Wizard's Dominion - Lost early C64 RPG gets new release [ Update ]

Wizards Dominion was a popular graphic adventure written for the first 16 bit home computer the Texas Instruments TI 99/4A in 1982, and ported to C64 in 1983. Until now you'd only find the Texas version to download online, but thanks to Genesis Project the game has been rescued and is available now on CSDB.

The game is a Pseudo 3D isometric turn based RPG. Explore the caves to find the Wizard's chamber and progress to the next level. Each cave has an ogre, who starts at the cave exit and tries to hunt and kill you. But you are armed with weapons, spells and can try to kill the ogre in turn based combat. Reach the Wizard's chamber on the 10th level to become the Master Wizard and win the game. As the game is written in C64 BASIC, the redraw routine on each move can make exploration feel, a little sluggish. But if you're running in VICE, you can turn on Warp Mode to fix that. Just remember to switch it off in combat, or between levels, or you could miss vital information.

You will need to read the instruction manual, and reference cards, which have been scanned and bundled with the download. Progress needs to be recorded onto a scoresheet, so you can recover your character state in between plays... Which sounds silly now, but is really quite fun if you were ever fond of early 1980s role playing games. Also if you enjoy hacking BASIC listings together on your commodore, the 3000 or so lines of source code can be displayed by typing LIST after quitting the game.  If you can cope with the basic graphics, and follow the game honestly without cheating, then there's a lot of fun to be had here.  Don your helmet, and save the Wizard's Dominion!

Update - Since this article went live a new version was released which not only fixed alot of issues including spelling errors, but also improved the games speed. You can see the changelog below for the latest version Wizard's Dominion &D 101%

- several spelling errors have been corrected
- upon death, the game does not quit to basic but restarts.
- all the fingerpoking keys are disabled
- getting back a basic source after reset is disabled
- the entire sprite plotting thing, that originally required to split the basic ram and erranously wrote into the tape buffer was explanted and moved to a safe space and also replaced with a faster routine
- obviously the game was speeded up using method X (watch out for more like this)
- since the entire process to edit the source required new tools, a door was opened for unlimited future improvements to programs of this kind
- several erranous things have been removed from the source, i think the original really just works on razors edge.

Links : 1) Source 2) Download

@hayes_maker