Game 552: Magus (1993)

 

      

Magus

Sweden
Independently developed; released as freeware

Released around 1993 for DOS
Date Started: 25 June 2025

Date Ended: 5 July 2025

Total Hours: 7

Difficulty: Moderate (3.0/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)  

         

I know some people don't understand my problem with mouse-only interfaces, and it occurred to me that maybe you just have to be of the right disposition and demographic. Maybe if you were born so long ago that the mouse still seems like a miracle, you resent that I'm always disrespecting it—but if you were born in the 2000s, you've already gotten used to doing everything from inside a browser, where keyboard shortcuts may exist, but they're inconsistent and a little janky. Maybe you have to have been born right between 1970 and 1990 to understand my perspective. But even those of you born outside that range, when you go to type an email, you still type it on the keyboard, right? You don't click every letter on a virtual keyboard with a mouse. Maybe if you thought about how annoying that would be, you'd understand where I'm coming from. 

     

Both of my active games have mouse-only interfaces, and moving my characters through them is like one of those nightmares where you're trying to get somewhere quickly but your legs are stuck in quicksand. To this, add inconsistent, undocumented rules about left-clicking and right-clicking and you can see why these two titles have not helped facilitate my return to regular blogging.

       

Approaching a castle in Magus.

      

Magus is otherwise a tolerable graphical roguelike (see the glossary). It doesn't break a lot of new ground, but it's enjoyable enough for a free game. You create a party and explore a 200 x 320 game world, fighting monsters and picking up items. The manual says that the goal is: "To have fun—or as an option to waste the bad mage in the citadel." I wish I could take the game at its word, spend the minimum amount of time "having fun," and call it a day, but since killing the bad mage "wins the game," I have to believe that that's the "real" quest.

   

During character creation, you can select from shaman, wizard, elf, barbarian, knight, dwarf, druid, duck, and duck mage classes. The "duck" characters look like the Donald variety. Apparently, they can walk across water. Beyond that, the duck has comparable statistics to the elf and the duck mage has comparable statistics to the wizard. Each class has different values in mana, health, strength, agility, and wisdom, but these can be manually adjusted. Clicking on the portrait changes the sex for most classes. I have no idea what the party limit is. The game let me create a party of 24 characters without any complaint. 

         

Creating a druid character.

     

The party starts in a tower in the top center of the overall game map. The map is fixed in geography, but new items and enemies are distributed across it for each new game. From there, they can begin moving around, fighting, and picking up items. You can play the characters cooperatively, independently, or, I suppose, antagonistically (i.e., if there was more than one player). The problem with all of these methods is that each character only gets a small number of movement points (between 4 and 6 on average) per round, so you're constantly having to switch them after only a couple of actions, then hit "End Turn" when all of the characters have gone. Again, this is extra annoying where all your actions have to be done with the mouse.

   

You start with a small selection of items appropriate to the class and immediately start finding more. A strict encumbrance limit keeps you from loading up on too much inventory; spellcasters do the best here because spells weigh nothing. You left-click to identify an item and right-click to move it around between "in pack," "carrying" (i.e., equipped), and "using" (i.e., wielded). You have to stand on an item and left-click on yourself to pick it up. If you right-click on yourself, you attack yourself, so you can see how this control configuration sucks a bit.

        

Lots of goodies in these rooms.

     

Weapons and armor have bonus values between -7 and 7, but the negatives aren't "cursed"; they're just worse. There's no viewable statistic that tells you the base value, so I don't know whether, say, a short sword +3 is better than a long sword +2 or a silver shield - 2 is better than a wooden shield +3. There are missile weapons. Spells are wielded like weapons and deplete mana when cast. There are potions and amulets that raise attributes. If any of them have negative effects, I haven't found any, so the game is perhaps more "roguelite" than "roguelike," but it does enforce permadeath. The moment you load a saved game, it wipes it from the drive and only writes a new one when you quit.

        

Enemies are standard fantasy types, including goblins, trolls, zombies, skeletons, ghosts, minotaurs, sorcerers, death knights, demons, and dragons. They have a variety of melee, ranged, and spell attacks, but I don't think the game has any resistances; fire attacks seemed to do just fine against fire-based creatures, for instance. To fight enemies, you right-click the mouse on them. You need to be standing next to them to attack with a melee weapon, but spells and missile weapons work at range. You can also left-click on them to bring up a menu that lets you shove them, say "Booh!," and swear at them, but I don't know whether those options actually accomplish anything.

        

Some of the non-combat encounters.

      

Enemies only get to move and attack after the party has ended its turn. They respawn at a pretty good clip, and it's rare that I can't see at least one somewhere on the screen.

   

Experience is rewarded for successful actions (hits and spells cast) instead of kills. This includes healing and buffing spells cast on party members. Leveling up occurs at regular intervals of experience (I think 50, 50, 100, 100, 100, 100, 200, 200, 300, 300, 500, 500), with a level maximum of 11. Level-ups are accompanied only by +10 maximum mana and health. Finding potions, amulets, and other items that increase attributes is probably more important than leveling.

       

I get myself surrounded.

      

I tried playing for a while with a party of four characters—knight, barbarian, wizard, shaman—but I found it so annoying to constantly be switching between characters that I decided to try a single character. I went with a wizard because the variety of spells seems like it's going to be one of the best parts of the game, but even here I think the game makes a distinction between arcane and divine magic, so I'll miss some. Druids, interestingly, don't bridge the gap but instead have their own spells. They come with 4 of them that can summon allies of fire, earth, water, or air. This is cool in concept, but those allies just become party members with the same movement point annoyance.

      

My party meets a couple of foes.

      

The wizard starts with a dagger, a cloak, and three spells: "Fireball," "Vision," and "Portal." They're all pretty cool. "Fireball" is naturally a ranged damage spell; it kills most of the starting-area creatures in two hits. "Vision" lets you see everything on the active screen, including stuff normally hidden by buildings or behind trees. "Portal" is a teleport spell that lets you go anywhere on the visible screen. The problem, of course, is that these spells all cost points, and magic only restores at a rate of 3 points per turn. You restore as many hit points between turns as you had movement points left over when you ended the turn. Some items give regenerative effects that let you restore more. Throughout the game, I was always looking for safe places (usually dead-ends, or behind doors) where I could rest for multiple rounds undisturbed.

      

There are "NPCs" of a sort in the form of what I guess are supposed to be little gnomes in pointy hats; again, I find it hard to perceive any real graphic detail at this resolution. They're labeled "nicey" in the interface. The manual warns that if you attack them, dire consequences will follow. You can sidle up to them and give them your inventory items—supposedly, they like heavier items—but I never noticed any advantage for doing this.

     

He looks pretty much the same as me.

       

The game has some interesting "set pieces" across its territory, including dungeons and caves in the various mountains, towns, castles surrounded by moats, deserts, and swamps. Because all there is to do in the game is fight and find items, these areas aren't really used for any special encounters, but they're at least fun graphically. Most of the best items in the game seem to be behind doors, so it's always a slight thrill to find a keep surrounded by a moat or a cluster of buildings.

        

The world map, courtesy of cxong's GitHub site, linked below.

          

Enemies get harder the farther you get from the starting area, so to succeed with a single mage, I had to explore slowly, in east-west strips, moving south in increments. I found potions and items that boosted my character, including an elven cloak +3, which I think increased hit point regeneration between rounds, a Dragontooth +3 sword for when my spell point ran low, and "focus" bracers that increased my strength (and, thus, encumbrance) to 20. In my winning game, yellow potions (and a few items) increased movement, which is probably the most powerful buff you can get in the game. Higher movement means more attacks and more time to flee, although it also means you deplete your spell points faster and have to recharge more often.

      

Even "focus -3" made my strength go up to 20.

           

I experimented with spells. The game has both individual-damage and mass-damage spells. Oddly, one pair of these—"Fireball" vs. "Inferno"—mirrors a similar pair in Sandor II. (One solid rule is that if you pick any two random RPGs, you will find strange parallels in their mechanics.) There are buffing spells like "FastFeet" and "Berserk" and enemy debuffing spells like "StoneFeet." I got several ally-summoning spells like "Skeleton" and "Zombie" as well as exploration spells like "Vision," "Portal," and "Hyperspace."

       

Casting "View" on the bad mage's castle.

       

Mostly, I just blasted things. Having a missile weapon or an offensive spell that works from a distance makes a big difference in the game. I soon replaced "Fireball" with "Fireball +3," and when I found scrolls of enhancement (which increase the value of anything by 1), I tended to use them on "Fireball." Increasing the potency of spells not only improves their effects but also reduces the cost.

   

If I overextended myself, "Portal" was there to rescue me, especially if I left an ally behind for the enemy to concentrate on. I eventually found another quirk of the game, and another parallel to Sandor II: While enemies will move and attack in the same round, they will not attack and then move. If I found a particularly difficult enemy, I could summon an ally, attack him a few times, and then escape with "Portal" or by walking through a door. The enemy would kill my ally and then just sit there. Next round, I would re-enter his range and do it again. This was the only way my lone wizard could kill dragons, who otherwise had enough movement to pound away my hit points in a single round.

     

Fighting a dragon in its chamber. He won't move to chase me as long as he has a summoned skeleton to attack.

     

The "bad mage" and his citadel are on the southern border of the map. The mage has three tough guards in his large room. The rest of the citadel has no enemies and lots of equipment. The only way my single wizard could defeat the mage's guards and the mage was to adopt the "hit and run" tactics discussed above. I had to save scum several times as I figured it out.

    

A shot from my final battle with the bad mage, who can walk through walls.

       

The game ended after I killed the bad mage and then ended the turn. The denouement was odd. A screen came up that said, "Pure luck . . . " and had a button that said, "Blah!" I clicked that and then got a new screen that said, "Look, guys . . ." and a button that said, "Please?" Next combination: "Noooooo" and "Aaargh!" Then no message with a button that said, "Horray!" I guess maybe the idea is that the bad mage was saying the things on the screen and I was replying with the things on the button.

          

I don't know why I'm saying, "Please?," though.

       

Finally, it brought me to the leaderboard with my character on top. It showed me with 1,000 more experience points than I had before ending the game, which got me to the highest level and rank.

 

I'm just glad I did better than "Servant."

            

In a GIMLET, Magus earns:

   

• 0 points for the game world. We're told nothing about it at all.

• 3 points for character creation and development, most of the credit here going to the variety of classes.

            

The game is very generous in the number of characters you're allowed to field at one time.

      

• 1 point for NPC interaction. There are no NPCs unless you count those gnomes. I'll give a point here to give it the benefit of the doubt, but I don't know what purpose they served.

• 3 points for encounters and foes. There aren't really any encounters other than foes, but the enemies have a variety of strengths and weaknesses. I just wish they had names.

• 4 points for magic and combat. The magic and combat system are relatively robust, with quite a few options. The major problem is a lack of feedback. You don't ever see the names of the spells enemies cast against you, and you don't see how much damage your attacks do or whether your spells are successful.

• 4 points for equipment. Finding items is a major part of the game, but the game should offer more information about them.

     

A rare item. I wasn't able to wield it.

     

• 0 points for no economy.

• 2 points for a main quest.

      

Peeking into the bad mage's chamber at the end of the game.

     

• 2 points for graphics, sound, and interface. I give none for the interface and 1 point each for the others. The PC speaker sound effects are tolerable.

• 5 points for gameplay. I would consider it relatively nonlinear. The different experiences of different classes plus the randomization of loot makes it somewhat replayable. The length and difficulty are about right.

   

That's a final score of 24. Magus is a good outline of a game. It needed a bit more content and some interface refinements to compete with commercial games of the period.

   

The version I played was the second edition. I have been able to find out no information about the first edition and when it would have been available. This GitHub site archives both the second and a third edition, but thanks to a lack of copyright date, it's unclear when the third edition was created except that it must have been after 1994. 

   

The author is listed as Ronny Wester from Stockholm, Sweden—"better known," according to the same site, for Cyberdogs (1994) and C-Dogs (1997), neither of which I'd heard of. They seem to be mission-based, top-down action games. The third edition of Magus reportedly adds Sound Blaster support with effects from Cyberdogs, some of which were cribbed from Doom.

    

Wester would have been about 24 years old in 1993. His c.v. shows him working at Orc Software during the same period, which despite its name had nothing to do with fantasy or games. Wester's old web site (no longer online) describes how he got into gaming by playing old ZX Spectrum games in the 1980s. In the 2010s, he wrote that he had just tried one of the old games on a Spectrum emulator and "won the game [on the] first try, using the keyboard." He added, "Is that good or pathetic, I wonder?" I'd say "ironic," Mr. Wester. Definitely ironic.

     

***

 

Credit to Pixelmusment's YouTube video on Magus for various bits of trivia and for helping me figure out a few elements.