---
title: Inspirations
category: article
slug: inspirations
---

The [gurklike](/what-is-a-gurklike) takes its form from the
home-computer role-playing games of the early and mid-1980s, chiefly those
released for the Commodore 64 and Apple II. Several developers have named their
sources directly: John Watkinson of Larva Labs cites *Ultima IV* and *The Bard's
Tale II* for [Gurk](/gurk); Flat Black Films cites the early *Ultima*
games for [Lowlander](/lowlander); and mkudlo cites *Ultima*,
*Phantasie* and *Wizard's Crown*, alongside Gurk itself, for [RPG Party:
Goblin Raiders](/rpg-party-goblin-raiders).

Watkinson also names the solo-authored Commodore 64 games of Paul Norman,
*Aztec Challenge* and *Forbidden Forest*: *"There seems to be a kind of intimate
charm to games that were all the work of one person."* He wrote the code,
sprites and music of the Gurk series himself.

## The games

### Rogue (1980)

*[Rogue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game))* supplies the genre's
naming convention: "gurklike" is formed as "roguelike" was. Its procedural
dungeon generation is also the technique that fit the original Gurk into a 64K
J2ME MIDlet, by a modified route: Larva Labs generated maps with a random
algorithm, selected the best, and shipped only the random-number seeds, so the
world is fixed and hand-picked but costs almost no storage. Watkinson names
*NetHack* rather than Rogue itself.

### Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress (1982)

*[Ultima II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_II:_The_Revenge_of_the_Enchantress)*
was designed by Richard Garriott and published by Sierra On-Line on August 24th,
1982. A single character moves one square at a time across an overhead tile
world of wilderness, towns and dungeon entrances. Flat Black Films describes
Lowlander as harking back *"specifically [to] the awesome early Ultima games by
Richard Garriott"*; Lowlander's lack of a party, its one departure from the
gurklike traits, follows the same model.

### Ultima III: Exodus (1983)

*[Ultima III](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_III:_Exodus)* was released for
the Apple II on August 23rd, 1983, the first *Ultima* published by Origin
Systems. It introduced a party of four that travels the overworld as a single
icon and, on entering combat, transfers to a separate tiled battle screen where
each character is a distinct figure acting in turn before the monsters do. That
two-mode arrangement is the structure Gurk uses, and so do
[Kyen](/kyen-the-skeleton-amulet), [Bylina](/bylina) and
[Realm of the Wyvern](/realm-of-the-wyvern).

### Phantasie (1985)

*[Phantasie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantasie)* was designed by Winston
Douglas Wood and published by SSI in 1985. A party of six crosses a top-down
world map; towns are menus of shops and services, and combat resolves in a
separate window in which each character's action for the round is chosen before
the round plays out. The combat window is not a walkable grid. mkudlo names it
for RPG Party: Goblin Raiders, whose town screen follows the menu model rather
than *Ultima*'s walkable towns.

### Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (1985)

*[Ultima IV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_IV:_Quest_of_the_Avatar)*
reached the Apple II on September 16th, 1985 and the Commodore 64 that
December. Its overworld is sixteen times the size of *Exodus*'s, and it has no
final villain, ending instead in the player character's mastery of eight
virtues. It is the first game Watkinson names: *"Ultima IV and Bard's Tale II
were probably the biggest inspirations. I loved the music in those games. The
sense of adventure was great in Ultima IV, as you could just go anywhere and get
into trouble."* Gurk takes the open structure and not the virtue system:
*"there is a central quest driving you forward, but you can also walk around and
get lost, do certain things out of order."* Watkinson also cites the series
negatively: he was *"very disappointed as a kid that Ultimas V and VI had the
same world map as Ultima IV. I wanted to explore new places!"* The three Gurk
games share no world map and no continuing story.

### The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight (1986)

*[The Bard's Tale II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bard%27s_Tale_II:_The_Destiny_Knight)*
was designed by Michael Cranford, developed by Interplay and published by
Electronic Arts for the Commodore 64 in 1986. It allows up to seven active
characters, grants levels at a Review Board rather than automatically, gates the
archmage class behind levels in four other magic-using classes, and runs to 25
dungeon levels. Watkinson names it for that system: *"Bard's Tale II (and III as
well) had a satisfying system for levelling and gearing up your characters. That
probably provided the core values for the Gurk series."* He cites its music too;
music was the feature the 64K original Gurk had no room for, and the main
addition of [Gurk II](/gurk-ii).

### Wizard's Crown (1986)

*[Wizard's Crown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard%27s_Crown)* was designed
by Paul Murray and Keith Brors and published by SSI in 1986. A party of up to
eight fights on a grid of individual squares where facing decides what a weapon
does: shields protect only the front and shielded side, spears strike two squares
away, flails bypass shields and axes break them. Matt Barton credits its combat
system as the influence on SSI's later Gold Box engine. mkudlo names it for RPG
Party: Goblin Raiders. Directional facing of the same kind appears in
[SKALD: Against the Black
Priory](/skald-against-the-black-priory), where attacks land along
cardinal directions and rogues manoeuvre for backstabs.

### NetHack (1987)

*[NetHack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetHack)* was first released on
July 28th, 1987 by the NetHack DevTeam; it is a fork of *Hack* and a descendant
of Rogue. Watkinson lists it in his playing history rather than among the
inspirations: *"Later on, I got into Nethack on the PC."* The Gurk games take
none of its permadeath, ASCII display or single-character play.

### Pool of Radiance (1988)

*[Pool of Radiance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_of_Radiance)* was
published by SSI in June 1988 for the Commodore 64/128 and MS-DOS. It was
the first licensed Advanced Dungeons & Dragons computer game and the first of
the Gold Box series, with a party of six plus up to two recruited NPCs and
combat resolved on a tactical grid. Watkinson lists it among his favourite
CRPGs, and played Dungeons & Dragons on paper. TouchArcade's review of [Gurk
III](/gurk-iii) described its battle screen as one that *"will look very
familiar to old-school Ultima or SSI Goldbox fans"*. SKALD's parties of up to
six come from the same line.

## Console RPGs

Gurk is often compared to *Dragon Warrior* and *Final Fantasy*. Watkinson
rejects the comparison: *"I didn't play a console growing up, and I didn't much
care for the step-by-step story style of RPGs like Final Fantasy. Real-time
action in RPGs doesn't really interest me, either."* The Gurk III soundtrack was
written on synthesisers emulating the sound chips of *"the C=64, NES, and other
classic systems"*, making the NES an influence on the music but not the design.

## External articles

- [Larva Labs Interview](https://myboxeduniverse.wordpress.com/interviews/larva-labs-interview/) — My Boxed Universe; the source of every John Watkinson quote on this page
- ['Gurk III – the 8-bit RPG' Review – Music to Classic CRPG Fans' Ears](https://toucharcade.com/2013/09/02/gurk-iii-the-8-bit-rpg-review/) — TouchArcade, September 2nd, 2013
- [Lowlander](https://flatblackfilms.com/Lowlander/LL_index.shtml) — Flat Black Films, on the early *Ultima* games
- [RPG Party: Goblin Raiders](https://mkudlo.itch.io/rpg-party-goblin-raiders) — itch.io, where the developer lists the inspirations
- [Larva Labs Interview: Battle For Mars, Retro Defense and Coding for Android](https://www.pocketgamer.com/battle-for-mars/larva-labs-interview-battle-for-mars-retro-defense-and-coding-for-android/) — Pocket Gamer, on Gurk's 64K origins