Sword of Fargoal

Did you ever want to become a knight? Not fake retard on some holiday, but real medieval knight? Doing deeds, save villages and doing all kinds of knight's routine. If no, you don't have to read further, but if yes, this is the game for you.





First of all we will have to return where it all started, and no, it's not Medieval, but Lexington, Kentucky to 1982.
Jeff McCord, telented 17-year old programmer wrote the first version of the game for Commodore PET computer in Basic. A year later he got contacted with publisher and Sword of Fargoal was released in public for Commodore 64.



The games was a RPG of unknown hero in 20-level dungeon, full of different monsters, traps, treasures, magic items and weapons. Your knight had to kill enemies, got experience, levels and was improving on his job. The goal of the game was to find that sword and get it out to surface. And actually, that was incredibly hard thing to do! Imagine, you had to go through 20 levels, all randomly generated, and face unknown labyrinth every time!




Any beast can kill you here, and they are not shy here - every level that you go deeper the monsters' difficulty increases. Even after getting the sword you have to get it out in time, or it gets destroyed by a curse!



You might ask - why do I have to read about some ancient games? And what it has to do with Iphone? Well, the company that made Sword of Fargoal for Iphone is lead by the same guy who made that first game.

Iphone version is basically port from Commodore 64, but greatly enhanced and improved. All the mechanics is practically the same, so let's check out what changed in 30 years.



Graphics. Commodore PET was working on 1MHz frequency. You can imagine how much more resources programmers get on new Iphone! They used em to it's fullest - the game looks amazing, combining pixel art and 3d backgrounds and dynamic lightening for spells, torches and other light sources. All of that is controlled by usual gestures for Iphone.
So what we get is interesting and addictive old gameplay coupled with modern controls and graphics, great combination.

Music is amazing too, they managed to keep old tunes and add some new ones, which perfectly add to the beauties of the game.



Are you scared by extreme difficulty? Don't be, today programmers understand that it's not 1982, and so you get three levels of difficulty, but I would recommend playing on mid or high levels, novice is just too easy.

Controls are great, you click on any point of the screen and your character moves that way or attacks the thing that way. You can play with any hand and it is very intuitive.

There is also Ipad version of the game, and it fully supports HD capabilities of the platform.
I would recommend this game to everyone who likes RPG games and action games.

Price: 2.99$

Design+Graphics - 5/5

Gameplay 5/5

Should I get it? Yes! If you like RPGs.

 [iTunes link]