depth on display with the mountains curving back and the river narrowing as it approaches the horizon.

The rest of the game takes on the typical overhead view with blobs of green grass and hand-drawn but still repetitive tree designs. This board shows a significant improvement in complexity when it comes to board layouts, giving players reason to visit it from every angle and explore the entire space. And who doesn't love a good ZZT bridge? This is the board you show people to promote the game.

There's then one last fight on the bridge itself, with someone named Harren following orders from the emperor of the land to kill Tak. Darj I guess is just along for the ride, happily getting involved with Tak despite him being on the wrong side of the law. Of course, the game never really gets into what Darj is up to other than "business", so I wouldn't be surprised in the least if the story was intended to reveal Darj to be the leader of a rebel group working to bring down the empire. Especially if you consider that Tak's crimes didn't make any sense. Perhaps they meant to go to Darj's room instead?

We'll never know what Darj's deal is though. The demo comes to its conclusion somewhat unexpectedly, but at a sensible spot for a break. You get a glimpse at the forest that lies beyond the mountains, with a touch of banter between Darj and Tak who really need to do some bonding if they're going to be traveling together and constantly being attacked by people. They should really know what they're both getting into.

The game concludes with a remarkably complex password screen for the next chapter. That's a lot of characters to keep track of, though with one flag per character I guess it adds up.

...It's also a good way to discover things you might have missed. One character of the password looks for a "rock" flag, an item that I never found.

It turns out you can actually find a piece of the Chrysium rock in the badlands! The little dot on this bottom-most tree was something I noticed, though I assumed it was just a visible debug object as a few boards have dots that handle things like changing object colors.

This rock also makes it clear that eJECTION's solid wall grass and fake wall tree shadows are a deliberate design decision. In order to actually reach the rock you'd have to go off the path on the previous board. I guess that means the burning ship scene being so hard to reach was intentional. There are some really weird decisions lurking under the surface of this game. I worry about how well it would have held up if it was completed and expecting players to notice all these little details if they wanted any chance of success.