How to play Crypts of Chaos online
- Walk forward: up arrow
- Turn at a junction: left or right arrow (a beep confirms the turn)
- Pick an action when a monster appears: hold down plus left or right to move the cursor along the row of symbols, then press up to lock it in
- Aim and use it: left and right arrows to aim, Space to act
- Choose the play level: F11 (Select), then start with F12 (Reset)
- Wandering monsters: F4 and F9 (the difficulty switches)
Gameplay
Each floor of the crypt is a maze with eight monster lairs, one staircase up and one down. There are only four layouts, which repeat as you descend, so a map of floor 1 also works for floors 5, 9 and 13. Wall colours help: red for dead ends and T-junctions, blue for four-way junctions, purple for lairs, dark red for stairs. There is no map on screen, so draw your own.
Your life is the Hit Count in the upper left corner, and monsters drain it when they get close. The game ends when it reaches zero or when you leave by the up staircase on the top floor. The eight monsters, from weakest to strongest, are the troll, frog, snake, skull, blob, eye, wizard and dragon. Each floor down adds one more type, until all eight appear from floor 8. Deeper monsters are tougher, but worth more points.
- Sword: short range, never runs out, useless against wizards.
- Wand: long range, limited charges, no effect on dragons.
- Ring: the strongest weapon, with the fewest charges. Each use drains life from the monster and adds it to your Hit Count.
- Peace symbol: sends away trolls, eyes, wizards and dragons, for no points and not inside a lair.
- Treasure sack: takes a lair’s treasure once its guard is dead.
- U-turn: turns you around, and it is the only way out of dead ends and lairs.
Play levels and switches
You always start with 90 hits. Level 1 starts on floor 5, level 2 on floor 9 and level 3 on floor 13, each with fewer wand and ring charges than the one before. Level 4 is a practice game on floor 1 with the most charges, but no bonus for escaping. With both difficulty switches on B, wandering monsters appear at the normal rate. With one switch on A they appear twice as often, and with both on A four times as often.
Tips
- Learn on level 4. Floor 1 has only trolls, which makes it a safe place to learn the controls and the first layout.
- Empty all eight lairs before going down. A cleared floor gives you 10 extra wand charges and 2 ring charges.
- Keep the ring for emergencies. It heals you as it hits.
- Avoid corridor fights. Wandering monsters cost you hits and charges, so use the peace symbol on the ones it works on.
- Turn back in time. The up stairs are always next to where you entered a floor, so the climb out is quick if you have mapped it.
History
Fox Video Games released Crypts of Chaos in North America in early 1983, with a 1982 copyright on the manual. The manual claims nobody had ever reached the bottom of the crypt. The cartridge is rare today. An even rarer version came from Xante, a kiosk system in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that copied games onto blank cartridges while the customer waited.
Similar games to play next
- Tunnel Runner – another first-person maze, played against the clock
- Dark Chambers – a top-down dungeon full of monsters and treasure
- Dragonstomper – Starpath’s role-playing adventure
- Planet of the Apes – another Fox game credited to John W. S. Marvin