PC Magazine, v3(16)

~3 minute read

21 Aug 1984

PC ARCADE: Ultimate Sorcery

Sorcerer

Phil Wiswell

The folks at Infocom have a literary style that infuses their text adventures with a wonderful sense of humor, and Sorcerer is no exception. When I boot a game for the first time, for example, I expect to see traditional title and copyright screen. When I booted Sorcerer, however, the screen read: "You are on a path through a blighted forest. The trees are sickly, and there is no undergrowth at all. One tree here looks climbable. The path, which ends here, continues to the northeast. A hellhound is racing straight toward you, its open jaws displaying rows of razor-sharp teeth."

I hadn't done anything yet, but I was already in big trouble. I figured the hellhound would overtake me if I took the northeast path, so I typed in the command CLIMB THE TREE and hit the Enter key. The computer countered with "You are on a large gnarled branch of an old and twisted tree. A giant boa constrictor is slithering along the branch toward you! The hellhound leaps madly about the base of the tree, gnashing its jaws."

Gadzooks! Then a series of progressively more worrying sentences were followed by a lighming bolt striking my character's chest, causing him to wake up in a cold sweat and realize he had been dreaming! Then came the expected copyright screen. Before I had even entered the game, Infocom was controlling my heartbeat.

Enchanter series

Sorcerer is the second game in the Enchanter series. If you’re familiar with the first, Enchanter itself, you’ll feel right at home with the setting. In Sorcerer, Belboz, chief cheese of your Enchanter’s Guild (who was always there to resurrect you in Enchanter), has been kidnapped. You don’t know who did it or where Belboz is being held. It would be nice to have some help, but when you wake up in a cold sweat from your dream, you find a note from Frobar, another enchanter, which says he has taken everyone else into town to go shopping. There is no one in the eerie guild hall but yourself, and leaving is no easy task. Sorcery is a lonely business.

The world outside the Enchanter’s Guild Hall is expansive, consisting of hundreds of interesting, strange, and well-described places. You'll explore dungeons and torture chambers, read to your heart's delight in a seemingly endless encyclopedia, examine intricate wall carvings, paintings, and statues, cruise an underground highway, negotiate a three-dimensional maze of mirrors, and take the wildest roller coaster ride of your life in an amusement park that seems to have been created solely for your amusement.

Nonviolent

What really makes Sorcerer stand out from the crowd of text adventures is its predisposition against violence. You won't find any guns or knives or clubs with which to battle your enemies. Instead, your tools are scrolls that contain spells and vials that hold potions with which you can cast spells. You begin the game with three beginner's spells and a magic book into which each new spell must be written before it can be used.

There are three modes of play (or skill levels) in Sorcerer: superbrief, brief, and verbose. The game defaults to the brief mode, which gives you a full description of every scene the first time you visit it. On return to that scene you will only get a description of pertinent objects or things that have changed. The verbose mode gives full descriptions of all rooms every time you visit them. And superbrief is just what it sounds like; you get the name of the location only and must ask for fuller descriptions of any items in the room. These modes may be changed any time you feel you’re getting too much or too little information.

Sorcerer often presents several ways to accomplish a task, and while one way might make your next task easier, another might make it more difficult or even impossible. So when you feel stuck, backtrack and try another approach, carefully noting any differences in the results. The puzzles of Sorcerer are quite difficult and intricately woven together, and no help is available without writing to Infocom. (The fictitious Bilk & Wheedle Fiduciary Insurance Company, set up by Infocom, will mail you clues for $3.)

PC's three-part, one-to-six rating scale is not quite fair to a text adventure game without graphics and sound, but Sorcerer conjures up impressive scores in the other two categories:

This article appeared in
PC Magazine
21 Aug 1984

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