Curse of Enchantia

Curse of Enchantia
Developer(s)	Core Design
Publisher(s)	Core Design
Distributor(s)	Virgin Games
Designer(s)	Robert Toone Ian Sabine Chris Long
Artist(s)	Billy Allison Stuart Atkinson Rolf Mohr
Platform(s)	Amiga, PC DOS
Release date(s)	December 31, 1992[1]
Genre(s)	Graphic adventure game
Mode(s)	Single player

Curse of Enchantia is a fantasy adventure computer game created by Core Design and released by Virgin Games for the PC DOS and Amiga in 1992.

Story

According to Amiga Power, Curse of Enchantia is a sort of "a funny version of Lure of the Temptress with a different plot".^[2] The game takes place in the surreal fairy tale realm of Enchantia, which suffers under the cruel reign of wicked witches and their evil queen. The queen seeks a male child from another dimension for her desired spell of eternal youth. Brad, the game's teenaged hero, vanishes from modern-day Earth and is transported to a dungeon in Enchantia. Brad sets out to break the eponymous curse, bring down the witches' rule, and return home. Along the way, he meets human characters, talking animals, monsters, and other weird creatures.

The story is partially inspired by The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.^[3] It is a comedy and relies heavily on absurd humor.

Gameplay

Curse of Enchantia uses a point-and-click, icon-based user interface. It has very little in-game text, and the few short conversation scenes use a minimalistic system of pictograms in speech balloons. According to the developer Rob Toone, the game was designed this way because "too much reading can slow the game or kill it, like The Adventures of Willy Beamish."^[4] There are also several action-style segments like dodging hazards or using the right item at right time, but the character is never at risk of dying: every "dangerous" task can be repeated until successfully completed. According to Toone, the idea behind this concept was to make the "arcadey bits... interesting without being difficult".^[4] There is, however, one major design bug close to the game's end that can prevent the player from completing the adventure.^[5]

Development

The game was originally titled Zeloria and conceived as an action-adventure game, in the style of Another World,^[6] but with a more traditional mix of hand-drawn backgrounds and sprite bitmap graphics. This caused some confusion as several magazine reviews actually still used "Zeloria" as the name of the land in the game, and some also incorrectly assumed that Enchantia is the name of the witch, who is actually unnamed.^[7] An earlier version of the game's story, also featured in some reviews, involved a trio of sinister witches that need to drink a special potion every one hundred years or else they would instantly turn to dust.^[8]

Released in 1992, Curse of Enchantia was the first adventure game by Core Design as well as one of the first CD-ROM adventure games. The CD version reportedly took little advantage of the 640 megabytes of storage afforded by the CD, adding only a longer animated introduction than the floppy disk version. Virgin Games bundled Curse of Enchantia with many of the earliest PC CD-ROM drives in 1993.^[9]

Reception

Critical reception to Curse of Enchantia at the time of its release was mostly positive. Amiga Action gave it a rating of 94% and the Amiga Action Accolade award, calling it "flawless" and "easily the best adventure game on the Amiga to date". Amiga Computing gave it a rating of 93% and the Gamer Gold award, calling the game "excellent" and "down-right bloody enchanting". CU Amiga gave the game a rating of 89% and the CU Gold Screen award. Amiga Power and The One gave it ratings of 87% and 79%, respectively.^[10] Amiga Format gave Curse of Enchantia a rating of 62%, calling it "light years behind" Monkey Island. PC Player gave it a rating of 38% said the game might make players "nostalgic for Sierra titles".

Later, retro game reviewers remembered the game for its light tone and cartoonish graphics and derided its often illogical puzzle solutions, "arcade" sequences, user interface, and lack of text and dialogue, the last of which reduces the plot to a series of ultimately irrevelant slapstick gags.^[11][12][13] In 2007, a magazine advertisement for Curse of Enchantia was featured in GamesRadar's article showcasing "what game ads looked like when the SNES was alive".^[14]

Legacy

A sequel, Curse of Enchantia 2: Escape from Enchantia, was reportedly planned to be released for PC and Amiga 1200 in 1994^[15] but was soon canceled. However, Core Design followed up Curse of Enchantia in 1994 with Universe, a science-fiction adventure game whose game engine is similar to Enchantia's but was actually built from scratch. The basic premise of Universe's plot, a young man taken into another world to fight an evil ruler, is similar to Enchantia's, but the setting resembles a space opera. The plot is also more serious.^{[citation needed]}

Curse of Enchantia inspired the name of the Polish reggae band Enchantia.^[16]

See also

• Heart of Darkness

References

1. ^ IGN: Curse of Enchantia
2. ^ Amiga Power #17 (Sep 1992)
3. ^ Braving wicked witches and shark infested waters (page 2), CU Amiga, November 1992
4. ^ ^{a b} The One Amiga 47 (Aug 1992)
5. ^ Elkatas plays over 40 adventure games. Back to business - Penny Arcade Forums
6. ^ CU Amiga, July 1992, p.43
7. ^ GameFAQs: Curse of Enchantia (PC) Walkthrough by Anonymous (1993)
8. ^ Kultboy.com - DIE Kult Seite über die alten Spiele-Magazine und Retro-Games! (German)
9. ^ Curse of Enchantia at Home of the Underdogs
10. ^ HOL Amiga database entry
11. ^ Curse of Enchantia
12. ^ Curse of Enchantia (1992) - The House of Games.net
13. ^ The Good Old Days - Curse of Enchantia - Review
14. ^ What game ads looked like when the SNES was alive | GamesRadar
15. ^ Przygodówki, w które nigdy nie zagramy (Polish)
16. ^ Enchantia czyli reggae z Gdyni (Polish)

External links

• Curse of Enchantia at MobyGames
• Curse of Enchantia at GameFAQs
• Curse of Enchantia - Lemon Amiga
• Curse Of Enchantia - HOL Amiga database