Download Dragons - A Challenge in Chivalry

Dragons – A Challenge in Chivalry is an extremely simple yet enjoyable game. I would say Arkanoid clone, but it isn’t quite that…

You’re a knight in shining … pixels, and you need to rescue the princess Gwendoline from a castle. (Not another castle, this castle. Pay attention, Mario!) A giant, evil castle surrounded by brick walls and nasty ghostly henchmen. Henchghosts. Oh, you know what I mean.

Your starting rank is usually Dwarf. You’re given five gold coins and a sword with which to bounce them against the castle walls. Simple, right? Each time the coin hits a brick the brick disappears. Coin, brick; brick, coin. It’s Pong with … more stuff in. Well, you’re wrong. The ghostly henchmen have a nasty habit of killing you, and of moving bricks around. The wretched things also have a lemming-like tendency to leap in front of your coin, speeding up the game instantly, with a dying thweeep of triumph. And let’s not talk about how the game speeds up over each level. Did I mention that this game is extremely frustrating and annoying to play?

At least you get two extra coins per level, and your rank increases over time – serf, knight, duke – obviously, the final level crowns you king. King Bruce. It has a certain ring to it. Like Bob. You can almost see him wearing Bermuda shorts and wielding his sword like a badminton racquet. Okay, so I give this game a three. What of it? Are you challenging me to a duel?

I recommend running this game at about 500 cycles in DOSbox – or even slower, just to start with. As you improve, you’ll play it on higher and higher levels, so you can tweak the speed with CTRL F11 and F12 (making it slower or faster) as you go along.

The start screen has various key options that you can change; I recommend using ‘O’ and ‘L’ as up or down, and ‘K’ and ‘;’ as left and right, as the cursor keypad doesn’t really work.

You can also choose your level of expertise from 1 to 9 – 1 being expert, 9 novice.