''The Heroes of Karn'' is a 1983

adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or Puzzle video game, puzzle-solving. The Video game genres, genre's focus on story allows it to draw ...

written by Ian Gray. It was released by

Interceptor Micros Interceptor Micros, also known as Interceptor Software and later as Interceptor Group, was a British developer/publisher of video games for various 8-bit and 16-bit computer systems popular in Western Europe during the eighties and early nineti ...

for the

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC (short for ''Colour Personal Computer'') is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Sin ...

and

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...

. Music was written by Chris Cox. The Spectrum and Amstrad versions were adapted by David M. Banner with graphics by Terry Greer. A sequel, ''

The Empire of Karn ''Empire of Karn'' is an adventure game released for the Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, ...

'', was released in 1985 on the Commodore 64.

Gameplay

The player must rescue four heroes who have been magically imprisoned, and thus save the land of Karn from dominion by evil creatures. The heroes are Beren the swordsman, Istar the wizard, Haldir the Elf-lord, and Khadim the dwarf. The game's

parser Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar. The term ''parsing'' comes from Lati ...

accepts relatively complex sentences for the time (e.g. "attack giant clam with shovel"). The puzzles are mostly straightforward, involving the use of an object found elsewhere to defeat the creature that is impeding progress. The creatures and

NPCs A non-player character (NPC), or non-playable character, is any character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster o ...

in the game, including the heroes themselves, are rather inert and are very limited in their interactions. The game has 65 locations. The game is mostly text, with illustrations for some of the locations.

Reception

The Commodore 64 version of the game received criticism for slow loading of graphical scenes, which could take as long as several minutes to display completely. The Spectrum and Amstrad CPC versions were by a different artist (Terry Greer) and quicker to draw.

References

External links

* * *
''The Heroes of Karn''
at

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Heroes Of Karn 1983 video games Adventure games Amstrad CPC games Commodore 64 games Fantasy video games Single-player video games Video games developed in the United Kingdom ZX Spectrum games