Citadel: Adventure of the Crystal Keep

Fatbit appearance editor

Citadel: Adventure of the Crystal Keep was one of the most significant games of my childhood. Released for the Mac in 1989, Citadel was an amazingly full-featured RPG. Replaying it today makes me realize how many of the cutting-edge features of Fallout 3 or Dragon Age were already present in Citadel 20 years ago. For instance, playing Fallout today I am impressed by the ability to customize my character’s appearance. It feels like I have almost unlimited control over what my character will look like, but Citadel puts the Fallout to shame. The elegant simplicity of Citadel’s 32×32 pixel “fatbits” character appearance editor reveals just how restrictive Fallout’s system is. In Citadel, Little Bo Beep herself can lead my party, something that would be impossible in Fallout. The idea of using childhood activities to determine character statistics is also present in Citadel. As you can see, LilBoBeep is the child of a union between an Amazon and a Wizard. During childhood she divided her time between play and study and so has high agility and intelligence. Also note that there are three options for gender—LilBoBeep is a “neuter”—quite progressive for a game that came out in the 80s.

In Citadel, Little Bo Beep herself can lead my party, something that would be impossible in Fallout.

Character creation

An interesting feature of Citadel is that it supports non-consecutive multiplayer gameplay. Although you can have a maximum of six characters in your party at any one time, you can create as many as you like and switch between them. There is even a mechanism for protecting your characters with passwords, so you can let your friends and siblings play without worrying about them hijacking your characters. Everyone who plays on a given computer plays within a persistent world and locals at the tavern will give you information about characters lost in the Citadel in need of rescue. In fact, there is no ‘New Game’ option in Citadel. If you want to start completely afresh you have to reinstall the game. Furthermore, the game autosaves as you play, so if your party becomes trapped after falling down a pit (this happens a lot), you really do have to send in another party to rescue them.

In fact, there is no ‘New Game’ option in Citadel. If you want to start completely afresh you have to reinstall the game. Furthermore, the game autosaves as you play, so if your party becomes trapped after falling down a pit (this happens a lot), you really do have to send in another party to rescue them.

I’ve played a few games before that have some sort of “hardcore” mode, in which you only have one life, or you’re not allowed to open a saved game when things go wrong, but such modes always struck me as bloody-minded to the extreme; I’ve never even been tempted to try out this style of play. In Citadel, however, this is the default mode, and it really does make all your decisions feel far more significant. Taking risks actually feels risky. Hours of progress could be lost with one wrong step. Each time you return to town after an expedition into the dangerous Citadel, there is an intense feeling of catharsis and relief. You could have easily perished down there, forgotten save for the tall-tales of foolhardy adventurers told at the tavern in the simple icon-language of simple folk.

SPOILER ALERT:

LilBoBeep's party discovers the Lady Synd trapped in a crystal

Almost all the games I have truly loved have a special moment in them that is difficult to describe—it’s a moment when you achieve something, or obtain some power, that doesn’t just make you incrementally better at doing a familiar thing, but completely changes the way you understand something about the game. For example, in Civilization III such a moment occurs with the discovery of railroads. Rather than just increasing unit speed by some amount (as railroads do in Civ IV), railroads allowed units to move infinitely fast. Suddenly, physical location and distance meant something entirely different.

Citadel is full of this kind of moment. When you discover the Spell Book for the first time, everything changes. Your wizards are transformed from weak, largely ineffective characters into total powerhouses, absolutely essential to the game. Pre-Spell Book you had to carefully ration your spells, only using them in real emergencies; but post-Spell Book, spells become a replenishable commodity. Similarly, once you finally save up enough to purchase the Ink & Quill, your relationship with money changes utterly—you can now generate virtually unlimited funds by copying scrolls and selling them to the shopkeeper.

Some of these moments feel “cheap”—for example, the Open Portal spell can make passages through solid walls and, if you know where to look, you can get an arbitrarily large number of Wish Scrolls (I’m pretty sure these are both bugs)—but because the game is so hard and because it forces you to play strictly according to its own “hardcore” rules, it feels fair somehow. The game puts you in the position of a desperate adventurer, trapped in a terrifying dungeon with no way of reverting to a saved game, and as such it feels right that you would use any means at your disposal to survive. If that means violating the logic of the Citadel then so much the better; it is that dark and twisted logic that has been the death of so many brave adventurers.

A local telling tales of those who entered the citadel and never returned

Speaking of violating the logic and spirit of the game, I should make mention of the copy protection system. Citadel was one of those games that came with a cardboard code wheel (like the one in Monkey Island). Before you can enter the citadel you have to line up the two sections of the wheel in a particular way and enter the code indicated. Of course, my copy of the code wheel is long gone, but fortunately the code consists of a single letter of the alphabet. As such it takes about 30 seconds to break the code by trial and error.

Simpler times.