Temple of Apshai
Temple of Apshai is a fantasy adventure game which was published by EPYX in the early 1980s for most of the major home computer platforms of the day. A version was ported to the VIC-20 and released on cassette in 1983 (product number 216C). The VIC-20 version required 16K of RAM expansion to run.
Temple of Apshai was one of the first graphical dungeon-romp games and as such was an extremely popular title. Some novel new features were those that allowed a player to create a custom character, haggle for gear and weapons, explore a dungeon and engage in quasi-tactical melee. Most of the elements of the game mimic the pen & paper role-playing game "Dungeons & Dragons" which was highly popular in the early 1980s. This high level of gameplay detail went above and beyond the action-oriented games that dominated the home-computer market at the time.
The game provides a top-down view of the dungeon environment immediately surrounding the player's character. Movement and combat take place in a turn-based style (with a time limit). The game displays a number for each dungeon room which can be checked against the printed manual to provide detailed, mood-setting descriptions of the environment being explored. The goal of the game is to simply explore, fight monsters, gain experience, improve the abilities of one's character and find treasures. In many ways, Temple of Apshai (like EPYX's other release "Sword of Fargoal") was an adaptation of the earlier UNIX game "Rogue".
The keyboard commands are:
- 0 to 9 - Move forward 0 to 9 feet
- R - Turn Right
- L - Turn Left
- V - Turn around (volte face)
- O - Open Door
- E - Examine wall for secret door
- S - Search for traps
- G - Grab treasure
- D - Drop treasure
- then type the two digit number of the treasure you want to drop
- Q - Hearken (Query)
- ! - Speak to monster
- H - Apply one healing salve
- Y - Drink a healing potion
- A - Normal attack
- T - Thrust
- P - Parry
- F - Fire a normal arrow
- M - Fire a magic arrow
EPYX published several add-on software expansion packs which allowed characters to explore new dungeons, however it seems that none of these were ported to work with the VIC-20 version of Temple of Apshai. The original game and the expansion packs were part of the "DunjonQuest" series. EPYX did release "Rescue at Rigel" for the VIC-20 (a "StarQuest" series game which used the same engine as Temple of Apshai).
