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Perilous Magic

by David Fillmore

Zorkian
1999

About the Story

"A really short interactive comic tragedy." Humourously based on Infocom's Enchanter trilogy, your goal is to run off a newly completed report in triplicate. But you'll need the appropriate spell scrolls...
[--blurb from The Z-Files Catalogue]


Game Details

Off-Site Reviews

SPAG
Review by Francesco Bova from SPAG #20
3 rooms, 2 characters, 8 tangible objects, and 1 joke; that's all that there is to David Fillmore's 1999 offering Perilous Magic. Perilous Magic is one of a growing number of 'bite-sized' pieces of non-COMP IF that have become quite popular over the last year. 'Bite-sized' IF is interesting in that there's usually one convention that's being pushed or one joke that's being promoted and the games are typically finishable in a few minutes. Often, these smaller games are a nice break away from the bigger pieces out there that can seem more laborious than fun to finish.

Perilous Magic takes place in the Zork/Enchanter universe and is entirely built around a historical reference from the accompanying material in the Infocom game Enchanter. The game actually reminded me a bit of the film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, where the story of Hamlet is told from the confused perspective of the aforementioned bit players. With Perilous Magic, we look at a bit of Zorkian history -- specifically the misuse of a spell resulting in disaster -- through the eyes of the person who caused the disaster. The puzzles are straight forward and the goal easy to attain. The end result is amusing but alas, even for 'bite-sized' IF, the game is a little too sparse with many interesting options left untouched... [more at source page]
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SPAG
Review by Duncan Stevens from SPAG #21
How great an influence do the games of Infocom still have on today's IF? Hard to say, but there must be some presence there if an offhand remark in one of Infocom's manuals can turn into a game in its own right, as is the case with David Fillmore's Perilous Magic. The joke in question was a reference to a great fire--which, the manual said, was caused by some bureaucrat meaning to cast the ZEMDOR spell ("turn original into triplicate") but slipping up and casting the ZIMBOR spell ("turn one really big city into lots of tiny, little ashes"). It's a cute joke, and as long as you know the source, Perilous Magic is a cute game... [more at source]
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Page Update History

v.7: 29-Dec-2012 00:50 - David Welbourn (Current Version) - Edit Page - Normal View
Changed download links
  v.6: 29-Dec-2012 00:50 - OtisTDog
Changed external review links
v.5: 29-Dec-2012 00:49 - OtisTDog
Changed external review links
v.4: 27-Dec-2012 01:25 - OtisTDog
Changed download links, external review links
v.3: 11-Mar-2008 19:00 - David Welbourn
Changed description
v.2: 11-Mar-2008 18:59 - David Welbourn
Changed description
v.1: 29-Sep-2007 20:48 - IFDB
Created page