Spellbound

Copyright : Mastertronic | Reviewed by : Ritchardo

You are Magic Knight, the hero of Finders Keepers. Your tutor Gimbal the Wizard has been trying out some very old spells to make his rice pudding taste nicer, unfortunately the scribes who translated the spells from very ancient English to slightly ancient English made some mistakes with the wording and Gimbal is in trouble.

The spell sent Gimbal to the mythical Castle of Karn and dragged seven innocent people with him. As Gimbal becomes trapped he projects a last faint message back to you across the time stream: â??Iâ??ve taught you enough to rescue us all. Magic Knight, you are our only hope!!â?

Graphics

Spellbound is a graphical departure from its predecessor, Finders Keepers and adopts a more traditional graphic adventure perspective. An obvious inspiration for the Dizzy series of games, Spellbound is populated with well drawn and clearly defined characters and objects that help give the game a real sense of personality. The â??Unique window menu systemâ?? although taken for granted now is quite unlike anything that had come before and is very well implemented with a basic WIMP (Windows, Icon, Mouse, Pointer) interface just without the mouseâ?¦ obviouslyâ?¦ This interface is, again, clearly defined and easy to use through good design.

My only real drawbacks with the graphics are the serious slowdowns you get when there are a lot of other characters/objects in the room not to mention the sparse backgrounds â?? a lot of black space that couldâ??ve been better used with a nice background or two. It is easy, also to forget what floor you are on from time to time and even a change in colour scheme wouldâ??ve helped with this.

Sound

An excellent medieval tune (penned by infamous 8-bit composer David Whittaker) plays throughout the course of the game and is one of the very best tunes to be played on the Amstrad, in my humble opinion. Sadly this does mean there are no sound effects to accompany the game and this too is a real missed opportunity what with all the spells and blow something commands just itching to be used!

Gameplay

A fantastically well designed adventure, David Jonesâ?? Spellbound was the building block for a number of graphical adventures and has a steep learning curve with enough fiendishly difficult puzzles to keep even the most hardened adventurer baffled. In saying that though, the puzzles are not so obscure as to be impossible and there is a real sense of achievement when you finally crack that spell youâ??ve been working on for ages or climb over the tower!

The idea of having to keep the other characters alive is a good one and helps add a sense of urgency in places. The character interaction leaves a little to be desired, however, and it can become extremely frustrating when youâ??re characters are too tired to be happy but wonâ??t eat anything because they donâ??t want to be commanded by you. A virtual death sentenceâ?¦ youâ??ll grow to hate that Catch 22 as you wait around for them to croak it!

One frustrating omission is the lack of a save game option which meant you could progress a fair distance into the game only to mis-time a jump and plunge into the pit, forcing you to start again! Very irritating!