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Barbarian II - The Dungeon of Drax

Game Mechanics

Unlike his predecessor who offers sword fights between two players, Barbarian II: The Dungeon of Drax is one beat them all. The player plays Princess Mariana, who fights with the sword, or a barbarian armed with a war axe. Their common quest is to pursue the Drax wizard who took refuge in his dungeon after his defeat in the original game. For this, the character controlled by the player must cross an inhospital desert, a network of cellars and a dungeon before facing Drax in his sanctuary.

Using a joystick or keyboard, the player can move his character through the game environments. Each level of the game consists of a series of interconnected rooms, populated with monsters, traps and objects. The game displays the rooms one by one and when the player leaves one of them, the display is updated to display the next. The connections between the different rooms are disjointed: an exit on the left of a room can very well be connected to an entrance located on the same side of the next room. A compass, located in the bottom of the screen, allows the player to switch to the level by permanently indicating the north. The player must therefore direct his character through the different rooms, in search of the output leading to the next level, while avoiding traps and collecting objects.

In his quest, the character must also face about twenty different types of creatures. By moving his joystick while pressing some buttons or running the equivalent command on his keyboard, the player can make his character perform four different types of attacks. The combatants' life points are represented by a bar in the corners at the top of the screen. A successful attack, on a character or a creature, reduces his life bar and this one is killed when his life points arrive at zero. A precise blow at the neck can also decapitate an opponent and kill him instantly. The monsters disappear into a smoke cloud after they have been killed and reappear if the player visits the same room again after a while. Although the character controlled by the player reappears directly in the room after being killed, he can only do it a limited number of times. This limit (corresponding to its number of lives) is represented by globes at the top of the screen. This number can be increased by collecting skulls scattered in the game.