Druid 2: Enlightenment - Memories

The success of the first Druid game meant that a sequel was inevitable, so Dene Carter and Andrew Bailey started work on the C64 version of Druid II: Enlightenment in early 1987.

Inspiration for the elements within the second game came from a number of different sources, including Steve Jackson's Demon Princes adventure books and John Carpenter's movie The Thing, which gave Dene the idea of having the scenery come to life when you least expected it!

However, the main focus for Druid II: Englightenment was to create a more coherent world, giving the player a much larger array of spells, and introduce some sub-quest sections. Dene really wanted to make the sequel closer to a Role Playing Game (RPG) experience than the original game had been.

To this end, Dene and Andrew made the world much more open. Rather than following a linear progression through the different levels (only discovering the exit at the end of each level), the Druid was able to travel across ten different lands as well as five levels of a dungeon at the end of the game.

The 8-bit versions for Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC took about the same length of time to develop as Druid. This time around debutant Brian Pollock wrote the Spectrum conversion, and there was no 8-bit Atari version to worry about. Instead, Firebird commissioned a 16-bit conversion for the Commodore Amiga.

Neither Andrew or Dene had any experience with the Amiga, so Andrew Bailey approached Peter Molyneux. Pete was a friend who had originally been working for a company called Taurus Impact Systems. Taurus published business applications for the C64, and through a fortunate mis-understanding, Pete had ended up being courted by Commodore to write software for the then unreleased Commodore Amiga. In the end it came to nothing, but despite having no real game deveoping experience to fall back on, Pete persuaded Firebird that he was up to the job of converting Druid II: Enlightenment. Having signed on the dotted line, Pete and his business partner Les Edgar immediately formed Bullfrog, and the rest (as they say) is history!

The eponymous Druid character from the first game was never officially given a name. So, whilst writing the manual for the sequel, Firebird's Tony Beckwith named him Hasrinaxx - after a desktop RPG character used by fellow Firebird colleague, Adrian Curry.