The Lords of Midnight

I have become slightly obsessed with The Lords of Midnight, an old computer game from 1984 that I remember playing on the ZX Spectrum. I found an excellent adaptation on the Google Play store, and I’ve been playing that on my tablet.

And it’s excellent. And hard.

By World of Spectrum, Fair use, Link

A little history

The Lords of Midnight was written by Mike Singleton and originally released in 1984 for the ZX Spectrum (and was soon converted for other computers). The game featured an innovative 3-D effect that made playing the game feel like you were exploring a world. Features would appear on the horizon and get larger as you approached. It was amazing. 

The game is clearly inspired by The Lord of the Rings. You start by controlling the Fellowship of the Ring, er, I mean four characters: Aragorn, Gandalf, Elrond and Frodo. Sorry, I mean Luxor the Moonprince, Rorthron the Wise, Corleth the Fey, and Morkin, Luxor's son.

Against them is Doomdark the Witchking (ie Sauron), who has locked the land of Midnight in perpetual winter.

There are several paths to victory. Morkin can seek Doomdark’s ice crown (rather than the one ring) and destroy it (there are several ways this can be done). Or you can try for a military victory by recruiting the titular lords and winning on the field of battle, which is much harder and takes much longer.

The map (from here)

As for Doomdark, he wins if both Luxor and Morkin are dead, or if Morkin is dead and he conquers a particular citadel.

The game in 1984

I loved The Lords of Midnight, and remember playing it long into the night, in the corner of our lounge where our ZX Spectrum was plugged into our television. I think this must have been during the summer before I went to university, so I had time to spare.

I don’t remember the game being particularly difficult – I remember winning twice: the easy way and the hard way. But my main memory of the game was exploring the land, watching mountains and forests and keeps and armies appear before me.

The game in 2025

Mike Singleton passed away in 2012, but The Lords of Midnight lives on as Chris Wild continues to support the game and bring it to Android, Windows, iOS and OSX. His site, thelordsofmidnight.com, is full of useful information about the game. (And hints and tips, which I found useful as I’m too impatient to want to have to learn everything from scratch.)

The game plays well in 2025 – assuming that the 8-bit graphics do not put you off. For me, as long as the game is good, I don’t really care about the graphics. And is the game good? I think so.

On Android, the game seems a bit slicker than back in 1984. Certainly, it’s faster. But it also seemed harder.

State-of-the-art 1984 graphics

It took me a couple of games to win – I made a couple of mistakes in the first few games, as I was learning how to play again, running around the map, recruiting lords and trying to remember where things were.

I think I won my third game (the easiest way), but then spent several games (and more hours than Mrs H knows about) trying to win militarily. This seems to be much harder than I remember – but maybe I didn’t win militarily last time? Or perhaps I just got lucky?

Anyway, the military game consists of running around the map, recruiting lords (and getting them to recruit more) and their military forces. There are more than 30 characters, and they’re scattered all across the map.

Along the way, Doomdark’s ice fear grows – characters grow demoralised and tired and can’t always continue. But as you win more and more victories against Doomdark’s forces, your troops’ morale improves.

Things I liked

Reliving the 80s: It’s such a good game, and challenging. It’s not easy to win the military victory. And it feels epic, despite its 8-bit origins.

Winning: And finally, I beat Doomdark on the battlefield. It took a long while – victory came on day 73. This time, I retreated to the fortress in the south and waited for Doomdark to attack, and then headed north. I may try something else next time and see if I can do it sooner.

The automap: This is a huge improvement from the old days. Back in 1984, we had to take copious notes. Now, the game creates a map as you go along, so you can see where everything is. It’s a huge help – I wouldn’t want to play The Lords of Midnight without it.

Finding all the lords: I used this page to create a rough map so I knew where to find them. Even then, it’s not easy. (Korinel the Fey is particularly hard to recruit, as they are under attack early in the game. I spent one game fruitlessly searching for them, not realising they had already been killed.)

Grouping: The game is much easier when you can group the lords and move them by controlling their leader. It’s only a shame I didn’t discover it earlier!

The Lord of Midwinter: After Mike Singleton died in 2012, Chris Wild added The Lord of Midwinter to the game as an Easter egg. I saw him a few times.

Things that could be better

User interface: While the user interface is undoubtedly better than we had back in 1984, it could do with a couple of improvements. For example, I would like to have the map button (which I used all the time) on more screens. Maybe all of them.

Battle reports: It would be nice to read a single battle report, instead of going through each character to see how they fared. (I quickly stopped.)

Lords without armies: I carelessly lost a few lords to wolves and skulkrin because I had forgotten they weren’t travelling with an army. (Or maybe they had lost their army in battle.) Lords with armies cannot be killed by the random monsters roaming the land, but lone lords can. And so I lost a few lords while clearing the map of critters, which was annoying. An indicator to show that they weren’t travelling with an army would have been very useful! (This was before I discovered the group feature.)

Gender: The character gender split is very 1980s—all male. (Although I think an update may change that at some point.)

But Chris Wild is a one-man band and supporting The Lord of Midnight for the love of it, these are very minor niggles and I thoroughly enjoyed my return to Midwinter.

What’s next?

And now I’ve done it? Do I try a couple of the harder options (such as switching off the ability for troops to cross mountains)? 

I don’t know, but first I’m going to tackle Doomdark’s Revenge, the sequel. I remember this being much harder…