The Commodore 64 version of Lucasfilm Games‘ The Eidolon came out just after the Atari 8-bit original, in 1985. The game divided critics, but in my opinion it is an atmospheric and unusual cave exploration game, with weird-looking monsters and scary-looking dragons, and is still worth playing today.

In fact, looking back at The Eidolon, I’d say that the imaginative creatures; the tense gameplay; the strange fractal-generated caves, and the low hum of the vehicle you were driving (called The Eidolon) all combined to make something quite special. Understanding how to play the game was another thing entirely, and it took a bit of head-scratching to figure out what exactly you had to do.

The aim of the game is simple: explore a series of caves; find and defeat the three guardians and collect the jewels that they drop; when you have the three jewels the invisible barrier surrounding the guardian dragon will drop and you can approach it, waking it up. Once you’ve woken it you then have to quickly figure out how to defeat it. To complete that task you have to be quick, because The Eidolon only has a limited amount of diminishing energy – and time – and when either runs out it’s game over.

One important thing to grasp is the concept of the four coloured energy balls that The Eidolon can shoot, and that bouncing red energy balls – even your own, reflected off a wall – will hurt you if they touch you, or if you try to collect them. So you have to learn to convert red energy balls into harmless (and useful) yellow energy balls, by carefully firing a red energy ball of your own at them. Also: when squaring-up against a guardian dragon you need to learn how to absorb energy balls that it fires at you, which replenishes your energy. Your biggest enemy in The Eidolon, though, is time. If you run out of time it’s game over. So you have to get a move on. Finding a set of useful maps, or making your own, can be helpful.

The Commodore 64 version of The Eidolon is arguably the best version of the game available. Visually, it’s pretty much identical to the Atari 8-bit version, but the music and sound effects generated by the SID chip do give it the edge over other ports.

The Eidolon won’t appeal to everyone, but those who love slow, precise exploration and weird, atmospheric challenges will probably find it to be an absorbing game. Still, to this day, there really isn’t anything quite like it, which is testament to its originality.

More: The Eidolon on Wikipedia
More: The Eidolon on CSDb