"The Curse of Yendor" is a turn-based strategy game set in a fantasy world with monsters, magic, and loot galore. It falls under the classical "Rogue-Like" definition (it is not a "-lite" or "-like-like").

The game is designed to be user-friendly, but don't worry, you'll still die a lot.

Story:
You are the apprentice of one of the three "guardians of balance", near-immortal beings of either light, dark, or gray alignment. One of the other guardians has found a powerful artifact, and has become corrupted by its influence. It is your job to defeat this warped guardian before they ascend to godhood (yeah, it's a REALLY powerful artifact).

It's the time-tested standard "go 10 levels and slay the boss". Until you actually get there. But I won't spoil all the twists and turns of the story for you.

When you start a new game, you are asked to choose your character class (warrior, rogue, wizard) and your alignment (light, dark, gray).

It's important to note that all characters can use all weapons, items, and elemental spells. But here are the differences:

This class gets the most Hit Points (for staying alive), and the least mana (for casting spells). Warriors start with a sword and chainmail armor. Each class token collected grants a 10% bonus to melee damage. Warriors also tend to wear heavy armor, which further reduces the damage caused by their magic.

This class gets a balanced amount of HP and Mana, and starts with leather armor and a bow. Rogue tokens allow the player to sometimes disarm traps, as well as move faster and do more damage with a bow.

Magic-users are very fragile (low HP), but can cast spells all day (high mana). They start with a robe and a dagger, but you really shouldn't let anything get close to you. Wizard tokens will further improve your magic damage, and so will wearing very light armor.

Each character class also has different regeneration rates for HP and Mana. Warriors heal fast, but their mana comes back very slowly. Wizards are the opposite, and rogues fall somewhere in the middle.

And now on to alignments. These are roughly parallel to D&D alignments, but not all dark creatures are evil. You should know that the mana cost of your "alignment spell" will increase by 1 each time you use it.

Choosing light as your alignment will grant you the spell "greater healing", which fully heals you and removes negative status effects. You will face dark and gray creatures (you are allied with light creatures, so they will not be encountered.)

Dark characters get the "beam of death" spell: a directional attack that will instantly kill any non-boss monster, and penetrate them as well, allowing multiple kills. You will face light and gray creatures.

Players who choose gray will have the "gray wind" spell: a large radius attack that teleports monsters, breaks walls, and freezes liquids. You will face light and dark monsters.

Combat (Attacking, Armor)
Unlike many RPGs and RLs, attacks always hit, both yours and your enemies. The only variable is the amount of damage done. Which can be really variable. It is modified by many things, such as...

Armor
You have many choices about what to wear for physical protection. Robes, leather, chain mail, full plate, dragonscale, and some artifacts as well. All armor offers some defense. Armor also greatly affects your movement speed, and how much damage you do with your magic (heavy armor reduces magic damage!)

Your armor value directly reduces the damage done by monsters when they hit you. But you will always take at least one point of damage.

Damage Types (Edged, Blunt, Piercing)
Your weapon does one of three kinds of damage: edged (slashing or cutting, like swords), blunt (crushing, like a nice big warhammer), or piercing (pointy, like the arrows from your bow).

Most monsters have resistances or vulnerabilities to one or more of these damage types. Daevas are weak to all three types of physical damage, and spectres are resistant to all three, but most creatures, not so much. Did you know that you can right click on a monster to see information about it, including its weaknesses?

There are also varying degrees of resistance and vulnerability. For example, an Ice Elemental takes only 25% damage from piercing attacks, 50% from edged, and 150% damage from blunt weapons.

Elements (Fire, Ice, Stone)

Elemental magic plays a huge part in "The Curse of Yendor". Fire, Ice, and Stone are the three elements, and they have a "rock-paper-scissors" interaction: fire beats ice, ice beats stone, and stone beats fire.

Again, monsters have resistances and vulnerabilities to these elements. Demons take no damage at all from fire, but almost double damage from ice.

Weapons and armor can be enchanted with elemental magic. An elemental weapon may somtimes produce an explosion of its element type, effecting groups of monsters and the environment. If you are using a door to keep out certain enemies, don't use you stone mace: it might destroy the walls and the door.

Wearing elemental armor will boost your power with that magic school. You will deal more damage, and have a higher chance of activating any secondary effects associated with that elemental type, like breaking walls or destroying traps.

Auras (Blue, Red, Yellow)

Soon you will encounter creatures surrounded by colorful dancing lights, either blue, red, or yellow. These "auras" can appear on any creature. They give the monster increased health and damage.

You can also find weapons that have these colors. Auras interact with each other in another RPS manner: blue beats red, red beats yellow, and yellow beats blue. The worst thing you can do is use a red weapon against a red creature: it will just bounce off! Instead, use a blue weapon: your damage will be doubled!

A secondary effect of these auras is that they give creatures additional elemental resistance. Blue resists ice, red resists fire, and yellow resists stone. So it's possible that if you're planning to use your fireball spell against a group of Choke Weeds, if they have red auras, you are in big trouble.

All characters can cast three elemental magic spells: Ice-Bolt, Fireball, and Earthquake. These spells cost different amounts of mana to cast (1 / 2 / 3 ) and do different amounts of damage ( some / more / a lot )

Ice-Bolt travels in a straight line up to 4 tiles and hits a single target. Fireball travels 3 squares, and explodes when it hits in a 3x3 area. Earthquake is centered around the player in a 5x5 grid.

Each spell also has a secondary effect.

Ice-Bolt can freeze liquids in the tile where it lands, like water and acid. FYI: You have to properly position yourself to hit the tile you want!

Fireball is good for setting things on fire (no, really?). Are those trees blocking your view? BURN THEM DOWN! Just be careful you don't set yourself on fire, or burn down something that's actually protecting you.

Earthquake kills walls dead. And other things too. If it can be broken, earthquake can break it. And unlike fireball, you can't earthquake yourself, so don't worry.

Using these 3 spells, you can eventually get yourself just about anywhere on the map. In fact, that is a huge part of the game. The more inaccessible an area is, the more likely it is to have awesome hidden treasure.

There are many different types of terrain in "The Curse of Yendor": floors, walls, liquids, trees, furniture, more walls, and more (walls?).

The really important things to grasp about each terrain are whether you can move through it, whether you can see through it, and what happens to it when you freeze / burn / quake / dig into it.

The most perplexing terrain has got to be the "crystal wall". You can see through it to some degree, but it is extremely solid. If you freeze it, if becomes a "frozen wall". Hit that with an earthquake and you've got a pile of "debris". Smack that with your pick, and finally, FINALLY, you can walk through it.

The moral of the story is this: "figure out what stuff does".

Traps in "The Curse of Yendor" are a little bit different than in other roguelikes. For one thing, you don't have to search for them (that's so tedious!), but instead they are already visible.

That might make them seem pointless at first glance (just walk around them!), but the more you play, the more you will understand their insidious nature. And sometimes you just have to decide which trap will harm you the least.

A floor will start with a certain number of traps scattered around. But most traps will be the result of your actions: traps magically appear around useful items whenever you take some significant action. For example, pull the lever to open the locked room, and traps will appear surrounding the merchant. Pick up a key, and the chest becomes trapped.

There are several ways to deal with traps. The best is to combine the rogue character (chance of disarming traps) with the jewel of avoidance (chance of not triggering traps). A high level rogue can walk over almost any trap, disarm it, and gain experience too!

Some (but not all) traps can be destroyed by magic (spoiler alert)
Fire glyphs can be destroyed by your fireball spells.
Pits can be destroyed by earthquake.

And then there are poison gas vents. It is safe to step on them, but they periodically release expanding clouds of poison gas...hence the name. There is a way to destroy these, but you'll have to figure that out for yourself.



Traps from left to right: fire glyph, teleport, blinding, summoning, stun, and curse traps.

Everything you do (moving, attacking, casting spells, changing equipment, opening containers, etc.) takes a certain amount of time.

The best way to think of it is that every time you do something, it advances the "clock" by a certain amount of time. Any monster who takes less than that amount of time to move, will get to move (or attack).

The biggest effect to your speed comes from your equipped weapon and armor. Bigger and heavier things will slow you down more (they "add more time to the clock").

Every monster has a speed. Treelorns and stone elementals are extremely slow (they require a lot of time), while steely eyes move very quickly.

You can also get a haste effect from fountains (move faster), or a stun effect from traps (move slower).

Decade Skills were added in version 1.1 to further customize your build. They are only awarded every 10 character levels ("decade"), so choose wisely.



Decade skills are grouped together, and the choices within each group are mutually exclusive. What? You can either pick "move faster" or "attack faster", but not both.

OK, I'm pretty sure these are self-explanatory, right?

You move faster. Huh, i guess maybe that's self-explanatory too? But you only move faster when you're moving, not attacking or digging or whatever.

Oh, OK, I see the difference now. I attack faster, but I don't walk faster. Yep.

Treasure chests will contain better loot (higher level, more rare, etc.)

The Golden Scales will charge you less to enter the rooms that contain 3 items.

You do more damage when using your "class weapon".
For warriors, that's a sword. For rogues, it's a bow, and for wizards, it's a dagger.
Nobody gets a bonus for hammers, maces, or crossbows. Artifacts that are clearly a sword/dagger/bow *will* get the bonus.

When you wear the right armor for your class, it provides better protection. For the wizard, that means a robe. For the rogue, it's leather armor, and for the warrior, it's chain mail. No one gets a bonus for plate or dragonscale. Artifacts that are clearly class-appropriate will get the bonus. For example, Robe of Healing is a robe, and Roguesmail is leather.

Auras are the Red, Yellow, and Blue powers. Aura Affinity gives you +25% damage when using any weapon that has an aura.

Aura Rejection provides you with a natural defense against creatures that are imbued with Blue, Red, or Yellow Auras. They all do less damage to you.

You don't have to worry about poison anymore. In fact, you might even seek it out.

Each step you take, there is a small chance that any cursed item you are carrying will become un-cursed. Something else you won't have to worry (much) about any more.

Which ever one of these you pick, your spells of that type will do more damage from now on. Cool.

Press F2 to see your decade skills.

Yep, that guy.

He appears on most non-tower levels. He buys your extra stuff. Sometimes you accidentally make him disappear. And now, he sells things too. All you have to do is bump into him.



On the above screenshot, your inventory is full, and you have the opportunity to sell these things to the merchant. If you press the appropriate key A-J (or click the item), it will be sold to the Merchant (and permanently lost), and you will get an amount of gold in return.

Note that's you can't sell cursed items.


For every empty space in your inventory, the merchant will sell one item. For example, I dropped all of my equipment shown in the previous screenshot, and went back to the merchant. This is what I found:


There are several things that help you to know which items are for sale:

• They are colored yellow (no other item is yellow in the merchant)
  
• There is an asterisk * after the corresponding letter
  
• It says "Pay" at the end, signifying how much gold you have to pay to get that item.

There are no separate buy and sell screens, it's all together. So it is possible during normal play that you will see red items (weapons), brown items (armor), green items (cursed), and yellow items (for sale) all on the same screen.

Artifacts are found in reliquaries every few floors of the dungeon. And while you are offered 3 at a time, you can only pick 1, so choose wisely!

Horn Of Apostrophe : Fires a thunderous sonic blast!

Holepuncher : Makes lots of tiny holes very quickly.

Creeping Death : High damage at the cost of speed.

Sword Of Thorns : Hurts them more than it hurts you.

Wizard Hat : Greatly increases magical abilities.

Cloak Of Transparency : Not quite invisible, but it's easier to hide.

Hackenbander : A polearm that aggravates monsters.

Laser Pistol : Some sort of enchanted fire-bow?

Stun-Sword : Low damage, but can freeze monsters in place.

Staff Of Blinking : Telports its targets away.

Reaper : Feast on the blood of your enemies!

Robes Of The Healer : Provides a constant healing effect.

Interrobang The Unmaker : Enchanted mace that banishes summoning creatures.

Amperxander's Poison Darts : Thrown darts that explode in a cloud of poison gas.

Elemental Ward : Shield that reduces damage from all elemental creatures.

Runestone Cuirass : Extremely resilient armor that prevents spellcasting.

Helm Of Farsight : You can see the code. And everything else too.

Golden Spade : Less of a weapon, more of a tool.

Ether-Bane : If it bleeds (blue) you can kill it.

Blood-Drinker : Becomes stronger by absorbing blood from the floor.

Roguesmail : Increases rogue skills, even for other classes.

Flaming Flask : Throw. Explode. Burn. Repeat.

Sceptre Of The Ice King : You are infused with cold, but it doesn't bother you.

Spear Of Light : Kills dark creatures. Try shooting it.

Midas Gauntlets : Everything you touch turns to gold.


Mirror Mail : Ranged attacks bounce off you.

Carpenter's Shoes : Magically repairs broken floors.

Ring of Raging Fire : All around you, fires burn!

Hungry Hammer : Powerful smasher that drains your nutrition.

Bulwark Shield : Powerful shield, nothing can move you.

Pemini's Boots : The speed is blinding!

Phase Baton : You can walk through walls.

Summoner's Stone : Stone staff that makes more monsters spawn.

The Wasp : A small magic bow that shoots very quickly.

Ethereal Armor : Whisks you away through the ether.

Crown Of Eternal Suffering : Constantly heals you but provides no protection.

(Let's get these out of the way first.)

Q: "I cast a fireball spell in the forest, and I died in the flames"
A: Don't stand in the fire! (It actually says this in the in-game help file.)
B: Also, don't touch the stove.
C: Also also, familiarize yourself with the explosion radius of your spells and weapons, as well as which kinds of terrain will block them.

Q: "I Died!"
A: Get used to it.
B: Try playing the "Survival Training". It's a quick tutorial.
C: Also, survival training is mis-named. No one survives.

Q: "My wizard got killed in two hits!"
A: Really, use your magic. Don't let monsters get close to you!

Q: (Follow-up) "My warrior's magic does almost no damage!"
A: Yeah, warriors aren't really that great at magic. Just be thankful you can still freeze and burn stuff.

Q: "I don't have enough inventory space to carry all this great loot, and I can only see three spaces ahead of me"
A: Then you haven't been exploring! There are upgrades to either your inventory or sight radius on almost every floor.

Q: "None of these are questions!"
A: Neither was that. Good job.

Q: "Monsters make me dizzy/afraid and then they kill me!"
A: Killing you is the sole purpose of a monster's life.
B: If you don't want to be dizzy, poisoned, afraid, mana-drained, etc., then don't let the monsters get you!
C: Any monster with a really strong power will also have a weakness. Spectres and Fungols are both susceptible to fire.

Q: "I'm playing a non-perma-death, but I got myself into a hopeless situation!"
A: Yes, that is possible.
B: Sorry.
C: Be more careful next time.
D: I have 3 games like that right now.

Q: "I want to go to the stairs/merchant/shrine/treasure but it's surrounded by traps!"
A: Yep, the stuff you do will activate traps around desirable items.
B: If you can't figure a way around them,
C: And if you can't use your magic to destroy them (hint hint),
D: then you'll just have to decide which one you hate the least.

Q: Where are my Decade Skills?
A: Press F2.
B: You only get to pick one every 10 character levels.

Q: "I don't know how to (something) !
A: There is in-game help available. Click or press [?]
B: The entire command set fits on one screen.
C: You can even re-bind the keys to whatever you like!

Well, I guess I got carried away and put everything in the other section...

A: That's the orb. (Wait, is this the sarcastic section?) No, really. Somewhere on the level, you will find an "orb receptacle", that looks like a big round hole. You have to push the orb (no diagonal pushes!) into the receptacle, and you get a "Class Token", which increases the powers of your chosen class.
B: Be careful with the orb! It is very easy to lose it, or get it in a position where you can no longer push it. It can fall down stairs, into the water, or through collapsing floors.
C: Be careful with the orb! (again?) It can destroy things like life essences and mana balls.
D: The orb can be used to do something that nothing else can do. I leave it up to you to find out.

Many many years ago, while searching for video game art, I came across some tilesets by someone other than David Gervais (what?!). "Lost Dragon". I found them full of character and very inspiring. Curse of Yendor might not exist had I not found such interesting art to work with.

And over the years, as those tiles blended into my library and my mind, I forgot their origin. Monsters like the Treelorn and Widower were just part of my stable. But they were created by D. Bailey, aka Lost Dragon, and he deserves to be mentioned here, and thanked.

Thank you!