Wishbringer: The Magick Stone of Dreams is an interactive fiction

Interactive fiction

Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...

 computer game written by Brian Moriarty

Brian Moriarty

Brian Moriarty is an American video game developer who authored three of the original Infocom interactive fiction titles, Wishbringer , Trinity and Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor ....

 and published by Infocom

Infocom

Infocom was a software company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced one notable business application, a relational database called Cornerstone....

 in 1985. It was intended to be an easier game to solve than the typical Infocom release, and provide a good introduction to interactive fiction for inexperienced players. It was one of five top-selling titles to be re-released in Solid Gold versions including in-game hints. Craig Shaw Gardner

Craig Shaw Gardner

Craig Shaw Gardner is an American author, best known for producing fantasy parodies similar to those of Terry Pratchett.He was also a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America , a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized...

 novelized Wishbringer in the Infocom Book line.

Plot

The player's character is a postal clerk in the small fishing village of Festeron. The cranky postmaster, Mr. Crisp, orders the player to deliver an important envelope to the proprietor of Ye Olde Magick Shoppe. The proprietor in question, a kindly old lady, then asks the player to rescue her cat from a sorceress known only as The Evil One. Stepping out of the store, the player finds that quaint Festeron has mysteriously been transformed into a more sinister town called Witchville. Every aspect of Festeron has been changed to something ominous: for instance, what was once a poodle is now a frightening hellhound.

Fortunately, the player soon finds the Wishbringer, a magical stone that can grant seven wishes if a suitable object is used in conjunction. (To see the future, for example, the player must be wearing glasses and holding the stone.)

Wishes

The seven wishes that can be granted by the stone are for advice, darkness, flight, foresight, freedom, luck, and rain. Each wish can only be used once per game, and requires that the player possess some related object. (These objects and their relations to the wishes are described in the feelies, as a form of copy protection

Copy protection

Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy obstruction, copy prevention and copy restriction, refer to techniques used for preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media, usually for copyright reasons.- Terminology :Media corporations have always used the term...

.)

A few Infocom games featured puzzles with multiple solutions (for example, the "Loud Room" from Zork I

Zork

Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language...

). However, Wishbringer featured several such puzzles, many of which could be solved either in a straightforward (that is, non-magical) manner or by using one of the stone's wishes. The game can be completely solved without using any wishes.

Feelies

Included in the Wishbringer package are several items, which Infocom called feelies:

• A book, The Legend of Wishbringer, that explains how the magic stone came to be (in the Solid Gold release, an in-game object included in the player's starting inventory instead of the packaging)
• The envelope and letter to be delivered to Ye Olde Magick Shoppe
• A "postal zone map" of Festeron
• A plastic glow-in-the-dark replica of the stone

External links

• Wishbringer info in Adventure Classic Gaming
• Wishbringer information and overview
• Wishbringer information from the Infocom Gallery with photos of the entire contents of the game (manual, feelies, etc.)
• Wishbringer information from Infocom-if.org
• The Infocom Bugs List entry for Wishbringer