Wizard Wars

Wizard Wars is a video game in the role-playing (rpg) genre developed by Out of the Blue, Inc. and published by Paragon Software Corporation originally released in 1988. It is currently playable on DOS.

Paragon's third game is set in a fantasy world of mages competing for power. It's based on pretty much the same primitive engine used in Alien Fires 2199 AD, but this time the gameplay has improved a bit, as winning combat requires some skills (e. g. choosing which spells to cast), although randomness is still a factor.

The plot: you are the wizard Temeres, whose tasks are to reunite the White Unicorn with the Black Unicorn to restore cosmic balance, and defeat the evil wizard Aldorin in magical combat. The game features over 50 fantastic creatures to encounter, 85 magical items to collect, 3 dimensions and over 30 exciting enchanted realms to explore. However, despite this large game world, most encounters are resolved in a seemingly random fashion.

The manual touts a 'sophisticated combat generation that takes into account time of day, weapons, armor, strength and magic spells', but either the game engine doesn't do this or those factors are very well hidden from the player, because I won most of the fights very easily. Last but not least, the game has a very atrocious 3D maze that you must carefully trace.

Overall, Wizard Wars could have been a much better game if the designers had spent more time on the user interface and balancing the game mechanics. The best part of the game is the cool goodies that come in the box: a very nice wizard spell book and a magic bag (similar to the one included in Infocom's Journey box). Overall, it's a well-conceived but not so well-executed game.

It is possible that we have multiple downloads available when different versions exist.