Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
- Wizardry 1 and Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord redirects here. For the modern remake, see Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord Remake.
- For the anime adaptation, see Wizardry (anime).
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is the first game in the main series for home computers and ported into several different consoles, Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord was developed by Andrew Greenberg and Robert Woodhead, and launched a beta version of the game at the 1980 Boston Computer Convention.[1] In 1980, Norman Sirotek formed Sir-Tech to distribute, and followed by the final version of the game was released in September 1981 and first released on Apple II.
Plot
The evil wizard Werdna stole a very powerful amulet from Trebor, the Mad Overlord. He used the amulet's power to create a ten level maze beneath Trebor's castle. That was five years ago. Since then, Trebor has created a training centre in the upper levels of the maze from where he sends heroes further down to kill Werdna and get him the amulet. So far, no one has succeeded.
Gameplay
Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord has three primary gameplay systems -- the castle (also referred to as the town), the maze (also referred to as the dungeon), and combat.
The basic gameplay loop involves the party setting out from the castle, delving further and further into the maze until returning to the castle to heal. The player must weigh the benefits of further exploring the maze, gathering more treasure and experience vs the increasing risk of defeat as the party's resources are depleted. Character death is permanent and immediately written to disk (or cartridge save memory), which makes judging when to exit from the maze and return to the castle critical. Players at the original time of release found multiple ways to bypass this mechanic, typically by duplicating their save disks or ejecting save disks mid-game, while modern players may resort to save-states or similar functionality.
Castle
The castle is where party and character management occurs, including creating and training characters, purchase and sale of equipment, inventory management, healing, and the resurrection of dead characters. Characters stick closely to the RPG archetypes of fighters, thieves, healers, and magic-users while offering elite classes with abilities from multiple classes for characters who meet their more demanding attribute requirements.
The roster of characters in the active party can be changed any time the player returns to the castle so long as the characters have compatible alignments. It is common for players to have many more characters in the castle than would fit into a single party, for the purpose of sending into the maze to recover dead characters. Original computer releases allowed players to password protect their characters, preventing unauthorized users from modifying or adding characters to their party, thus facilitating multiple users playing off the same disk.
Maze
The maze is the exploration system where the player is presented with a first-person view of a multi-level dungeon and is tasked with navigating to the lowest levels of the dungeon to defeat the villain Werdna and retrieve his amulet. Players are required to create their own maps to prevent getting lost in the dungeon, as well as identifying the quickest paths back to a given location (the original game included graph paper templates to assist in this process.)
Traps are present in many locations in the dungeon, with effects ranging from disorienting the player within the maze, to causing direct damage (or even death) to the characters. Secret doors, elevators, teleportation magic, and other shortcuts can be discovered to make future trips into the maze shorter and allow a freshly rested party to resume their exploration close to where they had left off. As characters advance in levels, they gain magic to identify their location in the maze as well as teleport between its levels.
The layout of the maze as well as the location of key items persists between play sessions, and key items can also be transferred between characters in the castle. This allows a player who plans ahead to recover from the complete loss of a party by bypassing the need to reacquire key items.
Combat
The combat system occurs when the party encounters either fixed encounters (which will always occur at the same locations) or random encounters in the maze. Depending on the release, certain fixed encounters may only be possible once per scenario disk. Combat is turn based, the player assigning actions for the turn to each member of the party. Party and monster actions for that turn are then resolved in a random order influenced by their dexterity scores. It is possible for a character to attack or cast a spell on a character or monster that had been defeated earlier earlier in the turn, causing them to waste their action (some ports would instead cause these "wasted" actions to automatically choose a new target.)
Encounters are often deadly and parties have limited ability to replenish health or recover from harmful statuses between battles which makes resource management a key concern. Returning to the castle is the only way to fully recover a party's resources, which also means re-entering the maze at the first level. If a party is completely killed while exploring the maze, those characters are lost and cannot be restored without a new party entering the maze and recovering their bodies.
Players occasionally come across friendly groups of monsters and are presented with the choice to engage in combat or allow them to go. Depending on the choice, characters have a small chance of changing alignment from good to evil or vice-versa.
Characters
Development
Development of Wizardry started in 1978, when Andrew Greenberg and Robert Woodhead were both students at Cornell university. It was an attempt to bring the "maze runner" style of computer role-playing game that were popular on multiuser computer systems such as PLATO to home computers.[2] These games in turn were inspired by the popular Dungeons & Dragons series of tabletop role-playing games, which can be found in their use of common mechanics and concepts including AC (armor class), discrete character classes, and a focus on dungeon exploration.
Fan translation
A finished English translation for Game Boy Color port was made by Opus since August 22, 2001.[3]
Another finished English translation for WonderSwan Color port was made by Hengki Kusuma Adi since January 3, 2021.[4]
Trivia
- The names Werdna and Trebor are the first names spelt backwards of the programmers Andrew Greenberg and Robert Woodhead.
Nomenclature
| Names, etymology, and in other regions | ||
|---|---|---|
| Language | Name | Definition, etymology, and notes |
 English (United States) |
• Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord |
• The Mad Overlord refers to Trebor. |
 Japanese |
ウィザードリィ 狂王の試練場Uizādorī Kyō ō no shiren jō |
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord |
 French (France) |
Sorcellerie: Le Donjon du Suzerain Heretique |
Sorcery: The Dungeon of the Heretic Overlord |
Gallery
Cover art of Apple II release.
References
- ↑ Jana Hallford (Swords & Circuitry: a Designer's Guide to Computer Role Playing Games (Cengage Learning), pg. 55-58)
- ↑ The Digital Antiquarian - Making of Wizardry
- ↑ http://www.romhacking.net/translations/56/
- ↑ https://www.romhacking.net/translations/5829/