Heavy on the Magick tried to join two kinds of game that usually stayed apart. The player typed commands, as in a text adventure, but the hero was a large, animated figure on screen, a sorcerer called Axil who ruffled his cloak while he waited and shrugged at the player when told to walk through a door that was not there. Gargoyle Games released it in 1986, and Sinclair User’s reviewer thought the mix finally worked: “At last graphics and text have been combined in a really satisfying way.” CRASH‘s readers agreed for a long time. The game went to number 1 in the magazine’s readers’ Adventure chart in September 1986 and was still in the chart more than two years later.
Fast facts
- Authors: Roy Carter and Greg Follis of Gargoyle Games.
- Released: spring 1986, on the ZX Spectrum (48K, and it ran on the 128K) and the Amstrad CPC, at £9.95.
- Size: 255 rooms, 21 kinds of monster and about 280 objects, according to Gargoyle.
- Reviews: 9 out of 10 in CRASH’s Adventure Trail; five stars in Sinclair User; a Mastergame in Amstrad Action.
- Re-released: on the budget Rebound label in 1989.
Axil in the dungeon
Axil begins in the dungeons beneath the castle of the sorcerer Therion, in the world Gargoyle called Graumerphy, with a spell book, the Grimoire, that is missing most of its pages. He has to find his way out. On the way he meets trolls, goblins, wyverns, wraiths, ghosts, vampires, a medusa and a werewolf, and four demons that can be summoned. Sinclair User warned that the demons “detest time-wasters, fools and silly sorcerers”: each one had to be placated with the right talisman, and Your Sinclair passed on the combinations, including a block of nougat bearing the number 20. The one friendly face is Apex, a clumsy ogre who follows Axil about and explains objects and passwords, although with a stamina of 40 he can do real damage by stepping on you.
The game takes its role-playing from Dungeons & Dragons. Axil has Stamina, Skill and Luck scores, rolled at random when a game starts, and he gains experience and rank in the Magicians’ Guild, starting as a lowly Neophyte. Greg Follis told CRASH that Gargoyle had tried to include as many features of the role-playing game as it could, balanced against good graphics and playability, and to capture the atmosphere of D&D rather than copy its rules. Before writing the game, Gargoyle had worked out the whole world of Graumerphy, most of which Axil never sees.
Typing in Merphish
Commands used a language Gargoyle called Merphish, which Sinclair User described as “a rather terse, even Spartan, tongue”: an action and an object. Each action was a single keypress, so P gave PICK UP, X gave EXAMINE, B blasted a creature with a spell and I invoked a demon; the player then typed the object’s name in full. Several commands could be strung together with commas and would run one after another, until a monster interrupted them. Apex, the demons and even some doors could be spoken to.
The graphics came at a price. To fit in so many rooms, Gargoyle stored each picture small in memory and enlarged it on screen. CRASH’s Derek Brewster found that this made the pixels conspicuous and some objects hard to recognise, and he noted that each room’s description stayed on screen for nine seconds. He still gave it 9 out of 10 for atmosphere, vocabulary, logic and addictive quality, and praised the booklet as the best he had seen since Lords of Midnight. What he liked most was the animation, “the incredibly lifelike movements of the main character”. Sinclair User gave it five stars: “a dream of a game to play”.
Top of the readers’ chart
CRASH ran two readers’ charts, both built from votes posted in by readers, not from sales: the Hotline for games in its main review section and the Adventure chart for games covered in the Adventure Trail (see Reading the charts). Heavy on the Magick entered both in August 1986, at number 12 in the Adventure Top 30 and number 19 in the Hotline Top 30.
In the Adventure chart it reached number 1 in September 1986 and stayed there for six months. Level 9’s Worm in Paradise displaced it in March 1987, and CRASH noted the end of a “stunning run of six months at the top”. It was back at number 1 in April, and again from June to August 1987: ten months at the top out of the twelve from September 1986. It stayed in the chart after the Adventure chart was cut to a Top 10, and in November 1988 it was still there, at number 10.
In the Hotline, which took votes for every kind of game, it peaked at number 13 in October 1986. That month’s Hotline was led by Commando, Ghosts ’n Goblins and Bombjack.
CRASH’s readers also voted it the best adventure of 1986, with 18% of the vote, ahead of Delta 4’s The Boggit with 14%. It came third in the State of the Art award, behind Starglider and Lightforce. “It shows what excellent tastes CRASH readers have got!” said Roy Carter, and promised a follow-up.
Re-release
In 1989 the game came back at a budget price on the Rebound label. CRASH reviewed it again in May 1989. Its reviewer was “personally not that keen on adventure games” but found this one “rather playable”, and scored it 85%.
Sources
- Derek Brewster, Adventure Trail, CRASH issue 29, June 1986, pp. 87–88: review (Gargoyle, £9.95, Carter and Follis; the enlarged pictures, the nine-second descriptions, the booklet, the animation; ratings of 9).
- Richard Price, Sinclair User issue 51, June 1986, pp. 50–52: review, five stars (Merphish, the single-key commands, 255 rooms, 280 objects, 21 kinds of monster, Apex, the demons, Neophyte and Zelator).
- Your Sinclair issue 7, July 1986: review and tips (the Grimoire, the talismans, Apex), and Phil South’s interview with Roy Carter and Greg Follis.
- Amstrad Action issue 10, July 1986: Amstrad CPC version, Mastergame.
- CRASH issue 32, September 1986: adventure column on role-playing, with Greg Follis on Dungeons & Dragons and the world of Graumerphy.
- CRASH issues 31–58, August 1986 to November 1988: Hotline and Adventure charts. Issue 31, August 1986 (entries at 19 and 12); issue 33, October 1986 (Hotline 13); issue 38, March 1987 (Worm in Paradise at number 1, “six months at the top”); issue 42, July 1987 (Adventure number 1); issue 58, November 1988 (Adventure Top 10, number 10).
- CRASH issue 38, March 1987: CRASH Readers’ Awards 1986 (Best Adventure, 18%; State of the Art, third, 5.5%; Roy Carter’s comment).
- CRASH issue 64, May 1989: Rebound re-release (“Then: 9/10, Now: 85%”).