his life points are reduced to zero. Alternatively, a well-timed blow to the neck decapitates the barbarian, killing him instantly, upon which a goblin enters the arena, kicks the head, and drags the body away. If the players do not input any commands for a time, the game attempts a self-referencing action to draw their attentions: the barbarians turn to face the players, shrug their shoulders, and say "C'mon". The game awards points for successful attacks; the more complex the move, the higher the score awarded. A score board displays the highest points achieved for the game. Single-player story mode In the single-player story mode, the player controls a nameless barbarian who is on a quest to defeat the evil wizard Drax. Princess Mariana has been kidnapped by Drax, who is protected by 8 barbarian warriors. The protagonist engages each of the other barbarians in a fight to the death. Overcoming them, he faces the wizard. After the barbarian has killed Drax, Mariana drops herself at her saviour's feet and the screen fades to black. The United States version of the game names the protagonist Gorth. Development In 1985, Palace Software hired Steve Brown as a game designer and artist. He thought up the concept of pitting a broom-flying witch against a monster pumpkin, and created Cauldron and Cauldron II: The Pumpkin Strikes Back. The two games were commercial successes and Brown was given free rein for his third work. He was inspired by Frank Frazetta's fantasy paintings to create a sword fighting game that was "brutal and as realistic as possible". Brown based the game and its characters on the Conan the Barbarian series, having read all of Robert E. Howard's stories of the eponymous warrior. He conceptualised 16 moves and practised them with wooden swords, filming his sessions as references for the game's animation. One move, the Web of Death, was copied from the 1984 sword and sorcery film Conan the Destroyer. Spinning the sword like a propeller, Brown "nearly took [his] eye out" when he practised the move. Playing back the videos, the team traced each frame of action onto clear plastic sheets laid over the television screen. The tracings were transferred on a grid that helped the team map the swordplay images, pixel by pixel, to a digital form. Brown refused to follow the convention of using small sprites to represent the fighters in the game,