The Aching (For More, Perhaps)

In another attempt to support small indie studios, I decided to check out The Aching, a Sierra On-Line style parser-based adventure with a distinct horror theme built by The Lobdegg. The game started out as a game jam submission in the biannual DOS Game Jam hosted by Michael Klamerus on itch.io. It started out as a small prototype but turned into a proper release that even got a bunch of content-heavy patches later on. But what exactly is Aching besides our appetite for more old school adventure games?

There’s one thing that you must know about The Aching before you dive into it: the developer put in months and months of effort to create a parser engine from scratch that works on any original 8086 IBM PC. The full release is less than a megabyte big. This is not one of those new games made to look like an old one with the Unity engine. No; this is a labour of low-level C(++) and Assembly love that will work on your thirty year old computer. This alone stands out as a remarkable achievement. The macOS and Windows “binaries” available at itch.io are in fact DOSBox wrappers.

No Adventure Game Studio (such as Julia Montana’s The Crimson Diamond which also aims to emulate the 80s parser adventure subgenre). No Unity. Nothing but your bare hands to shape something out of nothing. Perhaps that’s where that ache comes from? Here’s proof in case you need it, with the game running on my 486:

With that out of the way, let’s dive into the meat. See what I did there? That was a sick joke for the people who actually played it because you do have to dive into the meat—its distinct horror theme can’t be escaped. Luckily, you can’t die in this game, but you can break your bones and have your guts ripped out. I don’t quite know how this works, but it does. And it aches like hell.

You wake up in a red cave with no recollection of where you are, what you are, and what you’re supposed to be doing. As soon as you step out of the cave you see a city in the horizon, beyond an “endless black sea”. You feel that all the answers lie there, and so your first clue is to get off this island. And once you do, the game abruptly ends: it’s just part I of many. I had the feeling that just when things were beginning to get interesting, the game was over. It felt a bit like the Tales of Monkey Island episodic releases although there isn’t as much meat to the bones here. OK no more gory meat jokes.

Mechanically, the game indeed plays like an old Sierra adventure: you walk around with the arrow keys and try to interact with the world by abusing the parser. For me, that’s where the problems start, as I can never quite figure out what the game wants me to do. “Pick up paint” doesn’t work but “take” does. Pressing F9 shows the verbs the game recognises but hides some that are needed for alternative endings. I’m not great at parser games so I allowed myself to take a peek or two at a guide whilst playing.

And I’m glad I did because a huge chunk of the story is only unveiled in a dream while asleep in someone else’s bed (requiring their permission that I couldn’t figure out how to get). Apparently this part was patched in after the 1.0 release (I played 2.01). The game doesn’t hold your hand and some apparent dead ends aren’t. It’s up to you to try and figure out what is possible and what isn’t.

It’s cool to see that The Aching stays true to its roots but I’m also glad adventure games did move on. For example, in an underground cavern there’s a lake. You type “look around” and the game serves you some context:

You’re standing in a sheltered little cavern occupied primarily by a hip-deep pool of emerald water.

Okay. You poke around a bit but can’t find any other exit. You type “swim”.

You don’t need the word ‘swim’.

Right, let’s look at the verbs the game does know. What is useful in this cave? Search? Poke? Drink? Examine? Toss? You type “drink”.

Ah! Life-giving water! Nectar of the gods!

Well that didn’t help. Examine, Poke, and Toss yield “I don’t understand”. What else can you do in a body of water? Right, dive, which is NOT present in the verb list.

The water here is not deep enough.

So you give up and retrace your steps. But you shouldn’t as in a certain position inside the pool the water looks a bit more dark: diving in that exact spot does work! How… am I supposed to know this? This is what The Aching is—for better or for worse. I hope you now understand why I reached for that guide.

I’m still looking forward to the sequels as the story, as dark as it is, felt intriguing. I want to know what or who I am! In the ending the game calls the protagonist “The Acolyte” and during your exploration on the island you learn a little bit about your bloody past but not enough to answer all the questions. I still recommend The Aching to DOS enthusiasts and old school adventure game fans alike. Although €10 for just two hours might be a bit steep, Hadrosaurus Software even put in Roland MT-32 support! The soundtrack is available in PC Speaker, Adlib, and MT-32 format. They even patched in PCM sound drivers supporting the Tandy DAC, Disney Sound Source, and even the original Sound Blaster sound card.

Clearly, a lot of love went into The Aching. I’m aching to see what’s waiting for me in the city.