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Spellbreaker
is the third game in the Enchanter series --
the previous two releases were Enchanter and
Sorcerer. Ol' Whitey has never actually played
Enchanter, but Sorcerer (written by Steve
Meretsky) is an old favourite of mine. In fact, I would
go so far as to say that it's my all-time favourite
game of the 'magic-and-mystery' variety.
Spellbreaker,
however, is not written by Meretsky, but on first acquaintance
it appears to be equally as mesmerising. The descriptions
are long and excellently written, and in the very first
few seconds of the game at least four characters deliver
speeches of almost a screen-full in length! They then
get turned into newts, but that's another story.
The
basic idea behind Spellbreaker is thematically
similar to the first two games. Somewhere in the background
lurks a hideously powerful Evil Power, who in this case
is very bad news for the Frobozz Corporation. Frobozzco
are purveyors of magical equipment, but the Enchanters
(who are their biggest customers) are having a spot
of bother with their spells. In fact, the whole spell-structure
of modern society appears to be collapsing, as the power
of the Enchanters' magic steadily weakens. Can you stop
the rot? Of course you can . . .
Well
I certainly couldn't -- at least not at my first sitting,
anyway. Spellbreaker is labelled 'Expert' level
by Infocom, which means that they consider it particularly
difficult to crack. It's certainly in a different league
to Wishbringer (Introductory level) and quite
a bit trickier than Sorcerer. You find yourself
having to cast spells left, right and centre, right
at the beginning of the game in order to make any progress
at all -- and the going doesn't get any easier, believe
me!
Nevertheless,
Dave Lebling (co-author of Zork and Enchanter)
has done an excellent job. Dave was responsible for
Suspect, a real tour de force of character interaction,
and the influence of this game can be seen at times
in Spellbreaker, where the characters play a
rather more significant role than in Sorcerer,
for example
Yet
another Infocom masterpiece -- need I say more?
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