The Lords of Midnight

The Lords of Midnight
Cover art
Developer(s)	Mike Singleton Additional work by: Maelstrom Games (DOS) Chris Wild (Remake)
Publisher(s)	Beyond Software (ZXS) Mindscape (C64) Amsoft (CPC) Domark Software (DOS)
Platform(s)	ZX Spectrum Commodore 64 Amstrad CPC DOS iOS Android OS X Microsoft Windows BlackBerry OS Windows Phone
Release	ZX Spectrum & Amstrad CPC NA: 1984 (1984) Commodore 64 NA: 1986 (1986) MS-DOS NA: 1995 (1995) Remake iOS WW: October 28, 2012 (2012-10-28) Android WW: January 11, 2013 (2013-01-11) OS X WW: July 5, 2012 (2012-07-05) Microsoft Windows WW: July 12, 2013 (2013-07-12) BlackBerry OS WW: October 28, 2013 (2013-10-28)
Genre(s)	Role-playing, strategy
Mode(s)	Single-player

The Lords of Midnight is an epic fantasy video game combining aspects of war games and graphic adventures, written by Mike Singleton and originally released in 1984 for the ZX Spectrum. Very well received from the beginning, it was soon converted for the Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64. The game featured an innovative 3-D effect that Singleton called landscaping, which served to bring the player into the game much more than usual. The Lords of Midnight is often named with Elite as among the top role playing games of the 1980s.

The Lords of Midnight is a strategy/role-playing game hybrid. The player starts with four characters (Luxor the Moonprince, Rorthron the Wise, Corleth the Fey, and Morkin), and then has the option to recruit up to twenty-eight further characters (such as Lords Blood, Ithrorn, Xajorkith, Shadows, etc. plus the Utarg of Utarg, Farflame the Dragon Lord and Fawkrin the Skulkrin) to join in the quest to destroy Doomdark, the evil Witchking who has locked the Land of Midnight in perpetual winter.

The game can be played in three ways, firstly as a straight adventure game, where the goal is for Morkin to destroy the Ice Crown, the source of Doomdark's power. The second is as a wargame, recruiting other lords and their armies until you are strong enough to defeat Doomdark's armies and storm his citadel in the far north. A third variation, referred to in the manual as the 'Epic', requires the player to complete the game both ways simultaneously.

The player has an advantage in that only one of the two objectives is needed to defeat Doomdark. The game is won whenever the Ice Crown is destroyed or when Doomdark's home citadel of Ushgarak falls. For Doomdark to win, he has to complete two objectives. First, he must kill Morkin, Luxor's son, since as long as Morkin is alive, the game continues. Also, he must subdue the armies of the Free, either by killing Luxor or by conquering Xajorkith, the capital citadel of the Free lands.

The game featured a groundbreaking technique called landscaping to depict the lands of Midnight from a first-person perspective. Also, even after completion the game may be enjoyed numerous times, since each time Doomdark's armies can attack from different routes and do not always follow the same pattern.