Gateway to Apshai is a simple, yet intuitive game for the 80s in the fact that you can collect treasure, weapons, spells and items in order to go through the dungeon. Most people will find this to be the 'stick figure' version of Diablo, or another dungeon crawler type game, but the simple dungeons leave more up to the imagination of what you're fighting, and what the dungeons are like.
The game starts allowing you to choose a dungeon, and choose a level of the dungeon you wish to visit.
This gives the game its 'random' type dungeon selection, which really is pretty cool for an old school 80s game. As you progress through the levels the difficulty ramps, having you fight Mummy's, Thieves, Mamba snakes, and even Dragons in the later levels of the game. Until you reach about level 4 or so you will find yourself fighting wimpy creatures like "Fungus, Garter Snakes, Rats, Spiders" until later you find these same creatures are a different color, and much more quick and difficult to kill. As the levels get higher, you will find that your equipment will eventually become useless on these harder monsters, and you will be required to upgrade your sword, use magic arrows, and have to wear better armor to not get killed in 1
hit.
As you complete levels, your character also advances, having your strength, agility, constitution etc raise in level with your character. Certain monsters will not only require you to have a certain grade of weapon to kill it, but also have enough Strength in order to kill it as well. The better the weapon, and higher the strength, the better chance you have of killing a higher level creature.
Later on in the game, you also can find charms will which increase your strength or other attributes, but also traps will drain that strength or teleport you into a room with a very high level creature!
Anyways, this game brings back many fine memories from when I was about 6 or 7, and I played it to death. It is the closest thing you will find to a Diablo type Dungeon crawler game on the commodore 64, and I still enjoy going back and playing it every once in awhile.
