Black Crypt
A debut dungeon crawler with real-time 3D party combat.
Black Crypt, a role-playing game for the Amiga, marked Raven Software's first release. Published by Electronic Arts in 1992, its real-time 3D gameplay closely mirrors Dungeon Master by FTL Games. Players guide a party of four heroes through a vast dungeon to face and defeat a major foe. A planned Mega Drive version was never finished.
Quick Facts
- Developer
- Raven Software
- Publisher
- Electronic Arts
- Producer
- Christopher Erhardt
- Designer
- Brian Raffel
- Programmer
- Ben Gokey, Rick Johnson
- Artist
- Brian Raffel, Steve Raffel
- Composer
- Kevin Schilder
- Platforms
- Amiga
Facts from the source article.
Gameplay
The player creates four heroes to traverse the twenty-eight levels of the Tomb of the Four Heroes and defeat the evil cleric Estoroth Paingiver, who was banished to a black crypt. Unlike Dungeon Master, Black Crypt does not offer pre-generated characters; the player must name each hero, choose a class (fighter, cleric, magic user, or druid), and set starting attributes. The magic user can cast Wizard Sight, which automatically maps the heroes' movement and displays it in-game while active. Bosses appear on several levels, the first within twenty spaces of the start.
Development
Black Crypt was originally conceived by Brian Raffel and Steve Raffel in the late 1980s as a pen-and-paper adventure module, with work on the video game beginning in April 1990 on a $40,000 budget. The game consists of 12 interconnected dungeons rendered in 64 colours. An EA spokesman described it as a dungeon simulator rather than a game. It uses Amiga Halfbrite mode, allowing a palette of thirty-two colours plus an additional thirty-two at half brightness.
Reception
Upon release, Black Crypt received widespread critical acclaim, scoring 92% from The One and 83% from Amiga Joker. Amiga Power gave it 85%, with a reviewer who initially disliked RPGs admitting the game drew them in despite criticizing the plot as boring, the graphics as aesthetically unremarkable, the title sequence as dull, the music as unsuitable rubbish, and the sound effects as unatmospheric. The reviewer also called it unoriginal and based on Dungeon Master, with limited monster variety, but found it absorbing and playable, never leaving them stuck. The One praised it as the state of the art in 3D role-playing games on the Amiga, highlighting smoother animation, superior artwork, thoughtful features, a balance between mental effort and combat, and a plot that leads the player through the game. The One also commended the sound effects for providing vital clues and the controls as intuitive. In a retrospective, Black Gate noted that despite critical praise, the game was released when the Amiga was in decline and never ported, vanishing quickly from stores and memory.
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