| Knight Lore | |
|---|---|
Amstrad CPC cover |
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| Developer(s) | Tim and Chris Stamper |
| Publisher(s) | Ultimate Play The Game |
| Engine | Filmation |
| Platform(s) | ZX Spectrum BBC Micro Amstrad CPC MSX Famicom Disk System (Japan only) |
| Release date(s) | 7th Dec 1984 (Spectrum) 1985 (Amstrad CPC) Nov/Dec 1985 (MSX)[1] |
| Genre(s) | Arcade adventure; Maze |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | N/A |
| Media/distribution | Cassette (Spectrum, Amstrad, BBC, MSX) Cartridge (MSX, Japan only) Floppy disc (Famicom Disk System) |
| System requirements
48K RAM (Spectrum) |
|
Knight Lore is a computer game developed and released by Ultimate Play The Game in 1984. The game is the third in the Sabreman series, following on from his adventures in Sabre Wulf and Underwurlde. Unlike the earlier games in the series it used Ultimate's filmation engine to achieve a 3D look using isometric projection.[2] In the game Sabreman has to find the ingredients for a magic potion. The game was written by Tim and Chris Stamper.
Knight Lore was regarded as a revolutionary title[3] and was the first of the "isometric adventure" genre, by displaying a detailed 3D world using isometric perspective.[4] It was extensively copied by other publishers, and was described as being the second most cloned piece of software after WordStar.[5]
Contents |
A man cursed to be a werewolf (spelt as "werewulf" in the game) travels to Knight Lore castle in the hope that the dying wizard, Melkhior can free him. He has only 40 days and nights to find a potion that will break the curse or he will remain a "werewulf" forever.
Again taking the role of Sabreman, the player must find the wizard Melkhior, then scour Knight Lore castle to retrieve the objects successively requested by his cauldron. Once collected, the objects must be returned to Melkhior, and dropped into the waiting cauldron. Successfully following all of the cauldron's requests within a forty day period frees Sabreman from the curse of lycanthropy cast upon him by the Wulf encountered in Sabre Wulf.
The curse itself plays an important role in gameplay. While beginning the game as Sabreman, the player is periodically transformed into a werewulf as day turns into night (see the sun / moon dial in the bottom right of the screenshots below). At the point of transformation (either to, or from, the werewulf), Sabreman experiences a short, but humorously animated, seizure, and is vulnerable to enemies or hazards. Certain enemies (including Melkhior's cauldron itself) will attack Sabreman when a werewulf, making the timing of certain actions crucial.
In what was revolutionary for its time, the castle is presented as a series of isometric, flip-screen rooms. Negotiating many of these rooms requires good platform skills, especially since some platforms disappear or move when stepped on. In some rooms, objects such as tables or treasure chests (or even the objects collected for the cauldron), need to be used to reach carefully positioned goals (see screenshots below).
Aside from platform-hopping, Sabreman must avoid a series of enemies and hazards. Static beds of spikes and falling spiked metal balls are among the simplest hazards. Malevolent portcullis gates guard many thoroughfares, and are often accompanied by slow-moving, but lethal, guards. Faster moving enemies, such as ghosts and Melkhior's cauldron spirit, provide more dangerous company.
Tim Stamper suggested in a 1988 interview that Knight Lore was actually completed before its less technically-accomplished prequel Sabre Wulf.[6] However, they delayed its release because "the market wasn't ready for it":
| “ | ... we kept the Number One position for quite a while. It didn't make any difference to sales. They were still good products for the time. I think possibly Knight Lore was ahead of its time, and in looking back at the market now, there doesn't seem to have been any vast improvement in the two years since we left it. I don't know whether we could have made any more of an improvement. | ” |
However, this chronology has been disputed by an independent analysis of the source code routine used by Ultimate's games for reading keypresses. While this routine has been found to be optimised in all of Ultimate's games from Knight Lore onwards, the optimisation is not present in Sabre Wulf. Given Tim Stamper's chronology for Sabre Wulf, one would expect otherwise if it had truly been completed after Knight Lore.[7]
| Reception | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Publication | Score |
| Amstrad Action | 95% (CPC version)[8] |
| Amtix | 91% (CPC version)[9] |
| Computer and Video Games | 9 out of 10 (Spectrum version)[10] |
| CRASH | 94% (Spectrum version)[11] |
| Sinclair User | 9 out of 10 (Spectrum version)[12] |
| Your Spectrum | 14 out of 15 (Spectrum version)[13] |
Knight Lore received an overwhelmingly positive reception from the gaming press at the time of its release. Amstrad Action described it as a "stunningly original concept" and praised its addictive gameplay, calling it "without doubt one of the best three games available on the Amstrad".[8] CRASH was equally enthusiastic, calling it "incredible, and a joy to play ... simply a great game" and describing the animation as "terrific from the smallest detail right through to Sabreman himself".[11] Your Sinclair magazine called it "one of the most important (and best) games ever written for the Speccy".[14]
The game's reputation survives intact to this day and it still receives acclaim as one of the most important and advanced titles of its era.[4] GamesTM have hailed it as "seminal" and "revolutionary",[3] while Gamesmaster magazine's Adam Norton claims that "this slightly cryptic puzzle/platform adventure defined isometricism in the same way Super Mario 64 defined 3D".[15] X360 magazine have said Knight Lore is "one of the most successful and influential games of all time",[16] while Edge has described it as representing "the greatest single advance in the history of computer games".[17]
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