Jewels of Darkness

Jewels of Darkness is a trilogy of text adventure games by Level 9. The individual games were initially released separately in 1982. They featured some themes and names inspired by the books of J. R. R. Tolkien and so became known as the Middle-Earth Trilogy. The individual releases were available for the BBC Micro unlike the compilation.

Jewels of Darkness
MS-DOS cover art
Developer(s)Level 9
Publisher(s)Telecomsoft
Platform(s)Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Amstrad PCW, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Macintosh, MS-DOS, MSX, ZX Spectrum
Release1986
Genre(s)Interactive fiction
Mode(s)Single-player

In 1986 the three games were revised, expanded and rereleased together as a compilation. For legal reasons the references to Middle Earth were removed and the trilogy was retitled Jewels of Darkness. The games include simple static graphics.

The games

Colossal Adventure
Main article: Colossal Adventure

An expanded version of the original Adventure by Will Crowther and Don Woods

Adventure Quest

Similar in structure to the previous game, the player must defeat the Dark Lord, Agaliarept.

Dungeon Adventure

A continuation of the previous game; following the defeat of the Dark Lord, Agaliarept, the player must explore his dungeon looking for treasure.

Reception

Computer Gaming World stated that the compilation's claim that the games had been "significantly revised to incorporate the latest innovative techniques" was false. It described the puzzles as illogical, the Commodore version's graphics as "crude", and, like the parser, below the standard of previous Firebird text adventures.[2]

"[The graphics are] colourful but they're not great works of art. And the location descriptions and scenarios have always struck me as being good enough on their own."
Zzap! issue sept. 1986[1]

References
  1. Jewels of Darkness review in Zzap! issue 17, sept. 1986, p. 74, ISSN 0954-867X here
  2. Seacat, Douglas (February 1988). "Jewels of Darkness". Computer Gaming World. No. 44. pp. 23, 26. Retrieved 24 April 2016.
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