Spellbreaker

by Dave Lebling

Episode 3 of The Enchanter series
Fantasy, Zorkian
1985

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- LoquySSS46 (Longueuil, Québec, Canada), March 27, 2024

- Max Fog, February 18, 2024

- Artran (Taipei, Taiwan), February 10, 2024

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Gnusto girgol. Gah!, February 2, 2024
by deathbytroggles (Minneapolis, MN)

Considered one of the most difficult games in the Infocom catalogue, Spellbreaker deploys an excellent plot that neatly and satisfyingly wraps up the Enchanter trilogy. Yet, as seems to be in the case in all of his games, Dave Lebling’s puzzle structure maddeningly gets in the way of most of the fun.

Magic is failing in the Zork universe, with spells by even the most powerful sorcerers fizzling out on the regular. During a council meeting to discuss the problem, a shadowy figure (presumably armed with the cleesh spell) turns everyone but you into an amphibian. Unable to chase the figure down but obtaining a magical white cube in the process, you must explore the far reaches of the empire to save your colleagues and magic itself.

By using a spell to investigate its mystical properties, the cube transports you to a void, presumably inside the cube itself. From there you can go various directions to explore a random area (in the real world) in search of additional cubes. Each cube contains its own void and connection to other parts of the world. Delightfully, each area is not its own vacuum; you will need to acquire spells and secular items to help you solve puzzles in other sections. Sometimes you will need to return to the same cube on multiple occasions and multi-step puzzles abound.

This setup is frankly brilliant, giving a sense of realism to the adventure while allowing the player to work on several different puzzles at once. At times you need to draw connections between the worlds to understand how your actions in one area can affect another. In true Zorkian fashion, there is little sense of atmospheric continuity; for example, a slippery field of talking boulders lays near a random treasure vault with no explanation for their existence. While there is a bit less randomness to the map than in Sorcerer, it still feels difficult to be truly immersed in a world where nothing seems to make any sense.

For a while I quite enjoyed myself, landing a couple of eureka moments while solving puzzles. But mixed in with some truly fun brain teasers (including several involving the manipulation of time) are monotonous math problems, random chance exercises, and instant death rooms. One requires you to map out an area while trying to corner another party in order to catch them. This would be fine if there was a pure solution, but the movement of the other party is random and it took me almost a half hour of repetition to catch them despite knowing exactly what to do. There’s a coin-weighing puzzle, which are boring enough in their own right, and a slog when needing to do so via text commands. A copyright protection puzzle also comes at a very key moment about midway through the game, and should you answer incorrectly, you won’t even find out until the very end, requiring you to replay large swaths of the game, including those two obnoxious puzzles just mentioned. At least in Sorcerer, the copyright protection was at the beginning and required some deduction; this one is just mean, given that a simple typo could set you back hours.

And there is so much learning by dying. While a few of these instances can theoretically be avoided with some lucky educated guesses, at least one situation is literally a 50/50 shot. And it’s not as simple as saving, dying instantly, and restoring. It’s puzzling around for a good long while down a dead-end path, eventually learning later through trial and error that you made the wrong random guess (that you don’t even realize is a guess at the time). That’s not an expert level puzzle as the game box suggests. It’s just patently unfair. And let’s not forget to mention the game’s final puzzle; it’s pretty awesome, but also requires dying at least once unless you luckily perform an action that would be considered foolhardy anywhere else.

Some concessions were made by Lebling. The thirst and hunger daemons are gone, which I imagine was tough for him given he brought the latter back for The Lurking Horror. The sleep daemon is here as in the other games, but the dreams are even more pointless than ever. You also acquire an object which can help you carry unlimited inventory. But he couldn’t help himself and threw in several puzzles around water that require you to do some lengthy and dull inventory swapping to avoid ruining some of your possessions.

It’s all a shame, too, as Spellbreaker has so much going for it. Essentially it takes the best parts of the first two games, the atmosphere of Enchanter and the humor of Sorcerer, while expanding upon the fun spell casting system, all culminating in a rewarding conclusion. But the road to get there is inconsistent and annoying. The longer I played, the more grouchy I became, which led me to consulting hints more frequently. I still recommend it to fans of the series; just don’t feel any shame about using help.

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- ENyman78 (Gold Beach, OR), October 29, 2023

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Sticks the Landing, August 24, 2023
by Drew Cook (Acadiana, USA)
Related reviews: infocom

I suppose many people think excellence is a zero sum game. It sometimes seems that one must pick between Trinity and A Mind Forever Voyaging. They cannot both be transcendent, some must believe. Only one game can rest at the tip of Infocom's spear. It's common - expected, perhaps - to see someone enter a conversation about A Mind Forever Voyaging only to say "I like Trinity better." The opposite is true, as well. One of these games must soar at the expense of the other, these exchanges seem to prove.

Such partisans do not realize the full complexity of their situation, as there is, in fact, a third game worthy of consideration: Dave Lebling's Spellbreaker. It seems that it has escaped the notice of star-givers and list-makers for most of the past four decades, though its critical fortunes have changed over the past few years. In 2019, it made its first appearance on an Interactive Fiction Top 50 of All Time poll with a placing of 36.

Spellbreaker is the sixth and final game in Infocom's two consecutive trilogies taking place in their famed Zork setting. This world, alternately whimsical and dark, finally makes good on its many promises throughout the series. What has it been promising? Change. This concluding episode delivers in what seems a final and irrevocable way. Spellbreaker's conclusion feels rewarding and philosophically complex. It is the narrative equivalent of a shower, then dinner, after a long hike on a warm day.

As the third game in the Enchanter trilogy, Spellbreaker uses a familiar, well-loved magic system. The player casts spells to solve problems and open new areas to explore, which in turn leads to the discovery of new spells, and so forth. It is an addicting loop. For 1980s games, the Enchanter series is quite deeply and generously implemented. These are, for their days, mechanically generous games. If you haven't played any game in this series, start with the first (Enchanter).

Since this is the third and final game of a trilogy, the protagonist of Spellbreaker is a powerful Enchanter, both in political and magical terms. In fact, they are the most powerful Enchanter to ever live. As the game begins, magic across the kingdom of Quendor (is it a kingdom? There seems to be no king) is failing. Since magic is the center of life in Quendor, this is a dire threat. Food production, economy, even public safety depend upon it. When guidmasters from across the land are transformed into small amphibians by a shadowy figure, the protagonist gives chase.

This pursuit drives the Enchanter through what is arguably Infocom's most complex and varied geography yet. Somehow, miraculously, it is all part of a single, complementary pattern. This world is a marvel of design: surreal, dangerous, and fascinating. Dave Lebling's prose has the density of poetry. This is his finest writing and an underrated competitor to Trinity's excellent prose. The ending, which not only concludes a game or a trilogy but a six-game series, is impeccable: unexpected, ambiguous, thrilling. It seems impossible that anyone could stick such a landing, but Lebling makes it all seem rather effortless.

Why has its recognition been so long in coming? I think it is a harder game than many would like, but players have fortunately grown more comfortable seeking hints. It's art, not an ironman contest. Experience Spellbreaker on your own terms, but please do experience it. The writing alone is worth the trip. For those who enjoy puzzles, though, many brilliant, satisying, and, yes, difficult puzzles await. With only one exception, I found them as rewarding as they were fair. This is a game that filled its Commodore 64-compatible story format to the brim. There is no fat, and there are no misspent words.

One of the greatest works of interactive fiction ever made. I mean this sincerely.

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- Kastel, June 22, 2023

- nosferatu, May 29, 2022

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Tour de force, February 24, 2022
by cgasquid (west of house)

generally, there are two types of hard games. in a game with fake difficulty, the problem is conveying to the story exactly what you're trying to do because you can't seem to figure out how to phrase it so the game will understand you. in a game with real difficulty, you have a wide variety of tools to tackle the situations you encounter, but each puzzle will require a different sort of lateral thinking and creativity.

a game with fake difficulty breeds frustration. a game with real difficulty induces obsession until you finally crack it.

Spellbreaker is absolutely a game with real difficulty. despite the surreal, disjointed landscape you're exploring, it's totally immersive. i never ran into the kind of blank incomprehension you see in a bad game; it was always just a matter of thinking harder about the puzzle and persevering.

this would be a five-star game, but i'm deducting a full star for the bank puzzle. it's derivative, uncreative, has iffy implementation, and even following the best-written walkthroughs i've never gotten better than a 50% chance of getting it right. (unfortunately, the use of stock puzzles would only get worse over time, hitting its nadir in Zork Zero.)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A remarkable but less entertaining conclusion to the Enchanter trilogy, February 1, 2022
by dvs

Spellbreaker is a much larger puzzle (by sheer number of rooms) than the previous two games in the trilogy. However, there are many rooms which are basically a description and a container of a single object. I felt the spareness in these rooms and several of the interactions with characters. I presume there just wasn't space in the original file formats. This game would benefit greatly from a filling out of all of the innovative ideas in the game.

The theme is compelling, some of the puzzles are appropriate tricky, but the final brief concluding paragraph along with the spareness made this game feel very thin. It's an important game for its time but fails to entertain as much as it could.

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- Lance Campbell (United States), December 24, 2021

- heasm66 (Sweden), August 10, 2021

- Zape, June 3, 2020

- Pegbiter (Malmö, Sweden), July 26, 2018

- e.peach, December 29, 2017

- Denk, March 28, 2017

- Spike, February 26, 2017

- EngineerWolf (India), December 18, 2016

- Xavid, December 7, 2016

- NinaS, July 3, 2016

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A gigantic epic with intensely hard puzzles. One of Infocom's hardest games, February 3, 2016

Spellbreaker must have been the inspiration for games like Mulldoon Legacy, Lydia's Heart, Jigsaw, and other intensely long puzzle fests (I feel like Curses! is slightly easier). This is Infocom's last game of the Enchanter trilogy, which follows the Zork Trilogy.

This game is incredibly long and difficult. I played to about 150 points out of 600 before turning to a walkthrough (eristic's), and most of those points I got because I had played Balances by Graham Nelson, which copied many items from Spellbreaker (to show that Inform could achieve the same results). The game is purposely murderously hard; I suggest that everyone use a walkthrough after reaching a predetermined number of points.

Magic is failing, and you must chase a mysterious figure to learn why. The game is pretty disjointed, but purposely so, much like Jigsaw, where you enter and exit various areas miraculously. It has a very different feel from Sorcerer, and especially from Enchanter, which was very easy to map and simple in its presentation.

Many people have talked about the time travel puzzle in Sorcerer, which I enjoyed, but felt a little down because there was so much hype. Unfortunately, I am now hyping the last big puzzle of Spellbreaker to you. What a puzzle; to me, it was great because it completely ties in with the game's theme of loss and ending. It is a puzzle integrated with the plot.

As a final note, I should really emphasize that this is a LONG game, 2 or 3 times as long as any other Zork or Enchanter game. When using a walkthrough, I finished each of those games in a total recorded time (not counting my numerous restarts) of about 16 minutes; this game, including several restarts to shave off the starting time, took 1 hour and 22 minutes.

I played this game on iOS's Lost Treasures of Infocom.

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- electromancer, July 19, 2015

- Thrax, March 11, 2015

- Hotspur, September 23, 2013

- RedHatter (Vista, California), June 6, 2013


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