Abandoned Places: A Time for Heroes

Did You Know?

• The narrative follows four heroes from Kalynthia saving their homeland from the evil arch mage Bronagh.
• During dungeon crawls the game switches to a 3D view and plays similarly to Dungeon Master.

Development

Abandoned Places was created by ArtGame founders István Fábián and Ferenc Staengler, along with musician György Dragon, who joined in 1989. The game drew inspiration from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Dungeon Master. Starting in spring 1990, the team pitched the game to several publishers, including Electronic Arts, but Electronic Arts had finalized a deal for Raven Software's Black Crypt a week earlier and rejected it. The game was finished and tested by January 1992, a month before release. The developers received little to no compensation and were banned from the Hungarian launch event.

Reception

Amiga Power gave the Amiga version an overall score of 80%, praising the size of the game world and noting that Abandoned Places' advantage over similar RPGs is its extensive above-ground locations alongside subterranean dungeons, stating that "what you do above ground is every bit as important as your endeavours below." The magazine also praised the difficulty level but criticized the graphics as "poor," calling the animations "lackluster" and almost '8-bit' looking in combat, expressing that it seemed a shame given the effort put into other aspects.