Portugues
The Sword of Ianna
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About the game
Long ago the goddess Ianna gave the hero Tukaram a sacred sword to defeat the Lord of Chaos. Centuries later, evil is stirring again, and as Tukaram's heir, the barbarian Jarkum, it falls to you to follow his footsteps, find the sword and put the darkness back to sleep.
The Sword of Ianna is a flip-screen action platformer in the tradition of the great 8-bit sword fighters. Jarkum walks, runs, makes long leaps, hangs from ledges and climbs them, pulls levers and opens doors with coloured keys, while the levels — a fortress, desert tombs, an icy gorge, a forge, temples and a tower of sorcery — are full of traps, collapsing floors and secret passages.
The heart of the game is the swordplay. Draw the blade and every direction becomes a different stroke: a high cut, a low cut, a lunge forward, a swing behind you, plus a block. Skeletons, orcs, mummies, trolls, golems and worse each have their own pattern and their own energy bar, and defeating them earns experience that raises Jarkum's level. Along the way you find better weapons, food and healing potions to carry in the inventory.
Playing it here
This is a homebrew game for the MSX2, the second generation of the 1980s MSX home computer standard: a new game, made in 2017 by the Spanish group RetroWorks after their ZX Spectrum version, and released for free with its full source code. It needs an MSX2 with 128 KB of video memory, and runs here in the blueMSX emulator with C-BIOS, a free replacement for the MSX system software.
Click Play. The menu starts in Spanish: press down twice to reach ESPAÑOL and press Space to switch to English, then go back up to PLAY and press Space. Story texts wait for Space before they continue. From the second level on, the screen shows a password when a level starts; write it down and enter it with PASSWORD in the menu to continue from there later. F2 saves the full state of the emulator in this browser and F4 brings it back. A gamepad works as the MSX joystick.
Controls
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Left / Right | walk |
| Up | jump, climb onto a ledge, go through an open door |
| Down | crouch, pick up an object, climb down |
| Space or Z + Left / Right | run (press up while running for a long leap) |
| Space or Z | pull a lever |
| Shift, X or M | draw or sheathe the sword |
| Space + Up / Down (sword drawn) | high / low stroke |
| Space + forward / back (sword drawn) | lunge / backward swing |
| Up (sword drawn) | block |
| H | pause: left/right choose an item, Space uses it, down changes weapon, H resumes, X quits |
| Q, A, O, P | also move (up, down, left, right) |
| F2 / F4 | save / load the emulator state |
A few things worth knowing
Sheathe to travel, draw to fight. With the sword out, Jarkum walks slowly and cannot jump, but he can strike and block. Put it away to run and climb.
Watch the energy bars. The status bar shows your energy next to the enemy's. Blocking and stepping back is often wiser than trading blows with a stronger foe.
Use the pause menu. Healing potions and the weapons you find are picked in the pause menu (H), and they can turn a lost fight around.
Credits and licence
The Sword of Ianna was made by RetroWorks: code by Utopian (Francisco Javier Peña), graphics and level design by Pagantipaco, music and sound effects by McAlby, MSX support by Guillian, optimisations by Metalbrain, proofreading by Felix Clowder and testing by Metr81, IvanZX and the RetroWorks team. RetroWorks released the game with its complete source code and artwork under the Apache License 2.0. The ROM includes the Arkos Tracker player by Targhan and Grim, an aPLib depacker by dwedit and a Pletter depacker by Manuel Pazos, which the author confirmed may be redistributed. The licence text and the source code are linked from this page.