Knight Orc
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| Knight Orc | |
|---|---|
 Cover art | |
| Developer | Level 9 |
| Publisher | Rainbird Software |
| Engine | KAOS |
| Platforms | Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, BBC Micro, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, ZX Spectrum, Mac, MSX |
| Release | 1987 |
| Genre | Interactive fiction |
| Mode | Single-player |
Knight Orc is a text adventure game released in 1987 by Level 9, with limited graphics on some platforms. It comes with a short novella by Peter McBride ("The Sign of the Orc") explaining the background to the story.
After a night of heavy drinking with friends, Grindleguts the orc awakes to find himself strapped to a horse and about to joust with a human knight. His "friends" are nowhere to be seen, and he must somehow escape from his predicament and get even with them. Grindleguts must survive in a world of hostile humans while seeking revenge against his tormentors.
After the first chapter, the game switches to a science fiction setting, where Grindleguts is revealed to be a malfunctioning non-player character in a futuristic massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Using his power of transitioning between fantasy and reality, he convinces several other bots to join him, and escapes from the simulated reality facility.
Gameplay
The game is a text adventure with limited graphics on some systems. Gameplay is similar to the later Level 9 adventure Gnome Ranger, which uses the same game engine (KAOS). The game flows in real time; each person and creature goes on about their daily lives and follows their schedule. The player must explore the settings while collecting useful items and interacting with various non-player characters to solve puzzles and problems.