Lianne in...The Dark Crown
by DarkDread
An RPG demo from DarkDread which is a big inspiration to many QBasic RPGs.
| Baron Von Cain has killed Lord Frehley and stolen the Crown of Kissworld! You are Lianne, and you must find him and bring him to justice! | |
| This is a top down RPG. Basically you are trying to find your way to the stairwell to get to
Baron Cain. To get there you must fight your way past bunnies (blue, pink, and yellow), spiders, turtles, and other unusually not cute enemies. The game is basically a demo. It is tile based which was actually done nicely.
You don't notice that tiles are usually choppy. There are basically two weapons and two pieces of armor.
You have the originals, and you must buy the upgrades from a cat. Yes, a cat. Once you have the upgrades though, the really tough battles become too easy. Gaining levels has a similar effect. You might die easily at level 1 but at level 2, you kick butt. Unfortunately, this demo does not have a lot of features programmed into it. You can't heal during battle. You can't view items (there are no items to view anyway, but still), and other things like it. I also found that the game crashes when you try to open the last treasure chest. Besides that chest, I found that for some reason my save file disappeared once. I was not able to reproduce that feat again, but it did happen. The game plays like a basic Dragon Warrior RPG, with one enemy battles and such. It sadly ends right when you make it to Magnus, and you see the same ending whether you defeat him or not. I don't think that was supposed to happen, but in either case, it is too bad that the game is so short. There is a promise for an expanded version, but this is obviously not it. |
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| Very bright and nicely done. They are tile, but this is one of the first RPGs.
And for tiles they are nicely done. The water, the cat, and the tree(??) all exhibit some animation, even though the animation only occurs when Lianne moves. The battles show huge characters. There is hardly any animation. Using Magic spells are really the only source of it. It looked ok though.
Overall the graphics were pretty well done, considering the fact that this is one of the oldest QBasic RPGs made. Some more animation would probably be nice. | |
| Basically, you move Lianne with the arrow keys and open chests with the Space Bar.
You can also bring up the menu with the the Space Bar. Unfortunately, sometimes when I want to open a chest the menu comes up. This is because when you are next to something and you try to turn in the
direction of the something, Lianne does not turn. She stays in the same direction.
You need to be facing the chests to open them so you might need to move away and then towards the chest.
This can be annoying, especially if you have to fight an enemy.
When in battle, there are not as many options as I would have liked, but the controls were simple.
Of course, having two different menu systems is confusing. Pressing the numerical keys for some and
pressing letters for others kind of makes the game unintuitive.
Controls are simple, and any problems can be lived with. There is no real major problem except for some lack of options. | |
| No sound, which is understandable since early QBasic programs were silent. | |
| The game is rather challenging at first, but once you build up a level or two and buy
the Bronze CD, the battles are rather easy. Then you get to that big old tree. It becomes difficult until
you raise a few more levels. Then it is easy and then you get to Magnus. Then it is difficult again.
The challenge for fighting the regular enemies is too low once you get started.
The bosses are also easy to defeat once you gain enough levels. They can be beaten without gaining a lot of levels, but they can be difficult. The main reason for wanting to gain so many levels is because
battles are survival tests. If you can last longer, you win. You can't heal so you better have as many
HP on your side as you can. I think the game could have done well with a much nicer plan for the enemies. Of course, this is only a trial version but still. | |
| This game had some interesting twists, like a cat merchant, attacking bunnies, and some animated tiles. Of course, the game play was also kind of enjoyable. I would have liked a bigger map with more to explore though. It just finished too soon. | |
| What would have made this game better? More options, larger gaming world, and more programmed
features. Besides all of this, the game was fairly cool. I liked playing it. Besides, I think this would be one of those "special" RPGs that should hold a place in everyone's heart for being one of the first. | |
| .zip file: 65KB download | |
| Pete's QBasic Site, V Planet |