Preliminary: Very interesting. Finding a way to play Mac was quite difficult, tho it is real cool to see the first examples of PC windows, etc. This is, really, just a graphic text adventure that is complicated by drop down menus--nothing more (turns out I was a bit wrong, you do click on the things in the screen, e.g. picking up a sword and interacting with the Guard at the beginning... I suppose it is a point and click adventure, just with dropdown menus and text commands too! lol). Calling it a true point and click is quite facetious imo. I liked the plotline, I liked that it takes a couple hours to finish not too crazy long, and I like that it has RPG elements (tho no one seems to know if gaining experience, etc., really makes any difference--using different weapons definitely seems to).

Day 2 of playing proved to me that I had not solved my Mac problems. I had been using a browser method and thought I had saved (which is a feature the game, thankfully, offers)--but alas I hadn't. Time to start over... hopefully I keep the excitement of following along that video guide to know how to enter commands and interacting with such early GUI... Also hopefully I have my Mac hard drive properly set up for saves cuz I rarely have time to play a 2-4 hours game in one sitting. Welp, on the 3rd day of playing, can confirm: It's soooo much easier to save now that I have a Mac harddrive possible. Yay!

Look: 8/10 All black and white, but it's nice to be first exposed to this initial Mac look. For being black and white, it had some cool drawings and immersed you in the world anyway. Lol this map room cracked me up, kinda lame

Here's an example of a well-done screen, even if it's your usual drawn, early text adventure look

And another

The ancient Greek structure underwater reminded me of a later Freddi Fish screen. Just full of great, yet simple screens

Sound: 7/10 Mostly just annoying and out of nowhere. At least it attempts to be relevant by sometimes "setting the scene" etc. (e.g., outside sounds when outside). On the 2nd play, the sounds grew on me, possibly because I had them at a lower volume while listening to something else from another source, and/or possibly because I was playing it straight from my computer rather than a browser or YT video. Not that I loved the sounds, but they gave me a classic/nostalgic adventure feel. The door open/close sounds were quite nifty and advanced :-p Goofy that's what I notice, I know..

Play: 9/10 Unlike most text adventures, the puzzles weren't overly convoluted, and I felt capable of figuring things out on my own (tbh, this was simpler than most later JRPGs to figure out what to do next). But like most early CRPGs, the battle rng was mostly tacky and frustrating (well, and the battles were just tedious in general). The text adventure writing is mostly clear and well-done. Like most RPGs, there's a nice progression of equipment, cool that you start out with the sword and a worn shield and keep getting other weapons, etc. Felt like later RPGs and even Zelda, etc.

Day 2: Yeah, I can't deny it: I really like the format of this game. Really effective for the limitations of its time, even if it's sometimes annoying to discern which method you are supposed to communicate the command. If only the battles weren't so tacky-early-textadventure-and-rpg style, where it's purely RNG with a very low chance of survival no matter what clever things you do, and if only the RPG aspects actually seemed to do anything like make you stronger--then this would be a toptoptopnotch game!

Day 3: Pro-tip/spoiler: "break mirror" during the Black Knight fight to skip that headache. Anothe r pro-tip: don't care about Wealth or Experience or picking up things like Some Gold Coins (tho I'm convinced Experience miiiiight make a difference).

Feel: 9/10 It quite smoothly shifts between text-based responses and drop-menu commands (tho I preferred to use the key shortcuts whenever possible, cuz drop down menus aren't it). It wasn't always intuitive when to switch to text commands or to click on things or drop-down menu command, but it was integrated mostly well (especially for 1984).

3rd Day: I love how items/power-ups/etc. prove useful later in the game a la later adventure games like Zelda and Tomba etc etc, but also like the best of the earlier text adventure games. And like many early text adventure games, especially those with graphics, the setting jumps from, like, medieval fantasy to jungle to modern to pirate, etc. ha. Giving me a nostalgic feel for those text adventures I've mostly tired of, but in a new format/medium making it feel fresh and fun. I always liked how early text adventures, and early microcomputer platformers+action-adventures too now that I'm at that point, accept their limitations and just play around with whatever graphics and capabilities they have (like those games with saxophones as enemies, etc.). It makes for a nice "indie" feel, in current gaming terms.

Attachment: 9/10 As I got deeper and deeper into the game, it became more frequent that there was no way to know which command to use (you'd think you'd learn the mechanics over the time, quite the opposite here)... sometimes you type to open something, sometimes you click on it, sometimes you drop-down, etc. I began to rely on that youtube video above more and more, which is fine--I enjoy playing games that require guides. After all, I'm nearing the NES era where I will probly rely a lot on guides (I prefer written guides over videos tho), so this is quite the precedent for the upcoming era I'm excited for! I like following along, tbh, and this one's a bit long! Def gonna take a couple days!

3rd Day: Wow, this really shows how advanced the Mac was for early 1984... it even asked whether I wanted to replace my save file, and all sorts of other things I thought came much later. Huge advancement for GUIs and PCs in general. Pro-tip: you can Rest to regain "health"/status, but you can never quite get back to Very Good after you've been hit at all. Not worth wasting your time trying to ha. (ahhh turns out certain rooms, resting can get you to Very Good, like the large mirror room.) And oooo, Black Knight. Giving me later RPG/adventure vibes like RuneScape's Black Knights.

4th Day: Welp, now that I'm getting into the era of longer and more expansive games, I will have to change how I write reviews. I'm thinking all these "2nd day, 3rd day" etc updates will be Status Updates if anything, and I will wait to start my review until I finish my playthrough (except, perhaps, for the Preliminary section). Feeling the "modern" (by modern, I mean NES) era getting closer!

Many many days later: So yeah, this will be my last review with a structure like this. I will have to write them at the end, because now that I am getting to longer games, and now that I am streaming games, it's just not realistic. Thank goodness for this map when I streamed this game haha, cuz I wanted to wing it/not use a video-guide (I had already played through it once, after all). It was really fun to return to that early text adventure feel of following a map and solving the puzzles on my own, with fantasy sci-fi sea desert--basically every classic text adventure setting--but within a new format of point-and-click and menus. Very impressive game that was truly fun and full of replayability. Also significant because I could see it as the "end" of my old way of playing/reviewing games and on to a new era, coupled with streaming my favorite/s from each week! Yay for change and growth! <3 I'm already replaying it at least once for the stream, and I've shown my buddy this game too. Definitely earned its 9. But done at last! Great game

Completion: Main Story (I want to say 100% but you could argue there is more to do in the game) Playtime: ~5 hours over about 7 separate sessions/days