Review: Wishbringer

(A short review, but ultimately a warning. To those who play this game: don’t forget about the violet note.)

Boot patrol!

I have officially finished my first Infocom game!

And I liked it a lot. Wishbringer brought me a lot of moments of joy and laughter. Once you complete the introductory task, it seems the game-world turns dark and sinister. Once the boot patrol turns up though, it turns out to be whimsical and funny. The little town of Festeron (Witchville in the dark) is full of surprises, secret passages and absurd characters. When I found my way to Misty Island I laughed out loud. Phineas and Ferb is one of my favorite cartoons, and here I saw an island full of Agent Ps…

The puzzles are fun and on the easy side. I would recommend that you look at the official feelies and the original game-booklet before playing though. (Widespread on the web.)

Then why only three stars? Because it’s possible to make the game unwinnable when you are at the doorstep of victory by not reading a certain note before it becomes forever inaccesible to you. And because the Magick Stone that this game is supposedly about is hidden without clues, like an inside joke from the makers. And because things like that are extra frustrating in an easy-going whimsical adventure such as this one.

But do play it. It’s fun.

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Nice review. For me it’s almost completely different. I’vw played all the Infocom games and almost nothing else (I had a loooooong hiatus from IF between 1989-2019).

If liked Wishbringer I highly recommend Trinity by the same author (Brian Moriarty).

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That’s not a hiatus. It’s more like coming back after a roundtrip to outer space!

Trinity is high on my to play-list. I really liked Moriarty’s writing and I’m curious to see a longer and more serious IF by him.

Me, I’m slowly working my way back in time. My previous oldest-adventures-I’ve-played were from the nineties. 1996 was a great year for amateur IF, I cannot recommend Sunset over Savannah enough.
Much more recent but very reminiscent of Infocom (I read somewhere) are two magnificent games by Michael Coyne: Risorgimento Represso and Illuminismo Iniziato.

Thanks for the response. Have fun adventuring!

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I love ‘Wishbringer’. It might be my favourite Infocom game. I love the atmosphere. It helped that I played an original copy with all the knick-knacks. (I especially loved the sealed envelope. Infocom even printed their own stamps for it. E platypus unum :slight_smile: And Wishbringer phosphoresces purple!)
It’s “Introductory level”, Infocom’s easiest (unlike ‘Trinity’!).
Stop reading and deliver that envelope!

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I can imagine that adds tons to the fun. I looked at photographs and scans of the knick-kniacks, but that didn’t feel quite the same as jumping on the table with a glowing Magick Stone and summoning rain…

I absolutely loved it when you look back over the village from the top of Magick Shoppe-hill and you see your boss shaking his fist at you. Or him hacking into the police radio to tell you to get on with it.

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I seriously did not know that the stone actually glowed for weeks, especially not purple as most glow-in-the-dark stuff when I was a teen was bright green or yellow. I remember the weird uncanny terror experienced when I went to bed one night and opened my eyes and couldn’t figure out what that purple glow was on my dresser.

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I’ve recently got back into IF, so thought I’d ease myself in before trying something more ambitious.

Just finished Wishbringer this evening. Although I found the tone a little odd at points (the boots?), it was mostly well written and charming. Even though it’s clearly aimed at children, and goes out of it’s way to be kind to the player, it reacquainted me with some old school adventure game mechanics - inventory management creating unwinnable game states. Luckily the game is pretty short and the map pretty small so starting over isn’t the end of the world and seems acceptable to me.

Any suggestions on another game that is a slight step up in difficulty from this? Infocom or other?

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Welcome back to the joyful world of tediously typing broken english into a stubborn machine and hoping for the best.

These are great and not too hard (among many others; I made a little list here: Games I finished without hints. - Recommended List (tads.org))

Have tons of fun.

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Thank you!

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