Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin is a video game for the Intellivision video game console and the Mattel Aquarius computer system. The game was written by Tom Loughry in 1981 and was published by Mattel in 1983. In this licensed Dungeons & Dragons adaptation, the player wanders through a multi-tiered dungeon, each level consisting of an 11x11 maze and its surrounding hallway. The objective is to slay the Minotaur who guards the Treasure of Tarmin and take his treasure chest.
The game's catalog gives the following description of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin:
- "You've found the secret map to the underground lair of the dreaded Minotaur. You can go in, but you'll never come out unless you slay the Minotaur and claim his Tarmin treasure. As you make your way through the hallways and chambers, monsters wield their conventional or spiritual weapons. You must gather the proper defenses along the way. But use them sparingly, the Minotaur looms closer!"[1]
While the battles were turn-based,[2] Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin is different from most games of its era, as it involved a first-person view, giving it a three-dimensional feel. Treasure of Tarmin was the second AD&D game for the Intellivision, being created after Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain. The player begins the game with only the lowest level bow, a small supply of food, and arrows (amount dependent on the selected difficulty level), and minimal "Spiritual" and "War" health. Randomly placed throughout the maze are new weapons, armor, magical items, and treasure.[3] The treasure in the maze (aside from the Treasure of Tarmin the Minotaur holds) can either boost the player's score (visible from the map screen), contain a potion (blue, pink, or purple in large and small varieties), or a bomb reducing the player's war/spiritual score. The bomb can cause a game over depending on the strength of the player at the time of the bomb trigger.
Types of threats
Note: As well, each enemy (aside from the Minotaur) comes in three colors of difficulty. [1]
- Skeletons: The easiest enemy to defeat in the game. They attack the player's War health and are very easy to defeat. Cloaked skeletons are more difficult to defeat. Both regular and cloaked skeletons may have shields, which as well increase their difficulty.
- Giants: The other primary enemy to attack only the player's War health. These can have shields as well and are significantly more difficult than any of the above listed Skeletons.
- Giant Ants: The easiest of the enemies who attack the player's Spiritual health.
- Dwarfs: Much like Giants in their difficulty as well as attack. These come either with or without shields, however these attack only the player's Spiritual health.
- Giant Scorpions: Another mid-range difficulty enemy who attacks the player's Spiritual health.
- Giant Snakes: More difficult than Giant Scorpions, Giant Snakes attack the player's Spiritual health and, as you can assume, have more health.
- Alligators: The next more difficult of the Spiritual-attacking enemies. How this fits in with an underground maze beneath a castle is uncertain; regardless, they do a great deal of damage.
- Dragons: The most difficult of the enemies that attack only the player's Spiritual health.
- Ghouls: These don't appear in the game until the player has gone several levels down into the game. They attack either the player's War health or Spiritual health and are capable of switching between either type of attack at any point during the battle. On the easiest two difficulties, its type of attack is determined randomly, but on the hardest two difficulties it attacks the weakest health. One peculiar aspect of this enemy is that it's listed as existing with a shield in the instruction manual but does not actually show up in the game.
- Wraiths: These are more difficult than Ghouls and can be either shielded or normal. As the player gets deeper into the game, these can and will become significantly harder to defeat than the Minotaur itself.
- Minotaur: This is the "end boss" of the game, is a different color than any other enemy (purple), and attacks both Spiritual and War health as well. Upon defeating him, he will drop the Treasure of Tarmin, which can be picked up to end the game. However, if the player leaves the treasure on the ground, they can continue playing. More Minotaurs will show up on lower levels and often even in the same level.
- "Door Monsters": These special creatures hide the three spell books and are usually found only on the lowest levels of the dungeon. They look like a door opening up on a blank, colored wall. Blue (the weakest) gives a book that teleports through walls. Pink gives a book that allows vision through walls. Purple ones contain a book that turns ordinary items to platinum (thus making any war weapon or treasure the highest value possible) and tend to strike with high-end Spirit weapons.
- Bombs: Some treasure chests and bags contain small or large bombs that sizzle and cause war damage.
Gameplay
- To increase health, the player must either attack or be attacked by enemies, followed by resting (consuming a food item), or with the aid of Spirit or War tomes found in treasure chests. The player's maximum health (with the aid of maximum-health limit increasing books and potions) is 199 War points and 99 Spiritual.
- In the outer hallways, gates between adjacent mazes on the same level may be encountered. Passing through a green gate reduces the player's spiritual health and boosts the player's health, and the opposite effect occurs passing through a blue gate. Use in conjunction with war or spiritual books can boost respective health significantly. Passing through a tan gate changes nothing.
- The player may keep going down levels (by accessing a ladder located inside each maze) until level 255, after which the game cycles the player back to level 1, with the player's character retaining their inventory and health, but attacking enemies at the first floor's easier difficulty.
- It is possible to be defeated but not lose the game. Upon dying, the player can be 'reincarnated' to another section of that maze, with all of their pack's inventory gone while retaining the contents of their weapon and shield slots as well as their supply of arrows and food.
Atari 2600 version
In 1983, Mattel Electronics, commissioned an Atari 2600 version of Treasure of Tarmin. This was developed by Synth Corporation in Chicago. Two Synth software developers, Michael Bengtson and Neal Reynolds, wrote the game to conform to the play of the Intellivision version. While the game was completed, it was not released before Mattel Electronics closed their doors.
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