It is rather telling that Roberta Williams' Graphical Adventure Game (GAG) "The Wizard and the Princess" opens up with neither a wizard nor a princess. Instead, the scene is set in a barren desert populated with snakes, rocks, and the scorpions which hide behind them.
Williams' first attempt at creating a GAG was "Mystery House"; indeed, "Mystery House" is considered the first text adventure game with graphics. She followed this up with "The Wizard and the Princess." The big draw for this title at the time was its color graphics. Unfortunately, modern day gamers will find little to draw them to the game at all.
The interface of the game is fairly identical to "Mystery House." A rather child-like drawing takes up most of the screen as a parser fills the bottom portion. After reading a meager description of the room, the player must type in commands at the command prompt like a standard Interactive Fiction piece ("Zork", "Planetfall", etc.)
Early GAGs tended to rely on mazes. They were a relatively effecient way to recycle art elements and also functioned as an artificial way to extend the length of a game. "The Wizard and the Princess" is no exception. Poor puzzle design and an ever poorer text parser round out this gaming experience.
The first puzzle in the game presents the player with a fairly obvious problem: a large snake blocks your path. A rock is also seen on the screen, right next to the snake. One would think that typing "THROW ROCK AT SNAKE" would result in the snake perishing. Of course, one that would think such a thought would have something called common sense, a trait Roberta Williams did not have while designing this game.
Instead, to rid the desert of the first of many snakes you will vanquish over the course of the game, you have to search around a bunch of identical looking desert screens until you find a rock your avatar can actually take with him. Simply navigate your way back through the desert maze to the snake and slay him with your rock to proceed past the first puzzle. Fun, no?
Actually, it's not fun at all, and that's a big problem with the game. With all its faults, at least "Mystery House" used the construct of a murder mystery to at least present an intriguing scenario for a game. "Wizard and the Princess" tosses you into a desert with no real clue of where to go and a bunch of illogical puzzles. If you've ever wished that a cactus in the desert would have a saltine cracker hidden inside of it, perhaps you would enjoy this game.
Certainly the color graphics add a bit of visual punch to the whole affair and Roberta Williams' artistic skills are improved over her stick figures of the damned from "Mystery House," but are the graphics truly integral to the gameplay experience? They might provide visual clues to a puzzle, but the gameplay is ultimately the same as an Interactive Fiction piece.
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