Congrats to jeffro on beating Infocom’s Enchanter! (OK, that’s a really old post, but sometimes I get way behind on my blog reading.) I played the Zork trilogy like crazy back in junior high and high school, but for some reason I never picked up any of the Enchanter trilogy. It’s too bad, because playing it now I think I might actually have enjoyed Enchanter even more than I liked the Zork games—the Zorks are essentially gonzo Gygaxian dungeon crawls, whereas Enchanter seems a bit more traditional and plot-oriented, and in general I prefer the latter to the former.

I played Enchanter for the first time ten or so years back after acquiring a copy of the wonderful Infocom Classics collection. I got maybe two-thirds of the way through before getting stuck and then distracted by school, but I’ve always intended to revisit it. The puzzles that I recall were a little less… random than those in Zork, and I didn’t encounter any that exhibited the sheer nasty near-unsolvability that some of the Zork puzzles did. (Jeffro mentions Zork III, which was the game that finally made me break down and consult InvisiClues for help: that stupid maze with the movable walls still makes me angry just thinking about it.) I really like Enchanter’s central gimmick—you’re a magician who knows a handful of low-powered but useful spells, which must be put to unorthodox uses to solve puzzles. Some of the puzzles made really clever use of the spells.

Ahhh, now I’m in the mood to dig out Enchanter and see if I can solve it this time. It’s strangely comforting to know that should I ever want to dig into Infocom games again, I’ve got an entire unplayed trilogy to explore.

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