Sword of Fargoal
From Free net encyclopedia
Sword of Fargoal is a computer game written by Jeff McCord and published in 1983 by Epyx. The first version was released for the VIC-20 computer, with a version for the Commodore 64 following shortly thereafter. Both versions were originally based on an earlier, much simpler Commodore PET game, also by McCord, called Gammaquest II.
Sword of Fargoal is a roguelike game, with the player controlling an adventurous warrior attempting to reclaim the titular sword from the depths of a monster-infested, randomly-generated dungeon. The sword is placed randomly somewhere between the fifteenth and twentieth dungeon level (inclusive). Sword of Fargoal is noteworthy for being one of the first popular games to introduce many elements used by later roguelike games, and for being extremely difficult to win—once the sword has been claimed by the player, he or she has exactly 2,000 seconds (33 minutes and 20 seconds) to escape the dungeon by going back through each level, or the sword will be destroyed by a curse. Complicating matters further is the fact that if the sword is lost for any reason, the player must return to the level he or she originally found it, and the clock does not stop or reset when this occurs.
An open source remake exists for many modern computers.