Phantasia

About the game

Phantasia is a fantasy role-playing game that Edward A. Estes wrote for Unix systems in the mid-1980s. Everything is a menu and a line of text: you pick a character type, which rolls your statistics, and then you move around a huge Cartesian grid. Wherever you stand decides what can find you. Near the origin the monsters are weak; the farther out you walk, the stronger they get, so a character that wanders too far too soon does not last.

Fights are turn-based and menu-driven. You can melee a monster, skirmish to slow it, try to evade, throw spells, nick it for a little experience, or try to out-think it with a luckout. Experience raises your level, the level raises your statistics and the distance you can move in one step, and a few levels in you begin to find treasure, spells and the first stops of the long climb: a place at the council of the wise, and, for the very strong, the throne.

The original was an "interterminal" game: every player's character lived in one shared file, so people met, talked, helped and attacked each other, and the rulers could reshape the realm. This version has one player, so the realm is yours alone, with its monsters and its rules.

Playing it here

This is Phantasia 3.3.2 in the form shipped with the Linux port of the BSD games, compiled for the browser from that source code. The screen is a text terminal drawn on a canvas, and a keyboard is required. The download is tiny and the game plays offline once loaded.

When it asks if you have a character to run, answer N for the first time, choose a type, keep a roll of statistics you like, and give the character a name and a password. Your characters stay in this browser, in the realm's file, and you come back to them with Y, the name and the password. Clearing this site's data deletes them. Be careful with the exit option: a character that quits at level 0 is deleted, because the game only saves characters above level 0. The game is in English.

Controls

In a fight the screen lists the options (1 melee, 2 skirmish, 3 evade, 4 spell, 5 nick, 6 luckout), and you press the number of the one you want.

A few things worth knowing

Stay close to the origin at first. The monsters you meet depend on how far you are from the center, so train near it, resting often, before you walk outward.

Resting is a move. Pressing a key that is not a command rests, which restores energy and lets you find mana, and it is how you recover between fights.

Choose the character type with care. The magic user lives on spells and wits, the fighter and the dwarf on strength and energy, the elf on speed, and the halfling is quick, smart and starts with a bit of experience. The experimento is mediocre at everything but can start almost anywhere on the grid.