Expedition Amazon: Won!

It turns out that not only is there such a place as "Ka," but the Incans wrote with a Latin alphabet.

When creator Willard Phillips showed up to comment on my first post for Expedition Amazon, then traded a couple of e-mails with me, I was doubly determined to win the game despite having run out of clues. (Mr. Phillips, regrettably, didn't remember enough to assist.) I fired it up again and invested several more hours exploring and re-exploring areas before I finally found what I'd been missing: a single staircase that went to a room I had not yet discovered. I had been under the impression that all of the maps on the same level ultimately connected to each other. This isn't the case. Different staircases sometimes lead to different, cordoned sections of the same level.

This still didn't take me directly to Ka. I had to go down to another one of the bottom-level maps where you move around erratically while the available passageways constantly shift. From there, I had to find my way up to another unmapped section of an upper level and mess around before, at last, after a series of traps, discovering the right staircase.

Or, as it turns out, a slide.

The slide took me to a level where the game warned me about "extreme temperature!!" and my characters lost a few hit points every round. On this level, I bumbled into an area that said "gas!" and everyone was knocked out. Then:

At this point, the interface completely changed to something that looked more like an adventure game, with a single explorer bopping down a series of parallel hallways with doors on each side. The commands also changed, with various keys allowing me to (R)everse travel direction, (E)nter a door, or (V)iew the opposite wall. I also had the option to (Q)uit and leave the area to rejoin my party.

Each door was marked with two sets of tick marks above it, and after some experimentation, I discovered a pattern. The top mark denoted sections of the hallway and increased or decreased as I walked across screens. The bottom mark denoted the number of the hallway itself and increased or decreased as I went through doors.

In all the crypts I had pried open on the upper levels, I never got the encounter I was supposed to get where I'd learn how to read Incan runes, at which point I'd start getting actual hints from all of the natives I was killing. I still don't know what I was missing there. But I'd already cracked the file in Notepad and read the hints, so I knew what they said. One of them was "FIVE OVER FOUR EVERY VERSE WILL WIN." I guessed this meant that I wanted to find the area with five ticks over four ticks. I didn't know what "EVERY VERSE" meant, but phonetically it sounded like "reverse," which turned out to be the trick.

At this point, I got the winning screen at the top of this post, followed by a note that "This is not the end. It is the beginning of Expedition: Ka."

The final area didn't really add anything in role-playing terms, and it doesn't change my final rating (except to add three hours to the total), but I'm glad I won it and kept my streak unbroken. 

In his comments and e-mails, Willard Phillips indicated that he's a Korean War veteran with a mechanical engineering background, and he was already 50 years old when he started writing Expedition Amazon in 1981. He was a self-taught programmer ("using short compiled BASIC routines tied together with machine language"; some readers, unlike me, will understand), and he wrote the game primarily as a programming exercise. Later, he met the owner of Penguin Software, Mark Pelczarski, at a software show and convinced him to publish the game. (Jimmy Maher has an excellent article on Mr. Pelczarski and the company if you're interested, though he doesn't mention this game.)

Mr. Phillips had played no previous computer RPG except Wizardry, which I find fascinating, since you really can't detect any influence of Wizardry on Expedition Amazon. Phillips made up most of the elements himself. He said he made the back story "silly" simply because he didn't expect anyone to publish it. After Pelczarski picked it up, David ("Dr. Cat") Shapiro helped de-bug the source code and Greg ("Moebius") Malone designed the cover. The old man in Iquitos telling jokes was added by Pelczarski and Shapiro, which makes sense. As an anonymous commenter pointed out, the graphic seems very foreign to the game--clearly not the same style as Phillips's other illustrations.

Phillips intended to write the sequel (Expedition: Ka) but never got around to it. He made about $50,000 in royalties from the game and was in the midst of a game called Vampire when, as he puts it, "Electronic Arts [came] into existence and everything changed. An individual couldn't compete." He kept working in the computer industry and retired from Dell in 1999. He remembers fondly that "1982 and '83 were great years for selling games and Apple was the machine to write for."

In total, a fantastic story and a good end to an interesting RPG from the Bronze Age. Now to get back to the Dragonflight posting I promised.

Expedition Amazon: Final Rating

The bottom level of the ruins. I'm sure the entrance to Ka was somewhere in here, but I never found it.

Expedition Amazon

Penguin Software (developer and publisher)

Willard Phillips (author), Greg Malone (graphics), Dave Shapiro (programming)

Released 1983 for Apple II, 1984 for Commodore 64, FM-7, PC-88, PC-98

Date Started: 15 April 2014
Date Ended: 5 June 2014

Total Hours: 15

Difficulty: Moderate (3/5)
Final Rating: 21
Ranking at Time of Posting: 35/142 (25%)

[Edit from 5 June 2014: I wrote this posting before figuring out how to win the game. You can read my account of the endgame here. After winning, I updated the values above.]

I didn't intend to offer a second posting on Expedition Amazon, but I continued playing it for about six hours after the first posting, so this allows me to make something of that time while easing myself back into the blog after a regrettable, unanticipated absence.

The game has some interesting ideas but isn't, in 2014, very fun. The basic dynamic is to stock up on as much stuff as you can carry in the town, explore until your supplies run out, and return to the city. The party can only lug 200 bullets, 8 grenades, 4 lamps, 4 spare batteries at a time, so your expedition is over after about 10-15 combats or 2 game days of tunnel-crawling. Random events (e.g., some creature smashing a lamp, natives stealing grenades) can lead to faster depletion. Very rarely, you find needed supplies on slain enemies, but for the most part, you have to be careful lest you find yourself fighting with fists or bumbling through dungeons in the dark.

After the first couple hours of gameplay, by the time the characters reach Level 4, there is very little danger from combat. Your hit points are high enough that even when enemies repeatedly ambush you (and get a free round of attacks), they don't pose any risk of death. Combat is a horribly rote affair by which your party members either throw grenades (killing a maximum of 10 enemies) or shoot a pistol (killing a maximum of 6). Technically, the "guard" character can also fire an assault rifle, which kills a maximum of 20 enemies, but the guard always goes last, and there are never so many enemies that you need him to shoot that many bullets by the time the first three characters have acted. Combat swiftly became extremely annoying, and I groaned audibly every time "jaguar cult priests!" appeared in the dungeon while I was just trying to get from one place to another.

My party status not long before I gave up.

I don't know if there's a maximum number of levels, but every character maxed at 40 hit points, so further leveling didn't really do anything for me.

With combat posing no challenge, the only real threat to the party in the dungeons are the traps, which can kill a party member (or the entire party) instantly and are impossible to detect, disarm, or avoid. Every death requires a reload or a trip back to Iquitos for a Level 1 substitute. I typically chose the former.

I'd like to give the game credit for including some obscure element from Incan mythology, but I can't find any evidence that "Imatu" wasn't just invented by the game developers as a vaguely Incan-sounding name.

In the first post, I talked about overland exploration and the process of "completing" a map by exploring every available square, at which point the map is saved permanently. The party gets experience for every new square explored as well as every sector completely mapped. This dynamic continued in the dungeons, although the game mercifully allows you to complete a sector without stepping on the trap squares. There were a couple maps that I couldn't complete even though I hit every visible square. I suspect there were secret doors somewhere, but the game doesn't have a mechanic to search for secret doors, and no amount of bashing into the walls seemed to produce any.

With as much time as I invested in the game, it's annoying not to be able to win it. But I've explored every square multiple times, and I just can't see what I'm missing. There are no walkthroughs online, but a few hints gleaned from a variety of sources suggest that somewhere, something was supposed to convey on me the ability to read Incan runes, and all those gibberish pieces of paper I'd been recovering from natives would start offering clues instead. This never happened. One place suggests that you have to wait in a "poison room" until three of the four party members are dead before you can find the door, but I never found this location.

One of the unavoidable--and thus unfair--traps.

Viewing the game files in Notepad does offer the clues that I was supposed to be getting, but they're pretty cryptic and don't really help: "SEQUENCE IN PAIRS TO FIND THE PATH"; "LEFT IS MORE FROM 4 OVER 4"; "SUCCESS BEGINS AT THE BOTTOM"; "A BATH IS NICE, BUT TWICE?"; and so on. The last two probably refer to the map at the top of this post: a weird maze on the bottom level that keeps shifting paths every time I move from square to square. There's an encounter on the map with a "fountain of black," where you have the option to bathe, which depletes all but 10 hit points. A second bath kills you, so that makes sense. But if success was supposed to begin here, it didn't do me any good.

In a quick GIMLET, I give it:

• 3 points for the game world. The back story is idiotic, but the game deserves some credit for offering a modern South American setting with themes from Incan mythology. This isn't the first RPG to offer a non-fantasy setting (that would be 1978's Space), but it is the first to offer a contemporary setting.

• 3 points for character creation and development. Expedition Amazon offers a Starflight-like approach by which each character occupies a role, and if he dies, you can no longer perform the functions of that role. It also offers a rare mechanic by which you accumulate experience through simple map exploration as well as combat. But the only obvious benefits of the experience--hit points and increased combat skill--max out fairly quickly.

• 0 points for no NPCs.

• 2 points for encounters and foes. There are a lot of "encounters" both outdoors and indoors, such as snake attacks, ambushes by natives, traps, and pits, but there are no role-playing options, or really any options, associated with them. You just take the damage and suck it up, or hope some piece of equipment saves you.

Sometimes, stepping on a random square causes a volcano to explode and kill everyone.

• 2 points for combat. As I described above, there are only a few options, no tactics, and very little danger. Combat is more about resource management (conserving bullets and grenades) than strategy.

• 3 points for equipment. You have a variety of equipment to help you explore, and the basic dynamic of the game is to manage it and make sure you return to the city before key items deplete. There just isn't much that's interesting about it.

Playing the game is a process of routinely returning to this screen to replenish stocks.

• 3 points for economy. You get money by finding and selling artifacts, but after a few hours of gameplay, you have more than you need. The most expensive items in the game are unnecessary.

• 1 point for having a main quest, though with a silly premise.

• 2 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics and sound are both very primitive (as was common in 1983). The interface is simple enough, but at the default speed, everything, from movement to waiting for the results of a combat action, takes too long.

• 2 points for gameplay. It's relatively linear and offers limited replayability. The basic game mechanic is a bit too easy, although clearly some aspects are too hard, since I couldn't figure out how to win no matter how much time I invested.

The final score of 21 is about par for the course for these early-1980s, mostly-forgotten offerings that never had a DOS port. Since I did a u-turn with my "new plan" back in November, I've met a few non-DOS offerings that I'm glad I experienced (e.g., Dungeons of Daggorath, Sword of Fargoal), but none that I've felt are truly great RPGs, even for their eras. What will be the first, do you think? Questron?

What interests me is how well these authors thought they were replicating the tabletop role-playing experience. Some commenters have noted that game magazines made no distinction between "adventure" games and "role-playing" games in the early era; this may be true, but game developers clearly did make distinctions. Perhaps the earliest commercial RPG, Dunjonquest: The Temple of Apshai, begins with a long description of role-playing and how Apshai replicates the experience on the computer. So does Expedition Amazon. The manual opens with a section titled "What is a Fantasy Role Playing Game?," and it mentions all the conventions of the genre--attributes, character development, player identification with the character, economy, equipment--while carefully skirting the fact that Expedition Amazon makes poor use of all of them. Though, as always, we have to remember the technology limitations of the time.

A reviewer named Johnny Wilson covered Expedition Amazon in the August 1984 Computer Gaming World, calling it "a very enjoyable game that doesn't take itself too seriously," but he goes on to say, "For me, it's much more satisfying to adventure in this manner than to deal with a limited parser in a text only game," suggesting that he didn't have a lot of basis for comparison. His review does provide an interesting window on what players thought was fun back in the early 1980s:

One of the most satisfying features of this adventure game was that by having four player characters, I could have a group over and play the game together. We had great fun laughing at each other's misfortunes; harassing one another for inept shooting; and generally suggesting mutiny toward whoever happened to be piloting the boat or leading the expedition. We would name at least one of the characters for someone we didn't like and would absolutely refuse to give medical aid to them, regardless of what happened to them.

The limited gameplay doesn't remotely support this depth of engagement. It doesn't even really treat the four party members as individual characters, and harassing someone for "inept shooting" is to harass him for the outcome of a 1d6 roll. The idea of four friends huddled in front of an Apple II, hooting and hollering about the twists of fate in Expedition Amazon--not to mention what the review calls "sparkling graphics and gags"--makes me want to cry a little.

Cue peals of laughter from four desperately lonely individuals.

I wish I knew more about the game's author, Willard Phillips. MobyGames doesn't have him credited on any other titles. [Later edit: Mr. Phillips later commented below, and I have more information about him in a later posting.] As I noted in the opening post, Greg "Moebius" Malone and David "Dr. Cat" Shapiro, both of whom would go on to work at Origin Systems, are credited in the Apple II version. At first, I thought this was quite surprising, but it turns out that Penguin Software's stable of employees or contractors included a lot of future Origin employees, including Dallas Snell, Denis Loubet, and Richard Garriott himself (he's credited for graphics on 1985's Ring Quest). Penguin (later Polarware) has only one other RPG on its list: 1984's Xyphus.

If any later reader comes along and knows the secret to winning Expedition Amazon, feel free to drop a comment and I'll see if I can pull off a victory screen. [Later edit: I did it! On my own!] Until then, it's time to move on and get back into a regular schedule. It's been so long since I played Tunnels & Trolls: Crusaders of Khazan that I no longer remember what I'm doing. I'm thinking it makes sense to start the game over with a new party; I'm also motivated to do this because my characters seem to have suffered an irreversible loss of attributes. But I don't want to do that right away, so I'm temporarily removing the game from the active list and moving on to Lord of the Rings, Vol. I to the next position. I'll come back to Khazan later in the year.

Sorry for the long silence, everyone. I can't promise it won't happen again, but I'll do my best.

Game 143: Expedition Amazon (1983)

The biggest surprise in Expedition Amazon comes on its title screen. The author of the game is listed as Willard Phillips, about whom I can find nothing, but the next two credits are for "illustrations" by Greg Malone and "program support" by David Shapiro. Unless there is more than one developer of each of those names, it appears that "Moebius the Windwalker" and "Dr. Cat" worked on a game together several years before they were both employed at Origin Systems, a fact that I've been able to find nowhere else.

Despite starting with a page-long tract on "What is a Fantasy Role Playing Game?," Expedition Amazon doesn't play much like a traditional RPG. Part of it is the setting, sure--modern South America rather than a high fantasy or sci-fi setting--but most of it has to do with the weird gameplay. The basic mechanic is that you slowly reveal a series of overland and underground maps while good and bad (mostly bad) things happen to your party at random, some of which you can deter with the proper equipment. Its closest analogue in the RPG world is Robert Clardy's Wilderness Adventure and Odyssey: The Compleat Apventure.

The backstory is told with the type of irreverent whimsy that most people enjoy and I hate. The party is a group of researchers from Flint University, outside Austin, Texas, which was founded by a rancher as a tax shelter. The university's Department of Archaeology is run by a part-time professor named Jonathon Arrowhead who, inspired by Raiders of the Lost Ark, got his degree from a diploma mill in California. Influenced by In Search of Ancient Astronauts and "smoking grass," Arrowhead believes the ancient Incans were taught by aliens. He's bent on the discovery of a lost Incan city called Ka--named because he believes the Inca civilization got its name from being "in Ka." Starting from a basecamp at Iquitos in Peru, multiple parties have been tasked with exploring the Amazon basin and finding the fabled city.

The player begins by choosing a difficulty level on a scale of 1 to 9, then assigning names to four positions: field assistant, medic, radio operator, and guard. You then transition to the city of Iquitos (a real city in Peru) and purchase equipment at the trading post. Each party starts with an amount of money dependent on the difficulty level.

Once outfitted, the party leaves for basecamp and begins exploring the wilds of the Amazon. We've had a discussion about "mowing the lawn" in reference to the exploration mechanism in Crusaders of Khazan, and here we have a nearly identical mechanic, with the player slowly uncovering each square by navigating with the IJKM cluster. The two biggest differences here are that a) the party "forgets" the map if they leave it before the entire thing (or almost the entire thing) has been revealed; and b) the party gets experience points for every new square they explore and every map they fully explore. This is the only CRPG I know that awards experience simply for exploration.

"Mowing" the map in a box-in pattern. The numbers below indicate that it's hour 14 on day 6 and I've mapped 1,610 squares. The numbers between 17 and 16 are the hit point totals for my four party members.

Every five or six steps, there's some kind of encounter, usually with something unfortunate. A rabid bat or "crazed capybaras" attack and give someone rabies. A mosquito cloud appears and gives someone malaria. Fleas bring the plague. Cockroaches infest the food and make the party lose a day's worth of rations. An Amazon throws a spear and damages someone. Natives infiltrate the party and steal some of the equipment. A tick delivers yellow fever. If you're in a boat, you might hit a rock and sink the boat. If you're dumb enough to be swimming without a boat, you might face piranhas, crocodiles, or quicksand. A few of these calamities can be averted with the right equipment (e.g., mosquito netting protects against mosquitoes), but most you just have to suck up.

Some of the encounters are "finds" in which you unearth clay, silver, or gold artifacts to sell back in town (you know, just like real archaeologists). Hopefully, your "finds" outweigh the amount of money you have to spend restocking medical equipment and replacing items stolen by natives.

Some encounters lead to combat, in which you face a large party of either Amazons or Jivaro Indians, countering their spears and blowguns with pistols, automatic rifles, or grenades. I've often lamented that more RPGs aren't set in the modern world, but there is something inescapably uncomfortable about a team of "archaeologists" massacring aboriginal Peruvians with hand grenades. Combat, in any event, is of the most basic sort. Each round, each character has an option to either throw a grenade (which kills up to 10 enemies), shoot up to 6 bullets from a pistol, or fire a 20-bullet clip from an assault rifle. The party is limited in the number of grenades (8) and bullets (180) that it can carry, so after a few combats, it's necessary to return to the city and re-stock. This makes it particularly annoying when natives sneak into your camp and steal all the grenades, which happens frequently.

Combat with some natives. My party has 140 bullets and 0 grenades left. I'm facing 6 enemies. In this round, I have chosen to have Virginia fire her (p)istol for 6 shots, 5 of which hit (and killed) the enemies. Enemies have no hit points; they're just either alive or dead.

Combat very rarely rewards you with some equipment or treasure, but more often the natives carry junk joke items, and there seems to be no limit to the list programmed into the library: a Roto-Rooter gift card, a picture of Fabian, a bust of Beethoven, and so forth. The same silly approach to humor can be found in town, where Pedro, proprietor of the trading post, tells horrible jokes when you enter. Fortunately, you have the option to turn the illustrations off and just get down to business.

This is the most graphically-complex screen in the game, and they used it for this.

Except for a few places in the underground areas, encounters are entirely time-dependent and not space-dependent. No encounter in the outdoor area occurs in a fixed location, so the only purpose of exploring all the squares is for its own sake. You could achieve the same results with combats, treasure, and other encounters by just walking back and forth between two squares.

Each party member starts with 6 hit points, from which they take damage from combat, poison, disease, and so forth. As the party amasses experience from combat, exploration, and treasure, the hit point total increases for everyone, as does overall "skill." The skill increase manifests itself in improved combat rolls (e.g., hitting enemies on all 6 shots instead of just 3) and the ability to occasionally defend against one of the bad encounters (e.g., a character shoots the rabid monkey before it can bite). Medical kits can restore a character's hit points (and remove poison and disease) at any point, but the party can only carry 8 kits at once.

Checking my status back in town. My characters are all Level 11 and have a maximum of 22 hit points.

There are 10 outdoor maps to explore, so most of the initial game dynamic is trying to survive long enough to fully map an area before inevitably having to return to the city to replenish ammo, medkits, and other equipment. Between thefts by natives and other calamities, it's very hard to do better than break even, financially, on each trip, and I haven't come close to being able to afford a LORAN navigation system or an assault rifle.

The game manual suggests that once you map the 10 outdoor areas, it's time to go underground, where "you will find clues to help you complete your quest." There are a bunch of structures on the outdoor maps, but only three (that I've noted) with stairs down. The underground areas have more combats than the outdoor areas, and a smaller variety of encounters, but the encounters are much deadlier. You can stumble on sacrificial altars and volcanic vents which instantly kill characters, and various (unavoidable) triggers might cause the level to fill with water or lava. There are rare "crypts" that you have the option to open; these occasionally reveal treasures but more often just poison or kill you. Monsters can appear randomly and destroy your lamp, and you can only carry three lamps at a time, so you can easily find yourself lost in the dark.

Finding a crypt in the dungeons beneath a ziggurat.

Despite the designated roles (field assistant, medic, radio operator, guard), your characters aren't really unique individuals. They don't have separate inventories, and they all level up together. If one dies, you can't perform any functions of that role until you return to the city and replace him. This would happen so often in the dungeons, even with high-level characters, that I've been reloading when I lose someone. The game does save the party when you exit, so I think it's still within the spirit of the original to do that.

For the most part, I've been trying to keep these "backtracking" posts to a single entry per game, but I'm stuck with Expedition Amazon. I've explored all the places I can find in the underground areas, and I just can't find the path to Ka and the endgame despite the manual's assurances that "hidden clues" would guide me there. Every party of "Crocodile Cult" members that I kill in the dungeons has this scrap of parchment on them:

Don't bother Googling it; I don't think any walkthroughs exist for this game.

I can't make heads or tails of it. It doesn't seem to be any kind of cryptogram, nor a map, nor does any obvious substitution with the Apple II keyboard yield a result. Any ideas?

I'll post again if I can win the game. Until then, my summary is that it's an odd game with some interesting ideas, but it's ultimately too limited in its gameplay options to hold much value today. Interesting revelation about Malone and Shapiro, though. It's nice that 31 years after the fact, I can still get an occasional scoop.