The Magicians Curse

That's some god awful sound effects and usually the budget Commodore 16 games aren't even worth playing for long but... there's something oddly alluring about this. The super fast gameplay and responsive controls, the nighttime setting, the alleged action-adventure elements (so far it feels like an adventure, but we shall see)

Look: 8/10 I love the nighttime forest look, and the UI especially on top with the Found: and Info: (tells you what item you got, and when you get hurt etc ha). It really did add to the action-adventure elements, which this proved to have. Of course, this is very simple as C16 games had to be , but the moon, the stars, and the UI make for a special Look. I could see myself having a lot of nostalgia for this if I had this as a kid.

Sound: -/- This would get a 6 because the sound effects are annoying, but I'm still in the era where I don't always rate Sound. I'm not sure when I will do the cutoff. Especially now that I normally play games with sound on (back before this chronology project, I almost never played with sound on or didn't pay attention to the sound as something else played in the background. I blame runescape for that habit :-p )

Play: 7/10 Tight, responsive controls with this simplistic version of an action-adventure, but y'all know I like straightforward and simple ha. It does have its tedious side, tho surprisingly not with the adventure elements (e.g., not a bunch of inventory management and backtracking), ironically this time it was the action elements that were tedious. Dodging those enemies while making those tight jumps... Surprisingly though, mostly thanks to the responsive controls, it was manageable. I'm never a huge fan of strength depleting even when you aren't getting hit, and instead of giving me so many treasures for Score should give me more Food and Drink! But they did give enough even for a mediocre gamer like myself. And the game was succinct enough (likely out of necessity, not choice, but still) that retries weren't too frustrating. I know this is silly but I really wish there were a duck feature :-p Would help a lot with those pesky Bats. And I wish you could jump in place (you can only jump during movement, since the idea was just to jump across those annoying platforms on water, but would be nice to jump over enemies etc). Also, some crappy collision masks especially with those damaging barrier things in the well... and you can't turn in place... welp, yeah, I can't give the Play a high rating because it has a lot of those limitations and clunkinesses from the early 80s that I was glad to be done with, but the fact I still played through it (albeit eventually caving to restarting with Unlimited Strength after restarting for the 4th time in the Well lol...) means it still has the right amount of adventure item retrieval and, well, adventuring for me, even if the action elements lacked considerably (I might as well call that the Below the Root factor :-p )

(Nice, there are rare opportunities to jump over Bats, like I wanted to, like when you're going down a hill and they're posted on the hill. That's always a nice feeling when land that)

Feel: 8/10 Here's where it shines. The nice Look and UI; the nighttime adventuring; the fact I wanted to keep playing despite the mediocre action mechanics... it just has one of those Feels. And sure enough, the YouTube playthroughs have tons of comments talking about nostalgia for this game. Gotta love pink cavern walls

Attachment: 7/10 Wellllll, once I got used to the magic barrier thingies, I guess I could've managed without Unlimited Strength. There are eventually long gaps that are easy to get across. And I was used to the collision masks by the end of the game... Didn't change how tedious waiting for the right moment was, definitely the biggest drag on the game imo. Maybe worth a retry some day without Unlimited Strength tho.

Wait! Lame! Lol, at the end I was waiting for the Score to finish going up so I could screenshot the screen that says "Success!! The statue!!" as my ending, but you don't even click to confirm--it just resets from the beginning, carrying your score over :-p Lame! A lot of my complaints really just relate to this being a C16 game. And when you think about the ambitious idea of an action-adventure on such a limited platform, this does achieve it very very well. Main complaint is the overuse of the annoying magic barriers throughout the game, but especially at the end. Can't really blame them for the re-cycle, arcade-style ending since it is so short and limited, so many people would be grumpy having a true game-closing ending then after only 20ish mins. Anyway, here was the screenshot right after I respawned/re-cycled.

Completion: Main Story once, Score 53,290 Playtime: ~30 mins