The Crypt Q&A: attic Entertainment's Cancelled RPG
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While preliminary work on the Atari Panther platform began as early as 1988, the console was cancelled some time before its expected debut in 1991 in order to focus on the more high-tech and 64-bit Jaguar system. But before any such cancellation occurred, a number of games were being developed for the Panther, including a previously unknown Eye of the Beholder-inspired dungeon crawler entitled The Crypt. The game was developed by none other than Guido Henkel and his team at attic Entertainment somewhere in between Spirit of Adventure and Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny, and thanks to a short Q&A on Atari.io, we get to revel in some history about the ill-fated RPG:
Q: This is fantastic news, no-one I'm aware of UK Press wise or seemingly online, seemed aware you were developing an RPG, it's never been mentioned, just the usual suspects, Pitfighter (which it now appears was a red herring), possibly Raiden, Plasma Pong, Crescent Galaxy and Cybermorph.
I'd love to hear more on just what your RPG game was going to be like, just how far along it got before Atari pulled the plug on the Panther, what features were you planning to exploit, hardware wise and your thoughts on the hardware itself .....(there's been views expressed online over the years people though it seemed to think it lacked enough RAM, Atari were considering dropping the Ensoniq Sound chip etc, so any insights would be fantastic) and is there a possible code/concept art, anything.... still exists of the game itself?
A: The game we were working on was called “The Crypt.” It was a first-person dungeon crawler in the vein of “Eye of the Beholder,” with an Egyptian theme throughout. You were essentially exploring the insides of a pyramid with all its traps and labyrinthian mazes. I was designing and programming the game at the time and I had one artist working with me on the game’s prototype. We had one level complete when we received word from Atari that the Panther was cancelled and that they had a bleeding-edge 64-bit console called Jaguar in the making that would replace the project.
I honestly do not recall a whole lot about the system. RAM may have been an issue, but we had just written one of the most incredible data compressors in our careers, so that I was confident we would not run into too many problems there.
I loved that fact that I could work on a TT as the master workstation because it allowed me to instantly use the same toolchain I was using for my previous development and did not have to find and learn new tools. So, from the first day, I was essentially ready to work on the console, and I remember how cool it felt to see my first sprite on the Panther screen—it was the game’s logo, and with its hardware sprite zooming capabilities, it was really cool to see how just a few lines of code created a powerful entrance for that logo on the screen.
Regarding our development, I do not believe anything has survived. I may have the actual hardware in the attic somewhere still, but I no longer have documentation or source code of the game itself. I’ve never been one to archive much of my work, which is bad, in retrospect, but I never really thought any of my work was all that relevant to be saved for posterity.
