Bloodwych

Bloodwych is a dungeon role-playing video game, a dungeon crawler, developed for the Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum. Its box featured artwork by Chris Achilleos. The plotline identifies the player as a champion of Trazere who, after recruiting up to three fellow champions, travels through dungeons and mazes fighting creatures along the way to find and destroy the evil Zendick, and banish the Lord of Entropy.

Bloodwych
Developer(s)Anthony Taglione
Pete James
Philip Taglione[1]
Publisher(s)
Platform(s)Atari ST, Amiga, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, MS-DOS
Release
Genre(s)Role-playing
Mode(s)Single-player
Multiplayer

Gameplay
Two-player cooperative mode (MS-DOS version).

All of the champions fall into the four classes of Warrior, Mage, Adventurer or Thief, each with their own particular capability. Within each class there are four characters available, each with their own colour of Red, Blue, Green or Yellow. Each colour also has its own particular advantage, largely with respect to the families of spells the character will be most adept at casting and developing. However, that colour is also important when it comes to matching up coloured rings later in the game to magnify the effects of spell-casting.

One particularly memorable quirk of the game is the ability granted to players to hold simple conversations with traders, other champions, and even enemies during combat. Stock pseudo-medieval phrases such as "Truly my courage is remarkable" and "Begone, thou oaf" are selected using a menu, and can be used in combination to flatter a desired companion, aggravate an enemy, or lower the price of an item which the player wishes to purchase. Many gameplayers have found that the price of a long sword (RRP 10 gold pieces) can fall to as little as 6 or 7 after the shopkeeper has been buttered-up with phrases such as "Thou seems fine" - particularly when this strategy is used in conjunction with the Beguile spell (most effectively cast by Megrim).

Expansion

The game had an add-on pack released called Bloodwych: Data Disks Vol 1 (also known as Bloodwych: The Extended Levels). Among the features of the add-on pack was the capability to persuade some of the enemy creatures to join your "merry band".

Reception
Reception
Review score
PublicationScore
CU Amiga86%[2]

Computer Gaming World criticized the IBM version's "weak graphics", but concluded that "Bloodwych scores very solidly on game-play and deserves serious consideration from dungeon fanatics".[3] CU Amiga-64 gave the game additionally a CU Screen Star, stating that the game had even more varied gameplay than Dungeon Master. It also praised that the puzzles could be solved by pure logic.

Hexx: Heresy of the Wizard

Bloodwych was followed in 1994 by Psygnosis' Hexx: Heresy of the Wizard (working title Wizard). Hexx was basically the same game with updated graphics, a slightly modified cast of champions, and a greatly expanded magic system.

  • Single player mode on the 8-bit ZX Spectrum version.
  • Bloodwych: The Extended Levels (Amiga version).
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References
  1. Barton, Matt (February 23, 2007). "The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part 2: The Golden Age(1985-1993)". Gamasutra. UBM Technology Group. Archived from the original on March 2, 2007. Retrieved January 20, 2019.
  2. CU Amiga-64 issue October 1989, pg. 52/53.
  3. Greenberg, Allen L. (April 1992). "You Can Take the Bloodwych Out of the Dungeon..." Computer Gaming World. p. 34. Retrieved 24 November 2013.
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