Game 341: Shape Shifter (1992)

          

Shape Shifter

United States

Independently developed and released as shareware

Released in 1992 for DOS

Date Started: 17 October 2019

Date Finished: 18 October 2019

Total Hours: 4

Difficulty: Easy (2/5)

Final Rating: 17

Ranking at time of posting: 61/343 (18%)

Some years ago, I modified my rules to allow myself to reject independent games "if they are clearly amateur efforts with no innovations or accolades attached to them." I have never invoked the rule. The problem with the rule is that it almost seems like there's at least one innovation to explore. It's only after several hours, when you've committed to the game (or else you'll have nothing else to publish), that you realize that you've been hoodwinked.

In the case of Shape Shifter, the element that sucked me in was right there in the title. You play a non-human character who can polymorph from a tiger to a snake to a mouse. The tiger, we learn, is strong and good at combat, but also slow and obvious, thus inviting more encounters. The snake avoids most combat, the mouse almost all of it. I figured the game would feature some interesting puzzles and encounters that relied on the ability to shape-shift.

            

The game opens with the player as a tiger.

           

The manual establishes the land as Vor Terra. Creatures of Chaos are invading the world via a rift in the space-time continuum. To face the threat, Lord Drelx Axtvqar created the Absomal Fxile, a council of the most intelligent (which, ironically, the manual repeatedly spells as "intellegent") creatures in the land. The Absomal Fxile sequestered itself in an impenetrable palace. "It is the goal of every living creature," the manual offers, "to one day join rule with the Absomal Fxile," whatever that means. To gain access to the palace, the character will need to significantly increase his knowledge and solve a variety of puzzles.

              

I explore another part of the world as a snake.

         

Character creation asks only for a name, after which the character begins in tiger form. Statistics are strength, knowledge, speed, and health. The numbers redistribute every time you change forms; for instance, the starting character has 55 strength and 25 speed as a tiger, 25 strength and 45 speed as a snake, and 20 strength and 55 speed as a mouse.

       

Checking my statistics on a city street.

           

As you explore the land, random encounters mess with your statistics. Angry gnats, chill winds, and snare traps sap your health. A "horrible darkness" decreases health and knowledge. The goddess Sona Luna might suddenly decide to increase your health and knowledge, or "friendly wicker people" might give you a boost to strength, speed, and knowledge. Two of the cities have temples to gods who alternately boost and decimate your statistics.

            

A random event costs some health.

           

There are also combat encounters, and here the developer shows something of Chuck Dougherty's (Questron) inventiveness with monster names--if Dougherty had endeavored to make them all unpronounceable. You face off against Illio Mucks, Nubliagg Frimuth Teroptts, MetzoBraums, Altzo Mafts, and Thraxiax Runners, among others. You and they do an amount of damage determined by your speed and strength. You get "credits" with every victory.

          

Combat is a rote exchange of blows with weird creatures.

         

The game takes place on 9 adventure screens arranged 3 x 3. The palace is in the far northwest. There are five other cities and towns to enter, each consisting of a single street of structures. Some of them are random buildings that you can search and talk to the residents. Others are more classic RPG facilities like taverns, healers, temples, and shops selling potions that temporarily increase strength and speed. There are no explicit weapons or armor in the game.

An all-keyboard interface works reasonably well, with arrows for movement and the occasional use of easy-to-remember commands like (E)nter, (I)nventory, and (U)se. The screen shows your available options in special circumstances.

                 

Getting a clue from a tavern patron.

             

So far, none of this sounds too bad, but the game simply doesn't add up to anything interesting or enjoyable. The world is extremely small, and you can explore the 9 screens and 5 cities and towns in significantly less than an hour. There are no puzzles in these locations. You have to acquire an inventory of artifact items, but you simply find them on your first search of the houses in which they're secreted. (And in a bit of amateur programming, you keep finding them every time you search the houses, even if they're already in your inventory.) There are also clues to find, but you get them by simply hitting T)alk in obvious locations.

             

A magical ring just laying about in an abandoned house.

             

Worse, there's really no reason to use the titular shape-shifting ability. No puzzle or encounter requires you to be a particular animal. (I think there's one tavern where they don't talk to snakes, but that's it.) You might want to swap out of tiger form to avoid combat, but combat is how you earn money, and as long as you replenish hit points by paying for healing, combat isn't all that dangerous.

Over the course of the game, you learn that a key artifact--the Crystal Heart--is in a tower in the southwest part of the map. To enter the tower, you need three keys. Two of them are found in deterministic locations in cities, but the third appears as part of a random encounter in the wilderness, meaning you have to wander around until you get it. By then, you've probably assembled most of the other items and clues you need to solve the encounters in the palace. 

         

Only one thing to do in the "tower."

        

You encounter one odd issue in that once you achieve a certain speed threshold--around 25--you successfully avoid all encounters. The problem is that a few key items and clues only appear with random encounters, so you can character-develop yourself out of victory unless you get lucky and pray to a god who takes umbrage and busts you back below the speed threshold.

                  

One of the keys needed for the tower only appears as a random encounter.

        

The hardest part of the game is finding the Fire Lizard's Bladder that you need to--uck--eat to immunize yourself to a poison mist that surrounds the palace. It only shows up in random encounters, possibly after a certain knowledge threshold, and I began to despair that I would ever find it. I finally got it after wandering and fighting for about an hour.

Part of the endgame sequence involves dealing with Earth Demons . . . 

. . . and crossing a "Rainbow Bridge."

              

The endgame takes place at the palace, where you have to use all your artifacts in sequence. You eat the bladder to escape the mists. You use the "silk wings" to get over the wall. You use the Ring of Flame to destroy some Earth Demons. You use an Amulet of Knowledge to safely cross a Rainbow Bridge. You appease a guardian by giving him the Crystal Heart. Finally, you speak five words of entrance at the door to the Absomal Fxile. All of these solutions are provided in very straightforward clues throughout the game.

It would be easy to make a typo on this final screen.

        

The final message tells you that you have achieved the honor of joining the Absomal Fxile, "the most prestigious council in the land." A final victory screen precedes the DOS prompt.

            

I can't decide if it sounds more like a weapon or a tumor.

            

With 1s and 2s across the board, Shape Shifter earns a 17 on the GIMLET. It's ultimately too trite and unchallenging, and it fails to live up to the promise of its premise. 

The game's author was Jeffrey P. Kintz of Waukegan, Illinois. (He goes by "J. Kintz" in all the documentation.) A 1999 biography indicates that Kintz was 19 when he wrote Shifter. He claims his primary inspirations as the Ultima series, Moebius (1985), and the adventure game Below the Root (1984), although it's hard to see the influence of any of them in his own work.

Shifter was his second game; his first was a horror-themed adventure game called Dismal Passages (1992) in which a protagonist tries to avenge his family's death by tracking down a wraith. Over the subsequent decade, he would churn out half a dozen games, including The Dark Convergence (1993) and its sequel (1994), Elkinloor (1995), a 1995 remake of Dismal Passages, Vor Terra (1996), Borderworld (1996), The Darkest Night (1997), Savage Future (1999), and Lost Infinity Part 1: Roquan's Farewell (2001). All of them except Vor Terra seem to be adventure games, although some of them are set in the same world as Shape Shifter. Enough feature non-human protagonists that it seems to have been something of a thing with Kintz, and in his bio he brags about the appearance of several of his games in a "Furry Video Game Database."

        

A shot from Dismal Passages, which appears to have no character creation.

           

He sometimes published under the label of Aries Software and sometimes Midlothian Software. Although there are signs that his games do get better, Kintz strikes me as one of those Ed-Woodish creators (see this entry for more on Wood and developers I associate with him) whose enthusiasm for making games far surpasses his skill. I tried to see what he's been up to in the last couple decades, but my search led me down some weird paths perhaps best left undiscussed in case I accidentally picked up the trail of the wrong Jeff Kintz.

Apparently, registering Shifter got players a free copy of a sequel called The Sun Demon in which the character faced the origin of the Creatures of Chaos. I was unable to find an extant copy.

If nothing else, an independent one-and-done is a good way to build some momentum after a long break. We'll continue with Fantasyland 2041 soon. For those of you wondering about The Magic Candle III, for some reason I was unable to muster any enthusiasm when I fired it up the other day. I figured I'd best table it for a while longer and play a few games that intrigue me more.

Game 340: Fantasyland 2041 (1981)

         

Fantasyland 2041

United States

Crystalware (developer and original publisher); Epyx (later publisher)

Released in 1981 for Apple II and Atari 800

Date Started: 9 October 2019

              

I had already passed through the 1980s at least twice before someone recorded Crystalware's catalogue on MobyGames. The company was so prolific that it's hard to believe that its absence on my blog went unremarked for so long. Between 1980 and 1982, the company--founded by John and Patty Bell--produced at least seven games with enough RPG elements to make my list, including the already-covered House of Usher (1980) and Beneath the Pyramids (1980). They may have produced the first Japanese RPG, with Dragon Lair (1982) appearing the same year as the better-known The Dragon & Princess.

Fantasyland 2041 (the manual tags the title with an A.D. but the title screen does not) is clearly meant to be the apogee of John Bell's contributions to the genre as an author if not as a publisher. He even writes in the manual that, "This will probably be the last great Fantasy that I write." The game combines themes from several mythologies and shipped on seven disks, which must have been some kind of record for 1981. It's too bad that Bell wasn't writing in a technological era that could better accommodate his ambitions.
           

The game had epic ambitions, but these were not epic platforms.

      

Thematically, Fantasyland combines elements from Disney World, the film Westworld (1973), and the television series Fantasy Island (1977-1984). It takes place in a giant live-action-role-playing theme park, presented as the natural future of Crystal Computing, although one which the owners ("John B." and his "pretty young Swedish wife, Patty") have been forced by "religious zealots" to set up in the Australian Outback. The entrance fee is $3 million.

The park consists of seven sections, each contained on its own diskette: the introductory Hall of Heroes, Congoland, Arabian Adventure, King Arthur, Olympus, Captain Nemo, and Dante's Inferno. The ostensible goal is to rescue Guinevere (if you're a male) or Lancelot (if you're female), but beneath everything is a Great Mystery, and Crystalware offered $1,000 to the first people to solve it, with separate awards going to Apple and Atari victors.

The game begins with your little character standing at the entrance to the Hall of Heroes, although it tries to have things both ways by presenting what looks like a first-person view but then having the character walk "up" past the doorway, past the roof, and past the screen text to enter the opening that goes to the "real" hall. The background continuously scrolls rather than presenting as discrete screens.
         

The game often suggests a first-person perspective even though the character walks around the screen from a top-down perspective.

         
The rooms beyond the entrance are full of objects and companions that you can buy for various amounts of money. (You start with 5,000 gold pieces.) In the first room alone, I was offered a diving suit, a diver, a horse, a Zulu warrior, a zombie, rations, a submarine called the Tari, fuel, a blowgun, a samurai, a cabin boy, an archer, a knight, a crossbow, and a tunic.
         

Maybe later.

         
The items and positions are randomized for each new game. After a few false starts, I learned that you want to purchase as many resources as you can, and as many companions as you need to carry them, in the Hall of Heroes. You continue to find treasure and to get opportunities to spend it later in the game. You have to make sure you buy plenty of rations, or you and your companions will immediately starve to death.
         

Some of my inventory after initial purchases.

         
I had expected the other lands to branch off the Hall of Heroes like spokes, but instead you explore them in a linear order, starting with Congoland. The area consists of around 12 screens of various terrain features, offered in the manual as "jungles," "mountains," and "swamps." As you explore, you can find treasure chests with gold or valuables (e.g., bone necklaces, emeralds, diamonds) that you can later sell. Mountainous areas feature crevices in which you can lose your equipment and companions, and swamps feature sinkholes that perform the same function. Occasionally, you have to have a particular item to progress; for instance, a plank or boat to cross a river or a lantern to see in a cavern.
        

Losing a gem in the mountains of Congoland.

         
Controls are even more basic than the previous Crystalware games. The joystick moves the party, and the only keyboard commands that you use often (at least in the starting area) are A)ttack and F)lee when encountered by enemy parties, P)ick up, D)rop, U)se, and T)rade.

You get attacked a lot as you explore, by area-appropriate enemies like tigers, gorillas, headhunters, and Zulu warriors. The character doesn't really fight in these battles, instead trusting in his army of companions. (If they all die, the character dies soon afterwards.) Their numbers plus their weapons and armor make up the army's combined strength, pitted each round against the enemies', with round-by-round losses on both sides fairly formulaic depending on the variances in strength. Victories don't really confer any benefit to the party except the opportunity to loot enemy equipment, so I think it's a good idea to flee from most battles. Overall, the combat system is rather underdeveloped. Coupled with the inventory system and the way certain items are needed in certain places, the game feels not unlike Robert Clardy's Wilderness Campaign (1979).
            

My party squares off against some natives on the other side of a river.

         
One repeated encounter is with a "witch doctor," who will join you if you defeat him in the first round of battle. He comes with a shrunken head and earth magic, which you can use like an item of equipment. He can die in combat, but if he does, eventually another will approach you.

Eventually, you cross a river in the northeast (you may have to fight a pack of piranhas) and make your way to Kabunga Village. There, you can stop at the various huts to sell valuables and buy adventuring equipment and companions, including most of what you need in Congoland specifically. North of Kabunga Village is a "banana grove" where every tree offers some rations.
          

Trading in Kabunga Village.

       
In the far northeast corner is the entrance to King Solomon's mines, a maze for which you need a lantern or else you lose an item every few steps.
           

In case we catch malaria.

         
It took me several abandoned characters and hours before I understood the game enough to make it to the mines. The manual recommends that you "conquer the sorcerer of Congoland" before you enter the mines. I wasted a lot of time looking for him before I realized that's simply a fancy name for the witch doctor that you encounter repeatedly.

The mines contain the same sorts of treasure and encounters as the wilderness area. At the center, I found King Solomon's Temple with the spirit of Solomon blocking a door and the number "666" on the floor. Using the witch doctor's earth magic made the ghost disappear, allowing me to enter the chamber beyond and transition to Cathay, the opening village of Arabian Adventure.
           

The final screen of Congoland.

        
Before I continue, let's talk about the manual and the so-called Great Mystery. I think I explored Congoland comprehensively, and I didn't find anything with any text except for the "666," although there might have been more to find in Solomon's Mine. I suspect that solving the Great Mystery is going to have something to do with the manual and the stories it relates about six sample adventurers and their initial explorations of each land. The first section relates the story of "Tisha: Queen of the Jungle," who gets this riddle as she enters Congoland:
                 

Northeast as the crow flies deep in the bowels of the earth
The treasures of Solomon, his Gods, his worth
10,000 wives and concubines to make a temple fair
A young lad who he deeply loved with long and flowing hair
Bagies burnt on hilltop fires, a nation plunges down
A thousand temples to Pagan Gods the King has lost the crown
A magic ring the demons shrink and on that ring a sign
The eater of heads a mystery is hidden in the rhyme
One two three four five six seven -- 666 or 777
22 clues from here to there--from the bottom neath the squid
To the Dragon's Lair

           
Other than the 666, which I found on the floor of Solomon's Temple, none of the imagery in the poem seems to correspond to the features in Congoland. There's a similar poem to go with "Thomas of Arabia's" adventures in the game's version of the middle east.

Arabian Adventure switches background and text color but otherwise plays much like Congoland. You can purchase goods and companions in Cathay and in the city of Baghdad to the far northwest. In between are treasure chests, sandstorms that make you lose inventory, oases where you can gather food, and a curiously large group of locked doors that you can unlock with keys found in the chests. Monsters include scorpions and "Turks."
         

Reaching Baghdad ends this level.

          
A couple of chests refer you to the manual to look up, for instance, "Treasure #5." This turns out to be a giant golden Buddha that I can't even begin to carry. The use of treasure numbers with manual descriptions was earliest seen in the Dunjonquest series, and it's possible that the Crystalware titles owe more to Dunjonquest than I have previously speculated.
         

Six giant golden Buddhas on the outskirts of Cathay.

         
You escape the Arabian Adventure via a door in Baghdad. It's blocked by a genie who only moves when you use the air magic of your own genie. The door leads the player to King Arthur's realm and the third adventure and game disk.
          

I suspect the "sorcerer" will end up playing the same role as the witch doctor and the genie.

         
I have a feeling it's not going to be too hard to simply whisk through all the levels, find Guinevere, and "win" the game, but without figuring out the Great Mystery. So I'm going to slow down and repeat the first two levels and see if I can pick up any more clues.

Fantasyland isn't really an RPG by my definitions. There's no character development and no "personal" inventory. Nonetheless, it's an intriguing quasi-RPG from the days before RPG standards, and I'm impressed by its ambitions even as I'm frustrated by its limitations.

Time so far: 3 hours

10 Reasons I'm Still Blogging About CRPGs After 10 Years

In case you're not already aware, the 10th anniversary of the CRPG Addict is coming up on 15 February 2020. Other than my marriage, which turns 21 this month, I can't think of anything that I've stuck with for 10 years. Since 2010, I've moved five times (it will soon be six), switched primary jobs three times, started and abandoned dozens of diet and exercise programs, made and lost several friends, and, if we're being honest, even tried to quit the blog once. Spoiler: it didn't work.

In recognition of my 10th anniversary, I've decided that for the next four months, I will periodically pen a special entry plumbing this project's past. I've written down several ideas but I would welcome more:

       

• The 10 best comments ever received
• 10 times I was very wrong
• 10 great discoveries
• The 10 most frustrating threads

           

But I'm starting today--mostly because I haven't done enough with Fantasyland 2041 to round out a full entry--with my list of 10 reasons I'm still pursuing this hopeless task to play all CRPGs.

10. Commentary on art is important.

In thinking about art, in analyzing it, in discussing it, we make it part of us; we make it live in a way that transcends the creator's pen or brush. One of the things I was "very wrong" about is when I agreed with Roger Ebert that video games are not art. At first I thought I was wrong because of a failure of definition: "art" is too complex a concept to be subjected to, to be generalized with, an "is." Now I think I was wrong just because I was wrong. You hardly have to twist the definition of "art" to make it encompass video games; you only have to abandon certain unfortunate prejudices. 

Perhaps the most important proof that video games are art is the level of critique that they provoke. Over the last 10 years, you and I have dissected hundreds of games and discussed how their plots, themes, mechanics, and artwork do and do not work, do and do not satisfy, on every level from aesthetic to socio-political. These are the same discussions that people have about paintings, books, films, and music.

I believe that there is incredible value to this commentary--not because either the art or the commentary is necessary to human existence, but precisely because it isn't. The measure of a great civilization must surely be how much time it devotes to unnecessary things. Oh, we certainly have some lingering problems, but what more testament do you need to our victories over hunger, disease, and violence than the existence of Keeping up with the Karashians, pet chiropractors, and a blog that spends decades chronicling every video game in a niche genre?
          

9. It's a nice contrast with reality.

To protect my anonymity, I don't discuss my "real" job on my blog. But suffice to say it's unlike playing computer role-playing games. It does not involve any art or entertainment, or the creation thereof, or the consumption thereof. It is worldly and necessary, about making existence sufferable rather than actually enjoyable. I'm not going to pretend that I play computer role-playing games as an antidote--I was addicted to them long before I had this job--but certainly this blog, in contrasting with the work I do during the rest of the day, fills my life with more variety than I would otherwise enjoy.

8. It makes me a better writer.

Communication skills are important in just about every profession and every walk of society. Because of this blog, I've written over 2 million words, the equivalent of about 5 door-stopper novels, in less than a decade. I've certainly put in the 10,000 hours that are supposed to make you an expert at something.
         

7. I learn things.
         

Once, I scoffed at the idea that RPGs actually taught you anything. But 10 years later, I find myself with a nascent ability to read German, much greater knowledge of the history and culture of Finland, a better understanding of classical mythology, and a large number of new technical skills. A lot of this learning, of course, has less to do with the games than with the discussions that we have on the blog, but this post is about why I'm still blogging, not just playing.
          

6. Maybe one day I'll work on an RPG.
            

The more I think about it, the more I think it would be fun to participate in the development of an actual game. I can't bring any technical skill to such an endeavor, but at least I can say that I have overall subject matter skill.
           

5. It's making me some pocket money.
              

This obviously isn't a major consideration because I only started my Patreon account this year. But thanks to my awesome supporters, I'm taking Irene to Chicago in a couple of weeks. This makes her feel a lot better about the time I spent on the blog.

           

4. It captures what might otherwise be forgotten.

In the last 10 years, we've uncovered and exhaustively explored many games that would have been utterly lost otherwise. I'm not the only one doing this, of course--Jimmy Maher and Matt Barton deserve particular accolades. But I like that I play a unique niche in this community by often being the only one to fully play a game from beginning to end.

             

3. I no longer feel like I'm wasting time playing CRPGs.
               
I used to beat myself up--a lot--for how much time I spent on computer role-playing games. I felt particularly bad about playing them to the exclusion of doing things with Irene. I haven't felt that way in a long time. The blog "legitimizes" my hobby in a way that I wouldn't have anticipated--not only because it's my blog but because it engages me in discussions with other fans of the genre. Prior to 2010, my CRPG addiction was a solitary, lonely, shameful experience. Post-2010, it is a community experience that adds value to a global understanding of this art form. What a change.
             
2. I really enjoy the discussions.

Early on, I thought that I would probably keep blogging even if I didn't have any commenters, just because I enjoyed the experience of blogging itself. Now, I'm not so sure. I think my blog would be missing something without all of the great comments that expand, supplement, and sometimes correct my own observations. I find myself looking forward to what certain commenters will have to say about certain aspects of a game, and I eagerly check in with comments a few hours after each posting.
               
1. I still think I can make it.

I don't know why I persist in this delusion. I can see for myself how many games lie both behind me and ahead of me on the "master list." And yet some part of me believes that I'll reject a lot of them, or that the process will go faster as they get more "playable," or that I'll somehow find a lot more time to spend on the project. Either way, my quest to be the One Man who has played all computer RPGs continues with Fantasyland 2041. Very soon.

Game 339: The Magic Candle III (1992)

           
The Magic Candle III

United States

Mindcraft Software (developer and publisher)

Released in 1992 for DOS

Date Started: 7 September 2019

      

It's something of a paradox that we take naturally to narrative material organized as trilogies--so much so that "trilogy" feels like a natural word, whereas the comparative terms for two and four installments sound clumsy and foreign in our mouths--and yet the third of something is usually the worst. It somehow feels tacked-on and perfunctory even though we all expected it. There are plenty of exceptions to the rule that no sequel outperforms the original--that is, plenty of Part 2s that are better than Part 1s. But in what series is the third the best of the lot? Arguably Lord of the Rings and then . . . I'll wait.

There are, on the other hand, plenty of examples to confirm the rule. Most people name The Return of the Jedi the least of the original Star Wars trilogy. And that's probably the most controversial of them. Following that is a long list of Part 3s for which no one would advocate: The Dark Knight Rises, The Godfather Part III, The Matrix Revolutions, Smokey and the Bandit 3, Heaven & Hell (the third part to North & South), and we could go on for ages. Note that the same rule doesn't always apply to the third installments of things that went on for a while longer (Ultima III, Might and Magic III, Fallout 3, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, A Storm of Swords), just things that were conceived as trilogies in the first place. Maybe it's a good thing that we seem unlikely to ever see the third Kingkiller Chronicle.
         

Dutch Elm Disease is rarely a setup for an epic adventure.

          

All this was on my mind as I began The Magic Candle III. I don't like to go into a game with a bias, but there were some ominous signs. Before I wrote a word about The Magic Candle, it was mentioned in 55 comment threads on other entries. Before I wrote about The Magic Candle II, it was mentioned in 22. Commenters have only brought up The Magic Candle III four times, none of them offering anything substantive about it. It is the only one of the trilogy not to have its own Wikipedia page. It also, unlike II, doesn't have its own subtitle, which always strikes me as the creators saying "#$@* it--here's another one," without any attempt to give the new installment its own character. A general sense of this game being "tacked on" pervades the introductory sequences. Where I thought the plot of II flowed naturally from I, III definitely feels less necessary. It depends, quite early, on lands and people that are remarkably close to the events of the first two games but mysteriously went unmentioned within them.

You'll remember that in The Magic Candle (1989), the protagonist and his (later retconned to "his or her") party of locals scoured the land of Deruvia to find the items and rituals necessary to renew the magic prison (a candle) of the demon Dreax. In ancient times, Dreax had come across the sea from Gurtex with an army of invaders, but he had been bound to the candle by a ritual created by the now-mostly-lost race of Eldens. After the party's success in the first game, King Rebnard of Deruvia decided he was sick of living in fear of the demon lords of Gurtex. He gathered his armies and took the fight to them, crossing the ocean and landing on Oshcrun Island--on the way, conquering the island of Maramon as told in The Keys to Maramon (1990).
           

A map of the "Solian Lands."

         
In The Magic Candle II (1991), the hero of either the first game or Maramon or both continued the effort by helping the invasion of Gurtex from Oshcrun. At first just interested in discovering the fate of the "four and forty" guardians of the original candle, the party ended up rescuing Prince Jemil, Rebnard's son, from the clutches of the demon Zakhad. While the demon himself was immortal, Jemil was able to send him "far, far away" using a magic orb. (The plot ended up getting pretty ridiculous by the end, which you can see in my entry on winning that game.)

The third installment picks up four years after The Four and Forty. Despite some lines from the second game saying "Zakhad's pall of darkness has departed from Gurtex completely," Rebnard is apparently still trying to subdue the continent. My character, Gia, is back in Telermain, on Oshcrun Island, protecting Queen Alishia and Prince Jemil. A "strange blight" has begun to affect the forest, and the queen asks Gia to go investigate.
                     

The queen kicks off the quest.

                  
The import process works very well, almost too well. "Gia" came through from The Magic Candle II with none of her attributes or skills reduced. Her average attribute is 9.4 versus 6.8 for a newly-created character. She comes with magic weapons and armor, plus 1000 coins instead of a new character's 500. She has practically a full set of spellbooks. More important, many of her skills are already maxed or near-maxed, including 99/99 for "Sword," 70/80 for "Archery," 87/99 for "Researching," and 50/99 for "Leadership." Later, after they joined my party, I discovered that other NPCs who were still with me at the end of II also retained their equipment, attributes, and skills.
            

None of Gia's skills were diminished by the intervening years.

            
The game opening gives you the option to pick 3 of 8 potential volunteers. I was in the midst of evaluating their strengths and weaknesses when, I don't know, I hit the wrong key or something and ended up with Silva, Kark, and Bollo by default. I decided to just roll with it.

We started in the middle of a dark, twisty forest, with a skeleton on the ground in front of us. As we began to move around, one major change from the previous two games became clear: the Magic Candle III party happily takes itself out of formation to get around obstacles and to conform to narrow passages, instead of requiring the player to micro-manage the formation to, for instance, make the lead character poke out one square so he can search a 1 x 1 area. To be fair, The Magic Candle II managed to make something of a game of the formations, requiring the player at various points to figure out the most convoluted formation necessary for navigating a trap-filled hallway. Still, I'm glad to be done with it.

As we walked along the path, we were ambushed by a group of "Blightmolds" and "Blightworms." An orc named Garz stepped out of the trees to join the party's attack against the creatures.
                   

The combat screen.

         
Combat takes place on the same tactical, turn-based screen as the previous games, with each character getting a certain number of actions dependent on his or her movement points. Combat seems a bit more streamlined here, and more in the Ultima VI mold. There's no pre-combat round, no positioning of characters, and less distinction between the exploration environment and the combat environment. Then again, I might just be noting the distinction between wilderness combat and "room" combat in the last game. I'd have to fight a few battles to check. I'll have more on combat details later.

The battle was pretty easy. At its conclusion, "Garz" introduced himself more properly as Garzbondgur, Crown Prince of Kabelo. He said that his land has been affected badly by the same blight, and that he came to Oshcrun to ask for my assistance. Just as I was wondering where "Kabelo" was, he continued that his father had forbade the trip, as the people of the "Solian Lands" don't normally trust "northern folk." I don't know if any previous Magic Candle had addressed these "Solian Lands," but I don't think so. It's the first major crack--the idea that a large collection of landmasses could lie south of Oshcrun and have gone unmentioned in the previous game.
                 

A suitably orcish-looking orc.

             
Garz remained a member of the party as we continued on. (For some reason, the game asks me to explicitly confirm that I want to include him when I distribute things to the party.) We met some more worms in a battle that left three characters poisoned, so I had to look up what mushroom cures poison (Loka). Fortunately, the game started me with a few of them, as well as a few memorized "Healing" spells. A third battle gave us "Blightboars" as well as molds and worms.

Pretty soon, we were out of the forest and on to the Oshcrun overworld map. Nearby were Oshcrun Castle and the city of Telermain.
           

Between the castle and the city.

       
I entered the castle first. Instead of the sprawling, multi-storied structure that I could explore on my last trip, for this game (or, at least, this trip), I was confined to the throne room. There, I had a lot of trouble distinguishing people from furniture. The conversation proceeded much as in previous games, through the "Greet" and "Talk" commands. As usual, the game offers some stock selections while allowing the ability for the player to type in a keyword to ask about a specific subject or person.
           

Stop being so dramatic, Carl. It's called "jock itch."

         
Almost immediately, a servant said that, "There is talk of Blightlords, fierce, deadly, and ruthless creatures, emerging as the new rulers of the lands down south," thus providing me with more intelligence than the entire backstory and summary of the problem given by Queen Alishia.

A notepad stores all of your major observations and conversations, and it's been significantly improved. It no longer erases when you quit and restart the game; it lets you add pages to type your own notes; and it has a "Search" feature. This might be the first game where you can do all your documentation in-game.
            

The throne room. Jemil is as helpful as ever.

          
Two companions joined my party in the throne room, replacing two of the rank amateurs who had accompanied me to the forest. (I assume you can keep them if you want, but their skills are in the single digits.) Rimfiztrik the Wizard and Sakar the Dwarf I remember well from previous games. A third potential companion named Marsa offered to join, claiming to be skilled in the martial arts, but she's a hireling who you have to keep happy with gold, so I declined to take her. In inviting himself to join the party, Sakar noted that the Solian lands are dangerous and I'd need a good fighter at my side. I guess everyone in this game knows where I'm going but me.

In contrast to the castle, Oshcrun was as large and complex as I remembered it, with numerous NPCs and shops, and their availability changing depending on the time of day. I think they may have kept the same map from The Magic Candle II; at least, most things were where I remembered them. I stocked everyone up on food and bought some mushrooms and potions. I'm a little annoyed that the third edition still hasn't fixed the pooling/distribution problem. (Since no character can pool more than 99 of most things, there's no way to evenly distribute all of a particular resource once you earn above 99 of them.) It would have been nice if the developers had regarded food, mushrooms, and gold as party resources rather than individual resources.
            

Buying individual food in the shop.

           
As with the first two games, there are locked houses at which you can knock at the door, but you have to have some clue as to the occupant's name. There are trainers and tradesmen where you can ditch party members to learn or work for a wage. I soon found Eneri, my hero from Maramon, in the Eastern Breeze tavern, so I ditched the novice Kark b'Dang at the metalsmith, as he had some skill in that area, to make money for us to take later. This always feels a little mean.
           

For some reason, the Maramon character appears as "Ralle" until he or she joins the team.

            
I saved selling my gems and purchasing any weapons or armor for later, deciding to explore the rest of the island first. I soon remembered how quickly stamina runs out in the wilderness. You basically have to have everyone chew Sermin mushrooms every dozen steps or so. What particularly sucks is that energy depletes at inconsistent rates for the characters, so that when some of them get to 0 others are still in the 60s. But unless you want to micromanage levels for each character, you just have everyone eat at once, wasting a lot of potential energy.

I found the stronghold on Oshcrun (places where you can rest safely and send party members), and then a "brick building" with a much more elaborate teleportal than I remember from the previous games, and then finally the little halfling town of Ketrop. A mayoral election was underway between candidates named Miko and Punnik, but that didn't develop into anything. I replaced Silva with a more experienced halfling named Tuff; he seemed to remember Gia, though I don't remember him from the previous game.
              

The teleportal chambers look more high-tech than before.

          

I considered dithering around Oshcrun longer, selling excess items, buying more mushrooms, perhaps gambling a bit, getting better armor for some of my characters--but I decided screw it, the new islands will have those services (probably), and I might as well get to it. (I assume I can return to Oshcrun at any time, too.) Thus, I hired North Star, a ship parked near Telermain, from Captain Turgut, and we sailed south. Actually, I tried sailing east to Gurtex first, but the captain told me it was "unsafe to sail in that direction."
          

Making landfall on a strange, southern shore.

         
We soon made landfall on a large island. The journey was quick enough that it defies logic that these "Solian Islands" are being mentioned here for the first time. The island turned out to be the island of Kabelo on the game map. This is Garz's kingdom, and indeed as soon as I entered the first city I saw on the island, Garz welcomed us to Urkabel.
           

Garz jumps the gun (apparently) in welcoming us to his home city.

         
I think I'll leave off there for my first session. So far, it's been a pleasant game, but with all the weaknesses of the Magic Candle II engine in addition to the strengths. I should have a stronger opinion after a few hours of combat and dungeon exploration.

Time so far: 4 hours

SpellCraft: Aspects of Valor: Summary and Rating

What awaited me if I had won the game.

      
SpellCraft: Aspects of Valor

United States

Tsunami Productions (developer); ASCII Entertainment Software (publisher)

Released in 1992 for DOS; SNES port developed but never released

Date Started: 27 July 2019

Date Finished: 25 August 2019

Total Hours: 26
Difficulty: Hard (4/5)
Final Rating: 35
Ranking at time of posting: 243/343 (71%)

Summary:
SpellCraft is an unusual, original RPG in which an American named Robert learns about a parallel magical universe and, under the tutelage of a wizard named Garwayen, grows from an apprentice to a master wizard. Most of the game consists of a series of missions in one of seven realms: Earth, Fire, Air, Water, Mind, Ether, and Death. As Robert solves these missions, he gets clues to the recipes for several dozen spells, mastering which is the key to winning the rapid game of rock-paper-scissors that soon develops between Robert and enemy wizards. Robert periodically visits Earth in between his explorations of the magic realms, getting clues, reagents, and side quests from various NPCs.

**** 
        

I admire and am somewhat envious of the player that could not only play but excel at SpellCraft. It's too much for me. I so lack the skill set needed to win such a game that it staggers me that winning it is even possible. You're dealing with dozens of spells constantly flying at you from dozens of directions, monsters constantly trying to drive you off the edge of an abyss, and dozens of your own spells through which to shuffle and try to counter enemies, constantly trying to remember which spells work in which domains, while keeping your eye on a bunch of meters and maps. It is so far removed from the careful deliberation that goes into, say, Gold Box combat that it's amazing we consider the games part of the same genre. A Gold Box game is like a good game of chess. SpellCraft is like three simultaneous games of speed chess played while wearing oven mitts.
          

Usually, when I have to enter "no" in the "Won?" column, it's because I didn't want to invest the time necessary to win the game. Rarely do I feel that I couldn't have won it with a little more patience. Here, I have to admit that the game didn't wear me out or bore me. It simply beat me. I could not react fast enough to the barrage of spells the enemy wizards threw at me. In this, SpellCraft offers a "first"--specifically, the first appearance of a dynamic common to modern games that I described in an entry eight years ago in relation to Dragon Age: Origins:

         

Most of the time, I have no idea what the #&*$ is going on. Seriously. Combat begins. My party members go into their tactics. I select one of the foes for my lead character to fight. I start using his special attacks. Meanwhile, there's a cacophony of sound as friends and foes meet each other and cast spells. Colors streak across the screen. My character starts sparkling for reasons I don't understand--am I being affected by an offensive spell, or did one of my party members cast a buffing spell? Sten starts calling for healing but then suddenly he's at full health even though I didn't heal him. Liliana starts saying "trap, trap, trap" even though we're in combat and it's unrealistic to disarm traps. My character is suddenly paralyzed and I don't know why. The screen shakes and I go sprawling against at tree--what hit me? Then, all at once, it's over, and apparently we're all alive.

      

The difference is that in the case of Dragon Age, the game is fighting for you as well as against you. I don't understand what's happening most of the time on either side, but at least some of it is benefiting me. This isn't the case with SpellCraft. My failure to complete the game, and my assessment of why I'm unable to complete it, has implications for any number of future titles. I'll analyze that more at the end.

Shortly after the events I recounted last, I reloaded and re-explored each of the domains until I found the Orb of Eternal Enlightenment in the Air Domain. With that in hand, I was able to re-kill the minion in the Water Domain. This was followed by the revelation that the Orb had now opened up two new domains: Ethereal and Mind. There, as Garwayen put it, "much of what you know about magic in the elemental domains will no longer be applicable." That generated a vocal multi-syllabic response that I will not reprint on a family blog.

On Earth, there were fewer places to visit but also some new places. Jack Hendricks, the paleontologist from Alberta, had moved to Dry Gulch, Arizona. Selina, my flirtatious friend from Salem, was found hiding in Agra, India, without her costume. A new friend named Spiros Talos showed up in Athens. The NPCs continued to give clues about formulas and ingredients.
             

Spiros Talos delivers some unwelcome news.

               
I gave up after a couple of attempts to defeat the minion in the Ethereal Domain. The graphics made it difficult for me to determine what was just a starry backdrop and what was a bottomless chasm. In three attempts to assail the place, the minion positioned himself on a thin thread of "land" with chasm on either side, making it impossible to approach and engage him directly without getting knocked off by other monsters. I tried keeping myself in the air with "Magic Wings" but the spell runs out fast, and I kept plummeting to my death before I could kill the minion with other spells. (I think he may have been dispelling it a couple of times.) In the few cases I did manage to do some damage, he just teleported away. I'm sure there's some set of options that would have worked, but I simply don't know what they are.

          

The confusing Ethereal Domain.

         
I was able to watch the rest of the game in a series of YouTube videos. There are three full series available, by users Garg Gobbler, Duke Donuts, and Fonze. Mr. Donuts doesn't even try to win honestly, frequently switching to a cheat menu that makes him invulnerable, gives him unlimited spells (he loves to spam "Dragon"), and keeps "Magic Wings" active. "I wouldn't wish a legitimate playthrough on anyone," he says at one point. Nonetheless, the other two seem legitimate, although I think they're both playing with foreknowledge of the game's spells, mixing them as soon as they have the right aspects and words rather than waiting for the clues.

Watching the videos, I experienced a major revelation that nearly made me quit this entry and try again. I hadn't realized that it was possible to cast certain spells, like "Teleport" and various conjurings, off the visible screen. With enough power, you can cast them anywhere on the map, using the attempt to scout the map as you go. This makes a big difference in your ability to find and target specific enemies and to acquire necessary treasures before you're killed. But I slept on it for a couple of nights and still couldn't motivate myself to go back to the game.

The video series let me check out the development of the plot and the ending. The Ethereal and Mind Domains deliver the Damascene Sword and a couple of spellbooks. As usual, the minions seemed to be cool guys who had just happened to become enslaved by their masters.
            

The Mind Domain has some interesting terrain.

           

At the end of the sequence, the Earth Master appears to taunt Robert, saying that the Council lured Garwayen away and has now imprisoned him. Robert must circle his allies on Earth to find a series of keys to access the various domains, as the portals in Stonehenge no longer work. Ultimately, he finds Garwayen's soul in a treasure chest. He continues to find upgrades to the other equipment items.

Robert then has to invade each domain and kill the wizards themselves. In the Ethereal Domain appears a "tear-stained letter" that hints at developments to come:

            

There is a wizard who has sworn himself to the College of ------. He is the most fearsome and terrible wizard of all. This wizard can call on ANY spell of ANY Other college, so powerful is the De----- Magic to which he is sworn. Beware this Wizard, for he is a great liar. His name is --------.

           

After defeating each wizard, Robert can destroy or preserve their spirits. Garwayen comments either way, usually expressing sorrow at the wizard's demise.
        

After the death of the final wizard, Garwayen reveals that his body has been hidden in the trunk in Robert's workshop the entire time, and every time Robert went off to battle a lord, Garwayen reunited his body and spirit to work his own mischief. Proclaiming himself the "Grand Wizard of the Universe," he announces his plans to conquer Earth and return magic to the real world, at which point he will become "Grand Wizard of the Cosmos," as if the cosmos is somehow greater than the universe.
         

Shouldn't you conquer Terra before designating yourself the Grand Wizard of the Universe?

           

A few new NPCs pop up, a few die, and others continue to move around the world. In the late game, Selina is found in the caves in Lascaux, France. She tells Robert to find the Pearl of the Beloved in the Mind Domain and bring it to her.
          

Robert must chase Garwayen through each of the six domains, defeating him in each one. When he finds the Pearl of the Beloved, he brings it to Selina, who gives him the Skull of the Marquis de Sade, which allows access to the Death Domain via a portal in Dry Gulch. Later, she gives Robert a Ring of the Full Circle, which allows Robert to use magic in the Death Domain.

The final battle takes place between Robert and Garwayen in the Death Domain. The videos showed so many spells flying back and forth that I couldn't even begin to keep track of them all. Duke Donuts eventually destroyed Garwayen with unlimited castings of "Meteor Storm" and "Dragon."
             

The chaotic final combat.

              

Exiting the Death Domain via the correct circle of stones brings you to the Mentor Wizard's Workshop and the endgame cut scenes. It turns out that each of the "minions" destroyed by Robert earlier were actually the wizards of each domain, and they survived, as did Garwayen. Everything that previously transpired was in fact a "rather elaborate ordeal to test the extent of [Robert's] powers." Even Garwayen's betrayal was staged, I guess. (One hopes the NPC deaths were also staged.) Robert becomes head of the council and Selina helps him restore Stonehenge and reforge the link between Earth and the universe of magic. Selina then warns of an "anti-hero" of prophecy who Robert will soon have to face. The two hop a jet to return to the United States, "where the leisurely flight home will allow us time to get to know each other better."
                

I can think of a few.

             

The game concludes with a series of humorous newspaper articles covering various subsequent events: a dragon in Stonehenge; Selina kidnapped in New York while Robert fights her abductors; an undead uprising in Romania; and a worldwide shortage of pomegranates.
              

Isn't the real news that the Chronicle is publishing again after 227 years?

            

SpellCraft is a tough one to rate, owing to the confusion in categories that I describe below. My best guess GIMLET is:
          

• 4 points for the game world. This was a tough rating because the game has such extremes in the good, bad, and weird. The magic realm isn't terribly imaginative, with the same series of maps appearing repeatedly in each domain. But it was fun how you could visit the various locations on Earth, and I liked seeing how they changed for each stage in the game. I want to call the backstory "interesting," but on the other hand it's so, so horribly written.

• 3 point for character creation and development. There's no creation. "Development" consists solely of hit point maximum increases that you receive at fixed points. Attack and defense scores are more a matter of "equipment" (and hardly seem to affect anything anyway). The method of earning new spells, partly based on accomplishment and partly based on the player solving puzzles, is worth a couple of points.

         

As far as I got with Robert.

          

• 4 points for NPC interaction. The friends you make on Earth have interesting personalities, and again it's fun to visit and cycle through them to see what new tidbits they have to offer. Unfortunately, there are no dialogue options.

• 3 points for encounters and foes. The small selection of monsters gets old quickly, leaving your only important "foes" the various simulacra, minions, and wizards that you have to face and counter. There are no non-combat encounters.

• 5 points for magic and combat. It really is all about magic. The system of acquiring spells is one of the more original seen in my chronology so far, and the enormous variety of spells gives you a near endless set of combat tactics. I frankly thought it was too much, and at some point the game simply lost me. More patient or talented players might increase this category by a point or two.

              

The final list of magic words.

            

• 2 points for equipment. You have four slots in which the items replace each other automatically as you acquire upgrades.

• 6 points for the economy. It's surprisingly robust. You need a lot of money for spell ingredients as well as jetting around the world, which you can make by selling excess ingredients and artifacts, or by simply buying low and selling high when circling the Earth.

• 4 points for a main quest with the occasional side-quest involving some kind of item acquisition. I'm also giving a point here for how Death Domain is an optional area in nearly every series of levels.

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics work well enough, but I found sound effects minimal. (The music, which I don't rate, is quite good, featuring different themes for different domains and people.) I didn't care for the interface--in particular how you cannot fully use the keyboard for selecting and targeting spells.

• 1 point for gameplay. For me, it hits all the wrong notes in this category: too linear, too long, and too hard. I gave it a point for some limited replayability based on selecting different schools of magic as the character's specialty.

               
That gives us a final score of 35, which falls right on my "recommended" threshold despite good performance in some categories. The GIMLET is, of course, subjective and has always been subjective, but it feels necessary to call out its subjectivity more in this game than others. Those who take better to this style of gameplay could easily rate it closer to 50.

Computer Gaming World avoided a full review of this one, but they did cover it briefly in the December 1992 "holiday buying guide." The author said that it "offers the most extensive magic system that we've ever seen in a game," which is fair praise. Dragon gave it 4 out of 5 stars, but the reviewers clearly didn't finish it. Like me: "We had more than one occasion where we battled enemy creatures but were defeated because we simply couldn't find the right spell in time. At other times, it was difficult to successfully face an enemy wizard's volley of spells." MobyGames catalogues only two other reviews: a 79/100 from Power Play and a 67/100 from ASM.

Either Tsunami or ASCII or ASCII's Japanese parent worked on an SNES version of the game but never released it even though it seems to have been completed. A pre-release beta version has made the rounds of abandonware sites. A YouTube video suggests that the conversion preserved few aspects of the original. Some of the character portraits are the same, and domain exploration looks similar but with different (better, frankly) graphics. Combat is entirely changed, however, with the character and enemy moving to a separate one-on-one combat screen. There are far fewer spells and no puzzles inherent in determining their mixtures. There also appears to be no Earth section.
               

Combat in the children's version of the game.

            
It would be fun to hear sometime from lead designers Joe Ybarra or Michael Moore about the inspiration for SpellCraft, since it's so unlike anything that preceded or followed it. Ybarra had been a producer at Electronic Arts for about a decade before starting his own company, but none of the titles he worked on show any hints of SpellCraft. Nor are there any clear similarities in the two following titles in which Ybarra is credited as a designer, Shadow of Yserbius (1993) and Fates of Twinion (1993), except for Mark Dickenson's graphical style.
           

             
SpellCraft is a new sort of game, and there are some implications to my failure. I would say I'm unlikely to complete any game that requires a) constant reaction to b) real-time enemy attacks, c) in which the attacks and responses are extremely varied; and d) your cues as to the nature of the attacks are purely visual. So, this doesn't rule out all real-time games because most of them only have a handful of attacks and defenses and you can get used to patterns fairly easily. It doesn't apply to, say, the Infinity Engine games because in addition to the visual cues, the transcript tells you exactly what spells the enemy has cast. I frankly don't yet know what games it does rule out, but I can tell you that I've tried a few modern action games (one of the Devil May Cry editions comes to mind), and I simply have no idea what is happening on the screen at any given time. It makes me feel old.

And speaking of feeling old, I began teaching college this week! Specifically, I began teaching students who were not yet born for, or otherwise have no memory of, September 11, 2001. I'm teaching students who never saw any of the Lord of the Rings films in theaters. Students who think of the Star Wars prequel series as "old movies." Students for whom Back to the Future is as recent as The Bridge on the River Kwai was for me. Not only do they have no memory of an original Ultima or Bard's Tale, they were barely alive for Morrowind and the last Infinity Engine game.

Anyway, it's been a crazy few weeks. I hope I can get back on a regular schedule now, but there might still be a few rough patches before I return to the regularity that we saw in April to August. Thanks for sticking with me.