Enchanter cover art

Game entry

Enchanter

1983 · Adventure · Mac, DOS, Atari ST, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, Amiga, Apple II, TRS-80 Color Computer, Amstrad CPC, TRS-80, Amstrad PCW · Infocom

Enchanter is listed in the GameForever catalogue but not in the duel pool: this game is never offered for a vote, its 1,500 points are never at stake and it does not appear in the world ranking. Its entry and its debate stay open.

World rank

ELO score

1,500

Wins

Duels played

0

The duel pool gathers the best-known titles of the catalogue, cover included, so that every match-up stays meaningful. It is recalculated with every catalogue update: this game may join it later. How a game enters the duels →

About Enchanter

Enchanter is a 1983 interactive fiction computer game written by Marc Blank and Dave Lebling and published by Infocom. It belongs to the fantasy genre and was the first fantasy game published by Infocom after the Zork trilogy (it was originally intended to be Zork IV). The game had a parser that understood over 700 words, making it the most advanced interactive fiction game of its time. It was Infocom's ninth game.

Krill, an incredibly powerful evil warlock, is spreading chaos and destruction. None of the more experienced members of the Circle of Enchanters dare to attempt to stop him. In desperation, the player, a novice Enchanter with only a few weak spells in his spell book, is sent in hopes that Krill will either fail to detect him or dismiss him as harmless. More powerful spells can be found on scrolls hidden in various locations, but as the player becomes more of a threat, Krill will respond accordingly.

This game features an innovative new spell system based partially on Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series and partially Dungeons and Dragons' Vancian spell system, where spells must be prepared through "memorization" before being cast. As in the Earthsea series, each spell is represented by some nonsense "magic word" which is treated as a verb by the game's text parser, so that one can use the FROTZ spell (which causes objects to glow and give off light) by typing >FROTZ BOOK, in exactly the same way as one might type >PICK UP BOOK or >READ BOOK.

ELO progression

This game does not take part in duels: its score never moves, so there is no history to plot.

Head-to-head

As this game is never offered in duels, it has no match-up to its name.

In the same genre

All Adventure games →
  1. 58 Journey2012 · Adventure 1,868
  2. 265 Shenmue1999 · Adventure 1,775
  3. 275 Oxenfree2016 · Adventure 1,772
  4. 299 Firewatch2016 · Adventure 1,763
  5. 308 The Stanley Parable2013 · Adventure 1,761

Keep exploring

The community

The debate

0 comments

Posting requires an account: log in or sign up.

The debate is yours to open.

Nobody has spoken up about this game yet. Say what it's worth, and the thread starts here.

See the whole Enchanter debate →