Ancients 1: Death Watch
| Developer(s) | Farr-Ware |
|---|---|
| Publisher(s) | Epic Games |
| Platform(s) | DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98 |
| Release | 1993 |
| Genre(s) | Role playing game |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Released in August 12 of 1993, Ancients 1: Deathwatch was a first person, Medieval/Magic turn based RPG for the PC.
Storyline
Players are told that during their youth they got lost while exploring the wilderness surrounding the city of Locklaven, and that they were rescued by a beautiful harp playing fairy who put them into a magically enchanted sleep and teleported them back home. Years later, the player returns to Locklaven and becomes aware of a new great evil, and suspects that the fairy who saved them has been kidnapped.
Gameplay
Ancients was a standard fare dungeon crawl with a simplified Dungeons and Dragons element of character creation including Fighter, Priest, Wizard, Rogue classes; Elf, Human, Dwarf races; and the rerollable statistics of Hitpoints, Gold, Intelligence, Strength, Constitution and Dexterity. Players control a party of four characters.
The world is a static grid based system with the top level being the relatively safe town of Locklaven including an Inn to recover hitpoints and mana and listen to rumors, a trading shop to purchase gear, a casino to gamble, a church to heal and resurrect lost characters, and a guild to level characters. Beneath the village is a sewer system followed by a number of different levels corresponding to increasingly difficult monsters.
Combat is randomly triggered by walking through the dungeon and is turn based allowing the player characters to attack first. Combat choices include a Basic Melee Attack, Defend, Flee and Magic. Player characters are effectively lined up in a square for combat with the left and right most characters lined up in back and the middle two characters in front, meaning in combat only the middle two characters can use melee attacks while the left and right most characters must attack from range or use magic.
Magic is broken down into the two primary classes of Priest and Wizard. There are 5 accessible tiers of magic usage for each class and access to each tier is based upon character level.
Leveling occurs when characters receive enough experience from slaying monsters to reach the next level tier. Players must then travel back up to the city of Locklaven and visit the Guild. There are no specific quests other than the storyline driven rescue.
Sequal
A sequel was created, Ancients 2: Approaching Evil. However, this game has a new storyline that is not explicitly linked to the original. Players are summoned to a new city after a seal trapping evil forces in a series of catacombs becomes broken. The seal will only close again when four special objects are recovered and bought to the entrance of the catacombs.
See also
External links
- Download Ancients at the Mobygames Archive, $Ancients.zip
- Review of Ancients 1: Deathwatch(Hosted by RealVG)
- Ancients 1: Death Watch at MobyGames