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	Title: (MARKETALK: Reviews) Sorcerer
	Author: Margot Comstock Tommervik
	Source: Softalk, v4(10)
	Date: June 1984
	Transcription by Steve Derby
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**SORCERER**. By Steve Meretzky. The strongest effect Infocom's sorcery
weaves in the second of its Enchanter games is the outcome of a spell by
which the enchanter can move forward in time — just a tad. But it's
enough to precipitate an awesomely convoluted situation that, complex
mental gymnastics mastered, is absolutely logical. The puzzle enmeshed
in all this, along with its logistical substumpers, may well be the piece de
resistance of all Infocom's brain twisters.

Enough said. You'll read no potential clues here that might dilute the
delight of solving this one yourself.

Perhaps the most noticeable characteristic of *Sorcerer* overall is the
variety of ambiances and tempos it encompasses. Underground and surface
empires intertwine with each other and with bits and pieces of other
worlds. Imagine Valley Forge on a cliff overlooking the Flathead Ocean,
Johnson Wax on a turnpike guarded by gnomes. Coney Island in a giant
cave.

In the last of these, Bozbarland, "a magical futuristic fantasy amusement
park," resides an eloquent argument for the power of text in adventures:
it's a roller coaster. Enter the car that temptingly waits on a nearby
platform and the ride begins. Steve Meretzky's brief, simple, blow-by-blow
account of the action is apt to have you clutching for the guardrail.
In the game as in real life, the roller coaster is a diversion serving no real
purpose; but it's well worth the ride.

All Bozbarland captures the honky-tonk flavor of the midway, with
its atmosphere of elbow-bumping impatience, smoke-filled sleaze, and
the fast breakaway speed of the rides. Yet the brush strokes are few and
only detailed at their ends — the roller coaster, a flume ride, a haunted
house, a carnival game complete with well-caricatured shill, and even a
crooked casino slot machine. You can almost hear the tinny music.

Leave Bozbarland, and you're in a silent world of craters and
chasms, where money grows on trees — until you pick it. Or tunnel up to
the surface of the earth, where plagues of locusts distract from mine
fields, where rustic bridges collapse in disrepair and riverbanks crumble
in the sun.

Then there are the war memorials, with a different kind of silence —
the turreted ruins of an old fort, parade grounds in dishabille with an ancient
flag somehow flying still, an armory fallen victim to vandals and
looters, a solitary cannon inhabited by forest critters. And deep in the
bowels of the earth below, all that remains of the castle that predated the
fort: its dungeon.

A coal mine is alive, its eternal night smacking of the nineteenth century,
despite the faceless diligence of the Orwellian troglodytes that work
its endless shafts.

Finally, a glass palace, Infocom's 1984 answer to the twisty little
passages all alike of the original adventure. Like a labyrinth of mirrors in
three dimensions, the crystal palace cannot be solved by dropping
possessions. Indeed, the layout of the maze is far less complicated than
that. It's just that with all the glass and the glare of brilliant light bouncing
among walls and ceilings and floors, you can't distinguish anything;
in essence, you can't see. It takes thinking outside this cube and clever
use of resources to solve this one.

All these worlds are a long way from the monastic serenity of the Enchanter's
Guild headquarters in which the game begins.

Then, when you've explored and restored a hundred places a hundred
times and you finally reach the cool clean air of seashores and lazy
lagoons, it's all for naught. Time, you discover, was of the essence. So
it's back to the beginning, playing through with an economy of moves, to
give yourself time to tackle the end game.

And what an end game it is. It gives no quarter; every move must
count. Every part of the enchanter's being is besieged by needs and
shortages, frustrations and threats. Somehow keeping it all together, you
must solve a dozen puzzles that seem like a hundred, finally to earn the
greatest possible reward as enchanter and a thoroughly satisfying intellectual
reward as player.

You'll have worked hard for it. Throughout, *Sorcerer* is filled with
puzzles that stop you but don't stump you; in almost every case, you'll
feel like the answer is right there if you can just put the pieces together.
The game stops you not in frustration mode, but in hard thinking mode.
And that's great. That's what adventuring is all about.

And in a sense, 90 percent of this superior game is like a bonus;
the altered-time puzzle is just about worth the price of admission all by
itself. An inquiring mind could spend days after solving that puzzle just
mulling over its implications, the possibilities it suggests.

As has become usual, Giardini/Russell's implementation of Infocom's
documentation is superb. It's also essential. Not usual, but a
first for Infocom on Apples, players with IIes and IIcs can opt to play in
eighty-column mode with lower-case text.

Steve Meretzky's auspicious debut as a software author was made
with *Planetfall*. *Planetfall* was good, but *Sorcerer* shows considerable
development, tighter integration, and just plain polish. Keep it up, Steve,
and we'll be looking for you to precipitate a Pulitzer Prize for interactive
computer adventures.

Watch out for Berlyn, though.

<p class="smaller"><em>Sorcerer</em>, by Steve Meretzky, Infocom (55 Wheeler Street, Cambridge, MA
02138; 617-492-1031). $49.95.</p>