Into the Mystic

Into The Mystic is another well-crafted game from the fecund mind of the prolific Jack Lockerby. Like most of his games it was Quilled for the Commodore 64; he remained loyal to this platform despite Spectrum sales of his games outnumbering Commodore 64 purchases by a ratio of ten to one. Fortunately it is not bugged in a game-breaking way as some ports of his games are.

The back story invests you, a somewhat naive but brave everyman, with investigating the disappearance of magic from your land. That Merlin knows a sucker when he sees one. You begin your meanderings to the south of an Orc encampment, bivouacing for the night.

This game bears all the trademarks of a Jack Lockerby adventure: mainly tough but logical puzzles; a medium sized game map; many devious but realistically constructed puzzles; and soft and hard locks a plenty. Magic force fields and gas-filled courtyards are among the problems to be dealt with here. And robbers don't like leprosy! Who does?

One striking element is the most atrocious spelling I have ever come across in a text adventure. You will be hard pushed to find a single location description that doesn't have one howler at the very minimum. The standard makes Guardian columnists look positively anal in terms of spell checking. The Spectrum version is much tidier but differs in terms of objects and of course no "undo" or "take all" but there are often synonyms available for items and a few verbs that you rarely, if ever find elsewhere in text adventures. Fortunately a full verb list is given you at the beginning of the game and this should give you a nudge towards solving some of the more obscure puzzles, for instance what to do with the oil in the moat and the purpose of the toads in the fountain.

The descriptions could never be described as cloyingly atmospheric, but neither are they "You are in a field. Exits are North, East and West." Jack's games have always been more about puzzles and goals than acres of text, well-written or otherwise. One typical description from within the abandoned Great Hall: "This is the Great Hall that once rang to the sounds of knights and their damsels. Now it is bare except for a tapestry that lines the eastern wall. Stone steps lead up to a gallery." It's not pulling up any trees but then it's not Scott Adams strangulation either. As for NPCs they tend to be passive; the talking dragon, however is a nice touch and the Dark Woods conjure up a fair bit of menace; until you work out how to travel through them in safety that is. There isn't really much humour to the game; Jack wasn't interested in being a J.J. Guest or an Admiral Jota. I think the user-friendliness of the game could best be decribed as nasty rather than cruel; if you are foolish enough to travel through bandit country without a means of avoiding them then you can probably guess what fate awaits you; likewise there is a puzzle late on where you have to choose one of three objects and, if you think carefully about an unsolved puzzle when you reach this stage the correct choice should hopefully come to you. West Ham supporters may have an advantage here! There are two exceptions to the hard but fair rule though; one involves attempting to enter a building and being given no clues as to why you can't; I think a door which should have been in the description was either omitted from the Commodore 64 port or was missed out in the original Spectrum version as well; not having played the latter to conclusion I can't say for sure. You will recognise this oversight when you stumble across it. All I will say is, leave it and approach it from somewhere else. The second unfair scenario involves the opening of a wooden door which is on the far side of an ADVENT tribute maze. I managed to open it but any solution involving the frequency of a French radio station is just too obscure to be fair. Think Abba and 1975 here. One nice feature of this version is no inventory limit (the Spectrum version has a sack) and your light source is inexhaustible too.

Make sure you search and examine absolutely everywhere in this game as there are many hidden objects, more than in almost any other game that I can think of. By contrast the solutions to the Orc problem and passing through the force field are both masterpieces. Some objects have multiple uses too and any game which riffs off Lewis Carroll must be lauded.

Towards the end of his text adventure writing career Jack produced a couple of duds but he was at the height of his powers with this one.