Spellbinder

Overview

Spellbinder is an adventure game, released for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron in 1987. The game was written by Dan and Etan Shirron, two teenagers from Israel. They were 14½ and 16 when they started coding the game in 1986. The equipment used to write it was a memory monitor chip, a monochrome 14" TV, a cassette tape recorder and their own BASIC-written graphic-design software. The game was originally named Magelords, later to be named Spellbinder by Superior Software marketing team. Unusually, for a BBC Micro game, it featured continuous background music - a version of Midnight Summer Dream, the 1983 song from British rock group The Stranglers' album Feline. The player has to navigate his way through the castle, collect ingredients and make spells that can be used on the various creatures that roam the castle. The player sees his character from a side view and uses the keyboard to navigate him between rooms and interact with the environment. The castle consists of two floors, three citadels, a catacomb and a dungeon and to move between the different levels teleports or portals have to be used. There are also secret passages, one-way doors and doors that only appear after certain tasks has been accomplished. To create spells the player has to collect the various ingredients that can be found around the castle and then mix them together. Among the ingredients there are burned ashes that is used for spells that causes effects on enemies, sulphur that is used for curing wounds, toad's legs that are used for freezing spells and dried roots which is used on spells intended for the spellbinder. Example of spells include heal which is made by mixing sulphur and dried roots while freeze which slows down enemies is created by combining toad's legs and burned ashes. Regular spells doesn't kill enemies but can be used to avoid their bad effects. Recipes for the most common spells are listed in the game's instructions but by exploring the castle the player will find hints and clues on how to create more advanced spells.

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