Crystals of Arborea
Silmarils of France released Crystals of Arborea for IBM PC MS-DOS 3.2 in 1990. Crystals of Arborea is the precursor to Ishar: Legend of the Fortress of 1992.
Crystals of Arborea was marketed as "a strategy role-playing challenge"; that is, Crystals of Arborea combines map-movement strategy with flip-screen cRPG exploration and turn-based combat.
In Crystals of Arborea the Prince of the Elves, one Jarel, seeks magical crystals in order to oppose the black god, Morgoth.
From their company name to the setting and characters in their games, Silmarils were clearly inspired by and fans of Tolkienic literature. Crystals of Arborea was designed and programmed by Michel Pernot and Pascal Einsweiler of France.
The player creates and controls an adventuring party of seven characters each constituted by four stats. The party is led by Prince Jarel. Default scores of 25 in each stat can be increased via a point pool of 60.
In AD&D 2nd Edition terms, Life-points are hitpoints, Strength is damage, Agility is THAC0 and Constitution is damage resistance. Energy is akin to Fatigue or Stamina. The accumulation of experience points (XP) leads to gaining levels, which increases stat effectiveness. XP is not shared among party members: only the character that lands the killing blow yields the XP.
Combat plays out on a top-down 6x7 grid. Combat units move around on the grid and attack in eight directions. Archers cannot attack from adjacent squares or fire arrows through occupied squares, limiting their use. This is because the grid is jam-packed with the player's over-sized party, and the enemy prioritizes archers.
Magicians can only buff allies and cast offensive spells. For example, a warrior buffed with Acceleration (Haste) is granted five attacks per turn, not 1. Line of Sight is employed (LoS).
Exploration takes place in both the wilderness and in dungeons. Characters need to rest and heal at fountains via refillable potions, carried by Jarel. Healing and Infravision are Jarel-only abilities; camouflage Magician-only.
The object of Crystals of Arborea is to find four crystals on the island-kingdom of Arborea and place them on pedestal atop four towers. At the same time, enemy forces are finding the crystals and placing them on altars in their dungeons.
Crystals of Arborea displays in 16-color VGA 320x200, but its graphics were drawn originally for EGA. The active flip-sreen drawspace is 320x152 px.
Crystals of Arborea was distributed on 1x 3.5" 720kB DD diskette. The hard disk drive install size is 800kB (53 files).
Crystals of Arborea Manual: 38 pages. Impressively, this 38-page manual is accessible in-game (see above infographic).
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