The Lords of Midnight and Doomdark's Revenge
I was very sad to learn of the untimely death of veteran games
designer Mike Singleton on October 16th 2012. The Lords of Midnight
and its sequel Doomdark’s revenge were true ground breaking classic video games
and very much in my all-time top ten games list.
The Lords of Midnight, first released on the ZX Spectrum in
1984, was the very first game that made me believe in a virtual world and that a humble video game could also work on a story telling level. Mike Singleton was a pioneer of game design and world building and this week the industry lost one of its great unsung heroes.
Every time I played this game I lived and breathed that world and its characters. The game felt alive with possibilities and a purpose and I obsessed about the open ended gameplay. The
characters of Luxor the Moon Prince, Rorthron the Wise, Morkin
and Corleth the Fey became my first believable video game heroes. I even kept a diary whilst playing my game, my encounters, battles and losses became my own personal folk tales. The game had a sense of literature that made me want to read books that had similar themes, I discovered Tolkein through my love of playing The Lords of Midnight.
The first person view point gave the game a
realistic edge over the simple crude graphics of other games of the time. Looking out across the
frozen planes of Midnight and seeing mountains and forests as well as the distant
banner of great armies that I could travel towards made for an intoxicating chilly atmosphere of discovery and danger. Aided by
the fact I played the game in winter in a house with no central heating and on a tiny black and white telly all helped to make it feel as if I was traveling across a frozen world locked in perpetual winter. The
world and its layout of snow covered open plains, forests, mountains and citadels is still
indelibly etched on my mind, just as Tolkein’s Middle Earth was after reading
the Lord of the Rings books (which this game owes much to).
For those of you have
never played Lords of Midnight it was one of the first games to combine
strategy gameplay and AI with simple but beautiful first person graphics. The
game could be played as either, a straight adventure game, a strategic warfare
game or both. The aim of the game was to stop the forces of the evil WitchKing
from over running Midnight with his own armies. The player started out by
controlling a small group of characters that travel the world of Midnight
recruiting other Lords, these Lords also controlled their own armies. Once a Lord is successfully recruited (which was not always a given), their armies could be moved and controlled by the player. For its time the
graphics were ground breaking as was the details found within the game play.
Each Lord had his, or her own, strengths and weaknesses and morale, as well as allegiances
with other Lords. The game was turn based with the player moving his armies and
then the computer moving its own. The turn based nature made for very gripping
strategy game-play as you never knew what the next day/round would result in. This game made you think about your moves and each decision had an outcome in the field of battle.
Mr Singleton followed up the Lords of Midnight with Doomdark’s
revenge. Doomdark's Revenge featured more detail, more complex characters, objects and even changing weather conditions! He really
performed miracles on a tiny 48K of memory and simple 8 colour graphics.
Mike Singleton had always intended for the Lords of Midnight
series to be a trilogy but the third game was not forthcoming on the spectrum, I waited year after year for the third part, hoping. During that time I read an
interview with Mike Singleton about his plans for the third game - The Eye of the Moon. He
revealed the fate of some of the characters from the earlier games and that it would be set decades after the events of Doomdark's Revenge - I hung
on every plot reveal, as if I was getting insights into some great novel or a film series. I was that enthralled by the series of Midnight games.
A third midnight game was eventually released on the PC many years
later but it seemed a shadow of its former glory and I did not play in case I
ruined the memory of those first two cherished games.
Honestly, I loved
these original games, I still do. The none linear narrative and the attention to detail in the elegant yet complex game design, the mix
of strategy and adventure and even the striking packaging of the games were all very much ahead of their time - they were the
Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim of their time.
When I eventually sold my Spectrum and all of my games, in order to upgrade to a Commodore 64, I still kept my copy of The Lords of Midnight. I still have this boxed copy somewhere in my house; a memento of more innocent times.
Even to this day I always hoped and dreamed that maybe Mike would make a new Midnight game in the style of the
original two. I knew he was working on an update of the original game to play
on the IPad and using touch controls with improved AI and graphics (though hopefully not too improved). It is a game that I still am still eager to play again, like visiting an old friend. I had hoped that if the remake had performed well enough Mike would have properly concluded the trilogy by making Eye of the Moon in the same style.
Rest in peace Mike Singleton and know that you made many gamers happy during those dark 8 bit winter months of 1984 onwards. You showed us that games were capable of producing stories, characters and open ended game-play. You have influenced a generation of designers, coders and artists. Your legacy in the
history of video games will live on.
You made two of my favourite games and for
that, I thank you!
Long live the Lords of Midnight!
Here are extracts from the original Crash Magazine review of The Lords of Midnight from 1984.
Beyond have produced a game of immense complexity that
transcends the simple word-matching of the mainstream adventure and in many
respects more resembles a strategy war game. Many features of the game are new
or are developed to an elaborate degree setting new high standards in Spectrum
software.
The cassette is accompanied by a lavish booklet giving thorough and very
sound playing instructions. When I say you will need them, and you most
certainly will need to read some of the hints given, I mean this as a
compliment to the inventive depth which pervades the whole project.
Although this game is so complex it is difficult to review in the few days
available there is one feature which impresses on the very first frame of the
game. The graphics which show your journey through the land of Midnight are
little short of stunning. The panoramic views are drawn in full perspective
and consecutive moves see mountains, forests, hills, citadels, towers and
fortresses rising in stature as you approach or fade to distant outlines as you
leave. The screen as a whole is very well presented as if designed by a
graphic artist. There is no crude split on the main screen but instead a
pleasing mixture of superb views of the scene, tastefully redefined characters
for the text, a heraldic shield depicting the crest under which your character
fights, and highly decorative and detailed representations of the numbers and
type of foe you might come across. These last are the best I’ve seen on the
Spectrum.
Possibly the most pleasing aspect of the
Lords of Midnight is its
wonderfully coherent storyline.
You initially have control over four characters: Luxor, Morkin, Corleth the
Fey and Rothron the Wise but as you progress such characters as the Lord of
Shimeral and the Lord of Brith and their armies add support to the forces of
the Free.
If I run through a typical game it may show you some of the great features
it has and perhaps some tips if you’ve already got a copy.
My tactics, and remember you’ll need them as this is very much a strategy
game, involved building up armies at the Citadel of Shimeril guarding the
western route into the tranquil south-east and at the Keep of Athoril which
overlooks a major route south.
At the end of the seventh day at nightfall, when looking throughout the
eight compass directions, I could see the silhouettes of the towers, citadels
and armies that surrounded me, my thoughts turned north to Morkin who I now
knew had this very day penetrated deep into the dark Mountains of Ugrorn, into
the Tower of Doom and at this very moment was wondering how he might get back
with that precious object held tightly within his grasp. He had the Ice
Crown.
| Difficulty | 8 |
| Atmosphere | 10 |
| Vocabulary | N/A |
| Debugging | 10 |
| Overall Value | 10 |
To read the full Crash review, go here:
http://www.crashonline.org.uk/07/midnight.htm
