Kroz

Game review

Kroz is a series of Roguelike video games created by Scott Miller for IBM PC compatibles. The first episode in the series, Kingdom of Kroz, was released in 1987 as Apogee Software's first game. Kroz introduced the scheme of the first episode being free and charging money for additional episodes, a technique which defined the business model for Apogee and was adopted by other MS-DOS shareware publishers. The Kroz game set is one of the first successful series of shareware games in history. The author is Scott Miller, his main inspiration was the game Rogue. The name is a play on words - it is created by reversing the sequence of letters from the name of the game Zork. These are action games with logic elements.

The first part is called Kingdom of Kroz. The player assumes the role of an archaeologist, searching for a magical amulet of immense value in the mysterious realm of Kroz. The levels are rendered in ASCII graphics and each of them occupies one screen. In the top-down view, the player's task is to collect as many crystals as possible and find the exit from the level. On contact with enemy monsters, the monster is killed, but the player loses one gem. As a defense, you can use the whip, which, in addition to eliminating enemies, is also used to break walls. In the game, it is important to make strategic decisions, to think about the progress and to be careful when using whips and crystals, because it is often better to lose a crystal and thus destroy the enemy than to kill headlessly, when then the whip may be missing to open the way to the exit.

Kingdom of Kroz contains 25 levels. Registered paying customers had the option of purchasing additional parts of the series. Along with two other games (Caverns of Kroz and Dungeons of Kroz), it was part of The Original Kroz Trilogy bundle. It was later sold under the title Kingdom of Kroz I as the third episode when his original followers were moved in his place. In 1990, an improved version of Kingdom of Kroz II was released, which became a new shareware version. It contained 21 different levels, partly taken from other games in the series. In March 2009, the entire Kroz series was released as freeware.