Helden is a flick-screen action maze game. The name is German for "heroes", which refers to the game's protagonist who wants to perform a deed worthy of several songs written in remembrance. I'm not sure why the title is plural, but I like to believe that it is a sarcastic commentary on the sheer number of lives you'll lose while trying to get anywhere in this game.
Helden greets you with a nicely animated title screen, accompanied by a pleasant tune that starts out ominous but soon gets more upbeat.
 The logo uses a combination of sprites, modified character graphics, and some raster bars for good measure. Seven double-sized sprites act as stencils to cover up the negative space of the HELDEN logo. At first glance, it seems strange that they are in multicolor mode, even though they only use one color (plus transparency). Why didn't the authors use single color sprites instead and take advantage of the higher resolution? I think this was done to optimize the sprites' flashing effect. You see, they all use one of the two colors that are shared among all multicolor sprites. This means that creating the flashing effect only requires changing the value of one address (in this case $D025) as opposed to seven individual addresses ($D027 - $D02D) if the sprites were all in single color.  The pixel animation effect is achieved by continuously changing the pixel data of two characters which make up the visible parts (i.e. the letters) of the logo. And finally, the colored lines are raster bars: In this case, the color RAM (which sets the foreground color of the characters) is getting changed while the raster beam is still drawing the screen. This results in colorful bars, if the timing is set up correctly. |
After a while, Helden gently asks you (in German) to either press fire to start the game or hit the space bar to go to the editor. If you wait a bit longer, the high score list is displayed:
Those are suspiciously low scores, and there are only three digits reserved for them. This feels like an antithesis to the inflationary pinball scoring where you get awarded one million points just by pulling the plunger. Once we're in the game, you'll see how Helden's scoring works.
Before we start the game, let's read the backstory, as it is written in the diskmag's corresponding article. It goes as follows:
Rufus, dissatisfied with his life as an apprentice wizard, decides one day to go on a heroic treasure hunt and find a magical diamond. On his way to the Shadow World where the diamond is said to be located, Rufus encounters a wizened sorcerer who tells him that he has to find four magic crystal orbs first before he can claim the treasure.
It's safe to say that Rufus is in way over his head, and now it's our responsibility to complete his foolish expedition without dying (too often).
Speaking of dying, to give you an idea how ruthless Helden's difficulty is, let me just start the game and not move from the starting point:
It takes less than two seconds for Rufus to get killed on the very first screen. Did I mention this game is hard? At least the death animation is equally morbid and cute: A cross appears right where the apprentice just died, a brief death jingle is played, and, as soon as the music stops, the cross weakly falls over.
Okay, let me start again and try a legitimate run. Let's see how long I can avoid getting mauled this time:
Hey, that's not bad. I survived for about thirteen seconds and visited a grand total of eight rooms. I even managed to stumble upon the first crystal orb, which was such an unexpected sight that I got Rufus killed just an instant later.
Thanks to the game's relentless tempo, there is a lot going on in the above GIF. Let me try and break down the most important game elements:
Rufus can move in all eight directions at a pretty swift pace. Holding fire activates a lightning spell which only works while Rufus is walking left or right, like so:
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| UNLIMITED POWER! |
If an enemy touches the yellow sparkles, it dies. If it approaches from any other angle, Rufus turns into a cross instead. Since he hasn't fully mastered his craft, the apprentice wizard moves significantly slower while the spell is active.
Now, the reason why he can't keep the spell going while moving up or down is outlined in the diskmag article, but the explanation is rather lame and doesn't make a lot of sense: Rufus refuses to look up because he's afraid the sky is about to fall on his head, and he won't look down either, because he's afraid of heights.
Since we are seeing the maze from a bird's eye perspective, isn't it implied that "up" is the direction that points out of the screen and "down" is the opposite of that, pointing into the screen? If so, Rufus isn't walking up and down, but north and south instead. Unless, what we are looking at is a side view, and what I assumed to be the ground is actually a massive vertical rock wall Rufus is somehow holding onto while moving about.
Sure, I'm overthinking things here, but even as a kid, I found the explanation for Rufus' poor defense skills to be a pile of tosh.
Enemies can spawn anywhere on the playfield, as long as it's not inside a wall. They telegraph their arrival with a very brief animation of a thunder cloud, which leaves you a bit of time to either run out of the way or fire up your spell. Helden does not play very fair here and tends to plant new enemies right in your path or, even better, at the very spot where you just entered the room.
The game's bestiary consists of quite an eclectic bunch:
The monsters not only look different, they also exhibit individual behaviors. Some just float around aimlessly, while others go immediately after Rufus. The witches are the only enemies that can pass through walls right from the start. However, if Rufus stays in one room for longer than five seconds, all monsters on the screen gain the ability to ignore walls and start making a beeline for the apprentice. This contributes very much to the game's frantic pace, as you are not allowed to stay in any room for long.
Beside enemies there are also these giant skulls scattered throughout the rooms:
About every thirteen seconds, all skulls in the maze open their jaws in unison, and a thick, colored liquid oozes out of their mouths and eye sockets. I'm going to call this substance skull juice, since Rufus has apparently no qualms touching and (I presume) drinking it. Depending on the juice's color, the apprentice gains a certain (temporary) power or an immediate effect takes place. Here's what each color does, sorted by usefulness:
ORANGE
Rufus gains an extra life.
YELLOW
Teleports Rufus to one of the rooms where a crystal orb might be.
CYAN
Makes Rufus invincible and destroys any enemies he runs into (temporary).
BLUE
Makes Rufus invincible, but inverts the joystick controls (temporary).
RED
Makes Rufus invincible, but even regular walking is slow (temporary).
GREEN
Rufus can walk fast even while casting a spell (temporary).
PURPLE
Rufus' regular walk becomes slow (temporary).
BROWN
Rufus dies.
While a temporary effect remains active, the border displays the corresponding juice color. The music also changes and switches to a badass percussion sequence. This musical interlude lasts four bars, which precisely matches the duration of the effect. Thanks to this audio cue, you can exactly anticipate at what point the power is going to wear off. Once the effect has gone, the regular music picks up where it left off.
While I think the yellow juice can be very useful, it can just as well be the opposite and teleport you into a room where you've already been. Then you have to find the way back to your previous location.
The maze is arranged in a rather massive grid of 16x16 squares for a total of 256 interconnected rooms. Here's a complete view of the maze that is stored on the disk with the filename "0". I've added a checkerboard pattern to make the individual rooms easier to distinguish:
One thing that makes Helden difficult to complete, at least for me, is that the player has no access to a mini-map, like the one in Keyfinders. After about thirty rooms I lose track of where I've already been or which exit I've not yet taken.
Since the score goes up by one each time I visit a room for the first time, I can use it as a progress indicator. Checking my score means taking my eyes off the playfield, though, and that can spell death all too easily.
At the start of each game, the crystal orbs are randomly placed in four locations out of a selection of thirty-two possible rooms (marked in the above map in green). There is also a predetermined (non-random) goal room which holds the diamond (blue square) and a starting room where Rufus first spawns (red square).
Helden is one of many C64 games I never managed to finish and thus never saw how it ended, or if it even had something that could be called an ending. Now, thanks to the modern wonders of emulation and save stating, I have the necessary tools at my disposal to finish the game without raising my blood pressure to the boiling point. I'll use the above map as a reference to keep track of where I haven't been yet.
Since I'm keeping track of the potential crystal orb rooms I've already visited, I'll avoid the yellow skull juice, as random teleportation would just throw me off.
I managed to get a random seed where the first crystal orb is in the same room as on my previous run. Collecting an orb grants 15 points, which is a massive number considering how stingy the game is with doling out points otherwise.
You may have noticed that the room's color scheme has changed. While the tilesets for the rooms always remain the same, the colors are chosen randomly at the start of a new game.
LATER
The second orb is in what I'd call the popcorn zone. At least that's what the walls look like to me.
While playing I discovered a minor but legitimate trick to improve my chance of survival: Since it takes a brief moment for monsters to spawn after Rufus has entered a room, I can rapidly switch back and forth between two screens. This way, I can remain in complete safety and wait for any nearby skulls to produce one of the more useful juices, like an extra life or invincibility. The constant room changing makes for a rather insane-looking playthrough, though.
EVEN LATER
The third crystal orb is surrounded by much bigger crystals. If this Shadow World weren't overrun by undead rabble and other meanies, mining these minerals could represent a lucrative opportunity.
LOTS OF ROOMS LATER
Narrow vertical corridors like this one are the worst rooms you can encounter, thanks to Rufus' inability to defend himself from enemies above or below him. You either need a lot of luck with the monster spawning, or you wait for the game to deliver some invincibility skull juice and make a run for it.
The fourth orb hasn't shown up yet, but I've already discovered what I assume is the magical diamond. I've gotten further in this game that ever before, and now I'm curious what happens if I just pick up the diamond without getting the last orb first:
Unsurprisingly, Rufus dies. However, he doesn't just lose a life, he loses all of them at once. This results in an immediate Game Over where you get called a failure. Nice.
If one looks at the way Rufus respawns after a death, there is some macabre logic as to why the game ends right there. The apprentice always reappears where he previously died. By preemptively touching the diamond, Rufus has sealed his fate, as he will just respawn on top of the deadly stone and die over and over again until his lives run out.
EVENTUALLY
There's the last crystal orb, in a corner of the map where everything has turned to grayscale. If my math is correct, I had to explore 172 out of 256 rooms in order to locate all the orbs.
Now Rufus just needs to find his way back to the diamond and hope that touching it doesn't suck out his entire life force this time.
The moment has finally come for me to discover if Helden has an ending that was worth the effort. Let me celebrate the occasion by getting a bit dramatic:
Rufus takes the last few steps forward, ignoring the wandering ghost next to him, and extends his right hand to touch the smooth surface of the precious stone. A shiver goes through his body as he feels the intense coldness of the diamond, and he hardly notices that the apparition behind him fades away with a pitiful wail. For a moment, all is still. The apprentice blinks and looks at his hand which is now touching nothing but air. Dumbfounded surprise dawns on his face as he realizes that the diamond has vanished. He tries to take a step back, but Rufus finds himself unable to move. The entire world around him has frozen.
And then, as if carried by an intangible wind, soft notes of music reach the apprentice's ears. A pleasant and cheerful melody surrounds Rufus, telling him that all is right, that he has reached his goal, that this is The End.
I'm not kidding, this is literally what happens. Everything in the room vanishes and the player sprite freezes in place. A short, happy melody is played, and then the game ends.
At least the German text stops calling me a loser and acknowledges my achievement instead. As endings go, this is rather bland, but I was still surprised to hear a custom music track that isn't used anywhere else in the game.
As I mentioned before, Helden also has a built-in editor. Let's take a brief look:
The green square displays the entire map which is currently all walls and no corridors. By pressing the bracketed keys, you can edit various things, load an existing maze, or save your new creation. The editor even has its own music which is a modified and extended version of the "skull juice active" tune that plays in the game.
Editing a room allows you to turn wall tiles into walkable ground and vice-versa. Some tiles have to remain walls (shown in the above example), thus you can't just make a completely empty maze.
In order for a custom maze to be playable, it needs to fulfill certain criteria: There has to be a starting room, a goal room, and 32 rooms need to be assigned to be potential locations for crystal orbs. What the diskmag article to this game doesn't tell you, however, is that the maze must not have any rooms that only contain walls. This is what tripped me up when I wanted to make my own maze as a kid, as I never got the game to accept my map layouts. Also, if you forget to save your creation to disk and leave the editor, then your maze is essentially lost. You can still play it (if it got accepted), but if you go back into the editor, you're greeted with a blank maze.
Since there is no quick copy-paste function, it took me a while to create a simple maze that the editor would accept. I had to manually put one tile of ground into all unused rooms, a task I don't want to repeat anytime soon. Anyway, the layout got accepted, and it's simple enough that I can complete the game without having to use save states. Yay for me!
CONCLUSION
Revisiting Helden was an interesting experience for me. Up until now, I was of the opinion that this game was almost unplayable. I assumed this to be another case where the game was exclusively playtested by the people making it, and none of them realized how unrealistically hard it was. There was no chance I could bring up the patience to beat Helden legitimately.
After spending some time with it, I have to say Helden is not quite as difficult as I remember. It's still a tough challenge, especially if you don't know the maze's layout, but with enough patience, a playthrough without cheating is certainly possible. The screen-flicking trick I discovered while playing also makes the game a bit easier. I still wish there were something like a rudimentary automap to prevent the player from getting lost quite as often.
On the technical side, Helden doesn't do anything out of the ordinary, but it still looks appealing. The graphics are well-drawn and lend the game something of a unique atmosphere. I mean, just look at the maze's bizarre wall tilesets:
I also like the sprite work, especially the smooth and slightly disturbing-looking skull juice animation.
The music by Dirk Bialluch is Helden's real highlight, in my opinion. All the tracks have catchy melodies that are worth a listen. The in-game music gets progressively more exciting, which works as positive reinforcement for surviving longer. What really impresses me, though, is the way the music switches seamlessly to a percussion track while one of the skull juice effects is active, and how it uses its rhythm as an audible time limit. That's not something one encounters very often in a C64 game, especially in a budget title like this.
The editor is an added bonus. While it is quite easy to start making your own mazes, the requirements for a valid map are a bit too strict. If something is wrong, you don't get any feedback what exactly is missing, and you are forced to figure the issue on your own. Still, it's nice to have an editing tool, and it also makes for an interesting look "behind the scenes" how the game works.
Would I recommend Helden for others to try out? Honestly, I'm not so sure. If I hadn't forced myself to tackle the game for this article, I probably would've given up way earlier. It took me a while to get into the groove and finally get some solid enjoyment out of the game, despite its difficulty. If you have the patience and feel prepared to accept the occasional unfair monster spawn, give Helden a go. Everyone else should just fire up their favorite SID player and check out the music instead.
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