Larn made harder: pick a class, beat the demon lords and bring the cure home in time.

Ularn (Phil Cordier, 1992) is Larn with more of everything. Your daughter is dying of dianthroritis and the cure lies at the bottom of the caverns. You pick a class first (Ogre, Wizard, Klingon, Elf, Rogue, Geek, Dwarf or Rambo). The dungeon has 15 levels and the volcano 5, guarded by demon lords, demon princes and, at the very bottom, the God of Hellfire. You have 400 mobuls to bring the potion home. Levels stay as you left them.

• About the game
• Keyboard controls
• Saving your game
• Tips
• New player's guide
• Playing in the browser

About the game

Ularn keeps Larn's town, deadline and dungeon but makes everything bigger: 15 dungeon levels and 5 volcano levels instead of 10 and 3, a class chosen at the start, and far more demons. The time limit is 400 mobuls.

• Levels 11 to 15 hold one to five demon lords; the volcano holds demon princes and the God of Hellfire, who guards the cure.
• Demons are invisible without the Eye of Larn, and the Lance of Death barely hurts them.
• New unique items: Slayer, the Sword of Slashing, Bessman's Flailing Hammer, the Orb of Dragon Slaying, the brass lamp with its genie and more.
• New: the make wall spell (mkw), express elevators and Dealer McDope's Pad.
• There are no stair commands: step on the stairs and answer the question. Here < and > do the walking for you.

Keyboard controls

Essential keys

Saving your game

• Saving is automatic. The game is stored in this browser (IndexedDB) when it starts, every two minutes while it waits for your next command, and whenever you switch to another tab or window. Reloading the page continues from there.
• S saves and ends the session, as in the original; reload the page (or press Play again) to continue.
• When your character dies (or you quit with Q) the game is over and the save is deleted; the next start begins a new character.
• Each browser keeps one game. New game deletes it and starts over.
• Export save downloads the save file; Import save loads one. Use them for a backup or to move a game to another browser or computer (any Ularn 1.7.0 reads the same file).
• Your name (.Ularnopts), the window layout, zoom, the sound switch and the high scores are stored in the same browser storage.
• Private/incognito windows and "clear site data" delete the stored game. Export first if it matters.

Tips

• Visit the town first: the DND store for gear, the College of Ularn for stats (costs gold and time), the Bank for interest, the Trading Post to sell. Step on a building and answer g to go in.
• There are no stairs from dungeon level 3 to 4 or 4 to 5: go down through a pit or trap door.
• Demon lords are invisible unless you carry the Eye of Larn, and the Lance of Death only tickles them. Slayer is the anti-demon sword.
• At an altar answer p (pray), then m to give money: stingy prayers anger the gods. * as an amount means all of it (at the bank too).
• Never cast vpr (vaporize rock) next to an altar.
• When casting, type D as the first letter to list the spells you know.
• Express elevators can take you far up or far down: know which before you step in.
• Dealer McDope's drugs are used by dropping them and stepping on them; they are rarely worth it.

New player's guide

Your first steps

1. Enter your name and pick a class. Fighters (Ogre, Klingon, Dwarf, Rambo) are easiest at first; the Wizard starts with two spells.
2. Step on the DND store and answer g; buy armour first. Put spare gold in the Bank.
3. Press >: you walk to the dungeon entrance and go in.
4. Explore with ~, fight by walking into monsters, answer t to take items you step on.
5. Come back up (< on level 1 leads to town) to heal, shop and bank.

Staying alive

• Level 1 breeds lemmings: don't waste time fighting them all, move on.
• Rest back in town when HP is low; keep a potion of healing and learn protection early.
• Leprechauns and nymphs steal; the Device of Theft Prevention stops nymphs.
• Watch the time left in the Status window; the deadline is the other way to lose.

Playing in the browser

• Windows: the tiled map with Messages (with history) below it; Status, Inventory and Visible (monsters next to you, items on the map) on the right. Click an Inventory row for that item's actions. Shops, help, lists and menus pop up over the map.
• Resize windows by dragging the gaps between them; a text window's contents shrink to fit when it is too small. Reset windows puts everything back.
• Zoom: A− / A+ on the Map title bar (shown on hover) change the size of the map tiles; Tiles switches the map between tiles and text. The map does not have to fit: when it is bigger than its window it scrolls to keep you in view. Hover over a text window's title to show its A− / A+ buttons.
• Sound effects are off until you switch them on under Audio ▾. Ularn never had sounds, so these short effects were synthesized for this port; there is no music.
• Keys: the arrow keys, the numeric keypad or hjklyubn move you; the capital letters run.
• Browsers keep a few shortcuts for themselves (Ctrl+W, Ctrl+T, Ctrl+N, and Cmd shortcuts on a Mac), so those never reach the game.
• If the game ever crashes, a message appears at the top; reload the page to continue from the last autosave.

About this version

• Based on Ularn 1.7.0 (Phil Cordier 1992, Larn 12 based; maintained by Josh Brandt, then Josh Bressers et al.), commit ef42184.
• Original source: ularn/ularn, commit ef42184 (GPL-2).
• Our changes (port, auto-explore, command menu, inventory, web build): memmaker/ularn
• Tiles: the Amiga Larn set from larn.org (github.com/primeau/Larn, MIT).
• Sound effects: synthesized for this port (web/mksounds.py).