<!--
	Title: Infocom's Sorcerer adventure game leaves you spellbound
	Authors: John Markoff & Paul Freiberger
	Source: San Jose Mercury News, 3 June 1984
	Date: 3 June 1984
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

<blockquote style="border-top: 2px solid; border-bottom: 2px solid; font-weight: bold;">
Sorcer. Infocom. 55 Wheeler St., Cambridge, MA 02138. (617) 576-3190. $49.95.
Available for most popular personal computers.
</blockquote>

Trapped in the Chamber of Living Death, you feel
as if you’re floating in the center of an infinite void.
Hideous parasites are tearing at your flesh. Amazingly, you don’t die.

Neither did we and thus can tell you about Sorcerer,
an Infocom adventure game that has caused us equal
amounts of amusement and aggravation.

The beauty of Sorcerer, and other Infocom games,
is that they allow you to interact with your computer
by typing in what feels like complete sentences. Much
of the time the Infocom game "parser" will correctly
interpret what you are saying, or if it doesn’t understand
will respond unpredictably. (This can be amusing.)

We don’t want to give away too many of the details
of Sorcerer. Besides, we might mislead you since we
haven’t gotten beyond the Chamber of Living Death
which admittedly isn’t very far.

A brief message from Karza of Thriff (we never
found out what a Karza is supposed to be) on the first
page of the "Popular Enchanting" document enclosed
with the game explains that the adventure is based on
the saga of the young Enchanter.

The Circle of Enchanters has dispatched a "fledgling
Enchanter" against unknown evils. The Karza
concludes, "In this time of crisis do we have the protection
that only a Sorcerer can provide?"

In this Infocom adventure, you are the young
Enchanter who has achieved fame in the Circle by
defeating the evil warlock Krill. Now you must seek
out new evils and destroy them. Thus, the game
begins.

It's not easy. You move through rooms in the Hall of
the Guide of Enchanters and through a fantasy land by
typing instructions.

We did manage to get past the first section of Sorcerer,
in which you are either struck by lightning or devoured by a hellhound.

We sauntered down the hallway through the darkness
into Frobar’s headquarters. Hmmm. No clues
here.

The folks at Infocom  have a sense of humor as
you'll discover when you enter the quarters of Belboz,
the most powerful of all Enchanters, who has vanished.

His disappearance is what makes you the hope of
the Circle. Perhaps Belboz’s parrot can offer some
clues to his disappearance and the pending evil:

"Squawk! You should never have let down your
mindshield, you doddering old Enchanter, Squawk!
Now where can I hide this key?"

As you move through the game, you'll have to learn
to make good use of your magic spell book. And don’t
try to be clever and think you can solve this aventure
without pencil and paper. Begin work on your
map immediately.

One of the joys of Infocom games is the attention to
detail they offer. In one room we found an old matchbook
cover that offered a special spell that could be
ordered by mail.

In a brass container in the lobby of the Guild Hall
we found a copy of "Popular Enchanting" magazine
that contained stories on the explosion of the spell
scroll manufacturers and the coming shakeout in the
magic potion industry.

What's the future of adventure games? Some time
ago Infocom ran a catchy advertising campaign based
on the slogan "all the graphics are in your head."

This was a reference to the fact that, unlike many
other game companies, Infocom has so far bucked the
trend toward mindboggling graphic displays on personal
computers.

We hope that they continue to focus their attention
on the insides rather than the appearance of their
games. Adventure games that offer you a graphic display
of each sequence as you move from room to
room or place to place miss the point.

The pleasure of an adventure game is that it can
potentially free your imagination in much the same
way as reading a novel. It is easy to lose yourself in a
well written adventure game.