Ratings and Reviews by Rymbeld

This isn't going to be a normal review. I completely unfairly give this game five stars, for instance. And I'm giving it five stars because it was an unforgettable part of my early childhood.

Back when I was in elementary school, my parents bought Leading Edge computer which ran DOS. I remember it came with a ton of 5 3/4" gray floppy disks--many of them had legitimate programs on them, but I soon enough found the ones with games on them. Janitor Joe, Castle Adventure, Dig Dug, Eliza and many others which I barely remember and will probably never rediscover, since I don't know their names. And among them all, this game, The Wizard's Castle, really captured my attention.

I loved to read as a kid, and I loved fantasy. I started reading The Lord of the Rings in fourth grade, wrote stories, and before long I'd be getting involved with role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and MERP. So stumbling across this game, in which you create a character and explore a ruined subterranean complex, fighting monsters and grabbing treasures, completely hooked me.

In retrospect, the game is nothing too impressive. It begins with character creation. You choose a race (Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling) and sex, which determine your base statistics. You are then given 8 points to distribute among your STR, INT and DEX, and 60 GP to buy armor, a weapon, and a light source.

Light isn't a big deal in the game. It just allows you to look at the map. There are always 8 floors, 8x8, but the contents are randomly generated each play. And what are the contents? Well, there are the treasures. Some of them have in-game effects, like protection from blindness. Others only have a cash value. Every treasure can be sold to a Vendor, if you want, who also sell new weapons and armor (your gear can fall apart) as well has potions to increase your stats. You can always attack the Vendor, but he is hard to kill and once you do that, all Vendors will fight you. It's often worth it to kill the Vendors anyway, since they carry good gear.

There are lots of other monsters, too. When you enter a room containing a monster, your options are to attack or retreat, until you bump up your intelligence, in which case you can also cast web or fireball spells, or the risky deathspell.

You walk around and fight monsters, prompted to attack or retreat (or in some instances, if the creature is sentient, you can attempt a bribe.) There are pools and books which will have various effects: they can alter your stats, including sex and race. They can also render you blind, and some books glue themselves to your hand, which really sucks. It's best to acquire the Opal Eye and Blue Flame, which protect against these bad things, before messing with books.

(Spoiler - click to show)In order to find the Orb Of Zot, you have to get the Runestaff, which allows teleportation. You can only get the Orb if you teleport to its location, which looks like a Warp on the map. How do you get the Runestaff? keep killing monsters. One of them has it.

There are plenty of environmental sound effects--like footsteps, screams, the sound of a Wumpus (an in-joke I didn't get). I mean, it's not much, but as an 8 year old, this dungeon seemed like a dark and terrible place. I would spend a lot of time here, just walking around, until I'd uncovered every spot on the map, jumping in sinkholes, warping around, etc.

I'm glad I found this game again, even though...well, it's not a great game. It probably ruled for its time, and I loved it back then, and I can even play it now nostalgically. But I doubt it's an "important" game to play.

I admit that I did laugh while playing this game. If it is of any significance, it is as a "commentary" on the frustration of old text adventures (Jeremy Douglass calls it "frustration aesthetics"). I mean, pretty much you just have to go pee. The problem is figuring out what you need to do to pee, since the game doesn't tell you this until you pee yourself and you fail. But every time you fail, you learn one new thing about the PC.

Of course, in actuality the game is pretty stupid and juvenile. You might laugh, but then forget about it. It is taking me longer to write this review than to play through the game to completion.

What a cute game is this! What a nice little thing! Small World is not a "deep" game, and it doesn't tackle any big issues like fate or death or heartbreak. Nope. Small World is just a nice fun diversion, not too hard, not too long. Just a short ride. On the other hand, this is a game with great narrative potential. I think it fell short, though, but I can easily imagine a larger story. With just a tad bit more hashing out of the game, this would be among my favorites.

In Small World, you play a fat boy getting ready for a hiking trip:

You hear the bus horn beeping as you, with misgivings, cram the last few items into your backpack, close it, and shoulder it on. It's Saturday, time for the first trip of the Junior Hikers your parents forced you to join. Short, chubby, and extremely shy, you've kept to yourself since your beloved, if eccentric, great-aunt died over the winter. As is your wont, before leaving, you spin the globe she gave you for your tenth birthday.

But it's stuck.

What happens next is great fun: you suddenly shrink, smaller and smaller, until you are in the globe, but a giant. You go from being a little fat boy to a big skinny boy! And in this small world you meet St. Peter, the Devil, Adam and Eve, and little green Martians, in an homage Gulliver's Travels. You job is to fix all the screwed up things in this little world and to get the globe spinning again. And in so doing, you regain your self-confidence and no longer fear a simple hiking trip. Pretty neat!

So, here's where I think the game could have done better: give us more of the set-up. Let us play as a fat, shy kid for a little bit. It doesn't have to be much, but we could roam the house a bit, play with our globe some. Maybe the globe actually got stuck because someone else messed with it, someone who intimidates us. If we had a little more time with the kid, we'd get a better feel for his character and this transformative adventure of his would have more meaning for us. This would make the end more meaningful and triumphant, I think. The basic frame is already in place, and all we as player-readers need is something more concrete, more showing, to really hook us in.

The writing in the game is already wonderful. Small World won the 1996 Xyzzy award for Best Setting (which I think it probably deserved) and Best NPC (probably for the Devil; he's hilarious), but to be honest I think it should have also been nominated for Best Writing. So Far won that one, and Tapestry was also nominated. But you know, Small World is solidly written. It isn't "beautiful," but the writing is solid and clear and Pontious maintains a consistent voice which fits the game perfectly. It's light and humorous and conveys a tone appropriate to the setting. I think it is at least as well-written as So Far.

I think this is a great little game, with very few flaws. It probably isn't the best game if you want very challenging, mind-bending puzzles. It would be suitable for children and people looking for a nice little adventure. Honestly, it has a bit of a Katamari Damacy vibe to it. Play it!

(reposted from my blog--totally surprised that this award-winning game had no reviews and few ratings.)