Knightmare: the quest to learn about left and right!

“Enter, stranger”

And so it began, with those two simple words. They were an invite to great adventure, to undertake quests of world shaking import and to finally learn the difference between left and right.

The speaker of those words of invitation was Treguard of Dunshelm, a man with the beard of a super-villain and a shit taste in clothes. He was the dungeon master, the quest giver and he preferred the company of kids. Hmm not sure about you lot but that seems a bit dodgy to me.

So what was Knightmare? Well besides being about a creepy bearded guy who liked luring youngsters to his lonely castle, it was about sending those youngsters on quests in his maze and forcing them to solve stupidly fucking difficult puzzles. I’m pretty sure that Treguards’ maze was a major breach of health and safety regulations; it had crumbling walls, collapsing floors, falling ceilings and the place was infested with vermin, and he bloody well sent kids down there. The man was a bloody sadist!

“Oooh nasty”, said with a chuckle, was his way of greeting some poor kids death.

What would happen is 4 youngsters would be lured to Knightmare castle by the promise of riches, fame and the possibility of sex with an elf (or was it only me who felt that last?). Treguard the beard would “welcome” them and tell them what he wanted them to do. Only one hopeful adventurer could enter the maze, the other three were made to sit in a room and watch his progress with a weirdo stood behind them. You may ask why they were even there at all if all they were going to do is sit around and eat sweets, but they were very useful/useless indeed as you will find out. The youngster chosen to be the teams hero (from now on called the dungeoneer), would have a great big fucking helmet, with horns and no eye slots on it, called the Helmet of Justice.

Did it really bring justice though? I mean I’ve never heard of it being worn in a court of law, though given the state of our justice system these days, I’m sure it couldn’t harm anything to wear the damn thing in court.

So the helmet rendered the dungeoneer blind, poor little shit. But at least it gave the 3 remaining kids something to do, they became seeing-eye dogs (in most cases they had less intelligence than a dog). They would guide the dungeoneer through the deadly quest, using such complex instructions as, “sidestep left/right”, “walk forward”, “halt” and “oh fuck, run you’re going to die”. As these were children, and their knowledge of things such as left and right was a bit lacking, this could lead to some catastrophic fuck ups.

“Dungeoneer sidestep right”, meaning left. Dungeoneer falls into a lava pit and frys quicker than an egg.

Anyhow, with the helmet on and the trusty companions to give advice, the dungeoneer enters the maze known as the dungeons of deceit. I never knew of a dungeon that was deceitful before, I thought they were all quite open and honest about their overall purpose.

Let’s get one thing straight, this dungeon was fucking dangerous. Not only did it contravene health and safety regulations as I mentioned above, but it was full of nasty shit that wanted to kill people, quite of while gloating evilly. There were dragons, goblins, horribly monsters trapped in walls and there was even a giant spider. And what did the dungeoneer have to help him in his quest? Not a hell of a lot, some wimpy elves and dwarves and a group of friends generally possessing all the intelligence of a brick wall. I told you Treguard was a sadist!

The dungeon was all about the puzzles though, and they were hard, Stephen Hawking would probably have struggled with them. Usually if a puzzle was failed the dungeoneer would die, just another thing for the poor little bastard to worry about. Many a time watching I felt sorry for a dungeoneer, not only did they have morons guiding them, but also every goblin and his dragon was out to get them.

Perhaps unsurprisingly there were only a few teams to ever beat the game. And what became of these mighty heroes? What glorious prize did they walk away with? Where are they now? The answer to all three questions is ….. I have no bloody idea. Which goes to prove that fame and fortune were just lies offered by a pervy old man who got a kick out seeing kids struggle.