Demons of Dex

You are Eino, a member of the druids. Your master, the archdruid has become old and it is time for somebody to replace him. As a young initiate you are sent to dungeon Dex, a mysterious labyrinth home to vile monsters. You must enter the dungeon alone and defeat three demon lords within. Can you achieve enlightenment and ascend to become the next archdruid?

Demons of Dex is a roguelike for the Jupiter Ace (with 16K RAM pack) microcomputer from the early 80s. You can play it with an emulator (not included!), on the real hardware, or on a Minstrel 4th clone kit.

 The game is distributed as tape and wav files.   

Please note: I don't own a Jupiter Ace myself (just the Minstrel 4th clone), so the game has not been tested on the real hardware. Jupiter Ace owners, please report how the game plays on the real thing!

Special thanks to George Beckett for helping with testing and debugging the game.

Loading the game

Emulator: Load the TAP file into your emulator of choice. Type LOAD DEX to load the game and DEX to run it (some emulators may support auto-loading and running). The game has been tested on EightyOne emulator. Some emulators are listed here: http://jupiter-ace.co.uk/index_emulators.html 

Jupiter Ace: attach an audio cable from host PC to the Jupiter Ace's Ear socket. Type LOAD DEX (with all uppercase) and press enter. Playback the wav file from the host PC. After loading is complete, type DEX to start the game. Note that the game requires 16K expansion RAM pack.

Minstrel 4th: You can use the same procedure as above. Or you can use an SD card reader, if you have one. The game supports both 3.25 MHz and 6.5 MHz (preferred) system clock. With  6.5 MHz system clock sound effects and music have have higher quality and the game is slightly more responsive.

How to play?

Use W,A,S,D keys to move. Attack by walking on enemies. Items are automatically picked up when you walk on them.

Items that you have found can be used by pressing the following keys:

1 - Use potion to heal all wounds.
2 - Use gem to reveal the map of the current level.
3 - Use scroll to become invisible for a short time.
4 - Use ankh to destroy all nearby enemies (some enemies may be immune).
Z - Use staff to shoot lightning bolts. After pressing Z, choose a direction to shoot at by pressing one of the movement keys W, A, S or D.

What do the symbols on the screen mean?

@ Your avatar
. Floor
# Wall
+ Door
> Stairway to the next level

Monsters are depicted by letters. There are also other symbols not listed here, find out yourselves what they mean!

Scoring

Your score increases when you do one of the following:

+10 for each monster defeated.
+100 for each item found.
+1000 for each demon banished.

Leveling up

When you defeat enemies you will get experience points. After a certain amount of experience points you will gain a new level. As this happens your health will be replenished. Your maximum health capacity will also gradually expand as you gain levels