Temple of Apshai

Temple of Apshai
Developer(s)	Epyx
Publisher(s)	Epyx
Platform(s)	PC, Apple II, VIC-20, Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, TRS-80, Amiga, Macintosh, Commodore PET
Release	1980
Genre(s)	Dungeon crawl
Mode(s)	Single-player

The Temple of Apshai is a computer role-playing game from Epyx. The game was originally released for the TRS-80 in 1979, then the Apple II and Atari home computers in 1980. In 1983, it was released for the VIC-20, Commodore 64 and for DOS for PCs. Even later it was made available for the Amiga and Atari ST in a much more graphically-rich version than the previous versions.

Description

File:Temple of apshai.png

The Temple of Apshai on the Commodore 64

The game puts the player in the role of a lone adventurer, exploring the mysterious ruins of the Temple of Apshai. The player can investigate room after room of a dungeon setting seeking treasure and monsters to defeat. Like many early role-playing games, Temple of Apshai has statistics for the player which increase based on experience (rewarded for defeating monsters and accruing treasure). Along the way, the player can discover and use powerful weapons and armor to help them defeat the sinister inhabitants of the ancient ruins.

The Temple of Apshai—and the series as a whole—is most often described as a graphical version of Rogue. With simplistic dungeon layouts and a minimal storyline, this is an apt comparison. As in Rogue, the object of the game is to do little more than garner treasure and defeat monsters in order to build up the character and escape the dungeon. Temple did go beyond simply adding graphics, however.

One unique quality of the pre-determined levels in Temple of Apshai that made it different from Rogue and even its own action-based successor, Gateway to Apshai, was its use of text descriptions, filled with hints, of the many rooms in the "Levels" of the dungeon. The player would determine the room number from the upper right hand of the screen, and would search for the entry in the booklet that came with the game. For instance, an entry in the manual read " The aroma of vanilla makes the senses reel and the floor of the room is covered with the shiny stuff previously observed. Bones lie scattered across the floor and the clicking sound grows fainter from within. Gems stud the south wall." The vanilla alludes to the possible presence of a giant ant within, and the gem studded wall to the south could be explored as a possible secret door or source of treasure. In Dungeons & Dragons pen and paper RPG this kind of teaser is used by the Dungeon Master prior to players asking questions about the room they are in. The use of text printed in a booklet to describe in detail the rooms of a game Dungeon was a rare device and has been seen little since in graphical RPGs.

Add-ons and expansions

Several add-ons were released for Temple. All required the original Temple of Apshai game.

• Upper Reaches of Apshai
• Temple of Apshai: Curse of Ra, similar game in Egyptian ruins

Legacy

Due to the game's release during the height of popularity of pen and paper role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Temple of Apshai was fairly popular and became a series:

• Gateway to Apshai, a prequel released after Temple
• The Temple of Apshai
• Hellfire Warrior

Repackaging

The entire Apshai trilogy was later re-released, containing all the content of the games and add-ons released over the years as the Temple of Apshai Trilogy. This, however, was not a simple repackaging of the old games. The graphics and sound were improved over the originals for the Commodore 64 Trilogy, and the games became more of a single unit in look and feel. The default background color of the dungeons became white, and the games took on a more arcade-like look. Purists might feel that some of the original "creepiness" of the older black-background graphics and strange background sound and music effects of the original were lost in the updated translation.

Trivia

• Temple of Apshai was referenced in an episode of Homestar Runner's Strong Bad e-mails (#4).
• The first release of Temple of Apshai for the Apple II was written in Applesoft BASIC
• The Mac version was ported by Louis Castle before starting Westwood Studios in 1985.

External links

• The Temple of Apshai series at MobyGames
• Temple of Apshai at c64sets.com - Images of the package and manual
• Game box and screenshots from The Legacy