Ancient Domains of Mystery

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Ancient Domains of Mystery

ADOM Title Screen
Developer(s)	Thomas Biskup
Stable release	1.1.1 / 2002
Operating system	AmigaOS, BeOS, DOS, Linux, Mac OS X, OS/2, Windows
Type	Roguelike
License	Postcardware
Website	www.adom.de

Ancient Domains of Mystery, or ADOM, is a roguelike game by Thomas Biskup first released in 1994. The player's aim is to stop the forces of Chaos that invade the world of Ancardia.

Like most roguelikes, ADOM uses ASCII graphics to represent the game world. It features a wilderness map that connects different types of dungeons.^[1] Most dungeons are randomly generated on first entering. Once visited, they — with the exception of the Infinite Dungeon — do not change when re-entered during play.

Contents 1 Story 2 Gameplay 3 Significant features 4 Development 5 Reception 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Story

ADOM takes place in the fictional world of Ancardia, in the mountainous Drakalor Chain. For 6,000 years, it has known relative peace, but recently reports have spread of the appearance of dangerous dungeons and frightening monsters. Khelavaster, a wise sage, discovers an ancient prophecy regarding the Coming of Chaos and propagates it to the peoples of the world. It speaks of a champion who will defend the world from the forces of Chaos in the Drakalor Chain. Hearing of this prophecy, many would-be heroes set out. The player assumes control of one such adventurer.^[2]

[edit] Gameplay

ADOM presents an initial choice of one (male or female) player character from ten races and twenty character classes, the combination of which strongly affects gameplay. Among other traits, character development includes experience levels, statistics, and skills. Version 1.1.0 introduced a talent system.^[3]

During adventures, a player is likely to explore many areas and complete multiple quests. Which quests are available may depend on character experience level or alignment (lawful, neutral, or chaotic). Alignment also affects NPC and deity interaction with the character.

ADOM offers multiple ways of winning, which vary in difficulty. The regular ending that appeared first in ADOM development, consists of locating and closing the gate through which the chaos forces infiltrate the game world Ancardia. The player also has the option to enter the gate, providing access to special endings, which are generally considered more difficult to accomplish. ADOM's quest-centric, plot-driven structure owes as much to adventure games like Zork as to the hack-and-slash of sibling games like Angband.

Death of player characters is meant to be permanent. The game exits after saving, effectively limiting savefiles to one per character, and the savefile is erased upon loading.

[edit] Significant features

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• Corruptions are the mutations caused to the game world and the player due to the forces of chaos infiltrating Ancardia. This has significant, unpredictable effects on gameplay.
• Herb bushes that grow on certain levels can be used to provide great benefits to the player. Interestingly, the growth of herb bushes follows a slight modification of the Conway's Game of Life.
• Vulnerability of high-level characters to specific monsters.
• Deity relation system with religious championship.
• Character improvement of items.
• 'Monster Memory' that records the player's knowledge about creatures in the game.
• Availability of every item as a melee and ranged weapon corresponding to its weight and size.
• Most items can be destroyed via rust or damage from fighting. Artifacts are immune to this effect.
• Combining different items with reasonable results, such as dousing an item with a potion of chaos or change turning it to an entirely different item, or pouring holy water over any cursed item to make it blessed instead.
• Certain items will have powerful effects when used on monsters, such as striking an undead being with a blessed holy symbol will burn it to ashes or chaos beings howling in pain when hit by a thrown potion of cure corruption.

[edit] Development

Development of ADOM started on July 12, 1994 and continued steadily since then.^[3] Core development on the game has slowed since the release of version 1.1.1 in 2002. Beta-quality ports to Mac OS X of this version appeared in 2006.^[4] Plans for future versions have not been announced, yet a next-generation successor to ADOM, called JADE, is in development.

Although ADOM is available free of charge, unlike most roguelikes its source code is unavailable. Biskup chose to reserve it for himself in order to retain some mystery about game operation and to curtail the spread of unsanctioned variants.^[5] Despite this stance, he is open to licensing the source to capable developers to form a commercial venture.^[5] Players meanwhile have deduced underlying mechanisms through careful experimentation and reverse-engineering by inspecting the execution flow, memory and binaries of the game, although this is something Biskup disrespects.^{[citation needed]}

Despite Biskup's original decision to not publish the source code to ADOM, he states in his blog (accessible on the official ADOM website) that he may be ready to reconsider his decision. In a post discussing possible events of the year 2009, he states that it is unlikely that he will work on ADOM any time soon, and is willing to discuss possible release models with the community. Thus, Biskup dedicated a subforum on the official ADOM forums for the discussion of this matter.

[edit] Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores Aggregator Score MobyGames 4.0 of 5.0[6]
Review scores Publication Score The Good Old Days 4 of 6[7] Abandonia 3.0 of 5.0[8]

ADOM has established a strong fan base that started gathering since 1997 at Usenet group rec.games.roguelike.adom, sporting 2000-3000 messages monthly regularly in years of active development, although lately the activity has been ceasing.^[9]

Given that ADOM is a long-lasting development effort and released new versions of game regularly over the years^[10], ADOM has received many critical reviews over many various versions. The overall critical reception is good.

Reviewers usually compare ADOM to other roguelike games (like Rogue, Angband or Moria) and find that ADOM offers much deeper storyline, more manifold environment, ^[11] and is generally more complex^[7]. Most note that ADOM offers very high replay value^[12] and general randomness of events that happen in the game^[8][1]. Overall game system design (and especially character development system) is usually praised for its flexibility^[7][8]. Some reviews note low hardware requirements and freeware distribution as essential advantages^[12].

As for downsides, there's no universal agreement. User interface is cited to have high learning curve by some critics^[7], while others note that it's "brilliant in its simplicity", "very practical" and "easy to navigate"^[8]. Keyboard controls imply usage of keypad which makes ADOM relatively hard to play on keyboards without keypads (i.e. laptops)^[7]. Discussing gameplay, the same complexity and randomness that were cited as positive features are sometimes said to make ADOM very difficult for beginner players^[12][1]. Most reviewers agree that ADOM may be very hard to play for beginners due to the deletion of savefiles, which is uncommon for games outside of roguelike genre.^{[7][8][12][1]}.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official Site
• The ADOM Guidebook, with detailed plot
• rec.games.roguelike.adom at Google Groups
• Ancient Domains of Mystery guide at StrategyWiki
• Interview with Thomas Biskup at RPG Vault