Enchanter
1983 Infocom
Designed by Marc Blank, Dave Lebling
Reasonability:
There are several things you need to discover by dying (or running into a dead
end) and then restoring:
*) you have to know in advance about Krill's bodyguards in order to know which
spells you should have ready
*) you must get the right objects from the map room before the adventurer;
you won't know what you need until later
*) you have to go straight from getting the adventurer to the guarded door, or
risk losing him; once you lose him, hooking up with him again by the guarded
door could push you beyond your food limit
*) you must know in advance to drop your inventory elsewhere before going to
the temple, since you can't get it back later
*) you only find out about the limited use of the pencil and eraser when you've
exhausted them -- examination suggests not many, but you don't know whether
that means, e.g., 1 or 3
*) in the machine room, exex myself is reasonable, but the unknown spears get
you, and ozmoo doesn't work, either -- at least the turtle is an obvious
character to try
*) you must know in advance your fate in the temple -- but it looks dangerous,
so ozmoo in advance is not too bad
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Difficulty:
*) summoning the adventurer to defeat a monster -- clever puzzle
*) figuring out the dungeon maze -- actually doing it is easy, but understanding
the goal and the working of the pencil and eraser and the Unseen Terror is a
good lateral leap
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Comments:
The spell system is a great addition to the standard dungeon crawl.