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Ancients 1: Death Watch

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Ancients 1: Deathwatch
Title screen
Developer(s)Farr-Ware
Publisher(s)Epic Games
Platform(s)MS-DOS
Release1993
Genre(s)Role playing game
Mode(s)Single-player

Ancients 1: Deathwatch is a first person, Medieval/Magic turn based RPG for the PC, released in August 12 of 1993, developed by Farr-Ware and published by Epic Games. The game was programmed by Mark Lewis, and its graphic art was created by Jason Struck and Matthew McEwan.

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 1 screenshot

Ancients is a standard fare dungeon crawl with a simplified Dungeons and Dragons element of character creation including Warrior, Priest, Mage, Rogue classes; Elf, Human, Dwarf races; and the rerollable statistics of Hitpoints, Dracos (Money), 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 city of Locklaven including an Inn to recover hitpoints and mana and listen to rumors, an equipment shop to purchase gear, a casino to gamble, a church to heal and resurrect lost characters, and a guild to level characters. Beneath the city 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 or Ranged 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 Mage. There are five accessible tiers of magic usage for each class and access to each tier is based upon character level. The first tier is available at level one. Access to tiers improves by one for each two levels gained, until the fifth tier is achieved.

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.

Sequel

A sequel was created, Ancients 2: Approaching Evil. Although players can choose to import their party from the first game, the sequel has a new storyline that is not explicitly linked to the original. An opening animation shows members of the 'Lockshire Council' discussing an evil that is escaping from a series of catacombs, after an ancient seal containing it was broken. A member of the council explains that he knows of a party that he believes can repair the seal, and summons them to the new city. The seal will only become restored when four special objects are recovered and brought to the entrance of the catacombs.

See also