The Heroes of Karn

The Heroes of Karn is a 1983 adventure game written by Ian Gray.[1] It was released by Interceptor Micros for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum. Music was written by Chris Cox.[2] The Spectrum and Amstrad versions were adapted by David M. Banner with graphics by Terry Greer.[1] A sequel, Empire of Karn, was released in 1985 on the Commodore 64.

The Heroes of Karn
Developer(s)Ian Gray
Publisher(s)Interceptor Software
Platform(s)Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC
Release
Genre(s)Adventure
Mode(s)Single-player video game

Gameplay

The player must rescue four heroes who have been magically imprisoned, and thus save the land of Karn from dominion by evil creatures. The heroes are Beren the swordsman, Istar the wizard, Haldir the Elf-lord, and Khadim the dwarf.

The game's parser accepts relatively complex sentences for the time (e.g. "attack giant clam with shovel").[3] The puzzles are mostly straightforward, involving the use of an object found elsewhere to defeat the creature that is impeding progress. The creatures and NPCs in the game, including the heroes themselves, are rather inert and are very limited in their interactions. The game has 65 locations.[4] The game is mostly text, with illustrations for some of the locations.

Reception

The Commodore 64 version of the game received criticism for slow loading of graphical scenes,[5] which could take as long as several minutes to display completely. The Spectrum and Amstrad CPC versions were by a different artist (Terry Greer) and quicker to draw.

References
  1. "Heroes of Karn cassette inlay".
  2. "Lemon64 - Heroes of Karn, the".
  3. "Personal Computer Games Commodore 64 Review", Personal Computer Games (4): 74–75, March 1984
  4. "Adventures in Colour", Personal Computer Games (7): 107, June 1984
  5. "My Ten All-time Favorites", Zzap!64, Newsfield Publications Ltd (1): 67–68, June 1985
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