Enchanter, as most Infocom fans know, is the first in a fantasy series intended to complement the Zork trilogy, a set of games where success depends both on wits and on judicious use of magic. (By implication, the adventurer in the Zork trilogy is a sort of grunt by contrast, using combat skills as opposed to spell-casting, which isn't really true--but the blend of the two in Beyond Zork lends credence to the idea that it was supposed to be a resolution to both trilogies.) The player's use of magic in this series is based on a simple system of copying spells into a book and then memorizing the spell each time it is cast, an approach that has earned much criticism over the years but which I still enjoy and find realistic (well, realistic on fantasy-game terms, anyway). It feels more natural to have known spells in a book than floating around in one's head constantly, somehow, even though it can become a form of inventory management. Part of the fun of this magic system, moreover, is the humor value inherent in casting certain spells on inappropriate objects (and the funny responses Infocom provided, of course).

Anyway, the plot of Enchanter is a fairly standard save-the-world deal, wherein you, the novice enchanter, are sent into Krill's castle because your powers are minimal enough that he won't bother to get rid of you. (Why it wouldn't be worth his while to smush someone prowling around his castle isn't wholly clear to me, but oh well.) The layout of the plot is rather "wide," in design parlance, meaning that almost the entire territory and most of the puzzles are available early in the game; it's up to you to figure out what can be solved at any given time. Wide games can be irritating if the puzzles must be solved in one particular order, but 'tisn't so in Enchanter, fortunately; quite a few of the puzzles are solvable very near the beginning of the game.

The puzzles themselves are mostly good, and not especially difficult, with one exception--one vital action is without motivation and relies on a somewhat obscure hint. There is another instance of a verb I didn't expect the game to recognize and spent hours upon hours devising alternative solutions to the puzzle--and no, my copy was not pirated; I just didn't think to look at the verb list, I guess. There are a few other mildly unfair elements--the effects of a spell expire after a small number of moves, but there's no way of knowing that (and no sign when it happens) and it might seem at first like that spell doesn't have the desired effect. Another puzzle, while the idea is fairly obvious, requires considerable trial and error for success--and there are some incorrect solutions, for which the game gives a fairly obvious warning. As an introduction to the use of magic in puzzles, Enchanter succeeds admirably; you use almost all of your spells at least once, often in creative ways. If there's a weakness here, it's that virtually everything you do turns on magic; whereas the other two installments in the series called for more puzzle-solving and less trying spells, Enchanter is largely solvable by pulling out a spell for every occasion. It's not a major drawback, but it's not optimal either.

Enchanter's plot, as noted, is not especially innovative, and is beset by contradictions, primary among them that Krill would not bother to notice when you acquire the means to defeat him (and that said means is sitting around in his own castle). That said, though, the atmosphere and the setting are quite well done--the abandoned village, the view of the castle from the Lonely Mountain, and the spread of the effect of Krill's spell, characterized thus: "Everything you see is gray and lifeless, as though covered with a veil of ash. Sound is muted and there is a faint acrid odor." Room descriptions change as well as the spell spreads, deteriorating from reasonably tidy abandoned castle to something altogether more sinister; it reminded me of the Nothing from Neverending Story. The effect is to lend some urgency to the plot, even though the time allotted to accomplish the mission is far more than needed, and to make the game something more than a collection of puzzles. There is humor as well, though: possibly the high point of the game is the arrival of the "adventurer," who seems to be you in the Zork trilogy (though it does, sadly, assume that said adventurer is male), and who plays on all the sillinesses of Zork and its genre, from illogical "wonder what happens if I do this" actions and their snappy responses ("The adventurer attempts to eat his sword. I don't think it would agree with him.") to classic vacuum-cleaner adventurer behavior--put the adventurer in a room and watch him pick everything up. In that and in a few select instances--a ludicrously overguarded door, for instance, and the arrival on the scene of the Implementors, meaning the game authors--Infocom manages to get in a few digs at the swords-and-sorcery universe, even while it invokes many of its cliches.

It's interesting, though, that as a fantasy game, Enchanter plays everything much more conventionally than the Zork series did. The parody elements largely address adventure games themselves, not of the fantasy world; the evil warlock, the good sorcerer, the friendly animals are all reliable fantasy elements, and Enchanter doesn't do much with them--whereas the Zork trilogy derived its humor value from making fun of fantasy itself. The feel, moreover, is less lighthearted than the Zork trilogy (at least, less than I and II; III was a departure in that respect); the adventurer's pratfalls aside, the onset of the "veil of ash" and the way it takes over the game has a sinister quality that doesn't fit well with the humorous aspect. Krill's sidekicks are more menacing than any enemies from the Zork series, since they're not given foibles or funny lines (no lines at all, actually); even when the thief in Zork I was intent on killing you, it was hard to actually be afraid of him because the game took pains to play up the "gentlemanly" aspect. Here, though, when "guttural voices seem to be coming in your direction," there's a genuinely ominous feeling. An early description sets the tone: 

To the east, far away, can be seen a great castle at the edge of the Sea.
Three turrets it has; two, old and still majestic, lie on either side of
a third, cold, black as night and squat as a toad. An evil smoke seems to
emanate from this tower, shrouding the others in a darkening fog. A small
mountain trail leaves the peak and descends to the south into a small
village far below.
Obviously, there isn't a lot that's new here; the ideas and images could have come directly from Tolkien or from one of his imitators. But the writing is restrained enough that these and other atmosphere moments work well--the game builds up to your final encounter with Krill by giving more and more space to the looming-menace aspect. It's hard to explain why it works well, but it does--though you start in a bucolic natural setting, as the game progresses, your discoveries bring you closer to the heart of the castle, and the atmospheric changes are calculated to reflect that progress. Likewise, your accomplishments as an enchanter build on each other: you move from minor triumphs in the beginning to more significant or daring uses of magic later in the game. The point is that Enchanter does quite a lot with a sparely written plot and its few puzzles, and the cliched aspect doesn't prevent the story from being effective.

On the whole, Enchanter works, and while there are problems--I wish the authors had rethought the insistence on hunger, thirst and sleep, for example--this is an example of one of Infocom's more solid early efforts. Though it takes a very different approach to its fantasy element than does Zork I, it's no less entertaining for that.