Reviews by deathbytroggles

The third game in the Stale Tales Slate series is by far the shortest and simplest. Unfortunately, it's also the least entertaining.

There are eight anagrams to solve, and even as Schultz wordplay games go the impetus for the story around the anagrams is lacking coherence. That said, the anagrams were fun and well clued. You can activate a more explicit hint system if you need it.

My brain is hard wired for anagrams and as such I finished the eight rooms in about twenty minutes. But there are two other puzzles that are notably more difficult and seem out of place thematically, though your mileage may vary.

If you liked the deduction aspects of Return of the Obra Dinn but felt it was either too gruesome or too hard on the eyes, then The Roottrees are Dead should be your perfect game.

It’s 1998 and The Roottree Candy Company has been around for about 70 years. Sadly, their CEO Carl Roottree, his wife, and their three daughters have all perished in a plane crash. You’ve been approached by a shadowy figure to help sort out the will. You see there’s chaos within the company as they try to replace the CEO while also figuring out who in the family truly has Roottree lineage and deserves a piece of the family’s fortune. Your job is to use the primitive world wide web to scour for sites, news articles, and periodicals to piece together the massive family tree and determine who truly is a direct discendant of Elias Roottree, the company’s founder. While the premise is quite far-fetched, it doesn’t make the puzzle any less fun.

The entire game takes place in one room as you never need to leave the comfort of your home for your research. On one wall is a cork board with a general outline of the family tree. There’s a spot for each person with room for a picture, their full birth name, and their most recent occupation. Every time you correctly identify all of these questions for three people, a wonderful chime plays and they are “locked in” to the board.


The first few identifications are fairly simple as identifying Carl and his family is as simple as browsing the web for recent news articles. However, there are 50 names to complete on the tree, and they get progressively harder, especially with lesser known cousins who aren’t regularly in the news cycle. Your shadowy figure eventually reveals themselves to be a descendant and occasionally gives you some helpful evidence she has found, but for the most part you are cross-referencing obscure facts from the internet with the library’s on-line book and periodical databases. Even poorly made fan sites loaded with frames are not beyond your search for the truth.

Visually, you are not looking at real websites. While you manually type in to a primitive search engine, results are summarized on the screen for you. However, if you find good evidence, such as photos or articles, they will be downloaded and printed in color so you can examine them more closely. Accessing evidence is a simple click away, and filling out the cork board is equally simple, using one click to select from a list of pictures, first and last names, and occupations.

Deduction is frequently necessary. For example, you may know the current last name of a member of the tree, but you’re required to get their birth name. And so you may first need to figure out who their father was first before filling it in. Or you may find an article that says your person was a housewife, but then realize that wasn’t their “final” job and must make inferences from other sources to identify what they did for work after their divorce, say. I was worried this kind of search might get stale, but there’s so many creative puzzles that the deduction never feels repetitive.


There’s gentle instrumentals playing the in the background, which you can shut off if you like. However, a few members of the family are or were singers, and you can listen to original tracks made just for the game. While they for the most part don’t contain evidence themselves, I found them a hoot to listen to.

At the moment I correctly identified the final family member (which requires deducing which evidence you’ve found is false), I felt a rush of satisfaction at completing the game. Only to my surprise, I was only halfway done. The family comes to you again and says a bunch of people are claiming they are Roottrees due to infedelities in the family’s past, and you must determine who is truly a Roottree descendant and who is not. Play continues much the same, which a slightly ramped up difficulty.

I never once required a hint while playing despite not finding any part of the game easy. With how much fun I was having I was persistent in my search and never found myself frustrated and never scoffed at an answer for being too obtuse. It truly is a magnificently designed mystery.


After all that is done, you can access yet another basic mini-game, with ten separate family trees to complete just going off of some basic rules for each game. Each one only takes a few minutes, but it was still a nice diversion.

I only have a few minor quibbles with the game. The first is the graphics, which are so basic I genuinely thought they were made with AI. Ironically, the original web-based version of the game was indeed made with AI. So I do give them props for going with hand-drawn visuals, even if they didn’t turn out the greatest. The limited voice acting in the game is also pretty brutal.

The other reason I didn’t like this quite as much as Obra Dinn is that there’s just no reason to care about anything you’re doing outside of the puzzle. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; I certainly enjoy puzzles for their own sake. But it’s hard to feel much about helping a bunch of filthy rich people. And they made little effort to truly make any of the characters much more than an avatar.

Despite the production values being a bit rough around the edges, The Roottrees are Dead is a must play for anyone who likes a good logic puzzle. It has proved to very popular so far and will hopefully lead to a similar masterpiece from the developers.

A direct sequel to Gateway, I was psyched to finally sit down and play one of the more heralded games by Legend about Frederick Pohl’s Heechee Saga. While it’s a well built game and has several high moments, I was overall disappointed, only because it failed to be as excellent as its predecessor.

Following the events of the first game, you’ve retired wealthy from your collection of Heechee technology. The game begins with you watching television when you get a video call from your previous employer, letting you know there’s an artifact outside of Pluto that they believe is an active Heechee ship. He asks that you consider joining an expedition given your expertise. However, you quickly realize this is a set-up and you’re a marked man.


The last game by Legend to employ a text parser, Gateway II does an excellent job with its implementation. While a noun and verb list are available, the parser understands quite a bit and I rarely found myself trying to guess the correct phrasing. This is proven right away with a tense chase scene, a rarity with text adventures. While pressed for time, I wasted no turns battling with the parser and felt a rush of satisfaction when I solved some clever puzzles and escaped alive on my first try.

The graphics engine is identical to its predecessor. Each scene has a hand-drawn still graphic that helps capture the environment. Conversations happen on another screen with a better detailed image of who you’re talking to. And there are several animated cut-scenes that are low-res but still pretty. The music, on the other hand, is a disappointment, with repetitive digitized tracks that began to wear on me after a while.


Your adventure takes you to the Heechee ship and beyond as you learn significantly more about this race. Without spoiling the details, I didn’t find this an entertaining this time around, perhaps because a lot of the mystery was resolved and, while powerful and technologically advanced, the race just isn’t different enough from humans to be interesting. On the other hand, my favorite part of the game sees you on an ice planet with a crystalline species called Kords, capable of telepathic imagery and exceptional mimicry skills. Their history and societal structure is significantly more compelling than the race the game is about. There’s also a spot where you can talk to several people who don’t realize they’re dead but whose personalities are stored in a computer; there’s no puzzles involved, but I found the conversations entertaining.

The game is also disappointingly linear. The first game was relatively open world for a good majority, allowing you to travel to different planets at will and work on several puzzles at a time. Here, if you get stuck, you’re pretty much stuck. While this isn’t a huge problem at the beginning, the game’s final section has many puzzles that stretch credibility, and I began to seek out hints frequently due to exhaustion. At least the game shipped with a hint book, a rarity in 1993. One nice feature is the game often advising you to undo your last move if you’ve put yourself in an unwinnable situation (of which there are few).


Conversations (text only) are also underwhelming. There is little to do other than exhaust topics. You can return to conversations repeatedly, but few characters ever have anything more to say, and continuity is ruined as they almost never update their responses based on subsequent actions you’ve taken.

While I was a but underwhelmed by the ending and a little tired at the end, I raced through the game rather quickly, a testament to its entertainment value, especially early on. If you enjoyed the first game, then Gateway II is definitely worth a play.

I’ve always had difficult playing characters that have less than desirable personalities or ethical codes. For example, it was difficult to get through parts of Gabriel Knight due to his sexual harassment of his employee. Many games now give the player a broad leash to be as noble or dickish as they want to be. Disco Elysium is the worst of both worlds, giving you control over Harry Du Bois, a detective whose recently demonstrated a lot of gross behavior. Then you get to decide if you want that to continue or to go for a redemption arc. Despite this predicament, I couldn’t get enough of this game, at least for one playthrough.

Zaum managed to create the ultimate hybrid of adventure game and tabletop RPG. Prior to the game starting, you get to choose a character makeup, giving yourself strengths or weaknesses in the areas of intelligence, psyche, physical, and motorics. Each of these groupings have several, more specific attributes (24 in all), such as reaction speed, endurance, empathy, and logic. These attributes come into play for nearly every action you take. More on that in a minute.

As the game begins, you are narrated to (in your sleep) by the different parts of your body, including your ancient reptilian brain and the limbic system. Fighting through heavy intoxication, your body struggles between the desire to wake up or fall asleep forever (which is driven by a terrible heartbreak in Harry’s past). You can make choices as to how to respond, but ultimately you will wake up regardless. You see Harry, struggling to rise in only his underwear. His tie is on the ceiling fan, empty liquor bottles are everywhere, and one of his shoes is missing.


Now, one of the first things many players will do is to examine the fan and attempt to snatch their tie. One of the options is turning on the light, which will immediately damage Harry’s health due to his massive hangover. Should you have skimped on endurance in your character creation, Harry will immediately (and hilariously) die. Lest you worry about making it through this game alive, it is generally very difficult to get killed as long as you don’t do anything stupid. Harry has both a health bar and a morale bar, and should either go to zero, the game will end. There are many ways to get items (drugs) to improve both, and some positive game actions will heal you as well. The game will even give you several seconds to use one of your drugs to heal yourself should you make a fatal mistake.

Outside of that, the game is constantly rolling dice. Most of the time, it’s in the background. There is near constant narration coming from Harry’s mind, either providing background information or giving him advice on what to do or say. But it will only be triggered should the dice rolls be higher than the points in the various attributes. Some narrated thoughts are almost automatic, and some are almost impossible, with a lot in between. Regardless, you won’t know if a dice roll failed. Outside of dice rolls, thought bubbles will also appear above Henry at times, which you have the option to activate to hear what his inner monologue is saying.


More interesting is the choices you get to make while rolling dice. At various points during puzzle-solving or conversations, you will get the opportunity to roll two six-sided dice, while being told what percentage chance you have of rolling a winner. Say you’re flirting with Klaasje, another woman at the hotel. You have the option of trying to woo her, and based on your skill points, it may be difficult or easy. What makes Disco Elysium so wonderful is that regardless of whether you succeed or fail, the result is entertaining. Often, failing a task is funnier and opens up alternative options down the road. Some of these opportunities, like flirting with Klaasje, are considered “red checks” and can be tried only once. Most are “white checks” which can be tried again at a later time, either by raising your skill points in the necessary area or completing another task. Regardless of your attributes, rolling two sixes is always a success and rolling snake eyes is always a fail.

Eventually, you’ll coerce Harry downstairs where he can either talk to or dodge the verklempt hotel manager. The one person you can’t avoid is your new partner, Kim Kitsuragi, sent by another district to help you in the murder investigation of a body hanging from a tree out behind the hotel. If you haven’t already realized it by now, it is while meeting Kim you fully realize you are suffering from retrograde amnesia. Eventually you learn that you arrived in town a few days earlier and have done nothing but drink, get high, damage property, and annoy the locals with your self-aggrandizing behavior, including your obsession with insisting on how disco you are. Thankfully for you, Kim is an incredibly patient and forgiving person, who will set boundaries with you while also encouraging you to be your best. From here, you’ll need to figure out how to pay your hotel bill (damages included) so you have a place to sleep while also checking out the body out back to start your investigation.


The fictional world you inherit is incredibly imagined, a sort of alt-Earth history with many parallels to our world. Technology and culturally it feels most like the 1970s, with some overlap on either side. Your investigation has taken you to the impoverished port town of Martinaise, in the district of Revachol. Some fifty years ago there was a revolution that left a good portion of the area in disrepair, with little money to make improvements. There is a strike occurring with the dockworker’s union and they have shut down the harbor. Locals believe the union is responsible for the murder, as the dead man is a mercenary sent by Wild Pines (one of the world’s richest corporations) to try to bust the strike by intimidation and deployment of protesters and scabs.

You and Kim will interview representatives from both sides, using evidence you collect through observation and interrogation to make headway. Your character attributes affect the flavor and path your investigation takes; for example, a physically built Harry may be able to knock down doors or intimidate witnesses, while a more intellectual Harry may need to use his encyclopedic knowledge or empathy to convince others to help him. It’s impossible to see every possible permutation of the plot and puzzles in one or even two playthroughs; however, it will always culminate in the same climax (if not the same denouement, of which there are six). Delightfully, you have the option of going on many seemingly unrelated sidequests, such as say helping a local cryptozoologist (to Kim’s chagrin) look for phasmids. Yet most quests do wind up relating back to the main plot and can help Harry build up his attributes along the way.

There are three ways to build Harry’s stats throughout the game. The easiest is through clothing; you can collect a whole menagerie of hats, ties, glasses, coats, shirts, etc that will change your skill points. Some items will raise one area (e.g. drama) while curtailing another (e.g. authority). You can mix and match these at will to help pass checks. The second way is through gaining experience points by completing tasks. For every 100 XP, you will get a skill point you can use to raise attributes; alternatively, you can also acquire thought quests, which need a skill point to be equipped. These quests take game time to fully process (in which some attributes will be lessened in the meantime), and once Harry has completed the thought, he will gain a permanent benefit, like raising a stat, or finding more money in locked containers. Money (which can also be acquired by begging or pawning) is necessary to sleep at the hotel the first two nights; after that it’s only necessary if you want to use it to purchase clothes or various items to finish sidequests. Now’s a good time to mention that despite the hurried manner of Kim at times to finish the investigation, the game has no time limit. Time only progresses during conversations or more long-winded tasks, and the game is usually generous in letting you know if a certain action will cut off certain game paths.


The third way to affect stats, and my least favorite, is through using drugs. While some, like magnesium, are only used to restore health, Harry can use toxic chemicals to raise his stats. Nicotine, alcohol, and speed are easily bought or found in town, and they all provide significant help in certain areas; while they temporarily can reduce health or morale, those can be easily boosted back up with healing drugs. On my playthrough, I liberally used chemicals to boost my stats and I never not felt gross about it. Even setting aside the notion that these toxic chemicals would make someone a better detective overall, I was annoyed that there was little in the way of punishment for doing so. Without being a moralist about it, I find this method of stat progression uninteresting. Moreover, one can take this path without ruining Harry’s redemption arc in the slightest (should you choose that route). The whole idea that this out of control addict who nearly doomed an investigation with his use can suddenly use chemicals in moderation to help him is laughable.

Visually, the game is a treat. Martinaise is realized with watercolor expressionism, and if nothing else evokes how dreary the town has become. Dilapidated apartment buildings, abandoned shopping areas, and eroded coastlines dominate the scenery. While the faces of characters on screen are somewhat difficult to make out, during conversations a hand-drawn portrait accompanies the dialogue and they all excel in evoking a vibe for each person. While animations are used minimally, they are deployed well and are effective.

Background music is sparse and minimalist which is appreciated. The band British Sea Power wrote the BAFTA-winning score, and most of the tracks are what best be could considered ambient rock, with occasional flare of punk. The music never dominates a scene (unless Harry is also hearing music), serving mostly to give the game a gentle rhythm. Sound effects are also rare, but satisfying (especially the click of rolling dice and the beat when you make a good roll).

The menu system is extensive but for the most part user friendly. You can easily swap out items in your inventory. One menu keeps a list of all your red checks and white checks you have yet to complete, making finding them again easier. Once you acquire a map, you can quick travel from three locations (to the other three locations). Another menu shows your current attribute stats, while another keeps track of all your thought quests. Blissfully, there is no limit to how many times you can save the game, and the game will auto-save on top of that every once in a while.

The game was designed for a keyboard and mouse; while that works pretty flawlessly, I wanted to sit back and relax with a gamepad. Moving precisely doesn’t work quite right with the pad, which while not necessary, can be annoying. I also found that accessing some parts of the menu and triggering some in-game thought bubbles were a bit janky with the joystick.

My enjoyment of Disco Elysium is mostly driven by the addictive dice-roll elements and the incredible voice acting throughout. While we never hear Harry speak (outside of his internal narration), near everyone else is a veritable treat to listen to. Kim is voiced to perfection by Jullian Champenois, giving his character a vaguely French accent (despite being visually coded as Asian, Kim has only ever lived in the French coded Revachol). He’s soft-spoken, but his words can also provide a subtle bite. I loved every minute Kim was contributing to the conversation. I also have to give a shout-out to Cuno, a foul-mouthed, speed-addicted youth who’s been throwing rocks at the corpse. While the game grossly rewards you for giving him access to drugs, Cuno is simultaneously hilarious and endearing, and I sought out interaction with him as often as I could.


Despite Kim being characterized perfectly, I found most of the game to be terribly overwritten. Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz wrote the script. He excels at evoking imagery and it’s incredible how much backstory (not only to Revachol, but the entire planet) is woven throughout the game to make everything feel real. But many characters drone on and on about their personal ideologies and political leanings, so much so that many of them begin to sound like professors and lose any emotional weight. Political theory plays a heavy role; you will be frequently asked about your leanings or given chances to espouse them. You can promote communism, fascism, moralism, or ultraliberalism, or be wishy-washy about all of them. Personally, I couldn’t always tell what options fit with which ideology (nor did I have interest in playing politics), so I wound up having no moral center. Several characters are also racist, and one in particular will drone on about his racist ideas (with painfully slow enunciation) for over a half an hour if you let him.

The game’s climax is intense and an intensely rewarding culmination of your investigation. While many loved how the game proceeds afterwards, I was left disappointed. For starters, the ending negates most of the detective work you’ve done throughout the game; while it’s not unrealistic, it solidifies that little you do prior matters at all. It also didn’t hold any emotional resonance for me, in part because there’s a further deluge of political ideology espoused.

Despite my complaints, I still loved the game and found the 25-30 hour mystery compelling enough that I started a new game so I could see how different skills played out with conversations and puzzles. However, I gave up on this endeavor quickly. A lot of the different choices you can make as Harry have only a little bit to do with strategy or ethical dilemmas, and mostly to do with shifting your personality. Much like the reason I didn’t replay Heavy Rain, I enjoyed the version of Harry I initially created, so seeing him be a different person was jarring. The biggest pitfall for me, though, was the fact that choosing alternate conversation options often winds up with Harry being an abusive, homophobic, and sexist dickwad. While many have replayed the game multiple times without every choosing to play Harry this way, doing so leaves a lot of repetition over another 25 hours of game time, something I can’t say I’m excited to do.

I want it to come across that despite all of my complaints, I highly recommend Disco Elysium to anyone who is intrigued by an adventure/RPG hybrid where no dexterity is required. I only emphasize my concerns as this may be the highest rated adventure of all-time by both fans and critics. Most likely it’s one of those games that you’ll either instantly love and immerse yourself in, or one of those games you’ll quickly find you dislike and won’t bother to rate at all given how long it is. While I had some misgivings about the details, the game’s general design is incredible and I hope many more future games use it for inspiration.

A murder mystery where you’re the murderer is ripe for intrigue and clever manipulation. Overboard! begins with a bang (not literally), pulling you into the dark web of secrets surrounding the shipmates you haven’t killed. Sadly, though, the structure of the game leads to repetition and fatigue, leaving it way less satisfying than it should have been.

Written and directed by Jon Ingold, this mystery sees you play a young socialite in 1935, whose tired of her husband and promptly deposits him into the sea. Waking up the next morning, she thinks about her upcoming freedom if she can just make it through the last day of the voyage avoiding suspicion. This is when you take over and the steward knocks on your cabin door. Your first decision is whether or not to let him into your room, and a dozen more choices await you over the course of the day that can lead to any number of conclusions.

Choices vary from whom you talk to, who you decide to make your friend, where you go on the ship and what items you have on your person. Should you act normal and go to the dining room for breakfast? Maybe scour the ship making sure you didn’t leave any clues behind? Or perhaps you should look up dirt on someone else in case they saw something. Heck, maybe forget all that and just sabotage your own fate. Each permutation of the game is a delight, replete with dramatic flare and charming dialogue. Each run-through of the game takes just five to ten minutes.

Other than the opening narration, there’s no voice acting, just some audible mumbling and sound effects with occasional light music. The graphics are simple but bright two-dimensional drawings of the ship and its characters.

Thankfully I reached about two-thirds of the potential endings within the first few hours of play, because boy does it get old fast. While you are allowed to rewind any scene once through playthrough, you cannot save your progress. So if you want to try a few different branching paths based on the same few hours of decisions, you have to go through the same dialogue and actions ad nauseum. Which would be tolerable, except many times you’ll find your ideas didn’t really change the outcome and you basically played the exact same version of the story three times in a row. There’s a fast-forward feature that will essentially push you through the same decisions you did last time (until you decide to stop it), but it’s still monotonous watching each scene play out repeatedly.

There is a hint system of sorts. You can go to the chapel and talk to a cross; God will then sarcastically answer your questions. But the hints are generally vague enough to not be particularly helpful. Once I got bored, I pulled up a walkthrough to find the final few endings and achievements. The game is so delightful that it was still fun to complete it this way. I only wish the game would have been designed to encourage me to do it on my own.

Last night I was feeling depressed, laying in bed, and wanting to escape. I wanted to do something that was simple, that didn't engage any of the emotional parts of my brain. So I thought an Andrew Schultz game might do the trick. I was right.

Like the story behind a PennyPress logic puzzle or a Mr. Mystery invisible ink game, Why Pout? has a barely there plot with barely there characters saying barely anything coherent. What is does have is a gleeful amount of homophone puzzles which are heavily clued and heavily hinted if you're struggling. I breezed through in about an hour, requiring only a few hints to nudge me in the right direction.

Would this game be better if the characters were more fleshed out? Probably. Would it be better with an actual story? Perhaps. But then it would have felt more out of place to have an area dedicated solely to reeling off a bunch of cuss words. And sometimes, when you're depressed, you just need a safe space to ****ing swear.

Considered one of the most difficult games in the Infocom catalogue, Spellbreaker deploys an excellent plot that neatly and satisfyingly wraps up the Enchanter trilogy. Yet, as seems to be in the case in all of his games, Dave Lebling’s puzzle structure maddeningly gets in the way of most of the fun.

Magic is failing in the Zork universe, with spells by even the most powerful sorcerers fizzling out on the regular. During a council meeting to discuss the problem, a shadowy figure (presumably armed with the cleesh spell) turns everyone but you into an amphibian. Unable to chase the figure down but obtaining a magical white cube in the process, you must explore the far reaches of the empire to save your colleagues and magic itself.

By using a spell to investigate its mystical properties, the cube transports you to a void, presumably inside the cube itself. From there you can go various directions to explore a random area (in the real world) in search of additional cubes. Each cube contains its own void and connection to other parts of the world. Delightfully, each area is not its own vacuum; you will need to acquire spells and secular items to help you solve puzzles in other sections. Sometimes you will need to return to the same cube on multiple occasions and multi-step puzzles abound.

This setup is frankly brilliant, giving a sense of realism to the adventure while allowing the player to work on several different puzzles at once. At times you need to draw connections between the worlds to understand how your actions in one area can affect another. In true Zorkian fashion, there is little sense of atmospheric continuity; for example, a slippery field of talking boulders lays near a random treasure vault with no explanation for their existence. While there is a bit less randomness to the map than in Sorcerer, it still feels difficult to be truly immersed in a world where nothing seems to make any sense.

For a while I quite enjoyed myself, landing a couple of eureka moments while solving puzzles. But mixed in with some truly fun brain teasers (including several involving the manipulation of time) are monotonous math problems, random chance exercises, and instant death rooms. One requires you to map out an area while trying to corner another party in order to catch them. This would be fine if there was a pure solution, but the movement of the other party is random and it took me almost a half hour of repetition to catch them despite knowing exactly what to do. There’s a coin-weighing puzzle, which are boring enough in their own right, and a slog when needing to do so via text commands. A copyright protection puzzle also comes at a very key moment about midway through the game, and should you answer incorrectly, you won’t even find out until the very end, requiring you to replay large swaths of the game, including those two obnoxious puzzles just mentioned. At least in Sorcerer, the copyright protection was at the beginning and required some deduction; this one is just mean, given that a simple typo could set you back hours.

And there is so much learning by dying. While a few of these instances can theoretically be avoided with some lucky educated guesses, at least one situation is literally a 50/50 shot. And it’s not as simple as saving, dying instantly, and restoring. It’s puzzling around for a good long while down a dead-end path, eventually learning later through trial and error that you made the wrong random guess (that you don’t even realize is a guess at the time). That’s not an expert level puzzle as the game box suggests. It’s just patently unfair. And let’s not forget to mention the game’s final puzzle; it’s pretty awesome, but also requires dying at least once unless you luckily perform an action that would be considered foolhardy anywhere else.

Some concessions were made by Lebling. The thirst and hunger daemons are gone, which I imagine was tough for him given he brought the latter back for The Lurking Horror. The sleep daemon is here as in the other games, but the dreams are even more pointless than ever. You also acquire an object which can help you carry unlimited inventory. But he couldn’t help himself and threw in several puzzles around water that require you to do some lengthy and dull inventory swapping to avoid ruining some of your possessions.

It’s all a shame, too, as Spellbreaker has so much going for it. Essentially it takes the best parts of the first two games, the atmosphere of Enchanter and the humor of Sorcerer, while expanding upon the fun spell casting system, all culminating in a rewarding conclusion. But the road to get there is inconsistent and annoying. The longer I played, the more grouchy I became, which led me to consulting hints more frequently. I still recommend it to fans of the series; just don’t feel any shame about using help.

Steve Meretzky took over the reins from Marc Blank and Dave Lebling in his second adventure after the wildly popular Planetfall. His style is quite evident here. While telling perhaps a weaker story with a significantly less serious atmosphere than Enchanter, Sorcerer far exceeds it as a sequel thanks to a more user-friendly design and some truly excellent puzzles.

You’ve been promoted in the interim and are more or less the right-hand man of Belboz, the head of the Guild of Enchanters. One morning he goes missing and in your search for him you discover he may be in the thralls of an evil sorcerer. And, unfortunately, that is pretty much the plot. In fact, the only times you can encounter this evil presence yourself is at the beginning if you fall asleep at home (which is never clearly explained) and at the very end.

Upon starting I was immediately annoyed as I was told I was getting thirsty and hungry, my biggest complaint from the first story. But I was soon relieved to discover a magic spell that obviated the need to eat or drink. That this new spell was even necessary was a rather pointlessly cruel joke, but at the same time a humble acknowledgement of a past mistake. The sleep daemon still exists and for the same reason: to get incredibly subtle hints for later in the game. As the game has no time limit, you can sleep just about anywhere when you get tired without worry.

Most of the game takes place in the land where the evil sorcerer hails, and it is extra-Zorkified as decrepit castles and coal mines butt right up against a gnome-run amusement park with a casino and a flume ride. Most locations are vividly portrayed even if as a totality it’s an incoherent mess. As such the map is easy to remember.

The amazing thing about Sorcerer is how fairly it treats the player, a rarity in 1984. There are plenty of walking dead scenarios you can get yourself into, but they’re pretty much either obvious right before or right afterwards. For example, you can drink a potion when you don’t need it, and it’s immediately clear you need to restore. Or you might enter an area that kills you, but the signs were clear that potential danger lied ahead. But beyond that, there is an optional spell that allows you to essentially create a save point, reviving you to that location if you kick the bucket. And the really cool aspect is that not only is the spell there to rescue you, it can also be manipulated to solve a few different puzzles in the game. While the “normal” way to the solve these puzzles may be more satisfying to some, I was happy to be rewarded with what my brain felt was clever in the moment.

Sorcerer rewards the player in many other ways as well. While there are many red herrings, when you attempt to solve puzzles in logical ways and fail you are almost always rewarded with an amusing retort as to why it didn’t work. The side effect of this was that I trusted the game to communicate well and I never went to a walkthrough when I was stuck. In fact, to this point it’s the first Infocom game where I didn’t require at least one hint (outside of A Mind Forever Voyaging, which is generally puzzleless).

And to top it all off, there are some damn fine puzzles. Two double as copyright protection, but you still must use logic to correctly interpret the game’s lore from the written materials. Believe it or not, there’s a maze that is actually really cool, a statement I may never make again. Finally, an unexpected time travel puzzle near the end is extraordinarily satisfying to solve.

There are three endings depending on how you play out the endgame, with the two better endings requiring you having solved previous puzzles. They’re well written, if a little underwhelming from a story perspective, an expected outcome given the utter lack of plot progression throughout the game. 

For those who loved Enchanter, Sorcerer may feel like a bit of a letdown as it veers wildly in tone and barely does anything to further the Zorkian lore. Thankfully, the excellent spellcasting system was maintained; so if you’re mostly just in it for the puzzle-solving you’ll be right at home.

The first game of the second trilogy in the Zork universe, Enchanter tells a much more interesting tale with significantly more rewarding puzzles than its predecessors. Sadly, some questionable design choices and inconsistency make it not as fun to play today.

Rather than being a treasure hunter, you play a young magician whose skills are so pathetic that they’ve been sent under relative anonymity to a castle to defeat the evil Krill, a vastly powerful wizard. You begin the game with four spells, three of which you barely remember, and must learn more in order to prevail. As you find scrolls, you can imprint them into your spell book and use them repeatedly, with the exception of two spells that are so powerful they can only be used once. Only a few puzzles in the game don’t require magic; the rest all rely on you using at least one spell, if even for one part of the task. And your reward for solving each puzzle grants you another spell.

Initially, you can only memorize three spells at a time; after using them you have to rememorize them again if you want to use them. While this obstacle seems pointlessly cruel at first, it makes sense given the general ineptitude of your character and plays a key role in future puzzles where preparation is required before entering a dangerous situation. What is truly fun, though, is all the various ways you can utilize your spells. Some aren’t needed to win the game at all, but can be used in lieu of other spells. Several puzzles have multiple solutions to cater to the inner workings of your brain. They’re also a welcome mix of serious (defend against unnatural death) and silly spells (turn your foe into an amphibian). Better yet, there’s plenty of funny easter eggs if you want to intentionally misuse your spells.

As for the two spells I mentioned that can only be used once; they can be used in several places, but only one is correct, giving you extra pause before you deploy them. While using them incorrectly puts your game in an unwinnable state, it’s not that difficult to tell when you’ve boofed. And even if you don’t realize it, the game is short enough that backtracking isn’t stressful. 

Sadly, this wonderful spell system is almost ruined by issues rampant in the early days of gaming. Most unforgivable are the hunger and thirst daemons that clog up most of the fun. While finding water and food is easy and your supply should last you the whole game unless you completely fiddle-fart around, the whole process just gets in the way. You have an inventory limit that’s needlessly wasted on carrying sustenance. Some puzzles have delicate timing, and if you happen to be really thirsty or hungry in that moment it can ruin the process. And mostly it’s just not interesting. There’s also a sleep daemon, though it’s not as cumbersome and leads you to dreams which can provide subtle hints.

I also became frustrated on several occasions with the puzzles. While they are all generally logical (though a bit of a stretch in a couple of cases), and a few are almost insultingly easy, most are poorly clued with no guidance if you’re on the right track. While I don’t expect a cheering audience while solving a puzzle, there are many times I wasn’t sure if my issue was that I was completely off base or if the parser just didn’t like the way I was phrasing something. That’s not to say the parser is poor; many synonyms are implemented and it can handle multi-step commands. But some of the responses are so curt and generic that I assumed I was asking something of the game not possible only to learn that I was oh so close to figuring it out. Thus I had to look up a few hints for what otherwise would have been very satisfying puzzles to solve.

The prose itself is clean and in general evocative, though on occasions it’s sparse and they’re only so many ways to keep me interested in a run-of-the-mill castle. The game certainly could have been haunting, though akin to Zork there’s more focus on whimsy, which is occasionally jarring even when funny. The final game sequence, especially, feels like a bit of a letdown as it’s very quick with little time for the atmosphere to settle in.

Despite my quibbles, Enchanter is definitely worth a play by Infocom fans, especially if you intend to play the other games in the series. Just be prepared to be annoyed at times and have a hint guide handy.

Bob Bates is a legend in the world of text adventures. While his two games for Infocom (Arthur and Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels) are generally not considered among their best, he co-founded Legend Entertainment and had his hands in almost every game, including Eric the Unready, Gateway, The Blackstone Chronicles, and Quandaries. After being co-president of Zynga and working on all sorts of projects, he returned after 20 years to the world of interactive fiction with the delightful Thaumistry: In Charm’s Way. I was one of the kickstarters and even got a couple of lines into the game myself. Naturally, I was quite eager to play. And while it’s a very short game with little freedom, it’s still a joy for those who like wordplay and tongue-in-cheek humor.

You play as Eric Knight, a young inventor who got famous as a teenager thanks to a lab accident that led to a remarkable invention. However, years have gone by without anything else to add to the résumé. With his career on the verge of ruin, he is visited by a bodger, a magical user who is part of a hidden society that subtly tries to affect positive change in the world. A very successful inventor has created a device that can detect magic, which would be the end of the bodgers; you’re enlisted to sneak into a convention to destroy this device.

Thaumistry is excellently coded. I’ve played the game twice now and have detected not a single bug, incongruent response, or guess-the-verb issue that tend to be the hallmark frustrations with text adventures. Your bodger friend gives you a tutorial on magic (while the game gives you a tutorial on playing text adventures), including teaching you a few spells (or charms, as it were), as you learn about their history before being brought to the convention. Of course, the magic-detecting device is under guard and there are investors who would also like to get their hands on it.

The disappointing feature of the game is that it's overly linear. While there is often a few puzzles you can be working on at a given time, each has only one solution. And with few exceptions, every spell you learn throughout the game is only relevant to one puzzle, often obviously so. There are a couple of spells that require some acute thinking, including a two-step puzzle that involves time travel. And most alternative solutions that aren’t accepted are at least recognized and explained away. However, I would have much preferred a system like in Wishbringer, where every puzzle has multiple solutions and more points were awarded for the more clever angle. Speaking of points, this game has 100 of them, and there is no way to win the game without getting all 100, defeating the purpose of the scoring system.

The game also needlessly locks off certain areas until your bodger friend feels you need them, making him seem less like a sidekick than a manipulative dungeon master. More than that, these additional areas (such as the zoo and the financial district) are neither near the convention nor connected to it in anyway, making the exercise feel quite contrived.

While there are no graphics or sound of any kind, a helpful map is one click away so that you don’t need to make one yourself. Though, the map is so small that within twenty minutes of playing you’ll have it memorized anyway. And there is an excellent nested hint system that recognizes where you are in the game and offers gradual hints for available puzzles only.

What ultimately saves the game is–-forgive me-–its charm. Nearly every character and scene exudes whimsy, from the twin sisters who created a literal copy machine to the inventor who values his privacy so much that nobody is allowed to see his product. Perhaps my favorite is a stranger you bump into who is playing with an invisible dog, and you must figure out how to convince the dog that you are a worthy play partner. The game also has the classic Infocom-style digs at pop culture and authority figures without it feeling like Mr. Bates is hitting you over the head with his personal grievances.

While it doesn’t offer much in the way of length or challenge, Thaumistry is an amusing romp that should take even text adventure novices no more than an afternoon or two to complete.