Merlin's Magic Forest - Review

This is part one of a small DOS trilogy written by John Olsen in the mid nineties.

If you have been worn down by tough long games recently (as I have) any game from this trilogy would be the perfect antidote. I played the first game which amounts to about 25 locations, all tersely but adequately described. These are nicely displayed in a green font in DosBox-X.

I had to mount an image disk as an a drive to save games as I got an error choosing c.

The object of your mission is to find five ingredients and put them in a cauldron to free Merlin from his magic slumber. There are half a dozen puzzles to solve, all do X with Y and clues abound if you do get stuck. I spotted no grammatical faux pas although there a few bugs that revolve around the EXAMINE command. If there is a message engraved on an object in the room you are in it will give you the same parser reply whichever object you are actually examining.

So in summation hardly stunningly original but acceptable if you are at a loose end one afternoon and want something to finish before your 4pm cuppa.

Parser/Vocabulary (Rating: 6/10)

Generally adequate but buggy use of the EXAMINE command.

Atmosphere (Rating: 4/10)

The descriptions are short and create little mood music.

Cruelty (Rating: Polite)

I found one way to make the game unwinnable (aside from suicidally attacking creatures) but generally speaking pretty kind to the player.

Puzzles (Rating: 4/10)

Few and predictable.

Overall (Rating: 5/10)

Good for an afternoon's entertainment.