Deathlord
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| Developer(s) | Electronic Arts |
| Publisher(s) | Electronic Arts |
| Platform(s) | Commodore 64 Apple II |
| Release date(s) | 1987 |
| Genre(s) | Role-playing video game |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
Deathlord is a 1987 role-playing video game created by Al Escudero and David Wong. It was published by Electronic Arts for the Apple II and Commodore 64 computer systems. The game set itself apart by its Japanese flavor, immense game world and length of play.
Deathlord has a world of 16 continents, 128 unique monsters, and twenty dungeons, yet fits on only 2 double-density 5¼" floppy disks as it compresses blocks of identical squares on a map.
There is only one savegame slot, and the game frequently autosaves, by design, if the party moves to another location, or a party member dies. A party, once killed, needs a new party to resurrect them.
The world of Lorn is under attack from the Deathlord's forces. The Emperor of Kodan has sent word asking for a party to defeat the Deathlord. The party must search the world to find seven words, six items, venture into Hell, defeat the Deathlord, and return. There is no linear path to the goals, and much of the story lies in subtext as the developer chose to keep dialog options to a minimum within the game.
The Japanese setting and theme of Deathlord was not its original design. Originally, the game was intended to have a Norse/Teutonic theme, But marketing department at Electronic Arts gave Al Escudero 5 weeks to change the assets (art, story, spell names, equipment names, location names, etc.)
The game plays as a turn based, top down, tile mapped CRPG. The player would create a party of up to 6 characters to move about the world, searching for secrets and fighting monsters. It used most of the keys on the keyboard, mapping them to specific actions.
Before the player could start the game, they needed to do some tasks first. The game begins by toggling between a title screen and the EA logo in use in 1987. From there a player can press any key to which three options appear at the bottom of the screen, "Utilities," "Character Options," and "Play a Game."
Before the player could begin the game proper, they were asked to go to the utility menu and make a copy of the scenario disk. They could also import characters from other games here if they desired.
Once scenario disks were made, the player then created their party of 6 characters from the 8 races and 16 classes available. They weren't limited to just 6 characters, however, and could keep a roster of other characters to switch out in the future, but any time they did, the party would be returned to the starting point of the game.
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Wikipedia