#myglares

[yugm]

#tuesdayselfie #picoftheday #selfoholic #myglares #mybeard #clicks #instaholic #instagramers #t4tag #famous #i #me & #myself (at Ahmedabad, India)

[spelberoendesverige-blog]

Inte nog med att staten kör med eget spelbolag och driver casinon men nu håvar de också in stora summor på spellicensener! Kan någon ärligt säga att det har blivit bättre för spelberoende efter allt detta? Spelreklamen har blivit mer aggressiv! Statliga myndigheten Spelinspektionen myglar och granskar inte statliga casinon! SMS lånen har blivit värre! Spelbolag erbjuder spelare betalkort! Så säg helt ärligt har det blivit bättre? #spelberoende #spelmissbruk #gamblingaddiction #gambling #sweden🇸🇪 #addiction #svpol https://www.instagram.com/p/BvOnsO3A_k7/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=ne6jugyh2qmj

[ciathyzareposts]

Missed Classic: The Price of Magik – Won! (With Final Rating)

By Ilmari

Underground

Last time, I had just explored a house from top to bottom and defeated a giant slug with some salt. Beyond the slug opened up a completely new playing field. It seemed the game was funneling me towards some direction, since there were so many one-way connections between rooms (in truth, there was always a route I could backtrack to the house).

I love the decoration

The first interesting encounter was a golem wearing a silver mail with the word FIN written on it. It took me a while to find out what the creature wanted, but finally I traded my robes with the mail.

There’s a union for every trade

The FIN spell turned the target into a fish, and it came soon handy, when I arrived at a river. A ferryman took me to the center of the river, I turned into a fish and dived. My reward was another spell (SAN).

Rest of the underground

Beyond the river I found a tunnel, the end of which was guarded by a bloodworm. Fortunately, my trusty bat friend scared the monster away.

Next, I came to an altar, on which rested a talisman, above which floated a 10 000 kg weight. If I tried to take the talisman, the weight crushed me. The simple solution was to cast FLY spell, which was enough to keep the weight floating, even if I took the talisman.

I didn’t know cherubs looked like this

A few rooms further I found a statue of cherub. The statue was holding a trumpet, which I knew to be a focus for BOM spell. I couldn’t just take the trumpet, but I had an idea I could test what BOM would do (you don’t need to be holding the focus for casting a spell, it just needs to be in the same room). To my delight, the spell turned the statue alive. The cherub was scared and left the trumpet behind.

Somewhere else

I came to a glowing portal, where I had to offer a gift to Myglar, the evil wizard, before I could proceed. Myglar accepted any item as a gift, and then I could move through the portal to a grassy plain. The weirdest thing was that a brass monkey dropped on my back and refused to move. Taking into account that Brass Monkey is a cocktail and having a monkey on a back refers to being addicted, I think this is meant to be a joke. Ha-ha.

Getting the monkey off was equally ridiculous, and I had to check the clues to get it. I had to backtrack to house – fortunately I could use the ZEN spell for quick movement – and go to its kitchen area, specifically to a cold room. After a few turns, the monkey got too cold, escaped and left me with a crystal and a black ball. The black ball wasn’t that interesting – it was a sort of one-time protection to any spell – but the crystal ball was a focus for ESP spell, which let me send an astral projection to an adjacent room for one turn.

My mapping session ended, when I came to a portico, filled with giant ants. With no idea how to defeat them, I turned to test some of my new spells and items. I tried various things with the talisman I found and rubbing it sent me to a new valley, completely separate from the rest of the game. This place was almost empty, but I did find a riddle:

My father is dark 

My mother’s unknown

I dwell in high places

And where the ghosts moan

Returning from the valley, I continued checking the spells. BOM was especially useful, since the house was full of things I could animate. Most of them revealed new spells, some unleashed monsters, and one gave me a spell focus (claw, focus for SAN). But the most interesting result came from a picture of Stonehenge.

It really took me there!

Map of Stonehenge

At the middle of Stonehenge I found a blue box with the spell IBM written on it. This scene broke the mimesis for me. Had I been transported from a nameless fantasy realm to Earth? Why is there, presumably, a computer in Stonehenge? Did IBM have blue computers? And what does it all have to do with the spell itself, which frightens its target? In any case, I could use IBM to scare off the giant ants.

The final rooms

Beyond the ants I found new rooms. They were otherwise empty, but one of them contained a locked room. I could now try the ESP spell, which allowed me to project an astral projection of myself to some direction and returned me back to my body after one turn. Thus, I saw that beyond door there was a dead idol. I could not do anything physical in my astral form, but I could cast spells. Thus, it was only a matter of casting BOM to make the idol alive and of casting HYP to make it obey my command to open the door.

Next problem was an ice room that was too cold for walking through. The solution was simple – I just flew through it.

Is this supposed to be gargoyle or moonbeast?

After few rooms I came across a gargoyle and a moonbeast. Moonbeast was more aggressive, so I decided to deal with it first. I had trouble figuring out what I was supposed to do to the beast, so I checked the official clue sheet. The solution was waving a mirror, so that the moonbeast would be scared of its reflection.

Gargoyle was more peaceful, but it also prevented my move forward. The gargoyle wanted me to solve a riddle – it didn’t tell me what riddle, but since I had come across only one riddle in the game ( see above), I guessed that would be it. I had no idea of the solution, so I again turned to the clue sheet. Turns out, the correct answer was FEAR.

Only one more room to go! I entered the lair of evil Myglar – who instantly killed me with a lightning. I restored and sent instead my astral projection to the room. I tried casting SAN – a spell that makes a person completely sane – and it did make it impossible for Myglar to cast any spell, but he still had a dagger he could use. I then tested DED – a spell to “kill” all magic. After casting it, Myglar’s magical enchantment of eternal youth collapsed, and the evil wizard died.

Somewhat surprisingly, the game gave me an opportunity to decide whether I wanted a good or a bad ending. In the good ending, I received all the powers Myglar used to have and led the world into a new era of magic and prosperity. In the bad ending, my supposed magical powers were actually just figments of my disturbed mind and I was sent into an institution where I spent the rest of my days imagining myself as a magical ruler over my fellow inmates. Now, that came out of left field.

Spells (if I’ve “officially” found them) – foci (if I own them) – what they do: ESP – crystal ball – send an astral projection to a room next to you, ? – candle – ?, ZAP – ashes – throw a lighting, DET – elder cross – detect danger, XAM – prism – checks if target is focus for some spell, ZEN – mirror – rapid movement, MAD – grimoire – make target mad, HYP – staff – hypnotises targets, FIX – valerian – heal the target, DED – wheel – cancels spells, FLY- broom – makes target fly, DOW – pendulum – check if target is magical, BOM – trumpet – turns statues and pictures alive, SEE – feldspar lense – finding secret doors, KIL – axe – makes target go berserk, FIN – silver mail – turns target into fish, SAN – claw – makes target sane, IBM – blue box – frighten the target

Inventory otherwise: mandrake, skull, knucklebone, ring, eyebright flowers, cage, robes, knife, wolfsbane, shovel, plate armour, crowbar, talisman, black ball

Final Rating

Puzzles and Solvability

If we ignore the rather silly puzzle of monkey on the back and some of the more obtuse puzzles at the end of the game, all the puzzles were easy and solvable, once you knew what all the different spells did. Indeed, one might say that the biggest puzzle in the whole game was to learn how to use different spells and what effects they had. If I could have asked for something more, it would have been a more creative use of combinations of spells, since the rare times I had to do this (for instance, when creating an astral projection to cast spells in a room I couldn’t access) felt very satisfying.

The problem is that the game allows the player to skip a lot of these puzzles e.g. with a liberal use of XAM and ZEN spells. It’s one thing to provide alternative solutions and a completely other thing to let the player beat the game without solving puzzles, especially as solving these puzzles doesn’t lead to a different outcome from not solving them.

I haven’t spoken that much about the combat system, which the Price of Magik shares with its predecessor, Red Moon. Suffice to say that it serves even less function than in the previous game, since here no monsters need to be fought with. This means also that most of the spells, which often are meant to be used in combat, serve no purpose at all. Seems like a waste.

Score: 4.

Interface and Inventory

The interface is probably the best I’ve yet seen in Level 9 games. Just to name a few innovation, the game introduces (I think) the OOPS command you can use to correct your previous move, completely discards the need for stacking items by removing the inventory limit (finally!), allows for more complex commands in the style of Infocom and even lets me command other creatures. These additions are sufficient enough to increase the score from Red Moon.

Score: 5.

Story and Setting

The story is, to put it nicely, mostly irrelevant. You are told of an evil wizard in the manual and you finally face him at the very last room of the game, and in between you just keep exploring and augmenting your arsenal of spells. Well, to be fair, there are a couple more references to Myglar, but surprisingly few considering I am supposed to be walking in his home.

The house of Myglar is a good setting and has at least some thematic cohesion. The latter part of the game loses this cohesion, when you leave the house and the player has to trudge through yet another featureless cave system.

Score: 3.

Sound and Graphics

Graphics are what they have mostly been in Level 9 games: waste of disk space. At best they have some link to the room descriptions, often enough they don’t, and constantly they are bland and boring to look at.

Score: 2.

Environment and Atmosphere

The premise and the mechanics of the game seem at first quite promising, since the mapping of Myglar’s house makes for a relatively atmospheric experience. Then the player is sucked through a picture to Stonehenge, finds an IBM and uses it for magic. In the end, if you choose the “bad ending”, it’s all revealed to be a hallucination.

Score: 2.

Dialogue and Acting

Some reviews suggest that the text would have been better in a version with no pictures (or, I guess, in Amiga version). I can rate only what I see, and I see terse sentences with barely enough meat to make an OK room description. Not very engaging.

Score: 2.

4 + 5 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 30.

This lands the game somewhere close to Red Moon and Emerald Isle, which seems quite appropriate.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/missed-classic-the-price-of-magik-won-with-final-rating/

[ciathyzareposts]

Missed Classic 80: The Price of Magik (1986) – Introduction

By Ilmari

It’s again a time to celebrate the start of a new year with a round of Missed Classics. Just as 2010s are changing into 2020s I am about to come to an end in my own Level 9 marathon by playing, first, The Price of Magik, and then, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole.

Magik with k, bekause it sounds kool?

I said an, not the end. With these two games, a certain phase in the development of Level 9 is coming to a close. Looking back at all the products of Level 9 I’ve played, it seems that their most creative phase was with their four first games. Their first game, Colossal Adventure, itself mostly just a feat of importing an existing game from mainframe to PC, served as a template for all their Treasure Hunts, by which I mean a game where the main goal (aside from possible end sequence) is to maximize your score by collecting as many treasure items as possible (treasure items being usually, but not always, of no use beyond their role as treasure). The most perfect example of a Treasure Hunt in Level 9 collection was their third game, Dungeon Adventure, which.got rid of everything superfluous, like end sequences, and concentrated on looting treasures within the most fiendish puzzle box the developers could think of.

The second Level 9 game, Adventure Quest, could be said to form a template of Travel Story, where plot progression means basically advancement into a new map area (although backtracking might be allowed) and where main goal is to get to the final room (and possibly carry something into the final room or do something there). Travel stories Level 9 perfected with their fourth game, Snowball, where you have to move through a spaceship full of dangers into the final room where a terrorist is hiding with a bomb.

After this first round of creativity, the development of Level 9 games has been mostly technical – they added pictures and streamlined their parser – while most of their games still used the two templates. Lords of Time, Emerald Isle and Red Moon were again Treasure Hunts, although two of them tried to hide this fact with a meatier plot. Return to Eden, on the other hand, was like a bad parody of a travel story, with player walking through disconnected areas containing various threats to a trial, which they will lose unless they carry the right items with them.

This doesn’t mean Level 9 had completely stopped innovating. Interestingly, their imaginative side showed most with their games made for Mosaic. Partly these innovations must have been caused by a desire to make easier games. This is especially true with their take on CYOA genre, where The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole served as template and The Archers brought that template to fruition, especially by making the point system of the first game more sensible and giving real options for the player.

A more interesting novelty was what I could call a Game of Exploration, to which The Saga of Erik the Viking served as the template. The idea behind the name is simple. After a short introductory sequence, game world – big, but empty, as has been the case with Level 9 games – opens up almost completely, with only few hidden and/or closed spots. The task of the player is to explore this world, with no real idea what to look for (there are even no treasures to be discovered), and find the key items required for triggering the end game. This template was perfected in The Worm in Paradise, where the dystopian-bureaucratic context and the amnesia of the player character made the mindless exploration understandable.

The reason of this long prologue is that I feel The Price of Magik falls squarely into the Exploration type. It at first seems like it would be another Travel Story, but then… and now I am getting ahead of myself.

Let’s begin with the premise of the game. The Price of Magik continues the story of Red Moon, which was basically a tale of finding a stolen artifact (titular Red Moon of Baskalos), which was the source of all magik. In this game, the artifact is stolen again! The supposed guardian of the Red Moon, Myglar, wanted to make himself immortal and channeled all its energy to this task. Because of this, Red Moon is about to fade and magik will disappear.

Manual reveals also that the player was transferred to the House of the Red Moon magikally, after blowing and exploding a big red balloon found in an attic. I have a feeling nothing at all will be heard about this story in the game itself.

At the beginning of the game I found myself at the driveway outside the yard. There was a woodshed, leading to a herb garden, each containing a number of objects, some of which required some small scale puzzle solving (for instance, I could use a candle to burn a pile of wood into ashes).

The house itself could be entered from two directions – through the front door or by climbing a vine to the attic. It was completely dark inside, but herb garden had contained some eyebright flowers, which were said to miraculously improve vision when rubbed into your eyes.

Let’s start describing the house itself from the top. There was a small attic, consisting only of few rooms. Among other things, the attic contained a mirror, which I could cut to pieces with a diamond ring. Beyond the mirror I found a prism, which had the word XAM written on it.

This is the perfect time to speak of the magic system. Just like in Red Moon, you need two things for doing magic – spell word and corresponding focus. In Red Moon, the spell words, the required foci and the effects of each spell were described in the manual. No such luck here. Spell words – always consisting of three letters – are scattered around the game world, for instance, examining the knocker at the front door revealed the word ESP. Helpfully, if you try to cast a spell, but you don’t yet have the focus, the game will tell you what focus you’ll need.

Spell words seems to have some relation to the effects – you could think XAM might be about examining and ESP about telepathy – but it needs some research to verify what a spell actually does. As a book found within the house has told me, the game has three kinds of spells – spells you just cast generally, spells you cast to some direction and spells that you cast at some object/character (player included).

Interestingly, magic affects your characteristics. You start the game from the ripe age of 20, and each spell you cast makes you older – when you turn 100, you die. Magic is also connected to your sanity – the less sane you are, the more power your casting has. Naturally you want to reduce your sanity as much as you can, so how do you do it? Well, finding spell words and foci and casting spells for the first time does this. In addition, there are other events that shake your sanity – for instance, if you knock on front door, some nameless monster appears for a second and frightens you.

So, you’d think the game would be spent in searching new spell words and foci. Yet, the very first spell I found changed this radically – when I used XAM at any focus, I would learn what spell it was a focus for, thus making all spell words hidden in the house redundant. I then quickly learned that one focus – a piece of mirror I had just acquired – changed the game even more radically. The mirror let me cast ZEN, which gave me access to “mists of time”, which was essentially just a quick way to access nearly all of the map and even places that at this point would have otherwise been closed off from me (changing this from Travel Story to a Game of Exploration).

I decided I wanted to play this game more organically, learning spell words as I discovered them in the house and accessing new places only after I had solved the necessary puzzles (like Captain Kirk said, we are meant to fight our way through and claw every inch, not stroll to the sound of flutes). Back to mapping, then. Since most of this was pretty humdrum, I’ll try to be terse, indicating only the more interesting things I found and puzzles I solved.

My very own sidekick

The most interesting thing in the second floor was a bat that started to follow me. It took me a while to get this, but the HYP(nosis) spell let me command creatures. When I HYPnotized the fellow, it helped me to catch a moving wheel (another focus). Other puzzles on this floor were simple, once I found proper spells. There was one secret room containing lever, pulling of which released a sword. I also found an inscription of a spell on a roof, which I could read only by using the spell FLY on myself.

Finally, there was a room full of chests of many different colours. Opening up a wrong one created an explosion that hurt my stamina. It all came down to using the DOW spell – meant for checking if an item is magical – to find the one I could open safely, Inside, I found some salt.

I really don’t want to know what’s going on here…

The bottom floor was the largest in the house. The most remarkable thing I found in it was the Red Moon I supposed I was searching for. I couldn’t take it, because its magic gave me a jolt, but touching it rejuvenated me, making my age quite irrelevant. I also could levitate the Red Moon with my FLY spell, revealing yet another spell word (DED).

In addition, I met a ghost, who was willing to give me its old armour, if I just buried all his bones, scattered in few places. I had already found a shovel, and a good burial place was in the garden.

I also met my first hostile creatures: werewolf, wight, skeleton and a giant slug. The game has a combat system, but just like in Red Moon, I assume it’s completely useless. Indeed, I could walk around the wight, the skeleton wandered from one room to another and the wolf was scared of wolfsbane. And the slug? It didn’t like salt.

Beyond the slug opened up a whole new, underground section of the game. Having now searched through the house proper, I think it’s best to end the post. The main problem, as in many earlier Level 9 games, is that the game world is too sparse in comparison with its size – I’ve spent most of time mapping, instead of solving puzzles.

Spells (if I’ve “officially” found them) – foci (if I own them) – what they do: ESP – ? – ?, ? – candle – ?, ? – ashes – ?, DET – elder cross – detect danger, XAM – prism – checks if target is focus for some spell, ZEN – mirror – rapid movement, MAD – grimoire – make target mad, HYP – staff – hypnotises targets, ? – valerian – ?, DED – wheel – cancels spells, FLY- broom – makes target fly, DOW – pendulum – check if target is magical, BOM – ? – ?, SEE – feldspar lense – finding secret doors

Inventory otherwise: mandrake, skull, knucklebone, ring, eyebright flowers, cage, robes, knife, wolfsbane, shovel, plate armour

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/missed-classic-80-the-price-of-magik-1986-introduction/