Classics
Sword of Fargoal
By Dave McLean - March 10th, 2010
If you place Sword of Fargoal along the Commodore 64 RPG timeline, it sits snugly between Telenguard and Questron. It’s a brilliantly straightforward dungeon crawler. If you’re looking for class selection, stat management, socketable equipment, and battle tactics… well, this will number as one among many disappointments in your life. Sword of Fargoal offers the simplest pleasures: killing monsters, leveling up, and finding treasure. Frankly, what more do you need?
Your goal is to find a legendary sword buried several dungeon levels below the earth, and bring that sword back to the surface before time elapses. Each level you enter begins in darkness and as you walk through rooms and corridors you slowly fill in the map, revealing bags of gold, staircases, temples (offering sanctuary), chests, and monsters. In-game combat develops in the same way I imagine real life combat goes: you walk up beside your opponent—Thud, Clank, Shriek—someone dies. During combat, your options are to let it happen, to run away like a coward, or to throw up a spell. That’s the game—simple, awesome.
Because the dungeon levels are randomly created and because the sword is at least fifteen levels down, the difficulty level of this game is surprisingly high. I’d guess that I’ve played it at least a hundred times in my life, and I have yet to beat it. I have found the sword before, I can confirm that it exists, but the one time I found it I died almost immediately after. If you plan on playing this game, get used to seeing the phrase Thou Are Slain. If extreme frustration occurs, try deep breathing. Or whiskey. Or punching your monitor two or three times in a row.
If you still have your trusty Commodore 64 (and hats off to you, sir or madam, if you do), you can play Sword of Fargoal there, but failing that there was an excellent remake created a few years ago that’s available for download at various sites. The shareware version has improved graphics, enhanced monster behaviour, and the option to save your game. And if you’re looking for a version of the game that’s even more butch, well, there’s an iPod/iPhone app for that.
Check it out here.
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Who else but Epyx? Consider my interest piqued.
Epyx was always the best country in the Summer and Winter games.
Looking at that box art reminds me how much I suck for not winning this game. I mean, the sword is just laying there on a table, and all you have to do to get it is beat down a paunchy, unarmed goblin. But apparently that’s just too much of a challenge.
“Socketable equipment” - I am totally going to use that in a naughty context sometime soon.
Alas, the last I saw of my old Commodore 64 (it was actually a 128 with a 64 emulator) I was handing it over to friends of my parents to give to their kids to use.
I’m the co-designer and developer for the iPhone remake. The original C64 game was a huge inspiration for me… such awesome atmosphere, with the sound effects telling a tale all their own. It’s been a blast working on the remake. :)
Hey Paul,
Thanks for stopping in. We here at Thumbs are not afraid to bury ourselves in the past. A lot of these games are part of our “gaming makeup”.
:)