Darkstone

Darkstone is a computer role-playing game created by French developer Delphine Software and released in 1999. Darkstone has many similarities to Diablo, particularly in the user interface.

Object of the game
The evil Lord Draak, who has the power to transform himself in to a dragon, has recovered from earlier defeat and returned with his minions to the world of Uma bringing death and mayhem. Your task is to find your way to Draak's lair and slay him in combat. On your way you must locate the seven crystals and use them to recreate the time orb, without which you cannot defeat Draak.

The Lands of Uma
The game world is divided into the town (where you can trade weapons, armor, magical items and so on) and four Lands - Ardyl, Marghor, Omar and Serkesh. Each land contains the entrances to two dungeons, as well as other features associated with the various quests. Each of the first seven dungeons is associated with a quest and all of these have four levels. Completing a quest will result in your character recovering one of the seven crystals. The last dungeon leads to Draak's lair.

Dungeons contain many corridors and rooms. There are also many crates, vases and chests that can be opened or broken to reveal useful items. Wells abound, where characters can restore health or mana (see below).

Quests
The game has a number of quests available for each land or dungeon, and these are selected at random. This means that each time the game is played (at least for the first few games) the player is very likely to receive new quests that have not been encountered before. Most of the quests involve either defeating some enemy, solving some (usually quite simple) puzzle or locating a special item.

There are also ad-hoc quests that the townsfolk may give you. Most of these involve locating a lost item (the Claw of Sargon or the Stone of Souls, for example) or defeating some enemy (Buzbal the Furious or The Evil Garth, for example) and in return the player receives a monetary reward.

Character Classes and Attributes
There are four general classes, each of which has a male and a female variant giving a total of eight character classes. Each character has a set of four attributes - Strength, Dexterity, Magic and Vitality. Each general class is skilled in one area such as combat, magic, etc. The Warrior and the Amazon, for example, are both skilled in combat. In general the female classes are physically weaker than the male counterparts but make up for this in other areas such as dexterity or magic.

Each character can carry a weapon or two, a shield, and can wear a helmet and armor. You can also wear two amulets and four rings.

Characters age as the game progresses. As the character ages, he/she becomes weaker and less dextrous. The effects can be countered by drinking a potion of youth - these become available toward the end of the game and can be bought in town and also may occasionally be found in the various dungeons.

Characters also get hungry as time passes. Food can be bought in town and is often found when opening chests and crates.

Characters also have Health and Mana. A character dies when health decreases to zero. Mana is used when casting spells. Both can be replenished by drinking certain potions or from certain wells.

Characters have a "level" based upon a points system. Points are gained by doing damage to enemies. A character will "level-up" as certain points thresholds are reached.

Weapons, Armor and other items
A range of medieval-type weapons are available - swords, knives, bows and so on. Warriors would usually carry a sword or club, while a Magician might use a staff and a Priest a wand. There are also ranged weapons such as bows and throwing knives. Some weapons are two-handed, which precludes the use of a shield. Many items have a minimum requirement of strength, dexterity or magic and can not be worn by characters who do not meet the requirement. There are also items that give protection against attacks with poison, magic or lightning.

Armor also comes in a variety of forms, all the way from rags providing two points of protection to full armor providing sixty points or more.

Weapons, shields, helmets and armor is often imbued with properties that enhance some character attribute (by increasing strength or dexterity while worn, for example).

Rings and amulets add to character attributes or protection.

Spells and Skills
There are many spells that can be used. Some affect the character directly - spells of healing or food, for example. Others are protective (for example Reflection, which causes spells and ranged weapons to rebound) or offensive (such as Spark and Fireball) or simply provide some help, such as the spell of light that can be useful in dark corners. The spell of Magic Door creates a short-cut back to town.

Spells can be cast by reading certain scrolls, which does not use mana. The spell can only be cast once in this case - reading the scroll destroys it. Many spells can also be learned by reading books. Once a spell is learned it can be cast at any time without requiring a scroll, provided that the character has enough mana.

Skills are learned from the character Dalsin in town, in return for payment. Different skills are available to each character class. Some skills are always in effect once learned, for example "Master of Arms" which enhances a warrior's skill with weapons. Others must be activated rather like certain spells and last for a limited period of time. Unlike spells, skills do not require mana.

Enemies
Draak's minions come in many forms - trolls, orcs, skeletons, spiders, scorpions, wyverns and many others. Each of these types has variants - for example, some skeletons use swords while others have bows and still others may attack with fireballs.

Playing the game
The game can be played solo or multiplayer. Multiplayer games may be cooperative or competitive. Multiplayer games can be played over a LAN (using TCP/IP or IPX) or the Internet. The game includes its own server, so it is not necessary to locate a dedicated game server - any player can initiate a multiplayer session which other players can then join.

The user interface is very like that of Diablo (the developers of Darkstone acknowledge the earlier game as an important influence). Characters can be moved around by simply clicking on a location. Clicking on an enemy initiates an attack. Clicking on an item picks it up.

Each character has an inventory that can be opened. Items can be rearranged or removed.

A major point is that in the solo game the player can control two characters. At any given instant, one character is directly controlled by the player. The other character will act intelligently for the most part - it will follow the other character unless ordered not to and will defend itself against enemies. The player can switch between characters with a single click.

Comparison to Diablo
There are many similarities between the two games. Both use the same concepts of health, mana, scrolls, spellbooks and so on; the point-and-click interface is almost identical; even the hotkeys have the same function in many cases (for example, "i" opens virtually identical character inventory screens, and the Tab key toggles the map display). There are some major differences between Diablo (the original version, not Diablo II) and Darkstone:


 * Diablo's screens are very richly detailed but only one viewpoint is provided. Darkstone's screens are less detailed but allow four "camera angles". F10 switches to overhead. F11 switches to isometric. Left and right arrow keys freely rotate the camera around the selected character. Up and down arrow keys zoom. Ctrl+ up and down arrow keys move the camera angle up and down.
 * Diablo has three character classes; Darkstone has eight (four pairs).
 * Darkstone allows players to control two characters at one time.
 * Diablo characters can only be moved to a location visible on the screen. In Darkstone, when outside the dungeons the player can view a map of the land the character is in, and clicking on the map causes the character to move to the location. At any time the player can view a list of significant landmarks that have already been visited and return the character to any of these locations by clicking on it.
 * Diablo's gameplay takes place in (about) 16 levels of dungeons divided into four regions (the Dungeons, the Catacombs, the Caves and Hell). Darkstone takes place in (about) 31 levels split between eight separate dungeons each with four levels.
 * Darkstone characters created in solo games can also be used in Multiplayer games, and vice-versa. This is not true in Diablo (Diablo II offers a feature where solo characters can be converted to multiplayer, but this operation is irreversible). Since Blizzard's decision to do this in Diablo appears to be a deliberate anti-cheating measure, it may be that allowing this in Darkstone opens the game up to cheating (the game does have some anti-cheating features, such as the detection and removal of duplicate items).
 * Diablo has a Quest Log screen that summarizes the current open side-quests. Darkstone does not provide this - instead it allows the player to review all the conversations with NPCs. Since all such conversations are logged, locating a particular message associated with a quest can be time-consuming.

The foregoing may seem to be biased in favor of Darkstone - this is not intentional. The designers of Darkstone stated that they are big fans of Diablo but when designing their own game decided to change some aspects of the earlier game that they felt were weak. Nevertheless the earlier game is still superior in many areas - the richness of the graphics and sound create a darker and more menacing atmosphere, and (IMO) Diablo's enemies are more challenging than Darkstone's (some of Darkstone's enemies such as the Vampire are rather ridiculous). From the point of view of this author, anyone who enjoys Diablo will almost certainly enjoy Darkstone - but the author still plays Diablo almost as often and enjoys it just as much.

Other information
Diablo was a huge success and the original version is still available. Darkstone never achieved such standing and probably for that reason is harder to find. Nevertheless it can sometimes be found on budget shelves and as part of collections of older games.

As for Delphine Software, the company was bought in 2003 and all the developers were fired in early 2004. As of this writing (Apr 2004) the status of the company is unknown.