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WISHBRINGER
Zork: Grand Inquisitor

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Review · Background · Walkthrough TODO: Walkthrough: Map Witchville weitermachen Review: Packshot Review: Verdict: Komplett so? Walkthrough: Das "In short" weitermachen für alle Absätze Walkthrough: Sind alle wichtigen Items gefettet? Last: Shop auf Hügel Wertung vervollständigen Walkthrough: Liste der Punkte, die man beim Walkthrough macht. Punkte, Ort, Aktion. Background: am Ende Links zu Downloads, MobyGames Review: Leere Räume, z.B. die Library am Ende. Speicherplatzmangel? Background: Weitermachen Infobox Other games by Brian Moriarty Background: https://www.dasklapptsonicht.de/wishbringer/

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REVIEW
Wishbringer, written by Brian "Professor" Moriarty and being Infocom's 16th adventure, is from 1985, so it's got to be compared to Infocom's older games as well as to other games of its time, such as A View to a Kill, Brimstone, Erik the Viking, Nine Princes in Amber and The Pawn, and maybe King's Quest II. In a nutshell: While it certainly isn't a highlight of the genre, it easily beats most of its competitors. With a chair.

The Story

So in this game we're taking up the role of a postman in the small town of Festeron, current day (well, 1985), probably United States although that's not specified. You're taking a break on the hill on the south side of town where the post office is located when your boss calls you in to deliver a mysterious letter to the north side of town. You have two hours, or 120 game turns, to accomplish the "task", and after that... We'll see.



To hook you up at the beginning, a game needs to accomplish two things: Giving you a promising prospect of things to come while at the same time giving you clear guidance of what to do next. Like, taking you by the hand while at the same time promising a big adventure. Wishbringer does that in a very simple yet effective way: Right at the beginning the village of Festeron lies right at your feet to be explored while your nearby boss triggers the sequence of necessary actions. We're given a straightforward task and still have a village to explore - the game couldn't start any better. Our boss, provider of the task, could be more talkative though. Exploring the village is pretty straightforward, too - it's not too large (and not without charm), there's not a lot to do, and the local townsfolk aren't exactly chatty. Our target awaits us on a hill north of the village: Ye Olde Magick Shoppe, the playground of the local witch. You deliver the envelope, and from there the game takes a different road. Not only does fulfilling your task yield you a new, way more complicated one, but the game world itself changes, not so much in terms of geography but very much in terms of atmosphere - it becomes hostile. Every room is still there, every NPC as well, but everything is dark, gloomy and evil all of a sudden. And while you could explore welcoming Festeron at your own pace, the "dark" town (called Witchville) is pestered by a patrol that will put you into jail at eye contact. Your task is to deliver a magic stone, the eponymous Wishbringer, to "the Evil One". The background info on that magic stone is provided through a "book" (rather a brochure) that's part of the game package:




And yeah, that's what the game is all about. Quite some backstory. During the game the story is told a bit... hastily. For example, the NPCs the player encounters in the early game - our boss Mr. Crisp, Miss Voss, the shop owner - they're nothing but cardboard cut-outs. They play their role, and they play it well, but they are as deep as the fountain in the centre of daytime Festeron. Communication, background, explanation of their motives - nada. It's very likely that the lack of memory is the reason for this, because in the later game they'll play important roles. Also, the map feels a little sketched beyond the city centre, but that's not necessarily negative, walking through countless empty rooms in order to reach the lighthouse or the lookout hill would feel more realistic but not necessarily more entertaining. All this sketchiness has one advantage: Pace. With lengthy examinating orgies and dialogues out of the way, Moriarty can rush you through the story at will. That's... not necissarily bad. It gives the whole thing a certain "movie feel" - things around you happen fast, there's not much stagnation, sometimes it somewhat feels like a text-based action game. That's typical Infocom style by the way. You hadda get used to it, but it's actualyl quite likable.

The game suffers a bit from playing in a hybrid, non-clichéd game world. The daylight half could be filed under "slice of life" but needs to be pretty simple to match the Zorkian night scenario, and the Zorkian night scenario can't be too hyphy as it has to match the slice of life daytime scenario. The game also aims at a younger audience, so the nighttime scenario, despite being supposed to be scary, can't be too scary. Together with the memory-related restrictions Wishbringer always seems like it could have been more but its author had to struggle with restrictions he had no influence in. There's one restriction though that the author actually caused deliberately, and that's a no-go in modern interactive fiction: Inventory limit. One of the cardinal sins of game design in the Pleistocene of, well, game design. You stumble across an item, you recall all locations you've visited so far and imagine what exciting use you can make of it, you try to pick it up - no can do, for you already have five items with you. So you must drop one item, and if you need that one just five more turns into the game, you must get back to where you dropped it, drop another item, pick the first one up and go back to where you need it. Well, I'm getting old and have problems to remember how I felt about every single situation back in the mid-80's, but I have trouble imagining I had filed such shit as "fun" back then. That's simply bad design. In 1985 it was probably still acceptable though.

TODO: Resumé Story wenn weiter im Spiel

The Writing

Wishbringer is a typical text adventure without any graphics or sound. The writing is... okay. Sparse but efficient. It's pleasant actually, like, the dialogues are chitty-chatty, and the action is described in a way you can very well visualize what's happening. It's just a little bit brief at times. That is super-typical for Infocom games when compared to today's windy, sprawling walls of text and simply owed to the lack of memory. The game had to fit into the 48 kb of memory of an (upgraded) Atari 800, but the Infocom authors and programmers were pros and were used to these restrictions. Brian Moriarty maybe had a little less adventure to squeeze into the tiny home computer RAMs than e.g. 1985's Spellbreaker or 1986's Leather Goddesses of Phobos, so there was a little more room for descriptions and dialogue. It pays off. Among the contemporary text adventures Wishbringer is definitely among the most pleasant reads. Contentwise it's a bit... simple of course, with fantasy elements and chliché characters and whatnot. Wishbringer is not high literature. Try Moriarty's Trinity (1986) if you're looking for a more serious approach to the genre. That one also had twice the memory available as it wasn't developed for the small 64 KB computers anymore. But then, in Wishbringer there's scenes that depict the potential of the genre. The cinema scene, for example. Nothing big, but there's changing descriptions of what's happening on screen, and when you happen to have the right item with you it's changing to a vivid description of a short movie. Sure, that could have been an email, but I found it entertaining. A careful thumb up for the writing.

TODO: Beispiel für gutes Writing

The Puzzles

Wishbringer was designed for a younger and/or inexperienced audience. That in mind, the puzzles are indeed pretty easy. At the start the game is somewhat on rails, which makes sense as potential n00bs need to be familiarised with the concept of interactive fiction. I'd expect though that after meeting the shop owner the game shifts up a gear in terms of puzzles. The first puzzle after that turning point is unfortunately the bridge troll puzzle, a twofoldly unfair puzzle that requires you to try some random thing and clean up after you.

The day/night (or good/evil) cycle was hugely innovative back in 1985 and opens up possibilities for awesome puzzles. In general Moriarty did deliver (TODO: Hat er?), but he smuggled in some serious design flaws. For example, the Lookout Hill location. Among other immobile objects there's a tree stump. During daytime it looks like this: "The stump is huge, easily four feet across." There is absolutelys no reason to examine it again during night time, but: "Looking closely, you notice that the edge of the stump is hinged." Awesome. So during daytime I'm not allowed to look closely. Sorry professor, but that's considered bad game design. Similar problems with the cinema during night time: You have to try random stuff to get in, and inside you need to examine one specific scenery item while those usually just give you generic descriptions. Quite frankly, I'm used to better design from other Infocom games.

On the other hand, Moriarty connected the wires that hold the game world together well. Like, the scene around the cinema and the arcade hall. The cinema scene plays with perspective and location, and the arcade hall scene teleports you according to your input. Both scenes feel like they were cleverly assembled, and they only work because of your input.

Unfortunately there's no puzzles that actually make you feel clever. Like, you have an obstacle and a vague idea that something could work, and you try out a few things and dope out the right chain of actions and then tadaa - it works. No, in Wishbringer there's usually only one item to apply in the right place, or you have to guess the right word to get an obstacle out of the way. Applying the right item in the right place is still fun, but it's something in the middle between a boring fetch quest and a real puzzle. Sure, the game is for beginners, but theoreticall you could design complicated puzzles where the individual steps are still easy to come up with. Moriarty didn't do that. So sad.

Many of the puzzles have at least two solutions. Now that's something new! I'm not sure if that's ever been tried on a big scale before. In Wishbringer it was a central thing, as at least the seven wishes the Wishbringer stone granted were ways to bypass puzzles. Solely relying on wishes can lock you out of the game though as going the "hard way" en passant brings up some items that you need later in the game (unless you use the Wishbringer again then, which cuts you off from other items and ultimately locks you out of the game). Accoding to Moriarty that's NOT bad design but has been implemented intentionally, as some sort of moral pointing finger to not be frivolous in what you wish for.

Small spoiler ahead. Skip this paragraph to skip the spoiler. It's necessary to say a few words about the boot patrol at this stage. So once you're in Witchville, there's a patrol that is, well, patroling the area. If they catch you, you get thrown into prison, which isn't the immediate end of the game, but if you continue to run into their arms, you're done. Now Moriarty ain't a sucker, he gives us a fair warning so that we can escape in time. The problem is that the game map is so small and the layout is so simple that often you have to spend a great amount of time just avoiding the patrol instead of actually playing the game. Like, there's a park in the middle of the map, you want to try out something there, but whenever you reach it's You can hear the tramp of marching boots to the west. It sounds as if they’re coming this way!. So you move away, wait a turn or two, get back to the park, and there's the patrol warning again! It's easy to spend dozens of moves until you finally have some me-time. Initially it gives the game quite some momentum to have a dangerous foe walking about, but to this extent - that's bad design. And that's pretty much the first thing play testers would have noticed. Must be purpose then.

TODO: Beispiele für gute Puzzles.

The Implementation

Well, it's Infocom we're talking about. The parser is rock solid, at least by 1985 standards. Important items are implemented, scenery sometimes. The "several solutions for one puzzle" thing is awesome. There's no sudden death situations as they were common in earlier games, and if you get into real danger the game advises you to save before continuing.

On the other hand, towards the end game you can't fail to notice a certain lack of implementation. Like, in the laboratory there's two switches, but you cannot examine the switches, only the first and the second switch. Even worse, in the round chamber below there's 13 paintings which you cannot address individually, but you (spoiler; mark the text with your mouse) have to manipulate them, by using a generic "move painting" command which leads to a "Moving aside one of the paintings reveals..." response. Although Wishbringer may look like a simple and rather small game, memory constraints might be the reason for this inconvenience: Wishbringer is in fact one of the biggest Infocom adventure among those that had to fit into 64 KB of memory - only Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels was bigger. (Later games had 128 KB at disposal, those games were bigger.) Anyway, these implementation glitches suck, you can't miss them, and it's conspicuous that they conglomerate in the end game.

The Packaging

Oh yeah, it's an Infocom game, so we have all these awesome gimmicks in the box, right? Right. Wishbringer had particularly fanciful packaging. There's a "The Legend of Wishbringer" brochure that explains some of the background of the game, a map of Festeron (who doesn't love maps!), a replica of the blackmailing letter the Evil One sent to the shopkeeper, and... (drum roll) a "magic" glow-in-the-dark stone! I have no idea what that one is made of, but yeah, it glows in the dark, or at least it did back then in the 80's. Nothing to miss here, full score for the packaging.

The Verdict

Wishbringer is a nice game. For two reasons: It's got a nice and captivating story, which is a key element for text adventures to be considered nice, and it's accessible. Now how is that a quality criterion? Hear me out.

Back in 1985 text adventures were considered cool if they had you sit in front of your computer for one week straight trying to find out how to open a padlock. Those times are gone for good. In 2023 games need to provide quick lifts in order to be successful. Wishbringer initially does that by putting you on rails without you noticing that. It gives you an illusion of freedom to explore but bars off everything that could get you lost (or dead) and gently but firmly nudges you in the right direction.

What's also nice about Wishbringer is the tone. Like, if you had to attribute genres to it, it would surely be comedy, but also horror (because of the whole Witchville thing). And the mix of these two genres is very well balanced. After the peaceful stroll through Festeron, tiptoeing through Witchville gives you a constant feeling of threat. Nothing about that is repellent though, it's more of a constant suspense. And the humour kicks in regularly, through comic-like characters and slapstick action.

Is there a downside? Yes. Four actually. Two of them were acceptable in 1985 but 36 years later we have slightly evolved. First, the stress factor. Okay that's something you may actually look for in a text adventure, but Wishbringer exaggerates. The boot patrol is not a gain for an otherwise too peaceful gameplay, it's annoying. The map is too small and its movement rate is too high and its "AI" is too aggressive to make it any fun. Second, the puzzles. Yeah, some shine, but some suck. The boot patrol, the troll puzzle, the pelican puzzle, the magic word puzzle - that's Scott Adams niveau. No logic, just try'n'error. Only just acceptable back then, but not any more today. One thumb down. The third downside is the implementation bugs that stack up towards the end game. Knowing what needs to be done but not being able to do it because of a lack of implementation is frustrating. Fourth: Dead ends. Wishbringer has an amazing number of situations where you can lock yourtself off from winning by doing something wrong. The hard-boiled barekuckle adventurer of the early to mid-80's would simply stick to his "save early, save often" routine and laugh off any cul-de-sacs. Nowadays though, with all gamers being snowflakes - Wishbringer is tough terrain.

So, a verdict. Well, let's break it down for various target audiences. If you're into 1980's text adventures and their downsides, you'll be super happy with Wishbringer, because hey, it's Infocom, and thus towers high above the rest. If you're into interactive fiction of the 21st century, you'll probably consider Wishbringer to be an entertaining snack, something you'll look at out of historical interest on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Well, it is entertaining. It's a bit shallow in terms of story dynamics, but the Festeron/Witchville divide makes up for it, and it has some... pleasant vibes, as if the author had fun writing it. If you're looking for a simple game that keeps you entertained for some hours, and you don't mind the old school design and the flaws that come with a game crunched into 64 KB of memory, give Wishbringer a try. It will not enlighten your life but it will brighten your day.

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BACKGROUND

Brian Moriarty (1984)

Wishbringer plays in the Zork universe. But that's not all: Author Brian "Professor" Moriarty (pictured) developed a small universe within the Zork universe, in form of the "Wishbringer" legend that tells of unfortunate princess Morning Star who was defrauded of a happy life by her ruthless mother (not her biological mother actually) Alexis and whose heart lives on as a magic stone granting wishes.

For Moriarty Wishbringer was the first game he wrote for Infocom. His initial ignition of his love for adventure games was Scott Adams' Strange Odyssey. Moriarty fell in love with Infocom in 1982, upon the release of Deadline, and decided to become an Implementor. In the long term. His degree in English literature was a good start, and an early job as a technical writer wasn't an obstacle either. In 1983 he signed up as an editor for the Atari magazine ANALOG Computing for which he wrote two type-in adventures, Adventure in the 5th Dimension (1983) and Crash Dive! (1984). After a successless application for an Implementor job he managed to join Infocom as an application programmer - his original role at Infocom was to maintain and enhance the Z-machine engine and to port it to further computers such as the Commodore Plus/4 and the Tandy Color. He then contributed a few story bits (and the sonar) to Stu Galley's Seastalker, and then stepped up again: He bashed out a concept for a game called Trinity, presented it to the grandees at Infocom - and got turned down. Too ambitious. Happened that right at that time the Infocom management would have loved to produce an easier game, directed at players new to interactive fiction, in order to develop new groups of buyers. And so Brian Moriarty got promoted to Implementor, with the task to come up with a n00b-friendly game, ideally playing in the profitable Zork universe. And that was Wishbringer.

It took Moriarty about nine months to write the game. His initial idea was not the story, but the mechanics: He suggested a tool that allowed players to have two levels of experience: An easy solution to puzzles by using a wishing device, or a more difficult path by abstaining from using the device. The device was supposed to be a magic ring at first, but that deemed Moriarty to be a bit dull due to too many magic rings out there already. Moriarty then came up with the idea of a glow-in-the-dark stone, the marketing department said that could make that happen, and the Wishbringer was born. Moriarty got his okay from upstairs and started to develop a story around the tool.

Back in that time there existed a metric to depict the quality of a parser: The number of words understood. This happened to be a comparable value because all key words were stored in a game-internal "dictionary" where the parser looked them up, translated them into numbers and processed those. Using Wishbringer as an example, the player ("me") was a dictionary entry, an NPC ("Mr. Crisp") was, the word "building", the verb "enter", even the pronoun "my" or any kinds of adjectives. So the parser disassembled the player input, say, "enter the building", into numbers, and the rest was stuff like "if the verb is "enter" and the object is "building", move the player to the building object, saying "You enter the building." on the way". And the amount of words in the game's "dictionary" was a KPI for the quality of the parser. Wishbringer's üparser understood 1043 words, which is quite good, given that the original Zork I only understood about 700 words but had twice as many rooms as Wishbringer.

In terms of difficuly, Wishbringer was labelled by Infocom as a "beginner" game. The company sorted their own games into three difficulty levels, "beginner", "intermediate" and "advanced". Wishbringer was the first "beginner" one, initiated by the management who wanted an easy game to introduce new players to the genre.

As all other Infocom games, Wishbringer came with "stuff" in the original box. It was released during the "grey box" period, so it came in a 23x19x2 cm box with a folding lid (inside which was the manual), and a sealed depression inside in which were advertisements and the "feelies", various stuff related to the game and the game world which were supposed to increase your immersion and are the main reason why collectors pay exorbitant prices for the games now. Among the usual ads for other Infocom games we find: The instructions manual, the nine-page booklet on the Legend of Wishbringer, a letter (the one you deliver to Ye Olde Magick Shoppe), a map of Festeron, and a glow-in-the-dark stone which is supposed to be a replica of Wishbringer. The most unusual feelie is actually the stone replica. As mentioned before, the Infocom management wanted a game that applies to genre newbies. Moriarty suggested to use a "magic ring" as an add-on for the game package, and to write a story centering around this magic ring. Some thoughts later he suggested a "magic stone" glowing in the dark as the "ring" thing seemed a bit stale. The management was fine with that idea, and Moriarty planned on manning the game package with real stoens painted in glow-in-the-dark paint. The management bottled the plan, fearing lawsuits from parents whose kids could suck off the stones. In the end Infocom used plastic "stones", and Moriarty wrote a story centering about a "magic stone".

The game sold well. It was Infocom's most successfull title in 1985. It sold 75.000 copies in the first six months and maybe 150.000 copies during its shelf life, vaulting it into the ranks of the less successful ''Zork'' games. A successor was discussed, but Moriarty insisted on finally realising his Trinity script instead, which he did in 1986. In 1987 he followed it up with Beyond Zork, and that was it for his Infocom career. Upon the decline of Infocom he moved on to LucasArts, but that's another story.

Wishbringer got mixed reception in the media. Back in the 80's magazines pointed out that the package inserts were awesome but the game was pretty easy to complete. For the US magazine Commodore Power Play the game was "without a doubt one of the top three beginner's interactive fiction games. Witty, dangerous, (...) sometimes even downright silly".

Retrospectives in the 21st century came to mixed verdicts as well. Interactive fiction god Graham Nelson found it to be "solidly mediocre, charming but unsubstantial". Nick Montfort, on the other hand, considered the game to be a revolution in terms of transforming the game world during play. Ludo-historian Jimmy Maher found it to "feel like a classic piece of children’s literature" and to be "one of the most likeable games Infocom ever did". And he pinned Brian Moriarty down as being "a much better, more original writer than (Roberta) Williams, not to mention a more controlled one.". Quite a praise!

Infocom re-published a lot of their games since text adventures had a longer shelf life than games relying on latest graphics. Usually later editions had a downgraded packaging. In 1988 they released five games under the Solid Gold label, Wishbringer being one of them. Those were A5 folded-card-like packagings that could hold thin paper feelies such as the map, but nothing thicker, so the Legend of Wishbringer booklet and the glowing stone were not contained. As the booklet was essential it was included in the game itself, in the form of a "book" in your inventory that you could read. Since Infocom constantly updated its engine, the Solid Gold edition of Wishbringer contained another additional feature: A built-in hint system in the form of a cascading FAQ system.

Also in 1988, Infocom published a novel called Wishbringer. It was written by Craig Shaw Gardner, a bustling but luckless fantasy author. The novel plays in the same universe as the game Wishbringer but is not connected to its plot.

(Just in case you've got the hots for all the dirty details of Wishbringer on molecular level: In 2019 the Z-code source code of the game was released on Github. If you want to dive into the world of Z-code, the IntFiction.org forum is your friend.)

TODO: https://www.filfre.net/2014/04/wishbringer/ TODO: https://archive.org/details/your-computer-magazine-1985-10/page/n88/mode/1up?view=theater TODO: https://archive.org/details/rainbowmagazine-1986-08/page/n149/mode/1up?view=theater TODO: https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-009/page/n77/mode/1up?view=theater TODO: https://archive.org/details/cuamiga-magazine-012/page/n74/mode/1up?view=theater TODO: https://golmac.org/everybody-loves-wishbringer/ TODO: Reviews zusammenfassen

Sources:

• Adventure Probe, issue #5, May 1991, p.15
• Amiga World, January 1986, p. 71
• Commodore Power Player #19, February 1986, p. 38
• James Hague: Halcyon Days. 1997
• Jimmy Maher (The Digital Antiquarian): Wishbringer
• Nick Montfort: Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. MIT Press, Cambridge 2003, ISBN 0-262-13436-5, p. 152.
• SPAG magazine, issues #5 and #6

External links: Wikipedia, IFDB.

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WALKTHROUGH
Starting off

At the start of the game we're sitting on a lawn overlooking the village of Festeron, next to our place of work, the local post office. Would be nice to explore the village, but duty calls, our detested boss calls us inside. For the next few steps it's thus clear what to do: Get into the office, have your boss Mr. Crisp explain your task to you (which is delivering a mysterious envelope to a location called "The Magick Shoppe"), get the envelope and get going. Two hours (or 120 game turns) time, three turns gone already, so let's hurry. At least we're free to explore the village now. There's probably time enough to examine the poster on the wall: Author Brian Moriarty has immortalised himself there.

In brief: South, wait, get envelope, north.

Our first puzzle!

So, the post office's locked now, so let's quickly map what locations we have at hand.


Our way north into Festeron is blocked by "the tiniest poodle you’ve ever seen in your entire life", and the way out of the cemetary is blocked by a locked iron gate. The gatekeeper is pretty uncommunicative but shows a persistent interest into our envelope so that we finally show it to him - his remark clearly tells us that something's very wrong here. He leaves immediately after that and locks the north exit of the gravexard after him, and that cannot be prevented, which leaves us with just one spot to enhance the map: The poodle. Before we deal with it we ransack the cemetary though: An umbrella can be found near the locked north exit, and in the grave the gravedigger was digging (insert pun about appropriate job titles here) is a large bone. You'll need to drop the umbrella before entering the grave or you won't be able to get back out without inventory juggling. So, a bone. Bone, poodle. Poodle, bone. Do I hear synapses engage? The cemetary is purged, so we move on to deal with that bad breath ankle biter. We give it the bone, and while it's still acting as if it owns the f**ing town, it generously lets us pass. Which we do. No worries, the flea circus will be back in our way. But for now we have the entire village of Festeron spreading in front of us. But hey, who's that?

In brief: West, west, yes, north, show envelope to gravedigger, west, get umbrella, east, drop umbrella, enter grave, get bone, up, get umbrella, south, east, east, east, give bone to poodle.

Festeron in all its Glory

Just as we're about to map the rest of the village Miss Voss, the friendly town librarian, approaches us with a broad smile saying "errand" in all capital letters. She wants us to deliver a violet note to our boss. Of course we take the note she holds out towards us, and with a thanks and a smile she rushes off the stage. It's sealed, so unfortunately we can't open it. Well, with Miss Voss gone, we can finally map Festeron. Save your game here.


The poodle won't let us near the cottage of Miss Voss which is to the east. It won't let us go back west either, so the rest of Festeron is all we've got. One step to the north and there is Miss Voss, locking the library (damn...) and indicating she's got another errand for us. We wait a turn, and she holds out a violet note which we're supposed to deliver to Mr. Crisp. Sigh, why not, let's take the note, we are the letterman after all. Miss Voss immediately leaves the stage. Unfortunately the note is sealed, with library paste (indicating it comes from Miss Voss), but maybe we can come up with hot steam or something like that. For now: Festeron.

The fountain in the middle of the park has a gold coin in it which we immediately sack. The entrance to the (currently closed) movie theatre to the east is one gold coin. Hm, looks like we're going to the movies later on. There's also a goldfish in the fountain but we can't catch it (yet). The church has a candle in it but we can't take it (yet). The police station bears a sleeping Sgt. MacGuffin and a piece of chocolate. MacGuffin occasionally wakes up; in that case wait until he falls asleep again and then fetch the chocolate.

East of the rotary is the Pleasure Wharf. It features a mysterious mailbox into which we can throw things but we can't get them back then, so we ignore it for now. There's also a video arcade with a Leather Goddesses of Phobos machine which wants a token - ain't got one yet. On the planks at the end of the wharf there's a dying seahorse which we can pick up. We throw it into the water so it survives; whether that was good or if a dead seahorse in our inventory would have been more valuable - we'll see.

A quick jog around town reveals the rest of the map: The bridge leading out of Festeron and towards our current goal to the north, a pelican on the lighthouse to the northeast, a horseshoe and a tree stump on a hill to the northwest, and some kind of trap on the beach in the west that we don't touch for now. Note that the island mentioned in the booklet in the game package, Misty Island, is visible from the beach. Also note that the graveyard is currently locked off. Also, in case you are the proud owner of an original Wishbringer box with the Legend of Wishbringer booklet inside (or a PDF of it), you'll notice that we've uncovered four of the seven items that grant you wishes already. Anyway, just two things to do now. Restore your game (so that we have plenty time left). Save the seahorse (for it might die otherwise) and get the gold coin (for it's just too shiny). North bridge then, and up the hill. I assume you'd manage to walk the (linear) path by yourself, but I'm mapping it anyway, you'll soon know why. Eventually you'll arrive at a cliff edge featuring a little store. Funny detail upon entering the cliff edge for the first time. Nothing much happening outside, so in we go.


The store event is pretty much on rails. We get a few moves to examine stuff, but the rest is scripted. After two turns the shop owner shows up, an old (very old) woman. We give her the envelope, she goes pale upon seeing the handwriting, she asks us to read the letter to her. So we open the envelope and read the letter. Okay, looks like we got ourselves a new job.


Looks like the writer of the letter has Parkinson's disease or something. Anyway, the woman wants us to find her cat until 06:00 the following morning, and compliments us out of her shop after providing us with a metal can. Find the cat, avoid the Evil One, make use of some "stone of dreams" that we would need to find first. Oh, and the game world has completely changed. So much for our home time. Well, enough time wasted, let's get out of this shop and into our new job.

Whoah! Darn fog killed the room descriptions! We're lost! Good thing I mapped the whole shit earlier eh? :) So with the map above in hand we start our descent into Festeron, or what's left of it. The rattling of the can causes a bit of discomfort but nothing too alarming yet. At the bottom of the cliff there's a dead tree with a lone branch sticking out, so of course we attempt to take that, and stumble across a serious bummer: There's an inventory limit. Either we can only carry a certain amount of items around, or there's an internal weight calculation. In either case we have to drop things we deem less important and remember where we dropped them so that we can pick them up later in case we need them. That's so 198- Oh, yeah, Wishbringer is from that time. Still, that's annoying and doesn't yield any fun. Typical adventurer situation: We have a branch right in front of us, and in our pockets we got a rattling metal can, a gold coin, a violet note, an umbrella, and a storybook. The metal can and the violet note are safe shots, but quite frankly, without knowing what's ahead you simply can't deduce what's necessary and what's a red herring. Wishbringer is a bit special in this context, for as you may have read above quite some items are optional, namely those who are used by the magic stone Wishbringer to grant you a wish which can facilitate certain puzzles for you. Decisions, decisions... And we haven't even found that Wishbringer stone yet!

Fuck it, we deposit the umbrella here (hoping we can retrieve it later) and grab that branch. Adventurer thinking: Given the branch needs to be broken off the tree during mid-game (assuming we've left the early game behind us now) and given it's a bit longer than the umbrella, it should aide us equally in reaching something AND can be used to make a fire. So, bye umbrella, hi branch. On a side note, the mysterious violet note is now addressed to one "Corky". On to the west, to the north end of the bridge. Okay, the bridge troll is new. He wants a gold coin in exchange for letting us pass. Cool, we have one! Uncool, he doesn't accept it for in the "dark" version of Festeron the coins have changed. Also, the troll isn't very talkative. This situation is a bit of a bummer, as to my knowledge there's no indication of what to do here. Which means we'll be going through our inventory and try everything that might have an effect, which eventually brings up the solution, which is opening the can, which surprisingly holds a live rattlesnake that jumps out of the can, scares the troll away, and vanishes. I still think I must have missed some clear hints on this puzzle, otherwise it would be horrible. Also, if you open the can anywhere else the rattlesnake vanishes as well and you can't scare the troll away no more. This really looks like a fuck-up to me.

But of course we've intuitively (...) done the right thing and the troll is gone. The can is still there so we take it. Now for another move that to my knowledge is not hinted at: Was there any hint that the can contains a false bottom? That we don't get any info on when we examine the can, be it closed or open? Well, there is. And how do we get to the bottom of this false bottom? Of course, we simply need to SQUEEZE THE CAN! Sorry, but I would not have come up with that without a walkthrough, but then I'm a horrible player, so I may very well have missed the clues indicating that THAT is a necessary action.

Enough of this rant. The path is free, and we have the stone. Let's open the gate and go south. The sign isn't exactly welcoming. So our beloved Festeron is called Witchville at night. Or is this a neverending nightmare? We'll find out. A word of warning though: The following events contain an unpleasant element of random in form of the Boot Patrol, a "platoon of gigantic leather army boots". They march through town and arrest everyone they find for curfew violations (that is you, there's no-one else around). Maybe they follow a fixed route, I never found out, so let's assume they move randomly and thus cannot be completely avoided. You'll get notified wheny they're close by, which is good, for you can move away from them then. Like, if you read "You can hear the tramp of marching boots to the west. It sounds as if they’re coming this way!", you move where? East of course. If you decide to stand your man and meet the patrol they'll throw you into jail. You can escape from jail once for sure, up to three times under certain circumstances. We'll get to that at the end of this walkthrough as it's optional "content". Let's avoid the damn patrol for now. Move away from it, save occasionally.

Okay, we're going in. Or rather, south to South of Bridge, and from there west to River Outlet and south so we get to Lake Edge. Two things are somewhat frightening: A vulture we saw and ignored in River Outlet seems to follow us, and the cemetary gate opens by itself. Well, for now let's focus on two things: Avoid the Boot Patrol (Move in circles around the northwest section of town, or move, wait and move back, what works best for you. Save occasionally!) and check on the Lake Edge location.

The trap has been substituted by a pit inside which a platypus is trapped. Poor thing! Can we rescue it somehow? Natural choice is to put the branch in. Yup, the platypus clings to it. Pull the branch back out and your score rises by a phenomenal 5 points while the platypus, on the way into the lake, marks a spot with an "X". Interesting! Discard the branch and dig in the sand (with your hands). Nice, a whistle! Sack it. Remember to stop all actions and walk away if you hear the boot patrol. Took me like 20 moves to get the whistle after rescuing the platypus just because of those leather cunts.

Since we're curious to the bone we blow the whistle immediately (well, after examining it, which is cute but optional). Oh wow, all of a sudden we're on that island (probably) visible from the beach! Misty Island it's called, apparently, and it's inhabited by platypussies. Not too much to see though, for it only contains of two rooms, the one where you pop up and the "Throne Room" west of it where King Anatinus resides, who's more than happy you saved his daughter, princess Tasmania. As a sign of gratitude he offers you a wizard's hat (...) (that you take!) and tells you that "the Evil One" resides in a tower that's protected by a magic word that a certain creature in the sea might know more about. Oh boy. Well, we're supposed to go back to the other side of the sea, so we blow the whistle once more.

Back at Lake Edge. Where next? Well, I explored a little, and I'll spare you the details - next stop is Lookout Hill, so we drag our bones north and up (boot patrol permittin'). We've been here before during daytime, but now it's night. One detail has changed: The stump now has a lid and might be openable. Bad game design. Could be free loot tho, so let's open it - oh wow, a hole leading into darkness. Save, and try to go in. Whew, still alive. Let's quickly map that.


Restore. Let's not visit the Grue for now! The hole in the dirty chamber seems to be scenery. The hole in the damp chamber, on the other side, will help us. Attention, drop all your belongings at this stage. Move the bed on top of the hole and climb up, landing in - a jail cell! The jail cell actually - you might have "found" it earlier if you were caught by the boot patrol. Can this cell be benefitial? Well, it can, in so far as there's a blanket to loot. Nothing else to see here for now, so back down to the underground, and pick up your belongings again. Reason for dropping your stuff initially is that you'd not get back down from the cell with all your stuff, and you would have to bring it back down in tranches.

Dragging all your stuff with you, you move north and then east. If you ever devoted yourself to the lore of Zork you're aware that grues are absolutely deadly creatures. If you didn't, well, you're about to find out - two turns of idling and you're dead. Good thing you have a recent save game. Do we need to mess with that baby grue? Yes, because of the refridgerator in the back of the room. We can open it while the grue wakes up, but we can't take anything from it because we get killed. Hm. Inventory check.

Cover the grue with the blanket. Open the fridge. Get all from the fridge and the hell out of here. What's our swag? A wriggling earthworm (fishing bait, maybe?) and a bottle of milk - the Legend of Wishbringer says we can wish for darkness if we have grue's milk at hand. Might come in handy. Nothing else do do down here right now, so let's get back up to the surface, and close the stump, just to be sure. This place looks somewhat safe, so let's take a short step back and consider this damn inventory limit. We know from the manual that some items are supposed to grant us wishes, so let's pool those items here. So far we got the horseshoe and the bottle of milk. Let's leave those here for a time when we need them, hoping the boot patrol doesn't come up here.

Allright, let's head into town. There's this nasty boot patrol patroling the streets, so whenever you read You can hear the tramp of marching boots to the XXX. It sounds as if they’re coming this way!, move elsewhere, wait a turn or two (rather two, actually), and go back. This may take quite some turns, but that's what the implementors want us to do. So gow down, east, south and south again takes us right to the middle of Witchville, the park with the fountain. The fountain contains a brass token (potentially good, the gambling hall comes to mind) and a piranha (potentially bad, a gruesome death comes to mind). Inventory check... The worm! Throw it into the fountain, and yeah, it distracts the piranha, so the token is ours. I tried it out immediately, and it does work for the video arcade east of the fountain, but we go do one other thing first.

Go north, north, east and east, avoiding the boot patrol as always. You're at the lighthouse now. In case you've been here during daytime you'll notice that not much has changed, especially regarding the pelican. Coming up is yet another illogical puzzle: You need to give one item to the pelican. What kind of item would a bird want? The wizard's hat that King Anatinus gave you of course. An what's your reward? The lighthouse comes to life and writes a magic word into the sky. Sigh. Well, write down that magic word, you'll need it later.

The way south is barred unfortunately, which makes sense (it's high tide) but is a tad annoying. So, west, west, south and east it is, to the movie theatre. As always, mind the boot patrol! Okay, the movie theatre. The schedule says a movie show is one gold coin - convenient, for one we have. The marquee says there's a movie showing that's starring The Evil One. Interesting! Also, Miss Voss is here. It's not revealed by the game, but she's actually working as a ticket agent for the cinema. Give her your gold coin and she'll hand you a ticket. In we go!

The grave digger ain't much of an obstacle now that we have the ticket. Show it to him and we may go north. There is this empty carton for 3D glasses next to the gravedigger, but as the word "empty" already indicates it's not of much use... except for indicating that 3D glasses exist in this cinema, just not here! Let's see.

Inside the (single, but it's a small town...) cinema hall we can't make out much of what's going on on the screen since it's a 3D movie. Examining all nouns in the room description brings up a set of 3D glasses in one of the aisles. Wear it. Ah, that's a game changer. Luckily the important part of the movie begins the second you put on the glasses. Wait five times - hmm, looks that was a live broadcast rather than a movie? Anyway, what does this tell us? Not much so far. But if we ever stumble across power switches, it's a good guess they control the power somewhere in town. Time to head elsewhere.

Confirmation prompt if we really want to leave the cinema - well, what's the alternative? So yes. Outside, Miss Voss is behaving really dodgy. Can't do nothing 'bout that now tho. East we go, and south into the arcade hall, ignoring the mailbox for now. Just one arcade machine available for further inspection. A Slot for a token, a token in our inventory... A plan slowly forms. Insert the token into the slot. Wow! It worked!

Coming up is a bit of try'n'error. Luckily I've sorted things out already for you. :) If you examine the arcade machine screen you're told there's sort of a map, with squares in a grid that ranges from A to E (horizontally) and 1 to 5 (vertically). We're in E5, the arcade hall, marked by a star. We have a joystick that can be moved in any cardinal direction, and a red button. Means we can probably move the star around with the joystick, and press the red button when it has reached a desired destination. Turns out the arcade machine is sort of a teleportation device. Upon pushing the red button it'll beam us to the location indicated by the star on the screen. So which of the 13 squares should we choose? Long story short: The former post office, now the Dark Tower, located at square C5. Means push the joystick west twice and south twice. Then push the red button. BÄM! - you're on the hilltop where the game started, with the slight difference that the post office now is the Dark Tower.

The next goal is clear: To get into the tower. Unfortunately there's a drawbridge we probably need to lower (or get lowered) first. Unfortunately the paths west and east are not very promising: The cemetary gets locked up as you approach it (with no key in sight), and the aggy poodle is now a hellhound that kills us if we stay with it for a few moves. Unfortunately we don't have a bone or anythinge else for it. Unfortunately the solution is a typical Scott Adams brainmelter: You have to, and this is the exact solution the designer came up with, say the magic word that the lighthouse "wrote into the sky" after you randomly gave a hat to a pelican. You wrote that one down, didn't you? For if not, this is the end of your game, you're stuck. Well, the amount of possible magic words is limited. Try "fratto", "kaluze" and "sorkin", those are the ones I dug up from the source code. I have not tested if they work when you haven't given the hat to the pelican, or if the game even lets you get to the drawbridge when you haven't. In any way, save the game here!

Once you say the magic word the drawbridge is out of the way and you can go south. The vestibule you enter looks unsuspicious at first but turns out to be a trap - you were expected. Your nemesis Mr. Crisp has captured princess Tasmania, and now you as well. You both find yourselves chained up in a torture chamber, with Mr. Crisp about to do some torturing to you. A ladder leads up but is out of reach as long as you are in chains.

Good thing is you can't do much wrong at this moment. Wait a turn or two, and you'll learn that Crisp is bribable. You can give him stuff from your inventory, or wait and he'll take the stuff from you himself. There's only one thing he's interested in, and that's the violet note. Once he has read it he's quickly redressing, glams himself up a bit and rushes off. So his first (or nick) name is Corky, and that letter must have been some sort of romantic invitation. Also, there's a postscriptum that sounds like it might come in handy at a later time: "PS: If my little poodle yaps at you, just say ALEXIS, HEEL and she’ll behave." Wait, have we played the mailman again the entire time? Jeez... But okay, there's stuff to do. You're still chained up, with Crisp's labcoat and maybe a bit of your inventory scattered across the room. Princess Tasmania tells you what to do once you're free, which you aren't... yet.

Let's grab the coat, as it's the only thing we can do. It's poorly hinted at, but it has a pocket into which we can look - a rusty key! Conveniently it unlocks our chains. Free again! First thing to do now is to free the princess, which is done by what she tells, pulling the lever. Shouldst you decide to push it instead your score would lower significantly as you'd turn the princess into a puddle of meat mush. I think you could still solve the game then, but with a penalty score of 10. So, you dutifully pull the lever, and the princess is free. With a weird hint at human-platypus feet sex she disappears and leaves us to our main task to stop the Evil One. Get the now opened note and read it. It's from Violet Voss. Not only do we get to know that she calls Mr. Crisp "Corky-Poo" (if you ever load an old save game, try and address Mr. Crisp as "Corky") and that they're probably friends with benefits, but the note also reveals a way to (probably) get rid of the hellhound. Nice!

So, let's get to work. Open the hatch in the ceiling and climb up the ladder to a round chamber. 13 paintings are here, but I didn't find a way to examine them individually. Two ways to go - let's go up first. The room's all... fuzzy, you can't see a thing. Wait, didn't we experience something like that before? Right, in the cinema! We still have the 3D glasses with us so - okay, wearing them helps (again). So this a laboratory, and it's also the highest room in the tower. Now if this doesn't smell like end game... Save your game here. With your game saved, feel free to examine everything, fiddle around with the controls and wake the cat. Note: There's no "switches" object, just a "first switch" and a "second switch". And to my knowledge, the telescope here has no use. Well, load your saved game, and off we go.

Less to do here than expected: Turn off the second switch (leaving the first one at it is), get the broom and go back down. That's it. No fiddling with the cat. Now the round chamber is all fuzzy, but once we remove the glasses everything's back to normal. Go north and find you're trapped within the tower - the doorbridge is in the way. How to lower it? Well, not from here, so we go back south. The round chamber is the most likely room for a drawbridge-related puzzle, so we examine the paintings again and try to manipulate them. It's a tad annoying (see the respective section in the Review part), but all you have to enter (and nothing else helps) is "move painting". Aha, a crank! Turn it, and the drawbridge turns into an ex-obstacle. North twice, and we're back outdoors! The cemetary is inaccessible, so we continue towards the town.

Jeez, that darn mut is still there and won't let us through. Wait, what about that love letter we read in the torture chamber? Type ALEXIS, HEEL - The mutt obeys every word, and you can even pet it if you want. So, as for this old cottage to the east - the dog is no longer an obstacle, so let's check it out. The door is closed but not locked, so open it and go in. There's a steel key to take and a message to read - as suspected, Violet Voss and Corky are a couple in this side of the game world. Unfortunately the bookcase can't be manipulated (like, there's no secret room behind it), but at least we got a key to the library now. On a side note, I myself ran into storage problems again at this point, so I dropped the note and the glasses.

East to leave the cottage, north to get to Rotary. The library is here, and we've just been to the librarian's cottage and found a key. The library door is locked. I sense a connection here. Unlock the door with the steel key and go in. Finally, the library! As soon as you look around, someone slams the door shut and locks it from the outside. That's harsh, and it confirms someone is watching our every step.

Anyway, end game. Nothing interesting in the library, so go south into the museum. This room's also pretty bland, except for a display case with a cat statue inside. Hm, is this our final goal? The case has no lock, so let's try violence. Giving it a good old knuckle sandwich doesn't help, so I'll need a tool. Unfortunately, on my way here I didn't discard of items by how un-violent they are, so I'm trapped with useless stuff in my inventory, except for... the broom! Breaking the case with the broom works! I have no idea if it's possible to finish the game if you leave the broom outside the library and enter it with nothing else that you can break the case with. That would be... heartbreaking. For now we just have to examine the statue (it has a hole in its forehead, consult your inventory, and try to put the stone (the Wishbringer) into that hole. Oh, wow! This looks like an end sequence! An old woman shows up and demands I stop putting the stone into the cat statue's forehead hole. Yes/No question. Well, of course I tried both, and that woman is actually the Evil One, so continue your action by typing "y". Twice. Whew, you're back on the cliff, next to the magic shop! Knock on the door, and that's it! 100 points out of 100 scored, and the Evil One was defeated. Another text adventure solved! Congratulations!

In the gamne version I played, the game now gives you the option to consult th hints, which give you insights on how puzzles could have been solved alternatively. I briefly looked through some of the hints, and yeah, there's several cul-de-sacs. Like, there's six itzems that enable you to break the display case at the end, and you can drop all of them, before entering the library, cutting you off from winning the game two steps before winning it. Not cool. Anyway, if you're into statistics, here's a complete list of points to score.

No.	Room	Points	Score	Puzzle
1	Hilltop	1	1	Enter the post office (simply go south)