Doomdark's Revenge

Doomdark's Revenge from 1984 is a direct sequel to the successful strategy-adventure game Lords of Midnight, published on the ZX Spectrum by Beyond Software. This time the player controls Morkin, son of the hero from the first game, and must unite the fragmented forces of Midnight against a new threat coming from the north. The game offers an even larger and darker world than its predecessor, full of betrayal and uncertain alliances, where not every character the player encounters is necessarily an enemy.

The gameplay remains faithful to the original, being a combination of strategy and text adventure rendered using the unique technique known as Landscaping, where the surrounding countryside is drawn as a smooth 3D panorama made up of simple graphical elements and changes according to the direction the character faces. The player controls dozens of characters at once, plans their movement across the vast map, and leads armies into battle, while the text describes the results of actions and surrounding events in the form of brief reports resembling military orders. The new game also added the possibility for individual characters to transform and switch sides, which deepened both the strategic and narrative components compared to the first installment.

Doomdark's Revenge was received as a worthy sequel, and many rated it as even better than the original Lords of Midnight, with a more extensive world, more complex game systems, and a longer playtime that rewarded players willing to truly immerse themselves in the world of Midnight and devote dozens of hours to planning and tactics. In the history of the genre, it remains a demonstration of how far it was possible to combine extensive strategy with a narrated story and an open world on an eight-bit machine. Today the game is valued mainly by retro enthusiasts for its ambition, although the demanding controls and orientation within the sprawling text interface place high demands on today's player's patience and systematic approach.

Why play it: For patient strategists willing to devote dozens of hours to planning within a sprawling text interface – an ambitious sequel to Lords of Midnight that many consider even better than the original.