Wishbringer, the classic infocom game is one of the best examples of interactive fiction to ever come along on a 3x5 floppy disk. You start out as a postman in an offbeat, yet charming town, asked to deliver a package to an olde curiosity shoppe, way up a mountain on the other side of town. Naturally, you have plenty of time to explore the little hamlet, and I suggest you do, before the package is to be delivered. Still, do not waste too much time because there is a game clock, and if darkness falls before you deliver it, you will be fired, and the game will be over.
It is in your best interest to avoid darkness altogether, because, after dark, the charming hamlet shifts character and becomes really creepy. For instance, a cute poodle morphs into a vicious attack dog in the dark, the bumbling sheriff turns into the Gestapo, and a cozy arcade becomes a run-down haven for seedy types. Luckily, the old woman at the curiosity shoppe leaves you armed with wishbringer.
What is wishbringer? It’s a magical stone that grants wishes, provided you are in possession of the objects necessary for the stone to work properly. For example, you need to be holding the horseshoe to wish for luck, or the umbrella to wish for rain. That being said, wishbringer can be played and won without making a single wish,
although it is exponentially more difficult to do so.
The game goes above and beyond when it comes to describing each place you can travel to. I highly recommend turning on the verbose mode so that each time you go to a location you get the full description. In regular mode, you only get a description of a place the first time you go there, and with all the different locations in the game, this can get confusing.
I also recommend taking lots of notes (especially as you follow the winding path up the mountain) if only to compare and contrast the differences between day and night in the game.
Overall, I rate Wishbringer 95 out of 100, for the quality of the story, the level of challenge, the comprehensive vocabulary, and the success at creating a dream-like state without graphics. It was the first text-based game I ever played, and I can trace my love of them back to Wishbringer.
