Enchanter

            A *very golden* oldie available for
               download from The Underdogs at
           www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=3996

                      Reviewed by Sue

Enchanter was the second Infocom I completed and was for a long
time one of my favourite games. I've always been a sucker for
games with spellcasting and in Enchanter, magic plays a big part.

Many years ago, the Circle of Enchanters had forseen that one day
an evil Warlock would appear and take over the land. They also
prophesied that a young and relatively inexperienced enchanter
would appear to stop him because a more powerful enchanter would
be detected at once. A novice, however, might slip through
unobserved. The time has come and you are the one called upon to
seek out Krill and defeat him. Armed with just four spells, with
such intriguing names as nitfol and frotz, in your spell book, you
will need brains, not brawn, to succeed.

Starting on a road a short walk from Krill's castle, one of your
first tasks will be to find food and water because at regular
intervals you will have to eat and drink to keep up your strength.
You'll need to sleep too, as even enchanters need to rest from
time to time, though your sleep may be disturbed by strange
dreams, some of which may prove helpful.

More helpful, however, will be the extra spells you find on your
travels.  These are written on scrolls and, if the spell isn't too
powerful, can be transcribed into your spell book using the gnusto
spell. The scroll will vanish but you can memorize the spell
directly from your book and cast it whenever you want. Other
spells are more complicated and cannot be copied in this way. In
this case, the spell must be cast directly from its scroll which,
as before, will vanish, so you can only cast the spell once.

The game isn't especially large - it's only a 97K download - but
it proves that adventures don't need to have a huge number of
locations to make them good.  Infocom packed enough puzzles into
under 80 locations and made the whole game ooze such atmosphere
that you rapidly get sucked into the plot. Rated standard level,
it's not particularly hard - just hard enough to keep you
thinking. The bit that caught me out for a long time was the maze
in it. It's just 9 locations and no problem to map, but the puzzle
connected with it (retrieving a powerful scroll while not allowing
a formidable creature, which is imprisoned with it, to escape) had
me completely baffled.

Enchanter was the first of a trilogy, the other two games being
Sorcerer and Spellbreaker and the games get more difficult as you
progress. All of them can be downloaded from Underdogs.






                              - o -