The Descent

Game-Maker consisted of two basic elements: the actual executable file that functioned as the actual “game”, which called upon all of the user-specified graphical and sound and design elements to give itself a face; and the Game-Maker package itself, which consisted of a bunch of VGA design utilities tied together with a text mode wrapper. Game-Maker also came with a wealth of demo material, most of it by the lead programmer and his brother; some of it public domain material, gathered from who-knows-where.

Whereas Game-Maker provided powerful, well-designed utilities for drawing, defining, and organizing graphical elements — tiles, sprites, maps — the sound side of things was always kind of shrug. It wasn’t until the last few versions that the software supported Sound Blaster audio, and formats it supported were… curious. Any digital samples had to be in .VOC format, and any music in the very peculiar .CMF. Whereas even now it is possible to find audio applications that support .VOC, there never really were any popular sequencers or conversion utilities for .CMF.

So what you’ll often find is Game-Maker games with original, brilliant visuals and subversive design that borrow most of their sounds and all of their music from the demo libraries, or even from other Game-Maker games. If the original author complained, the derivative author would issue an update and give him a credit. It was a different era.

By comparison, The Descent has original music and often rather amusing sound effects — and nearly all the visual elements, from the character to the background tiles, are ripped out of the demo games that came in the Game-Maker box. It’s really strange. I guess David Barras didn’t consider himself much of an artist.

Of course what matters is not the materials you have; it’s how you use them. And David Barras was very clever here. The game is droll and odd and a bit subversive. You’re a tall guy wandering through a dungeon, collecting treasure and shooting monsters — mostly floating eyeballs — with a very noisy handgun. The level design is often deceptive, and includes a few forced checkpoints so that you don’t have to worry so much about saving. There are odd touches like paintings that may be treasures, or that may turn into gaping mouths that bite you as you walk past. And then there’s the spellbook.

I’m not sure why it’s there, though its presence — as does the presence of many things in this game — feels ironic in a way that I don’t quite understand. It’s the only item in the game that you can pick up. When you do pick it up, you gain the ability to cast a spell. When you cast a spell, your character slowly intones his incantation. With Barras’ slight southern drawl, it comes out like “ALAIYAT SYET ZIT-SIT”. Of course if you reverse the wave file, you’ll find what he meant to say was “LLEPS A SI SIHT”.