COMPUTE!'s Gazette, v4(3) #33

~3 minute read

Mar 1986

reviews

Spellbreaker

Selby Bateman

You are the enchanter. You are the wizard.

You've grown from apprentice to master sorcerer to the leader of the Circle of Enchanters. After years of study, discipline, and hard work, you're at the peak of your magical powers. And now, all around you, the magic is failing.

This is Spellbreaker, the final installment in Infocom's Enchanter fantasy trilogy. For those who've struggled happily through the first two programs, Enchanter and Sorcerer, Spellbreaker is a fitting climax. It's an expert-level game for the Commodore 64,tougher than both previous adventures. Those new to Infocom's brand of interactive fiction would be well advised to start elsewhere —- perhaps with the original Enchanter, a standard-level fantasy game —- then work their way up to this. In the future, Infocom's designers will have to go a long way to create a more difficult and intriguing text adventure.

Spellbreaker opens with you standing amidst a congregation of Guildmasters in the Council Chamber of the Guild Hall at Borphee. All of the Guildmasters are looking to you to explain why the magic of the land has begun to fail. Gloth spells won't fold baker's dough for pastries anymore. Fripple spells fail to contain wild animals. And even the locally brewed beer, without benefit of magic, tastes more like cherry soda. But before you can begin to ask your questions, everyone in the crowd except you and a sinister cloaked figure is turned into a frog, toad, salamander, or newt. Good luck. You're on your own.

As with Infocom's other adventures, Spellbreaker uses a very sophisticated parser, the portion of the program that breaks down your English commands and questions into components that the game can process. You can communicate with the program in complete sentences, even stringing together more than one action as long as the command is no longer than two lines of text. The game's puzzles —- the heart of the action —- are complex, making previous experience in the Enchanter trilogy a definite plus.

You're in possession of a magical spell book that's been a source of great power. Belboz the Necromancer gave it to you years ago in a previous adventure. But now, with the magic failing, many of the spells have faded from the pages. And those that remain you must relearn before using. Even the remaining spells frequently short circuit: Instead of writing a magic spell, your fingers simply grow numb; smoke clouds mushroom as another spell fizzles in the air.

There are other items of importance as well. Extremely rare spell scrolls dot the kingdom, giving you the power to use new spells or add them to your spell book for continued use. A magic burin lets you inscribe objects with words or runes that have magical power. And of course there are the spells themselves: lesoch, to generate a gust of wind; jindak, to detect magic; yomin, to probe someone's mind; and a variety of other incantations, some useful and some not. Learning how and when to cast spells is one of the keys to proceeding through the kingdom to find out who's stealing the magic.

Spellbreaker is the work of Dave Lebling, co-author of the popular ZORK series of adventures and of Enchanter. He also created the Starcross and Suspect Infocom adventures. With Spellbreaker, Lebling has written his most complex and mature work of interactive fiction. In today's computer adventure, lands of enchantment are a dime a dozen; but Lebling has created a more forbidding landscape of intrigue —- a kingdom whose very foundations are suddenly suspect. The staff of magic is full of worm holes, and to lean on it too heavily is to risk its collapse.

With Spellbreaker, Infocom has extended its reputation for literate, engaging, often perplexing, and always challenging interactive fiction. Even the packaging, wilh its slick "Frobozz Magic: Magic Equipment Catalog" (a subsidiary of Frobozzco International) is firstrate. Now, the legions of Infocom fans will once again have to set aside careers, families, friendships, and hobbies until the kingdom is safe.

Infocom, Inc.
125 Cambridge Park Dr.
Cambridge, MA 02140
$44.95

These historical, out-of-print articles and literary works have been GNUSTOed onto InvisiClues.org for academic and research purposes.