The Lords of Midnight

1984 · Strategy · ZX Spectrum

Overview

The Lords of Midnight (1984) is Mike Singleton's ZX Spectrum epic: an adventure and a wargame at once, fought across a frozen land seen in first-person panoramas.

Deep Dive

Doomdark the Witchking has locked the Land of Midnight in endless winter. The player begins with four characters — Luxor the Moonprince, Rorthron the Wise, Corleth the Fey and Morkin — and can recruit up to twenty-eight more lords and their armies. The game can be won in two ways: Morkin can carry out a lone quest to destroy the Ice Crown, or the armies of the Free can march north and capture his citadel, Ushgarak. Doomdark wins by killing Morkin and either killing Luxor or taking the capital, Xajorkith. Every location is drawn as a first-person view that can be turned to any of the eight points of the compass, built from pre-scaled images in a technique known as landscaping.

Developer Story

Singleton's game was published for the ZX Spectrum by Beyond Software in 1984, with Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64 versions following. A sequel, Doomdark's Revenge, came out the same year; a third part, The Eye of the Moon, was never released. Chris Wild's remake brought the game to modern platforms from 2012.

Did You Know?

The game can be played as a pure adventure, as a wargame, or as the 'Epic', which asks the player to pursue both victories at once.
Crash gave it 10 out of 10 in its adventure column, its readers voted it adventure game of the year, and it won Best Strategy Game at the Golden Joystick Awards.