''The Bard's Tale Construction Set'' is a computer game creation system that allows for the creation of

dungeon crawl A dungeon crawl is a type of scenario in fantasy role-playing games in which heroes navigate a labyrinth environment (a " dungeon"), battling various monsters, avoiding traps, solving puzzles, and looting any treasure they may find. Video games a ...

video games based on the '' Bard's Tale'' game engine. It was developed by

Interplay Productions Interplay Entertainment Corp. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Los Angeles. The company was founded in 1983 as Interplay Productions by developers Brian Fargo, Jay Patel, Troy Worrell, and Rebecca Heineman, as well as ...

in 1991 and distributed by

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the ...

. It was released for the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...

and

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few o ...

. Unlike other similar engines, it was not required to own ''The Bard's Tale Construction Set'' in order to play games which were created with it, while also allowing designers to add in their own custom title screen. This made it possible for anyone to share and distribute their own constructed games using the system, and a number of

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the ...

and

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

titles were developed using the system and released.

Sample scenario

Included with the software was a sample scenario for the purpose of playing and learning from, entitled ''Star Light Festival''. Set in the small rundown village of Isil Thania, a band of adventurers has traveled from afar to witness the annual Star Light Festival in which an eerie light comes down from a star for one night only making the night into day. While awaiting the Festival at the Rainbow Bar, a small twisted man leads the characters into the sewers (which feature the same maps found in the original ''Bard's Tale'' game), and from there the characters engages upon a quest that takes them from one location in the city to the next, eventually to find the secret truths behind the Star Cult and the town of Isil Thania.

Created games

Various companies created commercial games created using the program. ''The Bard's Quest'' was a three-part game series created by Alex Ghadaksaz of VisionSoft (PC, 1994)

Flying Buffalo Inc. Flying Buffalo Inc. (FBI) is a game company with a line of role playing games, card games, and other gaming materials. The company's founder, Rick Loomis, began game publishing with ''Nuclear Destruction'', a play-by-mail game which started the pr ...

offered a game called ''The Buftale'' based on the company's offices and employees.

Reception

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly throug ...

''s Scorpia criticized the small number of graphics and damage spells, but still recommended the program to those interested in designing their own computer role-playing games. The game was reviewed in 1992 in ''

Dragon A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted a ...

'' #183 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars.

Reviews

*'' Amiga World'' (Jul, 1993) *''Amiga Joker'' (Feb, 1993) *''

Amiga Action ''Amiga Action'' was a monthly magazine about Amiga video games. It was published in the United Kingdom by Europress (later IDG Media) and ran for 89 full issues, from October 1989 to December 1996. After its closure, it was merged into sister pu ...

'' (Mar, 1993) *''

CU Amiga ''Commodore User'', known to the readers as the abbreviated ''CU'', was one of the oldest British Commodore magazines. With a publishing history spanning over 15 years, it mixed content with technical and video game features. Incorporating ''V ...

'' (Mar, 1993) *''

Amiga Format ''Amiga Format'' was a British computer magazine for Amiga computers, published by Future plc. The magazine lasted 136 issues from 1989 to 2000. The magazine was formed when, in the wake of selling '' ACE'' to EMAP, Future split the dual-format ...

'' (Apr, 1993) *''

Amiga Power ''Amiga Power'' (''AP'') was a monthly magazine about Amiga video games. It was published in the United Kingdom by Future plc, and ran for 65 issues, from May 1991 to September 1996. Philosophy ''Amiga Power'' had several principles which comp ...

'' (Mar, 1993) *''Amiga Magazine'' (Jul, 1993)

Developers

Feargus Urquhart Feargus Urquhart is a Scottish-American video game designer and CEO of Obsidian Entertainment. Career Urquhart is best known for his work at Interplay Entertainment, particularly as leader of Black Isle Studios, Interplay's internal ro ...

served as a play tester for ''The Bard's Tale Construction Set'', and went on to found the game companies

Black Isle Studios Black Isle Studios is a division of the developer and publisher Interplay Entertainment that develops role-playing video games. It has published several games from other developers. Black Isle is based in Irvine, California. The division was fo ...

and

Obsidian Entertainment Obsidian Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Irvine, California. It was founded in June 2003, shortly before the closure of Black Isle Studios, by ex-Black Isle employees Feargus Urquhart, Chris Avellone, Chris Par ...

References

External links

* *
The Bard's Tale CompendiumBt Builder
- an attempt to create an open source implementation of ''The Bard's Tale Construction Set''. {{DEFAULTSORT:Bard's Tale Construction Set, The 1991 video games Amiga games DOS games Electronic Arts games First-person party-based dungeon crawler video games Role-playing video games Video game development software Video games scored by Charles Deenen